There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Real Estate (page 35 of 266)

Want to increase business? Answer your phone

Do you want to sell your listing faster and for more money?  Answer your phone

Do you want to work with more buyers?  Answer your phone

Lenders, do you want more loan business from agents?  Answer your phone

I know this sounds simplistic but more sales are made on the phone then are made via text or email.  This year, I made a conscious effort to ANSWER every phone call which come in.  I even bought a contraption which charges my phone and puts the calls on the car speakers.  The connection sucks but it allows me to acknowlege whomever called and to “triage” why they are calling.  If it’s a “money” call, I tell them that I will pull off the freeway and call them in a matter of minutes.  If it’s something to do with something other than work, I ask them to send me a text so I can call them later.

It doesn’t always work.  Sometimes, I’m a in a meeting and can’t answer the phone but by changing my mindset to believing that every single phone call represents a five-figure check, I am conditioned to sell.

Most importantly, our high tech culture has made incoming phone calls a “nuisance’ to many people.  if you are on the dialing end of the phone call, a voicemail or text, instead of an answer, tells you that you just might be bothering someone.  If you call me, I try to make you the most important person in the world.

You ARE the most important person in the world because you are the one paying my bills.  So call me at 858-777-9751

Real Estate Auctions: Not Just For Foreclosures Anymore

Two years ago, I started paying MLS, NAR, CA, and SDAR dues.  Since my wife Debra was taking on more of the lending responsibilities, I spent the bulk of my time working with the real estate agents.  Having MLS access allowed me to hold broker opens for my agents, hold open houses for their listings, and act as a de facto “buyer’s agent” for them when they were out of town.

I had a few “orphan” clients and, in the past 30 months,  I represented about a dozen buyers and listed and sold two properties as a real estate agent.  It’s not something I love but understanding the brokerage side of the business enhanced our knowledge as lenders.  We understand contracts, deadlines, contingencies, and conversations with our agent clients better.  Throwing mom and dad in the station wagon, showing homes, writing offers, meeting property inspectors, negotiating repairs, and closing deals has made us better lenders so I’m grateful for the experience.

Eight years ago, a local hedge fund type started an online real estate auction site.  I wrote about it here and was tangentially involved but it never really took off.  I think it was more because of the online component and less of the auction component.  Generally speaking, when tech types and hedge fund guys try to disinternediate the local brokerage, they lose.  Greg wrote about the next flop yesterday.

I have always been intrigued with auctions so it shouldn’t surprise you that I have followed Harcourts, the New Zealand real estate brokerage’s entry into the Southern California market.  Harcourts has been holding non-distressed auctions for two years now with tepid results.  I had a few thoughts about why its results are mediocre so I started to form a new firm; California House Auctions.

We are a vendor.  We have an exclusive agreement with one of the top auctioneers in California.  He’s held over 600 auctions in the past thirty years and is well known in the community.  We’ll be helping ANY real estate brokerage to sell their (non-distressed) listing through a live auction.  We’ll charge a fee for each successful auction (paid at Read more

My ideal closing date is always yesterday: The perfect real estate listing in the reckless teenage years of the new millenium.

On Facebook of late I’ve written about the idea of the perfect offer – the sum total purchase contract package most likely to win the de facto auction I am holding for my real estate listing.

We’ll talk about this in some detail, in due course, but for now the decision matrix for the ideal offer is obvious:

Highest safest soonest closable net return.

The price is the price, and you can lose me fast by dicking around. List or better? I like cash now, financed fast and FHA almost never. We’ll discount your offer for the time-value-of-money, obviously, but also for the closing-risk entailed by every new dawning day. My ideal closing date is always yesterday.

The corollary of the perfect offer is the perfect listing, and that’s an elusive prey. What we want is a marketing presentation – home, listing, photos, collateral – that cannot not elicit avid offers.

I list almost never lately, mostly repeats and referrals, which for me means a lot of investors. My sellers can be tight with a buck, but they’re rational. That matters, because a perfect listing wants a near-perfect house.

How near-perfect? FHA/VA-able, obviously, but I want more than that: Turn-key livable from Day One, with upgrades and spruce-ups as needed, cleaned to mother-in-law perfection and staged to charm. I want to be indubitably appraisal- and inspection-prepped, but more than that I want to be better than my competition – by a lot.

I don’t have to be luxurious or dramatic, just two or three cuts above everything else my potential buyers are seeing. For the same money or a little more, my house is your new home – and everything else is a work-in-progress.

We list just after midnight on Friday morning, this to maximize the marketing benefit of the Days on Market tally but also to maximize buyer frenzy: We offer up the scratch when we know buyers will be itching. My listing should be referenced in many, many “We must see this Saturday” emails.

