Category: Flourishing (page 19 of 38)

Thriving as only a rational animal can

August 26, 2010

Prospecting Your Way To Prosperity With Social Media

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Most real estate agents and mortgage loan originators don’t know how to find business. I fear that some of the social media strategies I’ve shared have morphed into a “build it and they will come” approach to business development. Greg Swann did a nice job of identifying this problem when he said that time spent on social media marketing is wasteful:

“Marketing” by social media is a huge waste of time. Selling is one-on-one, focused, time-consuming and goal-directed. Marketing, done properly, is broadcast, diffuse, time-efficient and passive and long-term in its goal-pursuit.

He’s absolutely correct. The time investment required, to keep your social media current, never pencils out if you want to make six figures annually. You will get some results but trust me when I tell you that you could have equaled or bested those results by handing out business cards at the swap mart (and yes, I’ve done that, too). Here’s where his opinion gets a bit murky, though:

Even if you are really doing your best to market your services on-line, if you are doing it by engaging people one-on-one in fleeting media like Twitter or Facebook, you are almost certainly wasting your time.

That, I can tell you from experience, is only partly true. Using social media to prospect can be exponentially more effective than cold-calling or handing out business cards at a swap mart because of the rich information users provide. People buy from people they trust and connections help to build trust more quickly. I’ll come back to this later but it helps to understand the difference between marketing and prospecting as lead generation tools.

Greg’s working definition of marketing (op. sit.) is a good one. The long-term benefit of marketing is that it is scalable. Online marketing, especially blogging, can be a workhorse, which generates inquiries from prospects for as long as the information is relevant. The hour investment in a well-written blog post can attract tons of inquiries over time (I have a few blog posts that perform that well). Likewise, a consistent display advertisement in the town’s weekly newspaper can trigger you to “top of Read more

August 24, 2010

React to this idea, if you would: “BloodhoundBlog Unchained and Unwired in Las Vegas: The Return of the Sales Monster.”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I was talking to Scott Cowan this morning, and he asked me about future Unchained events. It happens that I’ve been thinking about doing something, and Scott and I explored a few ideas.

Here’s one I really like: BloodhoundBlog Unchained and Unwired in Las Vegas: The Return of the Sales Monster.

I’m thinking Friday, November 26th, 2010, the day after Thanksgiving. One day, one big room like we did in Orlando, 9 am to 9 pm, bop ’til you drop. You could fly in Thursday night after the family stuff or early Friday morning. Arrive when you can, leave when you have to, and maybe we do streaming video and a webinar all day as well.

For content, I think I want to focus on selling, rather than marketing. We can be counted on to cover a lot of wired marketing just in passing, but, as I have been writing, there’s is a lot of ground on the sales side of our business that we’re leaving uncovered.

I also want this to be a Stone Soup project, if we can get that done. I want to keep it cheap, so you can afford to come, and I want to keep it simple, so that I can coordinate things without going up in flames.

So tell me: Is this a good idea? Would you come?

Also: Hit me with ideas. Content ideas in particular, but I’m game for anything you have to say. We might set up the room in “rounds” so that we can structure the day half as formal group sessions and half as mini-kennels, self-coalescing unconference sessions.

I’ll listen to a sponsor if you’ll pay for the room and two rounds of snacks-‘n’-beverages, and I’ll give you banner space, a meet-and-greet table and a 30 minute speaking slot in exchange. Conference space should be cheap in Vegas right now, so we might not be talking about a very big check.

I truly don’t know if this is worth doing. I think Realtors need to get back to selling basics, but the great mass of wired agents seem to be so infatuated with selling small talk to each Read more

August 23, 2010

Are you closing on the wrong objectives? The most insidious form of sales call reluctance is proudly racking up empty “accomplishments.”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I want to talk about being a sales monster, so I want to issue a disclaimer first: We are all about value. I get paid for closing real estate transactions, and I like getting paid, but I never want to get paid for encouraging a client to do the wrong thing. I’m going to be talking about closing in a lot of different contexts, but I am never talking about arm-twisting or even the mildest kinds of suasion. The ancient Roman law of agency is respondeat superior — let the master answer — and this is how we conduct our business.

