BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: John Rowles (page 3 of 4)

IDX Search Entrepreneur

February 27, 2009

Dual Agency Debated Outside of the Echo Chamber

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Google News plopped a link to a Blog post on SFGate.com (The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site) about dual agency in front of me today.

It’s always interesting to see a discussion about what Greg calls “…the insane way we compensate buyer’s agents in the residential real estate market” in the MSM, even if the arc of the dialog is predictable (“Agents are whores and criminals!”, “No we’re not”, “The traditional Real Estate model is dead!”, “No it isn’t!”, ad nauseum)

Discussions in the Real Estate blogosphere on this topic have a certain navel-gazing quality to them. That is not the case when regular people, many of whom have been involved in a recent transaction have their say. My favorite comment from the thread:

No conflict here. Just get the highest price for a seller and the lowest for the buyer at the same time. This is great!

The way the Realtors, some of whom identify themselves and some of whom just embarrass themselves by shilling for the status quo in such an obvious manner that their identity is transparent, jump all over these discussions just adds fuel to the fire.

The Realtors doth protest too much, methinks.

February 25, 2009

“Appliance” is not a verb!

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As a purveyor of Real Estate Search Engines that function best when they have text to work with, and as a guy who holds both a journalism degree and the English language in high regard, I often find myself wincing in pain when I read the descriptions that end up on Property Detail pages.

Lately, I have noticed two new “words” creeping into the bastard child of English that is the Real Estate lexicon: “applianced” and “fireplaced”.

Both of these nouns that have been horribly mutated into past-tense verbs are often accompanied by that harbinger of terrible writing, the adverb, as in “fully applianced” and “newly fireplaced”.

What the Hell does “fully applianced”” mean? If the dishwasher has been stolen out of a REO, does that make it “partly applianced”? If a foreclosure still has the pipes in the walls, is it “fully coppered”?

Not to get all Andy Rooney on you, but at a time when people are questioning both the need for and general quality of Real Estate professionals, you aren’t helping yourselves when your most potent marketing tool — the description of a listing you publish on the Web — sounds like it was written as a late homework assignment in the back seat of the short bus on the way to reform school.

Now I know that many people regard grammar books with the same level of enthusiasm normally reserved for a root canal, but there is one grammar book out there that makes the subject as painless as a nitrous-induced laughing fit. It is called The Elements of Style, also known as “Strunk and White” for the two men responsible for the original version.

William Strunk, who was EB White’s English professor at Cornell, wrote the original “little book” in the 1940’s. It was called the “little book” because the grammar part is just 14 pages, and it is written as a series of easy-to-remember commands, like “Omit Needless Words”.

(To which, if I were writing the Real Estate Description Edition, I would add “Don’t make shit up.”)

EB White was asked to update his old professor’s grammar book, and he added a section Read more

February 12, 2009

De-Commodotize Your Listing Content

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This is in response to Greg’s post about Jim Flanagan’s question, “What does today’s real estate consumer want in (on) a real estate brokerage’s website?”  “Listings” was the predictable, correct answer.

It’s no secret that Real Estate Web site users are primarily interested in listings. That’s why everyone has them, and that makes listings a commodity.  That begs the question: When everyone offers the content that your target audience is looking for, how do you set your site apart?

Blogging is one answer, but at the outset most consumers are not looking for you or your expertise, they are looking for listings, so at the end of the day, listing content is still the most powerful thing you have control over when it comes to attracting users to your site.

Before I spent most of my time on Real Estate (I heard you get to make your own hours and its easy money, plus I am a real “people person”), I managed eCommerce sites for a living.

If there is one golden rule of successful B2C eCommerce, it is this: Content is currency.

Consumers are used to the wealth of content that Amazon puts around a copy of Home Buying for Dummies. They are not impressed by cheap, 50-word “descriptions” full of Real Estate jargon and one or two grainy pictures from the IDX feed that feature cat boxes, dishes in the sink, and amateur porn lighting.

Google is not impressed when the content you offer on your own site is identical to the content that is offered on sites it considers more authoritative than yours.

