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Category: Egoism in Action (page 21 of 30)

February 10, 2009

Swanepoel’s Top 10 Real Estate Trends matter to me — and to real estate — quite a bit less than my own list of burning issues

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Stefan Swanepoel sent me a copy of his Top 10 Real Estate Trends Report, which was gracious of him, considering that neither me nor any of the Bloodhounds nor BloodhoundBlog itself are mentioned anywhere in the book — at least as far as I could detect on a cursory examination. I don’t mind, mind you. I’d be amazed if we were cited. That kind of attention is reserved for the likes of Sellsius and Agent Shortbus — the biggest little PR3 weblogs in real estate. Every pundit or entity even remotely connected to the official world of real estate honors us by ostentatiously affecting to ignore us. And: Even then: We care a lot.

I did surprise myself by actually cracking the book. I had it last year, too, but I don’t remember if I looked at it. And I don’t want to seem to be hyper-critical of Swanepoel’s effort. It ain’t for me, that much should be obvious. I can’t think of anything in the tome that strikes be as being either important or non-obvious — or non-trivial. The whole thing, and everything and everybody in it, seem like deck chairs on the Titanic to me — but so does everything else even remotely connected to the world of official real estate.

Here are the issues Swanepoel takes up:

  • Nightmare on Elm Street: What if Your E&O Insurance No Longer Existed?
    If the tenth biggest issue in real estate is a FUD factor, we’re in better shape than we knew. Excellent reason for getting rid of the broker’s license, but, of course, that doesn’t come up.
  • The “Real” Energy Crisis: Factors Shaping Housing Values and Development
    Predictions about energy are as reliable as predictions about the weather.
  • Winning the Gold: Green Movement Gains Grassroots Support
    If we assume an energy problem, much of the green issue will concern money, not the environment. For now, I read it all as a fad.
  • Information Highway Congestion: Too Much Traffic Creates a Virtual Parking Lot
    More FUD, in this case I suspect fuddy-duddy FUD. We are overwhelmed by information. Our only hope for salvation will come from Luddite real estate brokers who can’t Read more
January 29, 2009

The rest of the real estate industry might be Pinocchio — false in every particular — but nothing prevents you from being genuine

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Real estate is the most unbusinesslike business in the history of business.

I don’t want to defend that statement comprehensively, because it’s late and I’m tired, but I can offer some data points.

When we sat down with Greg Tracy, I argued to him that licensing inhibits the kind of competition for reputation that we expect and depend upon when deciding which restaurant to go to, for instance, or which auto mechanic to use. Instead, in real estate, after 90 hours of nonsense classes, we say, “Here’s your license, kid. Get out there and wreck someone’s finances!”

I met with a new buyer client on Wednesday, and we had a wonderful time cataloging all the things Realtors and brokers would do if residential real estate were organized like any other sort of business.

What kinds of things?

If real estate were a real business, Realtors would market the damn product, instead of engaging in two or three acts of rain-dancing and then waiting — for months or even years — for the rain to come.

If real estate were a real business, Realtors and brokers wouldn’t be so transparently mercenary about using, abusing and burning through their clients. One of the huge benefits of real estate weblogging is that Realtors are openly discussing the tricks they deploy to strong-arm their “leads.” In no other business do vendors have such contempt for consumers.

(Incidentally, although I say this all the time, apparently no one believes me: Consumers read industry-focused weblogs. When you admit that you do certain things to “force people to call,” you’re not telling them anything they didn’t already know about the real estate business.)

If real estate were a real business, commissions would be divorced and incentives would be aligned to put the agent and the client on the same side in negotiations. The longer the real estate industry delays in reforming its practices, the greater the opening it offers to vendors offering a better or cheaper alternative to traditional real estate.

I love it when I really get to talk to my clients, because I conceal nothing from them. We do well by doing good: This is Read more

January 20, 2009

Reading the signs and portents of Obama’s America

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We call it inauguration after the Romans, of course. Beginning at midnight on January 1st of each new year, the priests would take the augurs — the signs and portents — for the two new consuls, the duoviri who would govern the Republic for the next year. The ceremony would end with a long, slow march to the top of the Capitoline hill at dawn, at the end of which the senior consul for that year would sacrifice a bull. Only then would the new consuls and the senators convene in the Curia to take up the Republic’s business for the year.

And Janus, for whom January is named, is the god of doorways, presiding not just over beginnings but also endings. Today marks not just the beginning of Obama’s presidency, but also the end of the Bush era in Washington.