But still, as a salesman it’s my job to close. That’s important just by itself. It’s one thing to be an ethical salesperson, as above, but it is quite another to fail to close at all. My job — always — is to move the process to the next logical step. If my client wants to make a deal, it’s my job to make it happen, and the way I do that is by closing on the step of the deal-making process that happens next in the sequence.

That’s Salesmanship 101, except that no one teaches salesmanship these days. And, alas, many of the salesmavens who taught this discipline in the past were creepy, oily, slimy, smarmy moral degenerates. Selling is not a confidence game, and there is nothing at all wrong with helping your client take the steps necessary to achieving his objective.

Because marketing on the web is so cost-efficient, I can do a lot of my closing with software — passively, automatically, at any hour of the day. But: I still need to close.

When a new vistor lands on one of our web sites, I’m closing on one idea: More. Stick around and read — there’s lots of content. Or swap over to our free Phoenix MLS search. At an absolute minimum, I want you in our internet universe, so I do a lot to attract people, then I do a lot more to hang onto them.

When we get someone to do something we want them to do, we call Read more

August 19, 2010

A weblogging strategy for non-writerly Realtors. Or: How you can learn to stop worrying and love your blog.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I was on the phone yesterday with Chris Johnson, talking with him about Realtor weblogs. He mentioned that some of the buyers of his real estate weblogs are having trouble coming up with regular content.

I have a solution for them.

What should they do? Stop worrying about it — and solve the real marketing problem instead.

Instead of building a blogsite around a regularly-updated weblog, it would make more sense to me for reluctant writers to build the blogsite around the mission-critical content instead.

Here’s the deal: There are a finite number of topics that you absolutely, positively need to cover. Whatever target-marketed niche the blog is concerned with, you need to document that niche in a fairly comprehensive way.

How many articles would that take? Five? Ten? Surely not twenty. If you’ve done what you need to do, you can ignore the blog except when you’re burning up with something to say.

A WordPress theme like Equilibrium would give your weblog a magazine-like look and feel. The “featured” section could highlight the three or six or nine posts that are mission-critical for your niche. And the “latest post” section can document your more-recent musings. If you write something crucial later on, you can rotate it into the “featured” section.

Here’s the thing: Everything so-called weblogging experts (including me) have told you about real estate weblogging is probably wrong.

You are not trying to build long-term relationships with regular visitors who will wait for your latest pronouncements with bated breath. Instead, the objective of your blogsite should be to provide mission-critical information to people who will find you by Google when they need you and who will be happy to forget you just as soon as they no longer need you. The magazine-style blogsite fits that approach perfectly.

The purpose of your weblog is not to be available for lonely people looking for friends. It is not to make you one of the cool kids, so that Realtors from all over the world can show up at your place to grouse about how awful the real estate market is. The purpose of your blog is certainly not to make Read more

August 17, 2010

Nobody Cares About Your M.O. ‘Till They See It’s Skinnin’ Cats Big Time

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

In almost every baseball game you’ll ever see, there comes a point when the starting pitchers run into a situation on which the game’s outcome will likely pivot. Take last night for instance — the Padres/Cubs game in Chicago. Padre’s starting pitcher Keven Correia had a rocky first inning. The first two batters hit safely, resulting in men on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out, and the heart of the order now due up.

Nobody scored.

Kevin went on to pitch shutout ball ’till lifted for a pinch hitter in the seventh inning. That first inning could’ve gone either way. But he skinned that cat in short order. He’s not Bob Gibson, in that he can’t overpower hitters. He gets batters out the old fashioned way — by pitching, not throwing. When the season’s over, Kevin will have won 13-15 games, a total which is distinctly in the upper echelon of major league results.

HIs fastball can be hit by high school players if not located well. His curveball reminds nobody of Sandy Koufax. Yet he keeps skinnin’ more of his share of cats. Why? Cuz even though his ‘stuff’ ain’t hall of fame caliber, he knows how to make the best of what he has, and consistently does what all winning pitchers do, regardless of what they’re throwing. He disrupts batters’ timing. I know this first hand, as I had the pleasure of havin’ the dish once when he was a junior college pitcher in San Diego.