The answer is to add value to your currency. Start by minting rich content and then stop giving it away and you will get more visits from both Google and humans. It’s a three-step process:

Step 1: Develop rich content for your listings, or for listings that you get permission to modify on your site. At a minimum, that means a few hundred words of grammatically correct English, lots of decent photos, and the right meta data in the right places.

(There have been many posts on BHB about how to write decent listing Read more

January 15, 2009

My 2 cents on Shawna’s Mall Metaphor

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The use of design metaphors was one of the first things Web designers explored in the mid-90’s on the early commercial Web sites. A Southwest Airlines site used the airport ticket counter as a design metaphor, for example, and the mall metaphor itself was widely used by early eCommerce developers.

I did it, too. I designed a site for the RI Teacher’s union that used a ruled-paper background, and the homepage navigation was designed to look like stuff that was left on top of a notebook. I even had a coffee ring on there.

In the mid-90’s , most of the first Web designers were coming over from print. As Marshall Mcluhan pointed out, we tend to use a new medium the way we used the old one, so a lot of early Web design was driven by what designers knew from print, including the use of metaphor.

While you can make the argument, as Brian has, that a design metaphor can be used to make people feel comfortable with a user experience by basing it on something they already know, there are good reasons why Southwest and the RI Teachers no longer have metaphor-driven Web site designs.

If you really want to get into this, check out Jacob Nielsen’s book Designing Web Usability (where he dissects the Southwest ticket counter site), but it boils down to this: The Web has essentially become an operating system, and successful Web sites are basically apps that run on it. The reason your users come to your site is to complete a task using your app.

That means that Web design has morphed from print-based design principles to software user interface design principles, and the problem with metaphors in UI design is that they don’t scale well as you add functions to your app to enhance your audience’s ability to complete primary and related tasks.

You end up stretching the metaphor until it breaks, and something that started off  giving you a fresh and interesting way to look at a hierarchy of information becomes a drag on your ability to extend that hierarchy. Already on Shawna’s site, you have to Read more

December 16, 2008

More on Detriot: “Change” is a four letter word, too.

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Right before I read Thomas Hall’s earlier post about his experience in Detroit, a friend sent me the ad below.

(Really interesting post, btw, Thomas.)

Considering the situation they are in now, its too bad the Big Three didn’t lose the white collar dinosaurs along with blue collar dinosaur in Thomas’s post. Maybe they would have built cars other than SUVs that Americans would buy and at least have a plan in place for $4/gallon gas.

(Side note: Now that we are down to $1.70/gallon, how much do you want to bet Hummer sales rebound?)

December 2, 2008

Does “Googleopoly” = Evil ?

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I have a running news search going for anything that has the words “Google” and “Real Estate” in it. More often than not, this search returns cookie cutter press releases designed to reassure agents who plunked down a credit card for a cookie-cutter Web site (“Real Estate Agent Ollie Tabooger Adds Custom IDX Tools to his Web site” — film at 11), but it occasionally yields something interesting. Over the weekend, I got a link to a one-sided attack on Google that was published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which offered no forum for a reply, so allow me to retort:

The piece, called “Googleopoly darkens future of innovation” was written by Scot Cleland,  a telecom lobbyist that is fighting Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality debate is really complex, so I’ll boil it down to a paragraph:

As Ted Stevens tells us, the Internet is a “series of tubes”. On one side of the debate, you have the Tube Builders (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) and on the other, you have the Tube Users (Google, eBay, Apple, etc.). The Tube Builders are also Tube Users and they want to charge other Tube Users based on what they are putting into the tubes and how much of it there is. The Tube Users are afraid (based on past behavior) that the Tube Builders will take unfair advantage of their ownership of the tubes so the Tube Users want the Government to regulate the Tube Builders. The Tube Builders like to point out that the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was set up to stop the railroads from doing basically the same thing a hundred years ago,  ended up making the problem worse and they say it is best to let the market work things out.

(Where have I heard that before? In other words, we tax-paying consumers and small business owners will eventually get screwed on this deal no matter who wins.)