Both Bushes, pere and fils, seemed to me to be fundamentally decent people, quite unlike the man who served between them. But Bush the younger, by being so roundly reviled as president, has nowhere to go but up from here. Someday Americans will have the fortitude to thank this man for calling Islamofascism by its true name: Evil. In the mean time, the bull is no longer his to slay.

I’m less afraid of Obama than I was on election day, but still I fear for capitalism and for individualism. The good news, always, is that socialism cannot work. The bad news, always, is that millions perish in the process of discovering that socialism cannot work. Janus may well be opening the door to a renewed appreciation for classical liberal virtues, but it seems likely that the glorious light we associate with ages of reason may be found at the end of a long, dark hallway.

The one hope I hold today is to be found in the photo at the top of this post: I hope that today is the beginning of a post-racial America. Everything we’ve done about race so far, for four hundred years, has been pretty stupid. I hope it turns out that electing a black president was the first Read more

January 15, 2009

The Wild Wonderful Web We Weave. How tightly wound it will be.

by

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Author website

Yesterday was Teri Lussier’s Birthday in case you missed it.  If you did, then by all means go and give her your well wishes already.

Aside from working on your birthday, Teri and I have a few things in common.  Beyond real estate, our shared interest might have a lot to do with why I’m writing on Bloodhound.   A little over a year ago, after reading this blog for probably a year-plus prior, she pulled me out of lurking and into commenting on this post about twitter. It was not the utility of twitter that was as much of interest, but rather the evolving way that we communicate with one another on the WWW.   Twitter, as we all knew was offering a new line of communication at the time in the micro-blogging arena, and Teri was sharing her thoughts on the concept by using a shared favorite film as a metaphor.

It was her use of something that was of great interest to me that attracted me to her post.   Timing, curiosity, and a shared interest can start relationships in a heartbeat. Since then, Teri and I have become friends on and offline.  Meeting last year at Bloodhound Unchained in Phoenix and again at REBlogWorld in Vegas.

I value her viewpoint and honesty as I do everyone I have come across that contribute to Bloodhound.   Being so, we occasionally message each other with ideas or join in what has been dubbed a scenius.

None of this is ground breaking except for the idea that it is becoming easier to connect.  Since I spend so much time in the machine, I rarely take a step back in reflection as I did yesterday morning.

What Teri said via email is what got me started:

” I’m quite partial to grainy B&W foreign movies… a joke… sorta…. Brad will laugh.

I went on YouTube to search for a trailer for Wings of Desire” to send to Teri in a message and what I came across was fascinating to me.   There is a whole sub-culture of people on YouTube that have edited different music over the top of parts of the Read more

January 5, 2009

Free “gifts” for real estate webloggers: “The need to deny influence is damaging to the soul”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

On Vendorslut Eve, here are a couple of quick notes on free “gifts” and their intended influence:

Richard Riccelli points out this New York Times article:

Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies — Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs — that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.

No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X. So are pens advertising the Sepracor sleep drug Lunesta, in whose barrel floats the brand’s mascot, a somnolent moth.

Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians. But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients.

It’s not just a matter of subliminal influence. When every pen and pad you use comes from a vendor, the vendors are underwriting your office supplies budget. The “in-kind” gift translates directly to an “in-cash” benefit.

Here’s a very complete disclosure on this issue of “gifts” and affiliate marketing from the Mortgage Sales Blog:

While most of the information provided on this mortgage blog does not include product pitches or personal agendas, some of the authors may generate income by selling services to loan officers or real estate agents.

Personally approved mortgage vendors participate on this blog as a way to expand their online reach, develop relationships with our readers, and prove that their products are worth taking a look at.

In the instance where it is not obvious, I will make every attempt to be fully transparent with our readers about any affiliate agreements where the Mortgage Sales Blog receives financial compensation by promoting a product or service on this blog.

As of Jan 4th, 2009, the Mortgage Sales Blog (Mark Madsen) has not promoted any product or service where an Read more

January 3, 2009

A premium appeal for Vlad Zablotskyy: If you’ll give $200 to his defense fund, we’ll give you a set of BloodhoundBlog Unchained DVDs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of the biggest stories we followed in 2008 was Vlad Zablotskyy’s legal battle with ePerks.com. The fight ended in a settlement, about which it were better for me to say nothing, but it suffices to say that ePerks has filed for bankruptcy.

