There’s always something to howl about.
Linked below is a short screencast on how I use the text editor known as TextWrangler to wrangle text into usable formats. This particular episode illustrates how I create coded HTML from my weekly Arizona Republic column. In future screencasts, I’ll want to illustrate more arcane ideas about deploying robust software toward highly productive objectives.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
We had the honor of hosting Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate CEO Sherry Chris as the keynote speaker for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando. I can’t promise we’ll do this indefinitely, but this is twice now that we’ve featured executives in do-or-die situations — and who can deny that this makes for interesting speeches?
Here’s a short FlipCam clip I made of Chris while she was speaking:
Linked below is an MP3 podcast file of her complete address.
Technorati Tags: BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Sean “Rocky” Purcell and I discussed his big prediction of the stock market bounce and I repented for my recommendation to stay “unlocked” in hopes of lower mortgage rates.
Download and enjoy this light-hearted 17 minute show
We felt the near-term future for stock and bond markets would depend on the numbers not events. We’re looking closely at Retail Sales (which were weak) and CPI, specifically Core CPI, this week.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Last Monday, Sean Purcell and I hosted Top Dawg Greg Swann on Mortgage Mondays on Bloodhound Blog Radio. We discussed what real estate agents and lenders can do in a post-Bailout world.
The bailout bill passed today after the Senate signaled its support to the House. President Bush signed this bill into law and the world is safe, once again.
Interesting points in our conversation:
1- The Community Reinvestment Act (original sub-prime loans), conceived in 1977 and super-charged in 1995, was the actual starting point of the “toxic loan” revolution that took our economy down.
2-The Bailout may be an instrument to keep people into homes through the “loansharking collection” principle.
3-Greg talks about his strategy of working with investors (and why it works).
4- Predictions about the convergence of low-priced and mid-priced homes through financing caps.
5- Strategies for REALTORs to find ready, willing (and most importantly) and ABLE clients.
If you run an 8-minute mile, you can get a 10K in while you listen to this on your iPod. Mere mortals should just download the podcast and try to get 3 miles in on the treadmill whil listening to the three of us.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
We interviewed Matt Padilla, author of Chain of Blame- How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis. This book, released in May, 2008, details a history of non-prime lending, the S&L crisis, securitization of mortgages, and what went wrong.
Download and Listen to the 45 minute interview here
An excerpt from the book, by co-author Paul Muolo:
He had made this argument before subprime lending began to boom in 2003. He believed it down to his toes — that Wall Street (despite his contempt for it) would keep the housing market honest because the Street controlled the mortgage bond business, where most of the money for home lending came. It was in the Street’s best interests. I wasn’t so sure. I became even less sure when the losses (the nice word being write-downs ) at banks and Wall Street firms topped $300 billion in the spring of 2008. To me and my co – author, Mathew Padilla, something had gone awry. A million or so people had lost their homes to foreclosure. Two or three million would follow in their path by the end of the decade. It wasn’t just housing and mortgages that were ailing. It seemed as though the nation was getting hit from all different directions: rising energy and commodities prices, falling home values, banks pulling credit lines of all sorts including commercial and student loans. The mortgage virus had spread, infecting the entire body. It was as though the U.S. economy, which had burned so brightly during the Bush years, was a mirage. Angelo had been wrong. The capital markets — Wall Street — had failed us. This is the story of how it happened.
Matt is also a business and finance columnist at the Orange County Register, in Southern California and hosts Mortgage Insider Blog.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Have you been listening to Mortgage Mondays on Bloodhound Blog Radio? Each Monday afternoon, at 4PM, we invite REALTORs to listen to and participate in our 40-60 minute “radio broadcast”.
California REALTORs do NOT want to miss this broadcast. Matt’s knowledge and experience is unparalleled in the media. He’s interviewed Angelo Mozilo among other industry leaders. We’ll spend 20-30 minutes with Matt and open the show for questions.
To participate or listen to the teleconference:
Scheduled Time:
Date: Mon, September 22, 2008
Time: 4:00 PM PDT
How to participate:
Call in:
Join from your computer:
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Our guest on Bloodhound Blog Radio, this week, was Ronda Green, area manager with the Nehemiah Down Payment Assistance Program.
Listen to the full episode here.
