Author: Eric Blackwell (page 1 of 8)

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Author’s note: This post is about Rama Mehra and her team. They work in the East Bay in northern California. Feel free to click that link and see who they are, and what they do. With all of the negativity in the world these days, each week I am going to highlight some of the amazing people I have met during a career of almost 20 years serving as a technologist in the real estate industry. I am also going to highlight a few things that I have learned from each of them. Are any of these people perfect? No, none of us are…but if there is one thing that I have learned, it is that each person does at least one thing REALLY well. Sometimes many things. Finding that good that is in each person and learning from it has been a fun and rewarding life experience for me.

Here is a picture of their team:

So what is your version of the American Dream? Would you chase it to a new country? Would you learn a new language to seek your fortune? Would you be flexible and yet tough enough to deal with new cultures and customs? America offers freedom. Freedom provides opportunity. Opportunity brings challenges. Challenges bring character and strength. This is what attracts the best of the best to immigrate to America. And people like Rama and Sunil coming here is EXACTLY what should be celebrated about this country.

One of the amazing things for me about working in the real estate industry have been the incredible people that I have met. I am a family guy. I love and appreciate the talent that it takes to be a spouse and a parent. I have often fallen short, but I love the relationship that I have now with my kids as adults and wth my wife, Jen. We have 4 young adult (now) kids. When I met Rama Mehra and her husband Sunil there were a few things that almost immediately struck me about them.

First was how well they treated each other as a couple. When they immigrated to Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

One of the easiest things to understand in sales is that everything starts with a question. How much home can I afford? How do I deal with foreclosure? Who is the best REALTOR? Where is the best neighborhood for my family? There are literally millions of questions starting an equally impressive number of sales out there.

And the wild part is that REALTORS get asked those questions every day. The REALTORS that utilize those questions to start conversations (google Cluetrain Manifesto) and who turn those conversations into relationships and action generate stellar incomes. Those who find themselves incapable of that, well, notsomuch.

The trick is to find the right questions, the trending questions. The ones that are being asked. The ones that answers in the form of content provided on a site will result in Google putting you up there for the world to see. The ones that are WORTH blogging about.

How do you find them? Google it. I am not being a smart aleck. Check out what Google provides currently when you Google “How to Sell My Home”:

They show you both alternative questions to blog about and the FORM that you should use with the answer. (more on that later) Conform your answers to their style whether table, paragraph, list, or etc and watch what happens. Geotarget your answers gently for some extra fun and results.

Additional note: Want to expand the number of questions that Google displays and build yourself a month or more of blogging subjects? Click on each of the current questions in the Google search and Google will provide similar stuff. In a matter of seconds your list can look similar to this, but longer:

Position zero on Google (that’s the one above Zillow, kids…the one with the picture and a list). That’s the one reserved for the boys and girls with authority who a) pick the right questions b) answer them in the form that google wants and c) uses correct formatting…etc but whether you get Position zero or not, you WILL be answering questions that are being asked and you WILL be starting those conversations Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

First the news about a new organization set to try and take down Realtor.com, Trulia.com, and Zillow.com and replace them with syndication done REALTOR right. Or at the least to compel the syndicators to get the listings right.

Now my opinion. I think this is interesting. And I think it will get a LOT MORE INTERESTING if enough people join up to give them critical mass.

Did I mention that I would like things to get interesting? Or at least get fixed?

And for syndicators who want to hate on me for wanting things interesting… Fix the listings problem. Then gripe at me. Quit gaming the system. THEN let’s talk about the rest of it. 😉

If you want to dispute the WAV group’s survey linked in the news article…okayfine…but a LOT of us here in the real estate industry have a lot of empirical evidence that the study is true, namely people calling us about listings and us having to say “yeah that was sold a while ago.” That is a TON of empirical evidence that the WAV Group study is spot on.

Thoughts?

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Warning – long post ahead. I had a lot on my mind. 😉

This last week and my trip to Inman has been a whirlwind and I just walked in the door from the airport.

I have literally been too busy to write some of the things that I experienced and I really want to have some time to put them in context and “digest” some of them so that I can (hopefully) use what I saw to provide something useful in future posts.