Working together, we raised a ton of money for Vlad’s Legal Defense Fund — but not nearly as much as was needed. Brian Brady and I would like to do what we can to help reduce Vlad’s legal debt.

So here’s our proposal: If you will make a $200 donation to the Vlad Zablotskyy Legal Defense Fund using the PayPal button shown below, we will send you a complimentary set of DVDs from BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix, 2008. The DVDs sell for $199, so you’re essentially getting them for free, in exchange for your donation.

Why are we doing this? Because Vlad jumped on the grenade for all of us. What happened to him could have happened to any one of us. For my own part, I have tried to make this episode instructive for any other corporate attorneys who decide that webloggers are easy targets. But it remains that Vlad took the flak that could have been aimed at any one of us. We can only imagine what he and his family have been through this year, but at least we can help to lift this finacial burden.

Click on the “Donate” button and let’s put “paid” to this kind of intimidation against real estate webloggers.


Support Vlad Zablotskyy’s Defense Fund
Defend your own right to free speech!

December 31, 2008

Human sovereignty as a New Year’s resolution

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I hate lies, and I hate just about everything that doesn’t hate lies. We live our lives enmired in lies — in hoke, in smoke, in hints and allusions and innuendoes, in juice and hustle and jive — and it is entirely too easy to become one of the liars, de facto, without really intending to. My post on linking is one of the best things I wrote this year, and it’s apposite to the discussion I’ve been carrying out all week:

People are so used to marketing trickery that they expect it everywhere. The challenge for anyone seeking to change minds in the Web 2.0 world is to take away that expectation. Transparency doesn’t mean I am obliged to disclose to you the color of my underwear. Transparency means that if there is any possibility that you could entertain the smallest doubt that I am effecting some kind of sleight of hand to trick you into doing something you otherwise would not do, I have to give you the means of eradicating that doubt to your own satisfaction.

On Christmas, because of the latest episode of puerile posturing, I said to Teri, “I believe in Christmas. I won’t let it lie to me.” Later it came out as, “I believe in humanity. I won’t let it lie to me.” And the final form, I think, is, “I believe in life. I won’t let it lie to me.” That’s the architecture of this year’s Christmas story. Now all I need is the story.

I smile to myself at all the ways my life has conspired to put me where I am right now: A philosophically-adept obsessive writer, enraptured by the most beautiful and rigorous kind of ethics, with a background in high-volume, high-tech publishing problems, who works as a real estate broker and who spends much of his time thinking about the marketing of everything. Where would I be, by now, but here? It’s funny for me to watch people try to whimper-whip or brow-beat me into echoing their lies — after I’ve told them every way I can think of that I would Read more

December 30, 2008

The return counter — Looking AG’s Trojan Horse in the mouth: MyMarketWare works hard for the money, almost hard enough…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Continuing with my discussion of the bribe/gifts proffered to the contributors to Agent Blunderbuss, here’s a quick look at MyMarketWare.com.

I looked at this product when it was introduced and was not all that impressed. I like it better on second glance.

What is it? YASPWSS: Yet Another Single Property Web Site Solution. Like many of these services, the offering is pretty light-weight. And like seemingly all of them, it inflicts treacly music upon the end user. But, to be fair, the price for a site, hosted for a year, ain’t bad.

Keep in mind, as you read, that my frame of reference is our own engenu sites. I can do anything I want, to any level of detail or depth that I want, and I can reorganize an entire, huge web site on a whim. There is no YASPWSS on the market that is going to impress me.

MyMarketWare works to one level deep. That is, from a site’s “home” page, you go one level down, no deeper. Given that architecture, I would have loved to have seen at least the on-site links done within an iframe on the index page — pseudo AJAX.

You can link to off-site pages, which is a bonus, since it makes the sites effectively infinitely extensible.

The pages of the sites themselves are built in ASP, with a huge block of obfuscated code near the top of each one. Positioning on the pages is effected with both CSS and HTML tables, which seemed odd to me. MyMarketWare promises decent SEO from these pages, but they seemed very verbose, to my eyes.

I personally want a lot more photos than MyMarketWare makes available, and I want to be able to sort and organize them by category. The slide show software, apparently available on one page only, was fairly robust.

There are decent contact and scheduling forms, and MyMarketWare promises to feed your site’s details to various Realty.bots — which is probably also being done by other vendors you are using.