Cleland is behind a group called NetCompetition.org, which is funded by the Tube Builders. His beef with Tube User Google is that it is displaying monopolistic tendencies because the deal they tried to put together with Read more

October 1, 2008

A Look past the hyperbole of “The Great Depression”

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My Grandmother is 89. In 1929, she was 10, living in Duquesne, PA, a steel mill town not far from Pittsburgh.

Grandma is still a story teller, although Alzheimer’s has mixed up the palette of her recollections, which makes for some interesting mash ups. Before Grandma’s synapses got all Web 2.0, it was the Depression stories that fascinated me the most.

They were even better than the WWII stories, which were pretty good because she worked in an ammunition factory, but that’s a story for another crisis.

All of Grandma’s Depression stories, from the time a truck carrying oranges jackknifed on the road right before Christmas, to the beautiful indoor pool, gym and library that Carnegie built (where Aunt Emma secretly played basketball), to the truant officer chasing down Uncle Joe, all of them had a three-part moral:

  1. We were dirt poor.
  2. You don’t ever want to be that poor.
  3. Save your money just in case anything like that happens again.

As I got older, I started to understand how being a “Child of the Depression” had molded my Grandmother. The bargain shopping. Walking across the parking lot of the A&P stooped over not because of age, but because she was looking for dropped change. The look of disbelief Christmas morning when my brother and I sat in a pile of un-boxed toys surrounded by shreds of wrapping paper a foot thick, looking for more.

The lingering impact that living through the Depression had on my Grandmother used to interest me as an exercise of amateur psychology, a topic I’d toss around with my parents to show them they got something for the four years I spent doing keg-stands at URI: She was conditioned. Using a tea bag twice is a mild sort of PTSD. Aren’t I clever?

I don’t feel so clever, now. Now I’m recalling Grandma’s somewhat more reliable pre-Alzheiner’s stories looking for tips, or hope, or something…She did always say, poor as they were, they were happy. That’s something, right?

This morning a friend forwarded me a link to something that is on the Wikkipedia page for The Great Depression, a page that probably has gotten more traffic Read more

September 12, 2008

Attention Old Fart Brokers: Listen to the Young Farts!

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At the risk of becoming the Seinfeld of Real Estate demographics; What’s the deal with broker/owners of a certain age ignoring the advice of their own Marketing Managers, Managing Brokers, and best agents when it comes to Web technology?

I often work with people who have been asked to manage or improve a broker’s Web presence. Its a process that starts before they are clients, and over the past 6 months, on several occasions, I’ve had bright people pick my brain, learn our program, and then go talk to The Boss only to have The Boss decide he knows more about Real Estate Web sites than the people he hired or tasked to run one.

Sure, there are legitimate reasons to take a different approach. I can respect that. But I have Zero respect for decisions based on ignorant assumptions that trump the recommendations of the people they hired to make judgments that they themselves are not qualified to make.

Example 1: Earlier this week I was contacted by someone who found me through this Blog. I love it when that happens, because if you are reading this Blog that tells me that we can have a substantive conversation from the get-go. He was shot down when he presented our solution to his boss because the boss wants to “own” his Web site and not pay for it on a “subscription model”.

“Subscription model”? What does that even mean in the context of a Web App? Nothing. What that broker is really saying is that he doesn’t want a monthly payment. He is equating a Web Application with a car loan or a mortgage, where, if you can afford a cash purchase you avoid the added expense of financing.

Large brokerages who have an in-house Web team developing a custom app “own” their program at the expense of salaries and overhead, so even they have a “monthly payment” in the form of paychecks and Web hosting. The reality is everybody else rents because its the smart thing to do: Our Software as a Service (SaaS) model makes it possible for a broker to benefit from a Read more

September 4, 2008

The Kids Really Are Different…

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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There is so much pop-demographic-driven hype about Gen X, Gen Y and the “Millennials” (I saw that movie…cartoon family in red suits, right?) in the RE Blogosphere that it has become a bit of a cliché.

It makes sense: The industry is dominated by Boomers, and if you are a self-proclaimed RE Guru, there is no better way to scare a Boomer into downloading your eBook than to suggest that they are no longer “hip”, that the next generation is smarter about technology than they are, and that the alignment of these two trends threatens their very way of life.

Sort of like how their parents felt about the Beatles.

