BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Cathleen Collins (page 3 of 3)

Realtor, Staging Consultant

July 20, 2006

Drop a dime on a relo, win $50

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

I have a listing that’s been on the market since June 15. I know, that’s only a bit over a month… not too long in today’s market. But, this is a gorgeous, well appointed house in a great community, with really smart sellers. They keep the home immaculate, it shows beautifully and it’s priced well, comping to or even less than what the same model in the same subdivision sold for last autumn, after last summer’s rabid housing boom in Phoenix had ended. We didn’t try to edge the price up, like so many sellers are still trying to do. And the house has been marketed well. I’m proud of the differentiating factors we bring to our marketing. I’m not talking about the typical post-in-the-ground, ad-in-the-paper and flyer-in-the-box, but the kind of marketing that I believe Seth Godin might give a nod to if we were on his radar.

When I met with the sellers last night, I couldn’t give a good explanation as to why the house hadn’t even shown since the end of June. Sure, the market has slowed. But there are still folks out there buying houses. Perhaps conventional wisdom would have them lower their asking price, but I don’t believe price is the factor. I explained that theirs is a move up house and until someone lower on the food chain is able to sell his house, he won’t have any freedom of movement. My idea all along has been that this is a great house for a relocation. Yesterday Greg posted this from the Business Journal of Phoenix:

A new report by a research group called Federal Funds Information for States ranks Arizona first among states in terms of economic momentum.

And the day before, this came from from the same publication:

Quick, what do Mesa and Milwaukee have in common?

The two tied as the least vulnerable to natural disaster among the nation’s 50 largest cities. But Mesa wasn’t the only Arizona city to land near the top of the list created by SustainLane.com. Phoenix and Tucson tied for the No. 3 spot along with Cleveland and El Paso, Texas.

So Read more

July 20, 2006

Is pet rescue good for business, or are we just chasing our Long Tail…?

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

This past week, Noah’s Ark Pet Adoptions, a no-kill animal “shelter” and adoption organization, was featured in the Northwest Valley Republic. The picture to the right is from the article. If you click on it, the full article will display.

I’m always looking for ways to support this fine organization, by fostering unwanted pets who need permanent homes, by adopting pets (current family includes four dogs and nine cats), by donating money and by promoting them in any way I can.

On the “Refer a friend” page of our website, we make this offer:

And because charity begins at home, if someone you refer buys or sells a home with us, we’ll donate 10% of our net commission to the charity of your choice (within limits — we won’t give money to people who kill people). You get to share BloodhoudRealty.com with people you love, and you get to share the proceeds with the people who need your love. Everybody wins!

And, if the referrer has no ‘pet project’ of her own, we’ll suggest Noah’s Ark. From our “About us” page, in the section about me, Cathleen Collins, we say

She devotes most of her spare time and all of her spare money to rescuing unwanted animals — including our Spokesmodel, Odysseus.

Now the interesting thing about this page is we ran stats yesterday on the key phrase people had typed into the search engine they used to click through to our site. We opened up the survey to every search engine and every phrase. Eighth on the list of unique search terms that brought people to our site was “no kill animal shelters in Phoenix”!

Now how to turn that Long Tail into gold!

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July 15, 2006

Striking a blow for principle

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Kudos to Ardell DellaLogia for her condemnation of Buyer Agent Bonuses!

The mere concept that a Buyer Agent will be enticed to lead a buyer to one house over another, because of the amount of money that Buyer Agent will make when it sells, shoud be offensive to every single agent in this country

In her response to a flame that appeared anonymously as comment to my article, In the 21st century world of real estate, nothing says ‘roadkill’ like a dead dinosaur… (ahem, Ardell), she courageously explains why she has chosen to eschew membership in the NAR:

Does anyone really think it matters if I go over and slap my $500 or so over at the Board of Realtors on Monday to “become a REALTOR”? Does taking five minutes out of my day and $500 out of my pocket really make any difference in who I am or how I do business with my clients? I think it is more honest and ethical to be true to myself, and stay out as long as I agree with the DOJ’s position. I think it is more honest and ethical for me to stand outside the fray until our basic thinking is more in line, than to be a member who dissents from within. I’m the one who has to look at myself in the mirror in that regard, and make a personal choice. At present, this is the one I can live with.

With this single article, Ardell has joined Curtis Hall, a 1980s pioneer of Buyer Agency, as one of my Real Estate Heroes! (Trust me… Curtis, from whom I took my ABR classes, is far more fascinating in person than his web presence expresses.)

July 14, 2006

In the 21st century world of real estate, nothing says ‘roadkill’ like a dead dinosaur . . .

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Why do velociraptors no longer roam the earth? Because they couldn’t change. For all their ferocity and intelligence, they were not able to adapt to their changing world. Not able because they were not blessed with the human triumph of will, they couldn’t want to change, and so they became extinct.