It ain’t rocket science– but a helluva lot easier said than done. It’s analogous to success in real estate brokerage. Those who do what produces consistent results — skin the most cats — win. And to quote all of our grandpas, ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Last Thursday I wrote a post about a guy on the east coast who’s been skinnin’ cats at a pretty impressive clip, almost all on the buyer side. (He’ll close 70 sides this year.) Exclusive of any referrals, 100% of his business comes directly from his online efforts, which generate about 7-8,000 leads Read more

August 15, 2010

Me and Claudia and PHP: Using internet real estate marketing to — you know — sell real estate…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

So, the Arizona Republic ran an article yesterday on on-line real estate marketing and you will never in a million years guess who they did not call. I never get called for any of those kinds of things — the RaiseTheBarTab kinds of events — even though we’re doing cooler stuff than anyone I know of. I’m not weeping. I’m always very forthcoming with everything I know, but if there is going to be a cadre of Realtors dead set against learning how to do the work I do, I’m more than happy to have them working in my own market.

And I’m not bragging, either. We’re going to have a banner year, for us, in terms of volume of transactions, and we’re kicking the asses of all the canned-software Twitter-fidgets named in the article. But we are digging our way out of a deep hole, and we’re a long way from where I want us to be. I like to brag that we spend almost nothing on marketing, but the fact is that we almost never have any money to spend on marketing. I will put every Realtor in Phoenix on notice: When we have money and staff, we are going to be a force to contend with.

So, even though I don’t issue any Twitter spasms, at least not non-robotically, of late I am putting paid to a lot of new and interesting real estate marketing ideas.

What’s changed? Cathleen is giving me some Claudia time. Claudia Couts is the housekeeper I made Cathleen hire last year. She’s with us for two hours a day, six days a week. She keeps the house down to a manageable level of chaos and takes care of all the pet-maintenance duties. The idea was to open up the time that Cathleen was spending on those chores, and this has been a win-win all around.

Lately I’ve been buried in paperwork, at which I’m horrible, and I had marketing ideas that required small amounts of rote labor — at which I’m also horrible. I thought we might hire a virtual assistant, but Cathleen suggested giving Claudia a Read more

August 14, 2010

Innovation now: I’ve stopped taking buyer’s checks for earnest money, but now I want to stop worrying about wire transfers, too.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I’m living much of my time right now with my nose pressed right up against one tool or another — listings, DocuSign, the steering wheel, et endlessly cetera. That’s cool, we need the dough, and we can’t make it rain hard enough, fast enough. But by this point I have no idea if something I’m doing is an innovation or not. I’m just dancing as fast as I can.

This topic just came up, and I’m passing it along because I haven’t done that here yet. I know this because I hadn’t done it with my wife and business partner until just now.

Here’s the scoop: I’ve all but stopped taking earnest checks. I’m having almost all of my buyers wire their earnest money deposits directly into title. I never touch anyone’s else’s money — the only known way a real estate broker can be assured of escaping imprisonment.

But that’s not my reason for coming to do things this way. I used to take the check, made out to Chicago or Fidelity or whatever, then schlep it around while I waited for the contract to be executed. Not fun but not onerous — just inefficient.

By now, I do a lot of REOs as rental home investments for out-of-state buyers. I don’t know the name of the title company when we write the contract, and the buyer is back home by the time we need to deposit the funds.

I don’t even talk about checks any longer. I tell the buyer how things work and that I will have title email wiring instructions when we’re ready to rock. Totally transparent, totally arm’s-length, and no one involved in the process says boo.

If the lister is a little too adamant about receiving a PDF of a fax of a scan of a photocopy of a useless check, I will add language like this: “Seller is aware that Buyer will deposit Earnest Money by wire transfer into Title Company, to be determined by Seller, within one business day after Seller’s final acceptance of this Purchase Contract and any incorporated addenda.” (Reminder: I am not your broker.)

It’s the perfect Read more

August 13, 2010

Blood, sweat, and fears

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Once upon a time, maps were marked HIC SVNT LEONES to denote unknown territory. Hic Svnt Leones means “Here are lions”. Scary. Uncharted territory is scary.

I’ve been paying very close attention to how I accomplish things: What I do and what I don’t do. Why some things are easy and I embrace them and why are somethings harder and I avoid them. I’m trying to improve my business and my productivity so it’s kind of nice useful critical to understand what makes me tick. Or tock. I need to figure out the internal roadblocks that keep me from achieving my goals. I want to recognize them immediately so I can overcome them as quickly as possible rather than letting them pile up to barricade levels.