The listing price? My best guess of the full appraisal value on the day of listing – no discounts, no testing-the-market, just what the Read more

What is Position Zero on Google? All sales fundamentally start as questions….

One of the easiest things to understand in sales is that everything starts with a question. How much home can I afford? How do I deal with foreclosure? Who is the best REALTOR? Where is the best neighborhood for my family? There are literally millions of questions starting an equally impressive number of sales out there.

And the wild part is that REALTORS get asked those questions every day. The REALTORS that utilize those questions to start conversations (google Cluetrain Manifesto) and who turn those conversations into relationships and action generate stellar incomes. Those who find themselves incapable of that, well, notsomuch.

The trick is to find the right questions, the trending questions. The ones that are being asked. The ones that answers in the form of content provided on a site will result in Google putting you up there for the world to see. The ones that are WORTH blogging about.

How do you find them? Google it. I am not being a smart aleck. Check out what Google provides currently when you Google “How to Sell My Home”:

They show you both alternative questions to blog about and the FORM that you should use with the answer. (more on that later) Conform your answers to their style whether table, paragraph, list, or etc and watch what happens. Geotarget your answers gently for some extra fun and results.

Additional note: Want to expand the number of questions that Google displays and build yourself a month or more of blogging subjects? Click on each of the current questions in the Google search and Google will provide similar stuff. In a matter of seconds your list can look similar to this, but longer:

Position zero on Google (that’s the one above Zillow, kids…the one with the picture and a list). That’s the one reserved for the boys and girls with authority who a) pick the right questions b) answer them in the form that google wants and c) uses correct formatting…etc but whether you get Position zero or not, you WILL be answering questions that are being asked and you WILL be starting those conversations Read more

RE.net 2.0

Here’s a preview of what I have in my mind :

1- Facebook ads (as an agent)
2- Value-added services for real estate agents (as a lender)
3- Non-distressed auctions for real estate brokerages (as a vendor)

I have posted a few things since the content slow down on Bloodhound Blog but a lot has happened since 2012-ish.  The market has recovered nicely and most of the contributors are probably too busy listing, showing or financing property to write.  Bloodhound Blog was on the cutting edge of the RE.net:  provocative, hard-hitting, curious, and innovative.

Let’s start howling again

Two Turtle Doves (revisited)

I was weathering a Category 1 hangover the day my big fat Vice President dropped by the office and found me asleep at my desk. He’d come to personally deliver my Christmas bonus (a twenty-dollar bill stapled to a battery-operated Rudolph necktie) and to spread some holiday cheer to the few remaining insurance salesmen who hadn’t already quit to pursue more lucrative door-to-door opportunities. To this day, I can’t figure out why the fat man just didn’t pull my plug right there on the spot.

“Wake up Slick,” he said between clenched teeth. “Tiz the season of our discontent. You got a punch bowl around here?”

I didn’t answer, unsure if I could even open my mouth without hurling. My girlfriend had given me the boot a few days earlier and I’d been on a 24/7 gin-soaked tear ever since.

“No? Then put on your new necktie, get your sorry ass over to K-Mart, and buy one,” he said. He then ripped the crisp twenty from the blinking fabric, crumpled up it in his hammy fist, and bounced it off my forehead. “There, you can use your Christmas bonus to pay for it.”

I should have resigned right then and there but instead, I kept my head, splitting as it was, and did as I was told. I was the lowest ranked sales manager in the worst selling region in the country and it was only a matter of time before everyone…including the idiot standing before me…went down in corporate flames. You see, I may be a lot of messed-up things, but quitter isn’t one of them. Especially when Unemployment Benefits are at stake. So I got in my car and dashed to K-Mart, necktie flashing all along the way.

Twenty minutes later I found myself hovering in Housewares, neck sweating, head pounding, hangover slightly downgraded to tropical storm status, when a short, plump elderly woman approached me with a fistful of coupons. Alvin and those irritating chipmunks were singing that insidious song over the PA system.

“I want to file a complaint,” the woman said. “You don’t have the Sunbeam Foot Soaker in stock. And it was Read more

Is it me or have underwriting…

My wife and I downsized earlier this year, to save money, reduce debt, and put money into the beginning of a rental empire we hope to build.  We have good cash flow, income, and excellent credit.  And yet, maybe because we earn money as a small business – read: law firm – the underwriting process was hellish.

This wasn’t our first time on the rodeo.  We have bought and sold – having moved a number of times, once from Phoenix to North Carolina, and several times in each state.  But it seems as thought these last two mortgages were the most difficult to get, even though we are in the best spot financially we’ve ever been in.

My wife, who did most of the legwork in tracking down last-minute documents requested by the bank, remarked that if they made it this difficult on us to close, imagine how difficult it must be for an average buyer.