We opened up the program announcing that we can be found on iTunes as “Radio Mortgage” . All episodes will be available here, on Bloodhound Blog Radio. We discussed the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing and the Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch merger. After our brief commentary, we introduced Ronda who discussed the political battle seller-contributed, down payment assistance programs face. Assuming a successful reintroduction , we had Ronda walk through the process of the program. Ronda asked folks to support the program by writing their Senators at www.DPAgroundswell.org
Our stated purpose of Mortgage Mondays on Bloodhound Blog Radio is to educate REALTORs about mortgage programs and offer marketing ideas to them. The Nehemiah Down Payment Assistance Program offers benefits to both listing and selling agents. We suggest that REALTORS visit www.GetDownPayment.com to find free marketing pieces (and ideas) for both buyers’ agents and listing agents.
The call was attended by about 8-10 agents including William Johnson, Carole Cohen, Marlene Bridges, and Bill Collins. Oh, the BawldGuy snuck in to announce that he has a listing in San Diego and was looking for unique ways to market it. Successful agents, attending Mortgage Mondays on Bloodhound Blog, is proof positive that you’re never too smart to learn something.
Visit www.RadioMortgage.net for next Monday’s schedule.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
I guess we saw this coming. Robert Kerr has been talking about the collapse of the GSE’s, in the comments section on Bloodhound Blog, for close to a year now. Sean Purcell and I recorded a teleconference for California REALTORS about the Treasury bailout of the GSEs.
We talk about what exactly happened and what the near-term (3-4 month) effects and medium-term (12-18 month) effects on underwriting guidelines and rates. We also guessed at what the long-term (2-10 years) effect on conforming loans will be, in light of the mandate for the GSEs to reduce their portfolios.
The podcast lasts for about 15 minutes with 10 minutes of good questions and commentary by Marlene Bridges, Orange County REALTOR, Roberta Murphy, San Diego REALTOR, and John Novak, Las Vegas REALTOR. While I told the participants that their questions wouldn’t be recorded, it appears that they were. Thanks to everyone who participated in the call.
We’ll be doing more of these teleconferences on a regular basis.
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Jonathan Washburn and Bob Stewart were my guests on a 45 minute interview about the new Localism.com:
1- Bob Stewart gave us an overview of the new Localism site and described its stated purpose.
2- Jon Washburn explained the history of the Localism portal and how polling the Active Rain community led to the decision to repurpose the portal as a hyper-local community interest site.
3- Opportunities for community evangelism were discussed along with practical ideas about how existing Active Rain members might benefit.
4- The sponsored community issue as well as “Top Neighbors” placement were explained.
5- Jon Washburn explained basic SEO strategy.
6- Bob Stewart discussed how the SEO strategy will be coupled with search engine marketing to draw consumers to the site.
7- Jon Washburn answered the BIG question; “Will he sell Localism or Active Rain ?”
The interview is about 45 minutes long and is perfect to download to your iPod, for your evening workout.
If you search on Google.com for canadian real estate american mortgage what do you find?
Brian Brady, of course, Canada’s Favorite American Mortgage Broker.
In the podcast liked below, Brian discusses the strategy he deployed to dominate many Search Engine Results Pages for Canadian investors looking to pick up American bargains while the loonie is near parity with the U.S. dollar.
Here’s the battle plan in miniature: Be found, be food, be funded. You have to write content that will score well on search pages or over-the-transom clients will never find you. Once they’ve landed on your site, you have to feed them the information they’re hungry for — all they can eat. And once they’ve decided to do business with you, you have to be able to deliver your product when and as promised.
Are we talking about underwriting rental property loans for prosperous Canadian investors? Or are we talking about your business? Listen to the podcast to find out.
BlackPearlMarketingMinute040208.mp3
Technorati Tags: blogging, investment, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training
Barry Cunningham asked me to make a 60 second promotional spot for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, to be used in the regular rotation on Real Estate Radio USA. What can one say except, “Hell, yeah!”
Even so, I’m just not that comfortable in the do-what’s-expected waxed fruit world, so I came at the thing from my own angle. I made a podcasty kind of in-your-face kind of commercial. Who knows if it will pass muster.
Anyway, you can have a sneak peek by clicking on the podcast link below.
