There’s always something to howl about.
There’s Grant’s Tomb, looking a little scruffy in Riverside Park in Manhattan:
And here’s your chance to take a truly dizzying tour of the Guggenheim Museum:
These images, and many more, are brought to you by 360cities.net, a Google Maps mash-up of 360 degree panorama shots from all over the world. Probably more useful for fun than for real estate — but it’s definitely fun.
Tipped: Google Blogoscoped.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography, technology
What tips do you have to share with us to help everyone brush up on their marketing game?
We are too much misled, surely. Too much miscounseled, misdirected, misinformed. Too many of the people we turn to for advice on selling homes don’t actually sell homes themselves — never have — and, in consequence, too often, they are too much mistaken.
Consider that 2006 was to have been the Year of the Real Estate Video — except it wasn’t. Nor was 2007. And nor, neither, will be 2008. Video is useful for telling stories and for communicating personality. In expert hands it can be an incomparable tool for conveying arcane or abstract ideas. As a real estate marketing tool, it is at best a role-player — and most often — owing to crappy production values and even crappier pre-planning — it serves more as a detriment than a benefit to the marketing of a home.
Good photography, by contrast, is the real estate marketing tool of the millennium. Houses sit still, and what buyers want, more than anything, are scads of detail-rich images that also sit still — so they can examine, repeatedly, every last one of those details.
We will sometimes do video in a role-playing way for our listings, but the second most popular feature on our web sites, after the photographs, is the interactive floorplan. Buyers love to see exactly how their furniture is going to fit into the home — and the more they commit their minds to the home, the more committed they are to buying it. The scientific name for this intricate process is: Salesmanship.
For years now, we have dreamed of an even more fun, more engaging, more interactive tool to put on our sites: Virtual redecorating. Change the paint. Change the flooring. Change the cabinets and countertops. “You almost love this home, folks, and you haven’t even liked anything else. What can you do to make this place your own?” The name for this again? Oh, yes. Salesmanship.
And guess what? It’s here. Obeo, about whom I knew nothing until this morning, has solved the virtual tour problem in a way I not only don’t hate, but actually like. And they have given me virtual redecorating, Read more
Click AZ Central to read the full story.
Kate Nolan
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 18, 2007 07:17 PM
Dr. Adam Hansen, chief resident of general surgery at the Phoenix hospital, admitted to Mayo administrators he snapped the photo during a Dec. 11 gallbladder surgery on patient Sean Dubowik, whose penis bears the tattooed slogan, “Hot Rod.”
After Hansen showed the photo to other members of the surgical staff, one phoned a Republic reporter on Monday and left an anonymous message about the incident.
Hansen has been placed on administrative leave and is neither seeing nor treating patients.
…..
Dubowik runs a Phoenix topless bar, Centerfolds Cabaret, and said he’d gotten the tattoo on a $1,000 bet.
“It was the most horrible thing I ever went though in my life,” Dubowik said. He said he chose Mayo Clinic for treatment because his mother had five surgeries there.
“They were supposedly the best of the best. I have no complaints about the medical care I was given,” he said.
“But now I feel violated, betrayed and disgusted. I’ve never been in a hospital and (my) first experience is the worst thing ever.”
…..
Dubowik, who had not yet spoken to an attorney Tuesday, said he planned to contact one.
“The longer I sit here the angrier I get,” he said.
Saturday afternoon, about 2:30 I stopped by the Quiznos at Tatum & Thunderbird, it is in a little strip center right by my house. For those who like details, I had a Diet Pepsi and the regular size prime rib cheesesteak sandwich. Right next door to the Quiznos I saw this sign on the door:
I zoomed in so you could read it. Zooming back and stepping back just a bit it looks like this:
I suppose the advantage and the disadvantage of being in shopping center is foot traffic.
Sometimes people do things that if they would have considered all of the available options they might have made a different choice. For example:
Another example is the guy who drove his Lamborghini at speeds verified well above 200 miles per hour (219, to be exact). On an Arizona freeway. Late at night. Now I can’t honestly say I’ve never heard of any Porsche owners who have done something like that on a similar stretch of highway, late at night, a few summers ago (minus that high a speed and the video). What makes this particular feat so remarkable is he did it in a Lamborghini and then posted it to You Tube. Per this article (which includes a link to the video) there are about 350 Lamborghini Murcielago cars in the state of Arizona. This one is gold colored. I’m thinking that is an even shorter list. I wonder how many days until the East Vally Tribune reports the arrest of the young man who was driving the car?
I know, I know. Greg just wrote that even though there are no rules here at BHB, there is one rule. We’re not selling our products here. However, for this listing I need to make an exception. Look it over carefully and see if you don’t agree.
Remember, this one won’t last. So please call now. Thank you.
Bob Bass sent this to me and I wanted to share it with everyone. This is a house for sale. Here is the virtual tour. Turn your speakers on so you can enjoy the music from “Psycho”.
These are photos from the listing I was working on last night. Cathleen took all the photos for this house. I can do a house a lot faster than she can, but she comes home with photos that are just stunning.
