The Odysseus Medal: Amy Winehouse is not in the house

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Judging this contest, I get to read a lot of talented writers. But only one can connect Amy Winehouse to real estate and have it all make the most delightful kind of sense. The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Geno Petro for She tried to make me buy a rehab…:

Truth is; I can barely swing a hammer….Let me rephrase that; I can swing the hell out of a hammer but just not in a constructive way. I am not the fixer-upper type, in case we haven’t met. (See mug shot above for clarity.) I probably err to the side of demolition, if anything.

That being said, my lovely wife (and occasional muse) found a possible second home that in theory, could fulfill our retirement needs during those forthcoming platinum years that Dennis Hopper pitches on the Ameriprise commercials during prime time every night. All things equal, he’s my favorite corporate sell out so far this century, that Dennis Hopper.  Cool, quirky and rich beyond words, for sure.

“60 is the new 40,” exclaims my man, sharply dressed in black, The Spencer Davis Group blaring in the background, and looking unlike like any beshaded 72 year old cat I’ve ever met.  And I’m all over it. According to DH, I’ve got 40 more good ones ahead of me. According to his math and blueprint for living, I’m barely 34.  When he comes on the plasma in high def I get a sudden urge to run out and invest in something spectacular before I lose another precious second. I yearn to  join the expedition, or at the very least, embark on the journey to financial freedom.  After all, one man’s destination is another man’s starting point. Ask any truly wealthy person (9 figures+ by my definition) and I’m certain he will tell you as much. “It’s the journey, not the…” whatever.

But the ‘hidden gem’ my wife came across this past weekend, a shack on the Tennessee River, needs some serious attention; more attention than I’m prepared to pay for, quite frankly. She found it on the Film Location site our own house is registered with (unbeknownst to me until a few months ago). And in case you didn’t know, there is a market for short term property rentals (upwards of $30,000 a month–the first 14 days tax-free) ‘wherever motion pictures are regularly filmed near you.’  And guess what? We qualify!  Hell, everybody who pays the $199 enrollment fee qualifies, come to find out.  It’s the Barbazon School of Modeling for overly proud home owners. Our modest, generally untalented house is the white picket fence version of Little Miss Sunshine. Sad but true, I’m a default stage parent by the sacrament of Matrimony (although I’m pretty sure I may have been ex-communicated two marriages ago).

So, after discovering this (our house registration, that is) and upon further examination, I found that the Film Home Locator is just another portal for slinging rental property for a nominal listing fee. A smooth talking ‘location consultant’ named Bud convinced my wife, in a weak moment, to fork over our Amex card info and enroll our own humble residence in The Directory. So much for the Parental Control field I activated on my laptop although it is only the two of us living there.  (And just for the record, eight movies are being shot in Chicago this year and not one Hollywood Director dropped by the crib with our 30K.) Anyway, some other mullet that Bud clubbed over the head is trying to dump a river house on the same site and this immediately caught the eye of my wife. My Google History report tells me she logs on to The Directory nearly everyday, checking out the visitor meter and counting the unique clicks to our own home page, no doubt. Poor thing. She yearns so badly for our house to become famous.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to another utterly amazing writer, Kris Berg, with A lesson in push(y) marketing:

If our agent training focused more on developing critical thinking skills and less on delivering prescriptive methods to achieve success, I argue we would all be better off. Take “working expireds” (please). As both an agent and a consumer, if I fire up my frontal lobe for just one cup of coffee, I recognize this practice as spamming at its worst.

Let’s think about reasons why the owner of a property which “failed to sell” might not heed my early morning agent call to action:

• They are busy on the other line accepting an offer to save money on their long-distance phone bill;
• They knew in advance that their listing was going to expire, where you did not, and have already made arrangements to relist;
• They ultimately decided not to sell, for whatever reason, and therefore the “lead” you are chasing is not a lead at all.
• In the event that they do intend to relist and have not decided with whom they will do so, you are the 894th person to call them this morning, and now they are really pissed off – at all of you.
• They asked that their phone number be removed from the MLS so agents wouldn’t be calling them, and you just did.
• They hate spam.

The proponents of the expired listing game claim that the key to your success will be in making a distinction. How about this? Distinguish yourself by not calling, and use that valuable time to consider a marketing approach which might actually appeal to your audience, not turn them off. Spam, just because it comes from you, is still spam.

Whenever I consider a marketing approach or piece, I ask myself one simple question: Would I respond favorably to this approach if the roles were reversed? Where calling expired listings is concerned, unless you are someone who just accepted one of the forty-seven offers you received in your mailbox last week to refinance your home or transfer your credit card balance or lower your auto insurance payments, I suspect you would not. Sure, someone along the way may bite, but in the process you have left a wake of destruction, and our image just might be found among the debris.

I know, I know. There are a lot of agents out there who are not going to agree with me, agents who have had much success finding business through approaching “expireds.” That’s fine. Every agent needs to generate business; having business is how we make money. Over time, we each learn to apply our own unique strengths in finding our own unique approaches to success. What works for me won’t necessarily work for another. Yet, if working expired listings is one of the ways in which an agent attempts to grow their business, maybe mailing a compelling case for their services will be better received than hosting the 7:00 AM telethon. It is still “push” marketing, but it’s a little less pushy.

For me, there has to be a better way. I would rather spend my energies doing things that might inspire people who want to sell and have failed to call me – or, gasp, call me in the first place. But, then, what do I know?

And rounding out a trifecta of fine writers, this week’s People’s Choice Award goes to Mike Farmer for The Religion (Tyranny) of Niceness:

However, even in Pleasantville the human trait for dominance exists and niceness is a large, sharp sword in the hands of those who would control through kindness. Those who fail the test of kindness are enemies of the state (of mind). Those who are most kind are the leaders – their subjects strive to be more kind and they hate the unkind. Who are the unkind? Well, that’s usually decided by the leaders of the kind and depends on alliances.

The irony is that the kind can be unkind if it’s for the greater good of the kind, because niceness is subjective and must be determined by the wisdom of the leaders of the kind. Usually the unkind are those who think and act differently than the kind. If the kind believe that group support of self-esteem is more important than honesty, then those who say anything detrimental to the self-esteem of a member of the kind is unkind and therefore not nice, an enemy to be destroyed, even if they are destroyed by unkindness. It’s for the greater good of the kind.

Who doesn’t want to be kind? The number of kind is many because kindness is a virtue and niceness is the religion of the kind. Sometimes the unkind have done nothing but speak their minds, yet in speaking they’ve crossed the line of acceptable honesty and violated the code of kindness and therefore a legitimate target for unkindness for the sake of survival of the kind. Sometimes those deemed unkind have merely spoken out of frustration, yet they spoke wrongly according to the wisdom of kind leaders. Kind leaders may get frustrated and say something unkind, but this is to be understood because they fight for justice and fights can get nasty – remember, though, the greater good.

I know it all gets confusing, but like I said, it’s subjective and therefore dependent on the wisdom of kind leaders.

If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should.

We have a brand new tool for promoting The Long List of Odysseus Medal nominees. The Long List will be shown in that little gizmo until the current week’s Short List is announced and then I’ll update it with the new week’s nominees. This is link-love back from BloodhoundBlog, but my reason for building the tool is to promote the best ideas in real estate any way I can. To that end, read this post so that you can learn how to echo The Long List on your own site.

The Long List also has its very own weblog, a link blog of the latest Long List nominees as they are nominated. Feel free to visit, but probably the best way for you to keep abreast of the best in real estate weblogging is to subscribe to The Long List RSS feed.

And as always, if you trip upon some fantastic light, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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