There is stuff, for lack of better word, that I dislike doing, but when it’s up to me to do everything, and in real estate it often is up to me to do everything, I have to learn to just get on with it. I know this but still, there are things that I don’t like doing so I begin to waste my own precious time, using procrastination as motivation. An epiphany: It recently occurred to me that I would be furious with anyone else who wasted my time the way I so carelessly waste my own time.

Some of the habits I have fallen into are now clear even to me as red flags that I’m avoiding something. Twitter of course, is one example. What? Is it that obvious? Okay, so I use social networking to avoid doing some things that I find difficult. I recognize it now so I can overcome it, and that’s the thing. I once thought this was pain avoidance, but now I see it as fear. Of the unknown. As in Hic Svnt Leones. What is going to happen if I do this thing? What unseen beasties lie in wait to pounce on my soft under belly? I have a very fertile imagination and sometimes it grows weeds in the garden of the mind, but the only way to pull the weeds Read more

August 13, 2010

“…I knocked that transaction right on it’s…”

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

The Real Estate Ideal?

Sometimes the best part about being a real estate agent is the time it affords you to be with your family. Of course, other times the best thing about being a real estate agent is the excuses it provides for doing exactly the opposite: “What’s that dear? Your mother is going to be in town this Sunday and you want to spend the morning down at Begonias, Begonias and Tulips, then do a little shoe shopping? Gosh darn it all, I’ve got an Open House that Sunday.” You get the idea. But if you really think about it, the best part about being a real estate agent is the opportunity to knock someone else right on their derriere – metaphorically speaking, of course.

Last week our local football team (the San Diego Super Chargers!) held an open practice at the stadium where they play their home games. I took my two boys down there and we made an evening of it. (Mostly because I wanted my boys to see what the inside of a professional football stadium looks like without having to drop a cool $500 on parking, tickets, popcorn and a great big Styrofoam finger that implies we’re #1 at something… I’m guessing it’s separating fools from their money, but I can’t be sure.) Anyway, being there gave us an opportunity to watch Kris Dielman in action. Man I like watching this guy play the offensive line. Having been a defensive lineman myself, that’s saying something. The difference in mind-set between the two is staggering, but that’s exactly why I enjoy watching him so much: he plays offensive line like a defensive lineman… and he plays football the way we should practice real estate.

He’ll often knock his guy 2, 3 even 5 yards back; sometimes he puts the guy right on his backside. Now that’s what you call getting the job done. Even more than that: it’s what you call getting the job done very, very well. You might say he’s a Top Producer at what he does. But here’s the thing: after he knocks that guy back one yard and two cheeks, do you Read more

August 13, 2010

The Basic Laws of Stupidity – No Explanation Needed

by Don Reedy, San Diego, CA

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Greg often talks about self determination and splendor. There is a raw courage that comes with saying that a bandit can put a gun in your face and demand what they want, but ultimately that bandit cannot take from you what you will not give him.

But what about stupidity?

Here’s an interesting read from an article published by Carlo Cipolla, and summarized briefly in this post.

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

by Carlo M. Cipolla

1. The first basic law of human stupidity
2. The second basic law
3. The third (and golden) basic law
4. Frequency distribution
5. The power of stupidity
6. The fourth basic law
7. The fifth basic law

The first basic law of human stupidity

The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

The second basic law

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

The third (and golden) basic law

The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid.

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

The fourth basic law

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

The Fifth Basic Law states that

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The corollary of the Law is that:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

My premise? What I see as a pandemic is the unfettered law of stupidity threatening us in every arena of our lives. Professionally it’s NAR and financial reform. Sociologically it’s the “let’s all get along” mantra. Politically it’s the apparent dismembering and misinterpretation of our Constitution. Financially it’s our socialistic tendencies. Personally it’s the lack of decorum and respect.

Are there basic laws of stupidity? Read more

August 12, 2010

If You Were This Guy, What Would You Do?

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Had a nice conversation with an agent on the east coast recently who’s a world class buyer’s agent. He has his own site that sending roughly 7-8,000 leads his way each year. From those he picks the cherriest of the cherry, giving the rest to his assistant. He sells anything from a $100k place to cool houses whose price tags require a couple commas. I got the impression most of his stuff is $400k and above, though not much above, at least as an average.