Then something comes along that syncs up with the hype, and it reminds me that there really is some substance behind the idea that generational demographics are at work, and that it matters.

On the Property Detail pages of our RE Search Engine, we encourage people to ask our agent a question. We have cleverly named this feature “Ask Our Agent” (AOA).  This recent question is my new favorite:

“Straight up: Does this neighborhood suck? Don’t lie, I will be there soon, and if you do, I’ll know.

You can tell me if it sucks without saying, “Hey Jay, It sucks out there.”  Be smart.

P.S. Don’t lie.”

This question reveals so much in so few words:

  • Homebuyers really are getting younger.
  • Younger Homebuyers approach home buying on the Web in the same “straight up” fashion they approach other interactions on the Web.
  • Younger Homebuyers assume RE agents will lie to them.
  • Younger Homebuyers assume RE agents are idiots. This one actually instructs the agent on how not to lie and admonishes the agent to “Be Smart”.

The property in question is a $105k, 3 Bdrm row house in Bridgeport, CT , so it is within reach of a younger buyer. The listing is not our client’s, so all we have on it is what came out of IDX – the base facts and the one picture (complete with garden hose and trash cans) that shows a house that looks to be in reasonably good shape, but tells us nothing else, including the name Read more

August 19, 2008

Content development in the new model (aka: Jessica is Right)

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This started as a comment on Jessica’s earlier post about content. Welcome aboard, Jessica, and thanks for the grist.

Jessica points out that the average agent is no better than the average owner at generating content. I disagree with that a little: FSBO listings with owner-generated content are often better than agent-generated content (which isn’t saying much).

Owners just know more about their property and its surroundings, have more at stake, and have just one listing to worry about. Not to mention that, if they are even going the Web-based FSBO route, they know their way around a computer and the Web and are more likely to be an educated professional in their own right. All they really need to do is develop the content they know they would like to see themselves.

eCommerce professionals know that content sells. Period. Just compare the quality and depth of content Amazon has around a $10 copy of Home Buying for Dummies to the average listing for a $500k ranch on Realtor.com. The only thing I’ve seen that plays in that ballpark are Greg’s single property Web sites.

The current model (agent responsible for everything, gets paid nothing unless they sell), has Zero capacity for generating consistent, quality content that consumers are accustomed to when they buy anything else on line, and that violates the most basic principle of merchandising: Use the consumer’s learned behaviors to encourage them to do what you want them to do (like contact you).

So how do you change that when the entrenched interests have a dis-incentive to do the right thing? To wit:

  • Agents don’t want to dip into their split to pay professionals.
  • Brokers take advantage of the indie contractor tax loophole to make sure they don’t have to pay agents in the first place, and even the very best admins (the people who really keep the wheels on in every RE office I’ve visited) make, what? $30/hr.? That is not a mindset that is conducive to paying specialists.
  • The NAR and the MLSs have a stake in keeping the agent population over-stuffed with dues-paying half-wits.
  • The franchises consider consumers secondary customers: Their majority of their Read more
August 5, 2008

Truth, Damn Truth, and Consumer Reports

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Consumer Reports has released a survey that shows that the national RE companies have successfully wrung every drop of meaning out of their so-called brands.

I haven’t had a chance to read the report, but there is enough on Inman today to get the gist:

  • Even though Indie agents were said to offer fewer services, “…sellers who used them were just as satisfied” as the sellers who used name-brand agents.
  • Customer satisfaction scores for Real Estate companies ranged from 79 to 81. A 3 point spread. Homogenization complete.

Translation: Sellers don’t mind when an indie agent fails to show up with a folder full of Home Warranties, and they don’t care which logo adorns the business cards of the brand-name agents who do.

I am looking out my window at a Hostess delivery truck with a picture of a split-open chocolate cup cake next to the Hostess logo. I want one. I want to peel the frosting off, set it aside, eat the decapitated cupcake and chase it with the frosting just like I did when I was 10. I have an emotional attachment to Hostess Cupcakes that started the day my Mom brought home a box from the supermarket, and its been reinforced every time I have had two (you have to have two) ever since.