What’s a Realtor’s excuse?

In today’s world of Web 2.0, disintermediation, and DOJ scrutiny, anyone in this industry who doesn’t believe the real estate business in the 21st Century is going to be dramatically different from the last century is going to be in a world of hurt. The only way to survive will be to embrace that change.

Ardell DellaLoggia started an excellent thread on Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide, where she has a conversation about buyers’ reps changing their worldview on buyer compensation.

Clearly, the Buyer Agent truly treating the buyer as a client, is the key to the future of our industry. As long as agents continue to think that the seller is paying their commission, when they are representing a buyer, they will continue to treat the buyer as a second class citizen in the real estate transaction.

Be sure to read the entire thread to get the most out of it.

But, closer to my own heart is Allen Wright’s post on RealBlogging, which also recommends we re-evaluate the method of Realtor compensation. Closer to my heart because he asks the essential question:

As a real estate professional maybe we should take a step back and ask a more serious question, “What value-added-service am I providing?”

I like being in a commission based industry. I like being paid for my results, not just my efforts. There are 1,200,000 of us all expending some type of effort, a consumer might assume. But who is actually creating value for his clients through that effort?

Some business models such as discount service brokers and the Redfins of the industry have answered this question by saying “we’re not going to give you added value, but we’ll give you what you have come to expect from Realtors for less than Realtors typically charge.” For some consumers, this Read more

July 13, 2006

Got Junk? Welcome The Junk Guys

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Last Winter I represented a couple who bought a home from a pair of ancients who had lived in their house for over 30 years. During their long tenure, they never ran across a memento that they didn’t want to keep. So although we gave them a long escrow, by the last 5 days they hadn’t made a dent in emptying their nest. The seller’s agent, Dan Peacock, a fine Realtor whose license is currently with Homesmart, worked some magic and the house was empty at close, and at the time that’s all I cared about.

But, have you ever found yourself in this situation: surrounded by mountains of stuff, so much that you no longer have any idea of what you have, so much that it’s crowding you out of enjoying your home? And so much that you’re overwhelmed at the thought of how to go about getting rid of it? I was there earlier this year when I sold the family home, which I had bought from my parents eight years earlier. The home was full of memories. Memories of my youngest sister going to Senita Elementary then learning to drive and cruising MetroCenter then going to prom at Moon Valley. Her wedding gown was still hanging in the laundry room and her children’s kindergarten projects for Grandma and Grandpa were still tacked to walls and taped to cupboards. On top of those were my own memories. Memories of my life in the house during the last years of my late husband’s life: Decorating ideas we had cut out from Phoenix Home & Garden and Architectural Digest. Pretty stones we had collected along the shores of Southern California. And more recent memories with Greg and Cameron: Dried flowers from my wedding bouquet. Michael Jordan and Star Wars posters in Cameron’s bedroom. Memories that will last a lifetime, but stuff that was consuming my thoughts and my time. We had moved from that house over a year before, but still all that stuff was there, and we had sold the house.

There was a solution. Yesterday sellsius° real estate blog mentioned it Read more

July 11, 2006

The peaks and valleys of my first year as a full-time Realtor…

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Want to know when the real estate market will get back to normal? I have a crystal ball. Well, a really good spreadsheet analysis, anyway…

I’ve been a real estate licensee for three years, but I’ve been a full-time Realtor for only a little over a year. This means that when I joined the National Association of Realtors and local affiliates, I entered the industry at the height of Metropolitan Phoenix’s market correction — or irrational exuberance, depending on your point of view. On average, houses were appreciating between 35% and 65% a year. Homes were selling within days, sometimes within hours, and neither Realtors nor appraisers could keep up with what price a house should sell at. So, Realtors were running comps, pricing above all the recent sales, above last week’s sales, then waiting for the fax to churn out multiple offers to buy the house for even more than that! Representing buyers, helping them get the homes they wanted for a price they could afford, was hard work. But representing sellers was “easy,” so that was the preferred side of the transaction. I walked into the business with a winner — a seller — a dear friend who was leaving the company we worked for at the same time I was. I left to become a Realtor and she left to move to Tucson.

Because I was so new — and afraid of making any mistake that would result in Juanita getting less than she should — I asked Greg to take the listing so I could assist and learn. That was my last chance at my own listing during last year’s wild ride.

Then, sometime during the winter, the market became stable. It was no longer a seller’s market. My buyers were able to buy the homes they wanted without having to outbid other would-be buyers. This was a great market. Then the whispers came and the news media shouted: We were headed toward a “bubble burst.” What a silly metaphor for our housing market, comparing it to the technology industry of the ’90s, when venture capital camouflaged foolish business plans Read more

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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