Category: Egoism in Action (page 19 of 30)

May 19, 2009

No more free lunch! Understanding the National Association of Realtors — all the way down to your bones…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Michael DiMella wrote the remarks quoted below in a comment, but I’ve extracted them and my responses to him into a separate post.

The meta issue is this: Is the NAR a criminal conspiracy against consumers, and, whether or not it is, is there nothing else good about it?

Michael DiMella: > you seem to have a thorough unwillingness to learn what NAR actually is and does.

That’s astoundingly false. I have written more about the NAR’s criminality than anyone, ever. You may not want to focus on that, but criminality is NAR’s sole reason for being. Everything else it might do is window dressing devised to fool the public — and gullible patsies within the NAR.

> That doesn’t make you a bad guy, but I, for one, would appreciate a modicum of respect.

Good grief. I will offer you and the NAR the oath of respect Fiorello LaGuardia paid to a similar criminal mob when he was inaugurated as Mayor of New York: “E finita la cuccagna!” (“No more free lunch!”)

> To [eliminate mortgage interest deductibility without comprehensively revising the tax code] would be careless and have a major negative impact on a majority of Americans.

False. The deductibility of mortgage interest is a handout to the rich. I’m opposed to all taxation, but it is absurd to argue that the wealthiest Americans cannot afford to bear their own economic weight. In any case, as is discussed below, using tax policy to favor one group over another, thus artificially to churn the markets, is vicious and wrong no matter who is hurt or helped.

The next argument would be that, in a condition of pressure-group warfare, to lay down arms is suicidal. That’s as may be, but, in order to make this argument, you must first argue that there can be circumstances in which you feel yourself justified in expropriating other people’s property — stealing, that is — for your own benefit. Are you an advocate of theft? Did I hear you say something about wanting respect?

> I would say NAR’s support of the MID is well intentioned to protect consumers

The sole purpose of the mostly Read more

May 17, 2009

Earth to NAR: Drop dead — and try not to stink up the place while you’re doing it

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I haven’t paid any attention to this MIBOR business, and I’m grateful to John Rowles for keeping us up to date. Anyone who is dismayed at the way things worked out should be sure to sit at my table when we have a BloodhoundBlog poker tournament: You’re my kind of sucker.

The fact that the NAR is composed of clueless morons should come as a surprise to no one. The fact that they think they can buy off their intellectual superiors by kissing their asses should astonish no one who reads here: I’ve been telling you for years that the dinosaurs pretend to take you seriously in the hopes of compromising you in their corruption. Of course, no one will learn a thing from this experience, which suggests that the dinosaur strategy might well be sound, even though it is absurd on its face. They reason that a grand pageant of being lied to and pandered to makes people feel important, and the evidence suggests they’ve got a good bead on their designated spokesmannequins.

But none of this has anything to do with anything. Whatever combination of cluelessness and collusion motivated this MIBOR clusterfrolick, it’s just a side effect. The NAR is a criminal cartel. Its purpose is to deploy legislation at the federal, state and local levels in behalf of real estate brokers and to the detriment of consumers (and, secondarily, real estate sales people). If you despise the NAR because it is technologically inept, you’re hating it for the wrong reasons. The right reason to detest the NAR, and to seek its extinction, is because it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers.

Who pays for the tax deductibility of mortgages? The 70% or more of us who don’t qualify for the deduction. Who will pay for the $8,000 first-time home buyer’s tax credit? Your grandchildren — and it will cost them quite a bit more than $8,000 in interest costs. Thus do the vampires in the NAR make make vampires of us all.

If you want to grouse or joke about how stupid the NAR Read more

May 15, 2009

Skinning elephants: The lifelong salutary benefits of negotiating your compensation with your buyers

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Here’s how Mike Elsberry, my home inspector, charges for an inspection for one of my clients:

A sliding-scale price based on square footage
A sliding scale price based on the age of the home

Bigger homes take somewhat longer and entail somewhat more work to inspect than smaller homes. Older homes may have more wear and tear, also resulting in a longer, more arduous inspection. Mike has a little pricing grid, and taking those two numbers, square footage and age of the home, he can plot the precise price point on his matrix.