Every time I open that cupcake wrapper, I know what I am going to get: The plastic peels off of the frosting even (usually) if the package is warm and they taste *exactly* the same every time, even if they have been sitting on a shelf for six years. Mom brought home cheap, store brand chocolate cupcakes once….Once.

That’s how branding is supposed to work. The ad man Jerry Bulmore said that “Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.” Bulmore’s sticks and straws are interactions, and what he left out is that the strongest nests are built when the building materials are consistent.

Branding a service is inherently difficult. Unlike cupcakes, its a lot harder to control the quality of the end product, and something as fragile as the emotional Read more

July 26, 2008

Any BloodHounds looking for a lead in Ghana?

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We have a feature called “Ask Our Agent” on our Listing Detail Pages where people can do just that, no registration required and anonymously if they so choose.

Today, for the first time, we got our first “African Diplomat” phisher, and it is such a relief. Up to now, almost all of the questions have been legitimate, and none the bogus ones were from African con men. I was insulted, to be honest, but now we have arrived! A Minister from Ghana wants to buy a $25m residence/hotel:

DEAR SIR,

I AM CONTACTIN YOU ON BEHAVE OF HONORABLE DR RICHARD ANANE MINISTER, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GHANA. I AM CONTACTING YOU IN RESPECT OF HOUSE PROPERTIES FOR PURCHASE AS CONTAINED IN YOUR PROFILE.
HE WANT A RESIDENTIAL HOUSE FOR HIS FAMILY IN YOUR COUNTRY. THE LOCATION MUST BE OUTSIDE THE CITY. AND IT MUST HAVE ALL HOUSE COMFORTS.AND THIS PROPERTIES ARE ESTIMATED $25 MILLION US DOLLAR BOTH THE RESIDENTIAL HOUSE AND THE HOTEL.

IF YOU ARE CAPABLE AND WILING TO SECURE THE ABOVE MENTIONED PROPERTIES AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE CONTACT ME TELL:00233-246-430-865.SO THAT I CAN TELL YOU WHAT TO DO ABOUT THIS PURCHASE.

THIS PURCHASE MUST BE VERY CONFIDENTIAL BECAUSE OF HIS POSITION IN THE GOVERNMENT.

EXPECTING YOUR SWIFT RESPONSE,MR.MICHAEL JOEL.

How awesome is that? Textbook! Here is the response I just emailed back, for your Saturday AM enjoyment:

Dear Sir:

I am contacting you on behalf of the former CEO of a mortgage originator here in the US. I got your email address from a Real Estate agent who, as I write this, is in the driveway trying to figure out how to program the GPS in her Lexus to locate $25 million residence/hotel properties for your minister. She is very excicted to help, and wants you to know that she is ready and willing to provide you with access to her bank accounts just in case you need help moving money around, no questions asked.

Your communication could not have been more timely. I can tell by your choice of an @yahoo.com email address like mine and your willingness to initiate multi-million dollar deals with people you have never met that Read more

July 16, 2008

Why aren’t the Dinosaurs extinct already?

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In my last post, I made the case that many of today’s old school brokers are Dead Dinosaurs Walking.

In the last couple of days, two things have happened that have me questioning that theory and its keeping me up at night:

  1. I learned that a intelligent guy I know, a programmer who actually works for Rent O Meter (a RE tech start up), bought his first house last week. He used an agent who was referred to him. He did not use the Web in his search process at all. He told the agent what he wanted and what he could afford and had no problem when every listing the agent showed him just happened to belong to the agent’s brokerage.

    He bought one of those listings, the broker scored a 6% double whammy,  our programmer friend could not be happier, he loves his agent and actually referred him to me. To add insult to injury, the broker’s Web site is really just awful. This transaction is straight out of 1983:

  2. Another friend, who is not connected to the business, read the post and pointed out that the asteroid that hit the Yucatan, blocking the sun and causing firestorms on a planetary scale, probably killed most of the dinosaurs in less than a year. If the widespread use of the Web is the asteroid that hit Real Estate, then the impact happened around Y2K. Its 8 years later and lots of business-as-usual brokers are still standing.