Anyway, the guy’s wicked smart, knows what he’s doin’ backwards and forwards, and does very, very well. He expected to be at roughly 70 closed sides by the end of the year. Again, his website spits out leads like Grandma used to make muffins.

Talking with agents like him is a treat, mainly cuz they’re not only good, and work hard, but they get it. Big time smart.

I asked him why he’d never pursued being a dominant lister.

I asked cuz he’s such a natural, he’d kill. Agents like him can leverage the combination of their superior online skills and agent experience into a tremendous pay raise while keeping the hours level or even reducing them if preferred. For instance, my guess is Russell Shaw, who’ll probably do (my estimate, not his) 5-700 sides this year, works 30-50 hours weekly. Not sure how those sales fall into listing/buyer sides, but I’d wager more than a six pack of Dr. Pepper that 70% of ’em or more are listing sides. I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m mistaken. 🙂

Back to the east coast guy.

He’s been at this for a decade or so with stellar results. That’s a lotta sales. A buncha homeowners who’re in their homes due to his efforts. They like him, and view him as an experienced, knowledgeable pro. Geez, I dunno, given a built-in database of roughly 500-700 satisfied homeowners, one might wonder if marketing your equally cool listing prowess might have some traction.

Just sayin’.

Let’s say it’s just 500 or so. He already ‘touches’ them with emails once or twice yearly, though Read more

August 10, 2010

What Do We Know? Be Like a Monkey On a Cupcake

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Know: Be absolutely certain or sure of something.

Certain: Established without doubt. Complete conviction about something.

Sure: Having no doubt that one is right.

How much do each of us know about what we do? How much do we know about increasing the number of people we’re able to talk with about what we do? How certain are we of the results we’ll get when we set out to execute a particular marketing/prospecting strategy? Are you sure what you’re doin’ and the money you’re spendin’ are gonna produce the expected results?

Kinda puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it?

BloodhoundBlog is all about results. Whether it’s about technology, marketing, some sorta prospecting, software apps — we’re about what gets our clients exactly where they wanna be. As I’m fond of saying, the rest is happy talk.

From the bottom of my heart, no offense intended, but if you’re a recipient of leads fallin’ from some RainMaker into your computer — this post ain’t for you. This is for those who create somethin’ outa nothin’ — the RainMakers themselves. You create the business where before you did whatever you did, there was none. You’re a full time real estate agent or broker. You’re in the trenches every day by choice.

Who knows that whatever they’re gonna do tomorrow, next week, next month, to generate new business, is gonna work?

Who knows?

The other day I was asked very politely by a young real estate agent if I’d be willing to have a cuppa coffee with her at StarBucks — her dime — to talk about why she’s not coming within shouting distance of hittin’ her 2010 goals. Sensing the advantage, I negotiated for a couple oatmeal raisin cookies. Deal.

We’ve met, had the conversation, identified problems, and fortunately also singled out a solution or two. She admitted to having little if any confidence in what her office manager has told her to do. Fair enough. We figured out what she knew would work. She’s pretty excited.

If you’re not doing as well achieving those lofty goals you set between Christmas and New Year’s, what’s the Read more

August 9, 2010

Reasons to be cheerful, Part 3.1.4: “Get me rewrite!” How to revise the script of your life — writing yourself a happy ending.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

A friend said this on the phone: “I’m sorry this is taking me so long. I’m really bad at computers.”

My reply: “Why would you say it that way?”

“Huh?”

“I understand that you’re reporting on what you see as being a matter of fact. But why not say it this way: ‘Computers have been a challenge for me, but I find I’m getting better with experience.’ You’re telling the exact same truth, not misrepresenting anything. But by focusing on what you’re doing right, you’ll improve your future performance just by changing your attitude.”

I’m not talking about canned affirmations. I’m talking about the words you choose when you’re telling the unshaded truth about your life, your mind, your talents, your work, your relationships.

You can say: “I’m a lousy writer.” But you can be just as truthful by saying this instead: “It hasn’t been easy for me to improve my writing skills, but I’m finding that hard work is paying off for me.”

You can say: “I always get lost when I go someplace for the first time.” But it would be equally factual to say, “I find it beneficial to prepare carefully before I travel to an unfamiliar neighborhood.”

You can say: “I’ll probably lose.” But you would be no less honest to say, “I just might win.”