You could argue that he could come up with a more predictive pricing scheme, but the genius of his system is obvious: It’s reasonably objective, making it hard to argue with, and Mike can price a job from his cell phone, while driving, with his mouth half full of burrito. Lo-tech don’t mean no-tech.

Okayfine. Now let’s sell a couple of houses.

I’m about to do a Facebook deal with an old friend from high school. I will be representing her son in the purchase of the condominium he will live in while attending graduate school. Approximate purchase price: $80,000. Gross commission to me: $2,400.

I’m also about to help a very nice couple buy a small hacienda in Paradise Valley, one of the wealthiest towns, per head, in the United States. Approximate purchase price: $800,000. Gross commission to me: $24,000.

Obviously the differences between the two transactions are myriad, but here’s the one that matters most: The $80,000 condo will almost certainly take a lot more of my time than the $800,000 hacienda. I’ll get paid maybe $50 an hour for the condo, and possibly as much as $1,500 an hour for the hacienda.

How does that make sense?

Home inspector Mike Elsberry’s pricing scale makes sense, even if you could argue that something more complicated might make even more sense. The compensation buyer’s agents receive bears no relation to the time and effort expended. As the Freakonomics boys point out, the incentives are misaligned, as well: I get paid more if my buyers pay more, even though their best interest is to pay less. But even Read more

May 12, 2009

The essential importance of criticism to my mental functioning

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I hate the idea of belaboring this topic, because I think it should be obvious. But it keeps coming up, so I wanted to take a moment to shoot it down. If the headline seems really boring to you, that’s only because you’re right. Feel free to make your exit while your faculties are still unbenumbed.

In response to my post this morning on the sartorial elegance of Todd Carpenter, Dave Gooden says:

I don’t understand your need to pile on people like this.

I never pile on anyone. Piling on is done by groups of people, generally speaking fairly stupid people. I always stand alone in everything I do.

But: That’s beside the point.

Without piling on, John Kalinowski adds:

I can’t understand for the life of me why you waste time insulting others publicly, which seems to happen often on this site.

Both comments are specious, in the sense that I wasn’t insulting anyone. I was tweaking Todd Carpenter for a comical photo of the most un-besuited person I know wearing a suit.

But I’m willing to entertain these questions, if only because these kinds of complaints come up fairly often, and it’s plausible that I can help people better understand how I use my mind.

I will say first that I consider rebukes like these to be unconscionably rude. I am chastised — to my face, in public and behind my back — for being some sort of paragon of bad behavior, but I would never in my life consider it good character to presume to remonstrate my host while I am a guest in that man’s home. If I have a big-enough problem with your behavior, I will certainly take you to task, but only on my own property, never on yours. In this respect, I am regularly amazed that people would seek to address minor issues of style while committing an outright betrayal of my hospitality.

In the same way, it would never occur to me to tell someone else how to write. Your mind is your property. Do what you want with it. I will tell you now — and I’m sure I’ve said this Read more

May 11, 2009

Making a virtue of necessity is usually an error…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Stuff like this is why I went public with our Notice of Trustee’s Sale:

Author : A concerned renter
E-mail : irquel@REDACTED.com
Stopped paying your mortgage? BAHAHAHHAAHA!

Welcome to the hell you brought on others, you pathetic parasite. Good thing you’re a psychopath and can’t feel anything, or you’d be really bummed.