Technorati Tags: BloodhoundBlog Unchained, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training
The other morning, Bawldguy Jeff Brown left this note in a comment:
I’m jumping back into the San Diego investment property market as a lister. I’ve been ignoring my home folks since late ‘03.
I’m gonna be offering a broadly different choice for the seller. I’ll charge NO listing commission, but a small monthly fee for ongoing marketing, and my carrying costs at Starbucks.
Now that’s intriguing, ain’t it?
It’s been gnawing at me, so I called Jeff to talk to him about it. He explains it in his own words in the podcast linked below, but stop for a moment and generalize, if you will.
If you’re in a market with a surfeit of inventory, sellers are not the kind of blue chip asset they might have been a few years ago. Qualified buyers on the other hand…
If you can sell your sellers on the idea that, like Jeff, you will give them a knock-your-socks-off listing at a price that will save them some money, you will have acquired inventory you can use to attract buyers. I think you would have to list like Jeff plans to, totally turn-key — and you’ll have to decide where you stand on dual agency. But if listing stronger for less attracts more buyers, what do you have to lose?
Since he’s working with investors, Jeff’s strategy is even more intricate than that. Give a listen and see what you think.
Technorati Tags: blogging, investment, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training
Linked below is the first of a series of Black Pearl Marketing Minute podcasts that Brian Brady and I will be putting together. We want to take marketing ideas that we have discussed on BloodhoundBlog and flesh them out to real-life strategies while connecting them to other synergistic tactics.
In this inaugural episode, we start by talking about my post on using the business card form factor for doing low-cost broadcast door-to-door promotion. We talk about some ways that we deploy custom-made business card-sized promotional pieces, how we make and print them, and our distribution plan.
Brian then connects that idea to a marketing plan that emerged from our comments threads, partnering with local merchants as an online/offline farming technique.
Earlier today, someone known only as Jacksonville Real Estate posted a comment on my post about using low-tech promotional schemes to bring traffic to a single-property web site:
It’s an old idea and it’s not mine … but if you are targeting just a certain areas then getting your flyer on the local pizza delivery box can work wonders.
Brilliant! Never thought of it, but that’s why I love this place: We bring bright minds together and set off a blinding brilliance. My reply:
Oh, very cool. I tend to think in terms of things we can do on our own, but this is actually an interesting cross-promotion:
“Visit our custom web site for 123 Mulberry Lane and your next pizza is on us!”
Build a PDF coupon in the site and redeem them with the pizza joint once a week. Meanwhile, your contact info is on the fridge for weeks or months.
That’s a Brian Brady-style idea. I must be channeling…
It’s a Guerrilla Marketing kind of idea, actually, a Duct Tape Marketing kind of idea — maximum bang for minimum bucks. It’s most completely a BloodhoundBlog kind of idea, in the sense that it combines (and recombines) physical with online marketing.
But nothing’s perfect in the first draft. My correspondent thought springing for the whole pizza might be too expensive as a “pay per click.”
Okayfine. How about this?
Buy the soda instead, then. It’s an upsell for the pizzeria — bigger Read more
You can go to Real Estate Radio USA to hear the MP3 of my appearance today. I went into it expecting to kind of goofy and fun, but we actually ended up covering a lot of nuts-and-bolts real estate techniques.
As Brian Brady announced when he made his own appearance on Real Estate Radio USA, the price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained tickets will be going up at midnight tonight. If you want to get the whole package — a $350 value — for the Guerrilla-only special price of $149, you need to make your purchase now.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training
Brian Brady did a half-hour interview this afternoon on RealEstateRadioUSA.com, the internet radio station for real estate. He was talking about BloodhoundBlog Unchained, but hosts Barry Cunningham and Barry Johnson also probed him about the mortgage market. To top things off, there’s an extensive discussion of the “What would David Gibbons do?” philosophy.
I made a recording of Brian’s interview. Click on the link below for the MP3 podcast.
Or: If you click on this link, you’ll find MP3s of the full broadcast, of Brian’s segment and of another show segment with Mary McKnight of RSSPieces. The baton-passing is not quite perfect, but Brain and Mary manage to announce that she will be one of our guest speakers at Unchained. Thanks to the folks at RealEstateRadioUSA.com for the link to the MP3s.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology, Zillow.com