That said, the first of my impressions was the most clear and thus most easy for me to put out into the arena of public ideas while it is still fresh. One of the panel discussions was the “Syndication Discussion” which included the usual representatives, (Saul Klein, Spencer Rascoff from Zillow, Errol Samuelson from Realtor.com, and others) including Mark McLaughlin of Pacific Union. (Note to Mark – I don’t know you personally, but nicely done. The crack about “I’m not outnumbered the audience is on my side.” was priceless. There were many people in that audience that wanted to get up and say something, but did not…)

Ok, now to my main point. At one point in the panel, Mr. Samuelson turned to Mr. Rascoff and pointed out that they include FSBO listings on their site at which time Mr. Rascoff replied that REALTOR.com included non-REALTOR listings in THEIR site as well. (gulp–start the music and Mr. Samuelson proceeds to do the “Inman 2 Step – a dance done by executives when they want to avoid continuing the line of discussion that THEY started…) This is a point which I had made recently in a post on Real Estate Industry Watch. And the folks at Realtor.com had actually asked to meet me about at Inman (and we did…).

If you read what I wrote at REIW, I specifically was concerned that REALTOR.com has a HIGHER LEVEL of ACCOUNTABILITY because they are the OWNER of the REALTOR trademark. (Please, we can leave the anti-NAR stuff for a later post, I am trying to stick to one issue here) Since they HAVE Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I was all set to write about how you should NOT use the new Zillow sites because I happen to agree with Don Reedy that they are sleeping with the enemy…when sleeping with friends is ONLY an FTP and a little bit of money away…c’mon people. 😉 ( I was even going to title it “A Mess of Pottage” just to get people talking… )

But then I saw this on the Huffington Post. Check it out. SERIOUSLY. Check it out.

Now for those of my friends that are more liberal, RELAX. 😉 Just because I saw a Google alert for Real Estate Blog from HuffPo does NOT mean I am drinking your Kool-Aid. You should know me better than that. 😉

And for my conservative and libertarian friends, RELAX. 😉 I am not drinking THEIR Kool-Aid. 🙂 🙂 Boy this political season has me stressed. hehe. Oh yeah…conservative friends..go back and read the post, don’t skip it just because it is HuffPo…you aren’t gonna die or go blind…grin

My goal was to offend EVERYONE politically in two paragraphs…how did I do?

I guess my points (I have THREE) with the above article was that I was well and truly surprised to see HuffPo celebrating the creative destruction of one business and noting the rise of another as an entreprenurial journalist shifted from Journalism to profitable blogging and made good at it. (Or is in the process of it).

And a corollary to that point. Creative Destruction WORKS. Even in our beloved real estate industry, just because things are the way they are today does not mean that they will be there for long. I am headed out to Inman this year (after a long hiatus from Connecting and Conventioning and etc) to enjoy some further reflection on where this industry is going and how to profitably stay in front of it.

We need to embrace change. Enjoy it and thrive on it.

How essential are brokerages? How about Franchises? How about Offices? How fast will business models change? Third party lead generators – are they vital? Or just an interloper?(All good questions IMO)

Oh yeah…the other two Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

In the world of Google upheaval that I have lived through in the past couple of months, I have consumed my share of Diet Mt. Dew and aspirin. So to cure my headache and to continue to contribute to all that is good in the real estate conversation, I offer you the first of hopefully many Jeff Foxworthy style best practices that I am seeing in the real estate industry.

I have entitled these posts, “You might be a Bloodhound if…” I think it is appropriate.

The first entry is from a friend in Manhattan Beach Ca who has what I think is one of the classiest videos to introduce himself ever. Try competing with the sincerity and the authenticity of this REALTOR:

Get to know ya video for Greg Geilman

Seriously. Go to the page…click the video and please share your thoughts.

I personally think that this type of video connects in all the right ways with a consumer. It would if I was the consumer.