The point was to deny vicious trolls like this the opportunity to claim that, by not disclosing the foreclosure, I am therefore trying to hide it. The fact is I told them in my post Friday night — and many times before then — that their behavior is self-destructive, but that doesn’t stop them from carrying on like this. It’s sad and stupid, but it is what it is. I called them by their true names when first I met them:

My BubbleBoys are mostly gone for the moment, no doubt off like a cloud of gnats desperate to enshroud someone else’s head. The truth is, I do have a particular kind of fun at their expense, not the least of which are their pitch-perfect echoes of the charges I make against them. They were so aghast they I called them flying monkeys that they swooped in by the hundreds to express their outrage. Surely none dare call them Brownshirts, when most of what they did was rage, swear and threaten with all their minimal mental might. A certain few of them were brighter than I expected, but not one seems to have caught on that the Heckler’s Veto doesn’t work on the internet. And for all their complaints, none of them seems to have noticed that I also compared them to the Communists.

Even so, I ended up feeling sorry for them. It’s not the specious arguments repeated over and over, not the garbled grammar, not the atrocious spelling. Those are secondary consequences. What grabbed at my heart, despite myself, was the lack of internal resources that would lead a man — and they seem to be almost exclusively men — to join a gang of thugs. Surely this is not true of each one of them, but it is true in the main, in Read more

May 11, 2009

Free IDX from Realtor.Com!

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

In response to the juicy IDX discussion going on over at Agent Genius, I figured I’d take a stab at misappropriating some property data featured over at Realtor.Com.

After 10 minutes, I had 100 of the latest Indianapolis properties listed for sale posted to my website and indexable by google.

Here’s a look at the results: Retechulous.com/Category/NAR-BLOWS

If you have a minute, check out the article over at AG and if you can find a way to get involved, please do so. I guess you could say this little scraping stunt is me contributing in my own obnoxious way. That, and I’m also now looking for a non-NAR Pa broker to hang my license with….

May 10, 2009

Throwing a Virtual Rent Party

by Cheryl Johnson

Real Estate Broker, Investor

While Greg and Brian are talking about “Battling Back”; Eric, Teri and I have been talking about “Throwing Parties”. As in Rent Parties.

If you are not familiar with the term, Rent Parties flourished in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Musicians would make the rounds after their paying gigs, guests would pay a small admission fee to dance and party all night at someone’s apartment, and the host would end up with enough money to pay the landlord for another month.

Greg’s revealing personal post yesterday inspired the idea that we could throw a Rent Party online. And. the party could boogie on 24/7/365.

To my surprise the domain name virtualrentparty.com was available. By last night I had the bare bones foundation of the site up and running; and Teri had incredible visions of the good work that could be done. You can see our work at http://www.virtualrentparty.com

Meanwhile, I am plumb tuckered out. 🙂

Anyone who would like to work with us on building out the content please tell us in the comments; we’re thinking everything from video dance contests, to straight talk around the kitchen table about putting your financial life together. I will quickly and gratefully send any volunteer a login ID and password.

And yes, there are already a couple donations in the hat. I certainly respect that you didn’t intend to induce charity, Mr. Swann, but there it is, your friends won’t leave you to face trouble alone. If you won’t accept the funds, I bet Cathleen’s foster pet project would happily accept them, or Teri has some ideas in her community too.

May 10, 2009

Maybe the book we need is not the BloodhoundBlog book…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

…but the BattleBack book…

I’m delighted by the discussions I incited today, both public and private. I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve worked alongside so many people who inspire my undiluted admiration.

(Someday I should write a post about admiration. I see it as being the most important mental state in the future production of human values.)

But I didn’t intend to incite any conversations, and I internally debated turning off the comments in my foreclosure post. Certainly, I did not want to do anything to induce concern or pity or, god help me, charity. The first quarter paid for itself, and the second quarter is rockin’. I’m doing two and three appointments a day, plus lots of work in the office and on the phone. Refilling a pipeline takes time, and every transaction is a delicate dance right now. But lately I’ve been thinking about my first days in real estate, when I had my day divided in 90-minute segments to maximize my belly-to-belly time during the business day.