Can poetic copy sell houses? Maybe not. Custom signs? It’s a long shot — but we do get a lot of sign calls. Elaborate web sites? You tell me. Photos like these? Everything’s a crap shoot, and, of course, nothing works if the price is wrong.
But: If you assume that more than one house could be a good fit for that elusive buyer, then what should you do to make sure that it’s your listing and not the other guy’s that sells?
Our answer: Whatever it takes. Dramatic photos can’t win the war alone, but they’re one more weapon in our arsenal.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
Greg had asked me to follow up on some particulars of the twilight photos we recently commissioned for one of our seller’s homes and, specifically, how these shots translated into our brochures. Here goes.
As a foreword, I just love this whole conversation because it debunks the argument that all agents hold the tools in their marketing box as safely guarded secrets lest “the competition” figure it out. This is transparency at its best. The reality is, and my position has always been, that nothing I do is secret. If other agents don’t know what Steve and I are doing for our clients today, then they will tomorrow. None of us has a copyright on good ideas; we only own them to the extent that others are unwilling to invest the time and money to see our efforts and raise us one.
Many agents, of course, and many of them in my market will “borrow” my ideas over time, which will inspire me to do better yet, keeping our little poker game going. In the end, everyone wins.
First, it took me awhile to admit that, while my better-than-most camera with wide-angle capability is pretty nifty, and while I consider myself having a keen eye for the shot, having produced about 4 gazillion flyers and brochures over the years, the professionals can do it better. Perhaps the biggest benefit to me, and Mr. Shaw will appreciate my newfound appreciation for delegation, is the time savings that I am realizing, which more than offsets any cost of privatizing the photography.
While I still have to be physically present during the shoot (and, in the case of twilight photography, this is a two to three hour event), the photos are delivered to me within 24 hours. I receive two zipped files, one containing the full-resolution photos and the other the photos resized for the web. Now I do not have to spend an afternoon throwing out the bad and adjusting the lighting on the good, nor do I have to resize the ones I will be using on the Internet. And, the photos are mine to do with as I please Read more
Wait for the light. Kris Berg shows you how it’s done. Do not fail to look at all of the photos.
I’m sure we would all love to have bazillion-dollar beach houses to sell, but, whatever your market, this is the kind of above-and-beyond marketing that gets houses sold.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
Week after week in the Republic, I hammer away on the idea that the only homes that will sell in this market are the ones that are priced right, prepared right and presented right. It goes for us, too, obviously, so we made a visual record of the process of preparing a home for the real estate market for a home we listed last week.
This is fun for me, because one of the things I tell sellers is, “You know what’s wrong with this house. You know exactly what you would frown over — or your mother-in-law would frown over — if you were seeing this home for the first time. Those are the issues we need to address before we can try to sell this house.” This gives us one extra way to show-don’t-tell the ideas we are trying to communicate.
Staging is all the rage right now, but staging is a wasted effort if the home is dirty or in palpable disrepair. This slide show illustrates a more robust idea of home staging.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
I wrote about this before, but I don’t think I have what I want even yet. These will print 18″x12″, but I may go to 24″x18″ the next time. My design skills are not the best, but I arrived that this because I wanted three things on the sign, and this seemed like the best way to get them. I wanted the name of the brokerage, the web address for the house, and the maximum amount of photo I could get. This is what I ended up with for a first attempt:
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
Today our ever more irrelevant Arizona Republic demonstrated again that it is clueless about what over 1,100 daily readers of BloodhoundBlog.com know, which is… here on BHB you will find some of the finest weblog writing by real estate professionals available anywhere in the English speaking world. With the addition of so many fine writers with awesome credentials, since Greg and I started this site almost a year ago, I’ll admit that I feel outclassed. There’s really not much for me to deliver that teaches and informs and entertains like what our other illustrious contributors give us. But — Tom Johnson from Houston has given me an opportunity to show off my expertise…
In a comment on Teri’s post, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,” Tom talks about his dogs, Sophie and Duke, and asks
If I could figure out how to photograph them together, we could go for the all sizes, all families type thing. Suggestions?
Oooh, oooh, I can answer that! Take lots and lots of pictures! I know what I’m talking about! For our December 2000 holiday card I wanted to include our entire family, even those with fur or feathers, in the family photo. So I recruited my sister Terry, and she managed to shoot a perfect portrait. Took her only 40 shots to get it. Here are 16 of those pictures:
Fortinbras the Cockatiel and Gwen the Gerbil, alas, met the fate of animals who decide to escape the cages that protected them from their bigger sisters and brothers. And Charley, the regal Akita mix who Greg’s sitting on, and Peritas, the black Lab puppy with the bubblegum tongue who’s sitting next to me, were the ill-fated dogs Greg talks about in his comment on Teri’s post, whose loss led us to Odysseus. My heart still aches over that loss. In fact, you’ll notice, the sadness has been so profound, that it turned me blonde!
Technorati Tags: real estate
Another clip from the discussions Cathy and I had Sunday at open house. This film explores ideas for the focused marketing of specific types of real estate products — for example, how we might take different approaches with historic versus ultra-modern versus mid-century homes. Amazingly enough, there is some actual visual interest in the movie — all of it added in post-production.