The statements you make about yourself might seem to you to be statements of fact at the time you are making them. But whatever truth there might be in those expressions right now, you are also writing the script for your future. Saying “I’ll probably lose” is functionally equivalent to saying “I’ll never win.” If you don’t mean to say that you can never, ever get anything right, then stop telling these brutal lies about yourself.

If you invert those expressions instead — concentrating on everything you get right, not everything you get wrong — by that one simple change of habit you will rewrite the script of your future. There’s no telling how high you can rise, once you stop putting yourself down, but, at a minimum, you will write yourself a much happier ending.

Here’s what I say: I’m Read more

August 6, 2010

Radical Chic – Oh Baby How I’ve Missed Ya

by Don Reedy, San Diego, CA

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Radical chic is a term coined by journalist Tom Wolfe[citation needed] to describe the pretentious and fashionable adoption of radical political causes by celebrities, socialites, and high society. The concept has been described as “an exercise in double-tracking one’s public image: on the one hand, defining oneself through committed allegiance to a radical cause, but on the other, vitally, demonstrating this allegiance because it is the fashionable, au courant way to be seen in moneyed, name-conscious Society.”[1] Unlike dedicated activists, revolutionaries, or dissenters, those who engage in radical chic remain frivolous political agitators. They are ideologically invested in their cause of choice only so far as it advances their social standing. – From Wikipedia

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated with much pomp and circumstance, and today, some year and a half later, remains (IMO) a polarizing figure in American politics. So, when I, as a member of the real estate community, read about the overt actions of the Federal Government under the leadership of Mr. Obama, and contemplate both the merits and missteps of his administration, I cannot but yearn for some few hours with the elite of American society who swept him into office with their own brand of ideological one-upsmanship.

Yesterday Brian Brady commented that he had not been invited to attend the reported meeting on August 17th of the Obama’s administration’s attempt to overhaul or repair Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

That got me thinking about an old essay by Tom Wolfe.

The essay, Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s “. . . It’s a tricky business, integrating new politics with tried and true social motifs . . .” from New York Magazine on June 8, 1970, got me wishing for a few hours of time with just about any of the elite of American society that ushered in and oversaw the coronation of their very own so chic, so hip, so nimble and enlightened leader. But the radical chic, those who helped elect this President, and with it the seemingly endless policy shifts away from accountability toward mediocrity and the continued Read more

August 4, 2010

Joe Ferrara, Real Estate Attorney & Founder of Sellsius Real Estate Passes

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Joe Ferrara, Manhattan real estate attorney and founder of Sellsius Real Estate, passed away from an aggressive brain tumor yesterday. Joe, often credited as one of the pioneers of the online real estate community, explained and lampooned our industry from his home site. A ubiquitous presence, Joe offered advice to real estate agents, about online marketing, for Home Gain and Inman News.

Joe had a vision of an online marketplace; a Craig’s List of sorts for the real estate industry. While the RE.bots expended their energy and capital to aggregate listings, Joe thought his site might provide transparency for the NYC rental market, mostly dominated by the two, closed-system real estate boards. Ultimately, Joe thought Sellsius might encompass products and services for the dwelling and all that was in it.

Joe was an accomplished real estate attorney, practicing in Manhattan. He had a creative eye towards marketing and was a fountain of new ideas. His presentation of the inane, zany, and funny, real estate-related topics were addicting and his coverage of the technology sector, and how it might aid the real estate professional, was comprehensive. Joe had the gift of detachment and could present ideas to the layman with the knowledge only an industry insider might have.

Joe had a sense of justice. He willingly acted when he believed that the equilibrium of fair play had been imbalanced, regardless of the personal consequences.

Joe Ferrara had a paradoxical understanding that, amidst the rush to introduce technology to real estate solicitation, personal relationships would play an increased role in the industry. Consumer introductions however, would be atypical with our past marketing efforts. Joe believed that the broad reach and deep content, a real estate blog might have, would attract more quality customers to the best and brightest in the real estate industry. He felt, like I feel, that real estate agents should develop a worldwide, professional referral network.. Joe acted on that belief with then partner, Rudy Bachraty (now of Trulia.com), to organize Blog Tour USA. The “Sellsius Boys” set out to personally meet as many industry professionals as they could, in the summer of 2007.

The Read more

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The first basic law of human stupidity

The second basic law

The third (and golden) basic law

The fourth basic law

The Fifth Basic Law states that

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