Here’s the thing: Despite the financial hole we’ve dug ourselves into, I’ve been feeling massively competent as a Realtor for the first time in my career. That might sound funny, since I’m such an arrogant prick all the time. But in our own battling back to a real estate market with a reliable supply of achievable transactions, I quietly feel myself the master — or the someday master — of all these tools I’ve been juggling these past few years.

I make the analogy of learning to drive, or learning to drive stick-shift, but lately I feel myself in that state of splendor, that flow, that I’ve always known in my work — for my whole life. I don’t mean that I felt less than adept before, because I’ve always been a very thoughtful Realtor — a Realtor very full of thought. But now it all seems kinesthetic, perfectly integrated into my bones. Not doing real estate. Being real estate.

It’s just there for me now, and I’m free enough in my mind that I can watch myself work, live inside the process Read more

May 9, 2009

My own first-hand foreclosure story

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

On April 27th, ironically the day before BloodhoundBlog Unchained commenced, IndyMac Bank posted a Notice of Trustee’s Sale against our home. I didn’t know about this until this week, although I had known it was a possibility.

This is really nobody’s business. But as a matter of steadfast policy, I have never let anyone make a truthful statement about me that I have not first made myself. I know I tend to excite the most evil sentiments in people with evil minds, so they may want to take this opportunity to further their self-destruction. This matters to me not at all. I live my life well to the right of the zero on the number line, and the only people I deal with or care about do the same. People who pursue disvalues are of no value to themselves, nor to anyone.

But so as not to introduce this topic and then leave it unexplained, here’s what happened: For the past three years, our outflow has exceeded our inflow. This is not an unusual story in the real estate business, and we have been lucky to have enough high-paying work to at least keep us within reach of profitability. During this same time, as you have seen here, we have completely reengineered everything we think about marketing, with the ultimate test of those ideas beginning only now.

But our debt load became severe enough last year that we had to make some hard choices. I elected to take a chance on our mortgage payments, since there was a plausible threat that we might lose the house anyway. Our choice was to keep the doors open at the risk of those doors themselves. I could see an upswing in our business activity, to the extent that I expected to catch up on the mortgage by the second quarter of 2009, and to catch up on everything by the fourth quarter.

I still expect this to be the case. My one mistake was that I didn’t think IndyMac would pull the trigger this soon. I played chicken and I lost, so now, in addition to buying back Read more

May 7, 2009

I received the Nobel Prize in Real Estate Today!

by Ira Serkes

Realtor, Tech Connoisseur

Sorry if I’ve been a bit punchy – I think there’s a 9 hour time difference between Stockholm and Berkeley.. and those guys call on their schedule, so they woke me up in the middle of the night. This is a picture of my neighbor Albert, and he plays a role in the story … keep reading on.

The phone call came early this morning!

I’d heard the rumors, but was thrilled to find out that I received the 2009 Nobel Prize for Real Estate!

It was awarded for two different discoveries:

The Quantum Theory Of Home Buying and
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Real Estate

Quantum Theory
After a buyer writes an offer on a home, they either get the house… or they don’t get the house – there is no other state

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
The act of writing an offer on a home changes the home’s final sales price… even if you’re uncertain as to what the other offers are.

If there are multiple offers on a home, and you write a low priced offer, your probability of getting the home is very low. You affect the outcome, because someone who really wants the home will raise their bid and the home sells for a higher price!

And how does Albert Ghiorso fit into the quest for my Unified Real Estate Database Field Theory of Data Integration? He’s my inspiration.