My overall rating of MyMarketWare’s demo single-property web site was “eh” but not inadequate. It does a decent job at what it does, but Read more

December 29, 2008

The return counter — Looking AG’s Trojan Horse in the mouth: No mere API-ing ape, Dwellicious is a true dead-pool mash-up

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
        –Robert Burns, To a Louse

In a comment on AG’s bribe/gift extravaganza, I said:

And, yes, the Dwellicious campaign stunk to high heaven. It’s headed straight for the dead pool, once it actually launches. The same dumbass “idea” has already failed several times. To say anything else is absurd.

That remark turns out to be grossly unfair. Dwellicious is not all-on-its-own to the dead-pool destined, it is a mash-up and mash-note-like send-up of a vast host of future dead-pool denizens.

Here’s the pitch. People will shop at lots of different Realty.bots, see? So Dwellicious gives them an easy way to organize all the houses they are finding on these various sites. It has social-networking tools built in, since, apparently, social-networking-type homebuyers can’t even go to the bathroom without permission from their TwitterButtBuddies. Not only that, but Dwellicious taps into every available Realty.bot and social-networking API, which will possibly prove to be astounding if anyone ever accidentally uses this silly site.

I watched the Dwellicious PR campaign a few weeks ago, assuming that it had to be astroturf, but today is the first time I have paid even one second’s attention to the product itself.

It’s actually quite an instructive clusterfrolic, if there are web entrepreneurs out there who want to learn how to get just about everything wrong.

Here’s the straight dope: Dwellicious seems to have been developed by paying devout attention to the TwitWit echo chamber — without one second or one dollar being devoted to actual market research.

Premise: People will shop at lots of different Realty.bots.

This is almost certainly false. Homebuyers window-shop at sites like Trulia and Zillow. When they get serious, they move to a particular, robust and — important concepts ahead — complete and non-redundant IDX or VOW search engine.

(A subsidiary premise of the entire dead-pool-bound Realty.bot movement is the idea that some strange imaginary people might want to purchase a residence in more than one major Read more

December 28, 2008

The Goal-Getters Game: Yes, you want to set goals for 2009, but here’s a game to make sure you actually follow through on them

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Goal-Getters Game is a variation on some of the ideas we have been playing with in email since Thanksgiving.

So first: ‘Tis the season for New Year’s Resolutions, made in haste and forgotten more hastily.

The Motivational Speaker Circuit, both inside and outside of the real estate world, is always all over the idea of goal-setting. But real changes in you life can only come from goal-achieving.

In our email discussions, I brought up Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” system of goal tracking.

Years ago when Seinfeld was a new television show, Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comic. At the time, I was hanging around clubs doing open mic nights and trying to learn the ropes. One night I was in the club where Seinfeld was working, and before he went on stage, I saw my chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me was something that would benefit me a lifetime…

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Teri has mentioned that she is already Read more

December 28, 2008

Psalm

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m kicking this back to the top of the blog, as well. I think this is a good example of the kind of behavior that has been denounced for millennia by would-be bosses, but I also think this approaches an ideal expression of how human beings should behave. Plus which, it’s the stuff I’ve been talking about all week, boiled down to its essence — and I think it’s good Sunday reading besides. I live to be proud of my life, and the moments that gave birth to this essay are among the proudest of those I’ve lived so far. This is the best I have within me. This is a seed I long to see cast to the winds, to grow wherever it can take root. –GSS

 
Psalm

Art is demanding, and that’s good. But art is petulant and importunate and presumptuous to a fault. Art is that damned nuisance of a snoopy neighbor who keeps knocking, knocking, knocking on your cellar door. Art goes straight for the places you forbid yourself to think about and rummages through your most terrifying secrets like a burglar tearing through your underwear drawer. Good art makes you hate it as you devour it, shun it as you immerse yourself in it. Good art makes you restless and jagged and ragged and inspired. Good art makes you shiver. Great art makes you cringe.

Art is a vanity in precisely this way: I presume to recreate reality in my own image and likeness, and I have the effrontery to demand that you not only acknowledge that reality but prefer it. I presume to seize the universe and squeeze out of it a tiny seed of truth. And I presume to plant that seed within you — without your consent, perhaps without even your knowledge. And I presume to nurture this new universe I have caused to grow within you until you scream — if I am good enough — scream from agony and delight. And I presume to do all of this for no purpose of yours, but only for reasons of my own devising. And at the Read more

December 26, 2008

A sermon for the ninety-and-nine: Don’t mimic bad examples among big-name real estate webloggers

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m kicking this back to the top from December 21, 2007. This was, I think, the second the the last time that I pissed off the echo chamber clique of big name real estate webloggers by pointing out that they were thoughtlessly committing a serious error. I was right about the issue addressed here, which is why, despite three or four days of mob outrage, no one adopted the insulting video tactic discussed in this post.