Would love your feedback. (And NO I did not do the video. 😉 He sent it to me for my thoughts. grin

You might be a Bloodhound if…you create a video to connect with people like this. #justsayin for those of you twitterers..grin

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Long post ahead. I think it is worth your time. 😉
The first presentation that I ever did on SEO was titled “SEO is a team sport”. I am a team sport kind of guy. I know that it may sound wierd coming from a rugged individualist, but it is or at least can be totally true. I have an example that (hopefully) proves my point.
I have mentioned my friend Gary Lundholm before. His brokerage has 150 plus agents and is a sizeable force in the Virginia Beach / Hampton Roads market. The way that he and his partners foundeed their brokerage was on providing the most and best tools and training to their agents. And then teaching a trusting that their agents would respect themselves and each other enough to work together as a cohesive and yet competitive team in the same market with each other. It is a team sport.

Coopetition. It is when Cooperation and Competition meet.

Most would argue that Competition surely eliminates cooperation. I would argue that a brokerage CAN take a leadership role in building a climate where their agents feel that the broker IS helping them build their business and not just the “chinese food and cotton candy” approach that most brokers take where 20 minutes later the agent is still hungry. That is laziness on their part as brokers. There I said it. Meant it too.

So my example? I was teaching an online SEO class to a group of his agents. (remember I said nothing held back? 😉 ) Note: Gary also equips them for online marketing battle with the same armor that he uses. Interesting, huh? We were helping two members of this little class to rank their sites a bit better in Google for neighborhoods and niches that they were targeting. Greg Chaplain (who focusses on several luxury niche neighborhoods) and Larry Porter (who specializes in military relocations). Great guys and each technically could be competing for the same kettle of fish, but everyone deciding to learn by doing, and also by helping the other guy in the process.

Would this Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Just in case you missed this. And I got it on a Google alert.

Dead tree media is ummm…dying more everyday.

Note to newspapers…those presses are livery stables and we all drive cars. 😉 And have for a LONG time.

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

If you have never read what Jeff Brown writes, STOP. Go read it. Seriously. Go to the right sidebar, scroll down to the Bawld Guy and click the archive link. Ok. 😉

Jeff’s recent post brought up some good conversations that I want to shed some light on from my perspective. I consult with REALTORS on bulding their online presence as well as strategies for building their brokerages and teams. So his post was of significance to me.

The change that I am seeing in models right now (with some folks going right back to the model Jeff’s dad has practiced – an older school, more hardnosed approach that is much more leader (whether team leader or broker) centric and follower (dudes that manage leads either for listings or buyers and agents that are TRAINED to specifically convert those leads.)

“He who controls the leads makes the rules.” – me -several years ago. Still true.

Jeff’s 100% right about the value of whoever creates the streams of leads coming into the team (or brokerage or whatever). I think that was one of the most powerful points of Jeff’s post. If you can generate leads, build a brand (or utilize someone else’s until you can), then there are PLENTY of brokers willing to kiss your fanny just to keep you are part of their organization.

And in all but a few of those cases, you do NOT want your brokers advice.

Let me give you a concrete example of this type of model in play. I got a call from a client in Boca Raton Florida the other day. I have been working with this team on their online strategies for several months. Good guys. They have grown their team from the two of them to almost 20 (cannot remember the last count). Solely done by generating online leads and feeding their buyers agents those leads and working with them.

Here’s the kicker. Their brokerage (large independent brokerage with #1) level market share actually came to them and asked them to TONE DOWN their online marketing because they were getting close to outranking the brokerage site on Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Happy New Year to the dawgs. Woof.

Ok..maybe their isn’t something to like about this…I don’t know…but it is interesting to say the least. I honestly don’t have a dog in this fight. More than anything, I just want to understand it. And there is NO PLACE like BHB to put it out in the open and air it out a bit.

But let’s start with the facts and then get to the opinion and thus the fun. It was announced this morning that ListHub (a syndicator and sister company *snort* of REALTOR.com over at Move, Inc) has formed a new Real Estate Network. This is a syndication network with publishers of real estate listings that are jumping in at the founding which include RE/MAX, C21, Coldwell Banker, and other franchisors.

This frees them (if everyone participates in their network)from any illusion of NAR control. They are in the same shape (if I understand this correctly) as Zillow, Trulia, and other syndicators. Am I missing something here? They have to abide by the network rules seen here.

This also frees the independents NOT to participate in the syndication network IF they so desire. They can opt out.

I am not sure if I have that right. I would LOVE to have someone in the know comment and fill us in.