Albert, one of our 90-something year spry neighbors, was co-discoverer of more elements than any other person in the galaxy! Albert’s Wikipedia entry lists the following elements:

* Americium ca. 1945 (element 95)
* Curium in 1944 (element 96)
* Berkelium in 1949 (element 97)
* Californium in 1950 (element 98)
* Einsteinium in 1952 (element 99)
* Fermium in 1953 (element 100)
* Mendelevium in 1955 (element 101)
* Nobelium in 1958-59 (element 102)
* Lawrencium in 1961 (element 103)
* Rutherfordium in 1969 (element 104)
* Dubnium in 1970 (element 105)
* Seaborgium in 1974 (element 106)

Cogito Ergo Blogo in Berkelium Californium Americium

Degrees Of Separation
I looked at the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of Bay Area Nobel Prize winners, and realized I was one or two degrees of separation from several…. one neighbor works with someone who won the award in Read more

May 7, 2009

The Seven Deadly Sins of a Business Relationship: How Not to get Jacked around in the New Economy

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

We’ve all been there. We’ve done a deal or two with someone that leaves us invigorated happy and ready to do business again. We’ve also had one of those deals where everyone feels pissed off, beat up fried and angry. My mission in life is to identify–in advance– the 5% of my customers that cause 60% of the headaches.

Since forever, I’ve been tagging people with pejoratives du jour in ACT. The tagged? Folks that suck my soul dry, whose approbation would be an insult and whose company renders me insane. I probably have too low of a threshold for idiots, but they get “ID/STATUS= Black hole,” etc. This keeps me sane. I had 2 recent deals that were brutally bad. Not the normal bad, brutal. Life sucking wastes that I had multiple opportunities to abandon and failed to do so. Would have been better off watching my kid at the jungle gym…or smacking my toes with a ball-peen hammer. Both were files & projects I opened in December….and expected to finish in January. Both are still ‘ongoing,’ swimming in a sea of endless revisions.

Reminds me of the days when I was a Realtor® and I’d get investors (and also “investors,” fresh off a Mountain Dew fueled epiphany with Carlton Sheets) saying to me, “Hey, if you list my house for free, I’ll give you all this work in the future…but remember, I expect my flier box to be FULL at all times, ads to be running in the local paper version of part of the Internet, and more. Oh, by the way I’m a Strong Christian, have you made your decision for Christ?”

Yeah, those transactions were never any fun.

I went through my ACT! 6.0 database in conjunction with my move to Daylite CRM (highly recommended and imperfect, will review in a copula days on my own blog). I did a search on my PC for my pejoratives. In a database with 911 valid contacts–(1600 total, but most were web form people that never met me) only 41 were marked as a jerks/wasteoids/etc.

What do they all have in common? How are Read more

May 6, 2009

Meet the new dogs: Six new Bloodhounds to fill out the pack

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

We added six new BloodhoundBlog contributors last Friday at BloodhoundBlog Unchained. Actually, we added seven, but Dave Smith of the Real Estate Blog Lab has elected to take a pass for now to free up time for other projects.

It’s no accident that all of these folks are coming out of Unchained. A year ago, BloodhoundBlog Unchained was something that we did. By now, it’s something that we are. The blog and the events are conjoined, like a two-headed Cerberus, and each generates content and cultivates talent for the other.

One of the things we do here, one of the things we’ve always tried to do, is to make stars of our contributors. In a world without middle-men, the engaging expression of expertise should earn a writer a cachet of authority, and that authority should influence larger and larger audiences. We have built a big megaphone for talking to real estate professionals, and we want to make that megaphone available to the most creative and talented people we can find.

So: Here are the new dogs. I hope you’ll make them feel welcome.

It would be an understatement to say that Ira Serkes was the stand-out student at BloodhoundBlog Unchained. The man is a geyser of fascinating real estate marketing ideas, which he shares with an unrestrained delight. Ira and his wife Carol are Realtors in Berkeley, California. Ira co-authored “Get the Best Deal When Selling Your Home — SF Bay Area Edition” and Nolo Press’s best-selling book “How to Buy a House in California.”

Scott Cowan is a long-time friend of BloodhoundBlog. He organized our invasion of Seattle in February, and, while we were there, he signed on to work as a staffer for BloodhoundBlog in Phoenix. That is, he and Brad Coy served admirably as the Vice Presidents in Charge of Everything Else. Scott sells classic homes in the Tacoma, Gig Harbor, and the Puyallup areas of Washington State. If you want to make his day, ask him about the $8,000 home-buyer credit.