    How is it that brokers who refuse to evolve can tough it out for 8 years while Tyrannosaurus Rex was well on his way to being a skeleton in the Peabody Museum within 12 months?

The first comment on that post said, “If I’ve heard ‘I’ve sold hundreds of houses this way and there is no reason for me to change now’ once, I’ve heard it 100 times.”

What if that is right? That somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary (this Blog being Exhibit A), Real Estate is immune, or shielded somehow, from what the Internet has done and is doing to businesses as diverse as Travel Read more

July 14, 2008

Dead Dinosaurs Walking

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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As far as I can tell, the RE.net has been advocating for better broker Web sites for as long as there has been an RE.net. Many articles and posts focus on the twin pillars of eCommerce — Search + Content — but many brokers still have Web 1.0 sites or, worse, Web 1.0 sites tarted up with gimmicks to look like Web 2.0 sites while offering the same old stove-piped database search of the same old IDX content.

I started my company to bring common sense eCommerce strategy and Best Practices to Real Estate. To be honest, it has been harder than I thought it would be to get brokers to play ball and, lately, I have been thinking about why that is.

I’ve found that brokers are unique creatures in many different ways, but the most frustrating thing for me when it comes to improving Web marketing programs is that many of them seem to operate on the principle that ignorance is bliss because its cheap. Our clients are the exceptions that prove the rule, but even among them the pace of acceptance and progress varies widely.

Let me put a finer point on that by comparing a project in the real world with what often happens in the Oz of Real Estate:

I just started a new integration project for UVEX Sports. This project will replace the Web-based Business to Business (B2B) platform they are currently using with one that is hosted in-house and tied directly to their enterprise management software. UVEX sees a huge benefit in making the information and functionality that their software holds completely accessible to sales reps and customers via the Web.  This is a significant upgrade over the current platform and a really, really good idea.

This exercise is understood by UVEX’s management, consultants and vendors as an integration project.  Integration projects have two basic components:

  1. Technology Integration: Integrating existing systems with new software and hardware.
  2. Business Integration:  Teaching management, customer service people, sales reps, and retail buyers to use the new system and make room for it in their day to day running of the business.

Once the project is complete, Read more

July 8, 2008

Let me introduce to you the one and only Dr. Beatrice Rowles, Real Estate Coach

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IDX Search Entrepreneur

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Huff and Puff Your Way to a Fortune in Real Estate

Part 1: Get Your Head in the Game
BY DR. BEATRICE ROWLES, PHD, BSR, FUBAR

Dr Beatrice RowlesFilling up a plastic bag with propellant and and then squeezing the bag to force it into your lungs is the new, cutting edge way to stay positive about the Real Estate Market. Are you up on the latest?

“Huffing” — as its known — is the coolest thing since Twitter. If you aren’t killing a few hundred thousand brain cells before each showing with someone under the age of 50, then you are missing a golden opportunity to reach the red-hot Gen X and Gen Y market.

What You Need

Just about any air tight bag will work. Personally, I prefer the plastic bag from Wonder Bread.

Look for household and office products that include freon or compressed hydrofluorocarbons. I’ve had great results stealing the canned-air computer keyboard spray from my office’s IT geeks, but don’t let them catch you. Fortunately, I keep an industrial sized drum of Aquanet in the hatch of my Lexus SUV. That’s right, S – U – V.  “Oil is $140 a barrel!”, “Our Oil Based Economy is Unsustainable!”, “Al Gore is right!”, “A Gallon of Gas is $4!” these are the headlines that the Chicken Little press is using to scare us out of our SUVs and into a hybrid.

Don’t let them fool you into buying a Prius. Imagine what would happen if you got rear-ended by a semi with an industrial sized drum of Aquanet in the hatch of that tin can. Besides, according to OPEC, President Bush and Osama Bin Laden, it could be a lot worse. AND the Chicken Little press is wrong as usual: Gas is more like $4.25 a gallon. But I digress…

Of course, there are certain risks associated with inhaling propellant. Look at this way:  If you were able to look first-time homebuyers in the eye and tell them that house values always go up and a NINA was a great way to get into a home that was way beyond their earning potential, then you shouldn’t have much Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

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