This also (if I read this correctly) makes NAR more irrelevant than ever when it comes to marketing online real estate. (You notice how many times I have asked if I am understanding this right? Enquiring minds want to know.) Once everyone is sharing data outside of NAR (as syndicators), then who needs their .02?

Again. I am not saying this is good or bad. I would love some industry comment though.

I have a box of popcorn and a ringside seat and a lot of websites to work on..I will be waiting. 😉

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

“It’s complicated” is my FAVORITE relationship status on Facebook.

It describes perfectly the indescribable complexities that arise in life. And on this newfangled thing we call the internet that NAR seems to be trying to lasso. Such is the relationship with NAR, franchisors, and IDX . In Anaheim, the real fun will be had at BHB Unchained (goes without saying)…but the interesting side show may be best described in Rob Hahn’s latest post. (Well worth reading BTW) R.O.B. is on my short list of people that when he writes, I read for a reason.

I will probably tick off both sides of this argument in the next couple of posts I write on EricOnRealEstate.com.. I am going to attempt to articulate both sides’ positions better than they have…truth is I think I have a better solution, but one that would never be agreed to. (see below)

One of the solid points that ROB makes at the end of his analysis is this:

Consider that the franchisor is not a member of NAR. Nor is it a participant in the MLS. NAR has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the franchisor.

And yet, the way that the original, now-repealed language of the IDX policy read, it purported to bind the franchisor to a variety of MLS rules. Look at the conditions numbered 3, 4, 5, and 6 above. Those rules bound the franchisor, by threatening sanction against the participant franchisee.

Now that the whole thing has been struck down, what binds the franchisor to any limitation?

Why couldn’t a franchisor now modify or manipulate the IDX information, or retain it permanently? Sure, a MLS could bring a lawsuit under some copyright infringement theory, but the Kelly v. Arriba case seems to lean heavily towards the franchisors. If anything, manipulating and modifying the IDX information would likely be seen as being even more transformative.

As long as there was some sort of a Franchise IDX policy, the franchisors voluntarily submitted to the authority of NAR and of the MLS to dictate what they could and could not do on their websites. Now that the whole thing has gone poof, I wonder what now Read more

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I for one, am looking forward to getting together with Greg and Brian and the rest of the gang in Anaheim. It has been too long. But BHB wouldn’t be Unchained if I did not contribute some of the stuff I have been working on in the last couple of years since we got together.

So here’s my contribution.

I will bring 5 smooth stones to the event. That is what David picked up to slay Goliath. It only took one. And that is all you will likely need to bring down a Philistine or two and make some money. But I am going to bring five of the best SEO, Search Engine Marketing ideas that a real estate professional can use to generate opportunities to get belly to belly with potential clients. Five of the most effective strategies that a REALTORs have deployed in the last year. I promise you that they will be attention getters and conversation starters (which is what that Scenius stuff that Greg talks about is ALL about). It is where the fun begins and people start sharing ideas.

Sometimes the best ideas are so simple that people don’t take action on them. My purpose in life is to help businesses harness online marketing to bring people to where you can start a conversation…and you can use the skills you already have to start skinning cats and hanging them on the wall. I can not and will not do it for you, but if you want some ideas and where to start, I can offer you five smooth stones to fill your sling with. You must have the courage to take action.

I look forward to meeting a lot of new friends as well as reconnecting with a lot of old ones!

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Warning long post ahead.

First of all, I was saddened today to learn of Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple’s CEO. Below is the resignation letter which is making its way around the internet at lightning speed right now.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

I have copied it here because I respect the man greatly. I spent several rough months of my life being diagnosed with the same illness that he has only to find out that I was fortunate and did not have cancer and he did. In the darkest hours of that time for me, him toughing it out helped me tough it out.

What impresses me the most about him is that he has kept his focus on doing his business, in building things to make peoples’ lives better and it helping other people through capitalism.he is everything I admire about the dream of taking things on because they are there and in building more in spite of all odds. He epitomizes the term “Do your worst, I will not kneel.” I am grateful for the example of a really bright guy doing extraordinary things.

Note to the East Coast media currently whining about a 5.8 earthquake…Japan’s was 1,000 times as severe. Let’s have some priorities OK? Quit whining. You do not Read more