I don’t like the way people behave in these mad spasms, but I don’t care, either. The only behavior I control is my own, and, as I discussed last night, I never take an action I know in advance is morally wrong. Doesn’t mean I’m never in error. My contributions to BloodhoundBlog, very often, are discussions of what I’ve learned from my many, many errors. But I strive never to be intentionally in error.

But I have a unique understanding of the ontology of human ethics, and it’s something I feel a responsibility to share with the readers of this weblog. If you want to see everything I’ve written here on the subject, pursue the Egoism in Action category.

Or don’t. I’m easy enough to ignore — which will tell you a great deal about those mad spasms, if you trouble yourself to think the matter through. But if you want to profit by my experience at this kind of mass communication, I’m happy to share what I know. –GSS

 
I always thought that bible story about the lost sheep was stupid. If it were me in the story, I would stay right there with the ninety-and-nine, making damn sure that tomorrow it wasn’t the ninety-and-eight. Too bad about the lost sheep, but the mission-critical job has to come first.

Here’s an interesting fact about weblogs, and about internet discussion forums in general: You will almost never hear from the ninety-and-nine. If you manage to build an audience, you will hear from people who are reading your site. That’s a good thing. But if you take those people as being representative of your audience, you are making a mistake. You Read more

December 24, 2008

My own little gift on Christmas Eve: I’ve discovered a way that a contributor to BloodhoundBlog can get fired…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I would ask, is this sick-making to me alone? — but I heard about it from a nauseated reader before I had seen it myself.

We don’t take any money out of this site at all, not even Amazon affiliate fees. I don’t want for anyone reading BloodhoundBlog ever to doubt our integrity.

I am repelled by advertising on real estate weblogs, but taking in-kind bribes for pimping vendors and their dubious wares is simply corrupt.

Until today, there were no rules for BloodhoundBlog contributors — if for no other reason than because it had never occurred to me that anyone could do something this disgusting, much less celebrate it. Today we inaugurate our first rule:

If you write for us and if you have taken bribes in the form of cash or merchandise from a vendor, please send me your resignation. If I find out that any BloodhoundBlog contributor has taken bribes from a vendor, I will fire you on the spot. I love having our contributors here, but we each one of us have to be above reproach, now and always. This is the way I built this place, and thus it will remain, even if I have to go back to writing alone.

The one bright spot in this, for me, is that not one of these jackals made their bribe offers to me.

Un-frolicking-believable…

I have two more posts scheduled for the day, but I’m so angry I could spit. I’m going to mix myself a drink and toast, one by one, the people I know for sure I can trust.

December 22, 2008

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men…

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

One of the things you may not know about me is that I have two passions that most of my online friends do not see. I love to cook. I also love to sing (in a choir, where my mediocrity has a hiding place-grin). I particularly get a thrill out of Christmas carols. They are important markers of time and immovable objects for me in a life that changes at a frenetic pace.

My favorite Christmas carol? I heard the bells on Christmas day. Yet it was only yesterday that I took the time to learn the backstory behind Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it’s lyricist. Here’s a version of it from The Carpenters on YouTube.

I recommend a quick overview of his life here. I admire the man.

Much of the best writing in life comes from the dark place that is tragedy. What was going on in Longfellow’s life as penned the words “For hate is strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”? The war between the states. His own son was severely injured in the war and would be maimed for the rest of his life. What else was going on? He was grieving the loss of his beloved wife in a tragic fire that took her life and, (in his efforts to save her), burned him severely. The beard that Longfellow is known for reportedly came from the fact that he could no longer shave due to those burns. This happened in 1861.

The loneliness and darkness of the death of his wife along with the despair of the war were the backdrop for the poem that later became the carol. From those dark Civil War days of sadness and loss, came the beautiful words: “Til ringing, singing on it’s way the world revolved from night to day.” “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail…with peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

Since we are REALLY good at procrastinating sending cards… From the real TeamEric to each of you:

We wish you “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men.” Merry Christmas. And here’s to a successful 2009 for Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

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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