Kerry Melcher may be the most unlikeliest contributor to a weblog that has always endeavored to bring you unlikely contributors. Kerry is Read more

May 5, 2009

Wanna Help SEO My 404? – CentralPaLiving.Com/404LotsaListingLeads

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

I’ve been sitting on this idea for probably about a year now, and figured Unchained was the appropriate place to let it rip. So for those of you that were there, you know where I’m going with this.

If you weren’t in Phoenix, please take a minute to visit Centralpaliving.Com/NoOneElseInYourMarketWillDoThisSoDontWorryAboutSharingItWithTheWorld

What you’ll see is basically one of the better real estate marketing ideas I’ve ever had and the latest addition to the CentralPaLiving project.

Once you get to the page, you might get the urge to thank me? Maybe you can do so by hitting CentralPaLiving.Com up with a juicy link from your own 404? Maybe do something like http://centralpaliving.com/(insertyournameorurlhere) so that you pop up when I do a google “links:” query?

Thanks in advance for your thanks 🙂 And thanks also to all the folks on the Scenius in Phoenix who helped turn a pretty good idea into the turbocharged video based squeeze page monster that it is now!

Bonus! — A Screencast Demonstrating This Thing In Action!

Free online screencasting tool

May 4, 2009

A video postcard from Unchained in Phoenix

by Brad Coy

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Paybacks a mutha, so be careful what you ask for. I opened up the MacBook and asked the gang to do a video postcard for Teri Lussier because she could not make it. Much to my surprise, some bloodhounds don’t forget. Beyond that we get a look at the scenius in action and another sneak peak at some more video footage to come from Unchained in Phoenix. Enjoy, and don’t get too many ideas. I made a promise that this factotum/guest speaker/Omega will be performing Blake from Glenngary Glenn Ross next time we meet up.

Featuring Eric Blackwell with the Omegas working on SEO and Ryan Hartman exploring Gonzo Marketing with the Alphas.

May 1, 2009

BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix 2009: A quick wrap-up…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I don’t know how I’m still awake — and from moment to moment I’m not. But we wrapped up Unchained in Phoenix tonight, and I wanted to take a quick minute to salute everyone who was part of an amazing experience. Two fingers of Bushmills — more would be a waste. To all the dogs and to everyone who learned to howl like a Bloodhound this week, we are in your debt. This was by far the best Unchained event so far, and we are but begun. Per ardua, ad astra!

Category: Egoism in Action (page 19 of 30)

No more free lunch! Understanding the National Association of Realtors — all the way down to your bones…

by Greg Swann

Earth to NAR: Drop dead — and try not to stink up the place while you’re doing it

by Greg Swann

Skinning elephants: The lifelong salutary benefits of negotiating your compensation with your buyers

by Greg Swann

The essential importance of criticism to my mental functioning

by Greg Swann

Making a virtue of necessity is usually an error…

by Greg Swann

Free IDX from Realtor.Com!

by Ryan Hartman

Throwing a Virtual Rent Party

by Cheryl Johnson

Maybe the book we need is not the BloodhoundBlog book…

by Greg Swann

My own first-hand foreclosure story

by Greg Swann

I received the Nobel Prize in Real Estate Today!

by Ira Serkes

The Seven Deadly Sins of a Business Relationship: How Not to get Jacked around in the New Economy

by Chris Johnson

Meet the new dogs: Six new Bloodhounds to fill out the pack

by Greg Swann

Wanna Help SEO My 404? – CentralPaLiving.Com/404LotsaListingLeads

by Ryan Hartman

Bonus! — A Screencast Demonstrating This Thing In Action!

A video postcard from Unchained in Phoenix

by Brad Coy

BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix 2009: A quick wrap-up…

by Greg Swann

Search BloodhoundBlog

Subscribe to our RSS feeds

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Back of the house

Media Contacts