I suppose part of the problem is that we are self-employed, and so there is quite a bit of (understandable) concern about the stability of our income.  But, having filed and reported above-average incomes for 5 years straight, you’d think a mortgage company would take those seriously – after all, we aren’t exactly excited about paying high taxes to Uncle Sam, and it would be stupid just to do that in order to show good “income” to a future mortgagor.

Any thoughts?

Getting a San Diego Condo VA-Approved Adds Value To Service Members

Debra Brady and I are experts at VA-financing.  One of the things we do very well is secure a VA condo complex approval for condominiums which aren’t agency approved.  Some comments from a recent YELP review:

I started the home buying process while still on deployment, and Brian graciously worked with me across 13 time zones to begin explaining the ins and outs of home buying.

This is actually kind of fun for me.  With technology, deployed service members can communicate with me well in advance of buying.  Many times, when deployed,  they have free time with little to do.  They use Gchat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and email to communicate with me.  Sometimes it makes for some weird hours but I enjoy finally meeting them when they return to the States.

I googled VA home approval, and his was the first name to pop up.  Brian is an absolute master at working with the VA.

That’s what I love to hear–that we come up first on Google Search for this topic.

Brian took my wife and I out for cocktails to explain in person the different loan rates and explain the decision making process for each of them, and Debra worked like a fiend to make sure thinks were done WELL ahead of time.

This is how Debra and I work.  I spend most of my time “selling” real estate agents and educating clients and Debra gets the loan done.  When we’re clicking properly, I am “Mr. Outside” and she is “Mrs. Inside”.  Clients know that she is in the office, every day from 8AM until 230PM each day and available on the telephone.  This frees me up to: (a) find more business for us and (b) properly educate home buyers about the process.  We pride ourselves on “no surprises” during the loan process.

To any Servicemembers who are interested in using their VA loan option, look no further than Brian, he is THE expert who will get you into the place you want.

That’s what I hope to hear on every VA loan we close.  It doesn’t ALWAYS happen but, I’m proud to say, it does happen more Read more

How Are YOU Getting Real Estate Leads?

Let’s get back to it.

We’re all sitting around today, plotting and planning our strategies for 2014…

Writing down goals. Looking over our numbers, canceling the crap that aint working and signing up for stuff that might…

For me, (ever since I read MREA back in 2004) the modus o has always been “If I get a shitload of traffic, and generate a shitload of leads, and set them all up for some kind of semi-automated follow up, I’ll make more money.”

Guessing a lot of the folks reading this agree, though some of us have bigger “balls” then others and are willing to spend a lot more on lead gen then we do on food…

Right now my favorite way to generate leads is with dirty little Facebook ads that drive traffic to dirty little squeeze pages like this.

Screen Shot 2013-12-31 at 9.45.41 AM

How are you doing it?

(I’ll show you more about mine if you show me yours…)

Most Creative Loans We Funded in 2013

1- We funded a $900,000 Orange County purchase with just 6.5% down payment and no mortgage insurance

2- We funded an Orange County condo, with a VA loan, and got both the Master Association and Condo Association VA approved in 30 days

3- We funded a $600,000 San Diego County purchase, with just 5% down payment and a seller-carry back second mortgage and a conventional first mortgage.

4- We funded a 7-unit San Diego apartment property, $820,000 purchase price with just 10% down and a 20% seller-carry back second mortgage.

5- We funded an “underwater” property with loan values at 135% of the appraised value in Los Angeles County.

Celebrating the father of our freedoms: The freedom to own real estate

Kicking this back to the top. Happy Independence Day! — GSS

 
This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

Celebrating the father of our freedoms: The freedom to own real estate

By the time you read this, Independence Day will have passed, but I thought I’d give you one more reason to celebrate our freedoms: Real estate.

We call our culture Judeo-Christian, but we owe our laws and political institutions to the Greeks and the Romans. The Greek Hoplites, in particular, are the model upon which Western Civilization is based: Individual family farmers, freeholders in the land they farmed, who owned their own weapons of warfare and who banded together as a virtually unconquerable infantry when their lands were attacked.

What accounts for the independence of the Greeks? Was it their unprecedented military tactics? Was it their superior weaponry? Or was it the savage dedication of free men fighting for their own land?

The Hoplites fought against ragtag slave armies, engaging in combat only out of fear of the lash, never losing sight of the chance to dessert. But the Greeks fought to retain the rights they had wrested from despots, rights ordinary people, until then, had never known.

We derive many more treasures from the Romans, among them the story of Cincinnatus, the retired general called back to battle and given dictatorial power because the situation was so dire. Instead of abusing that power, Cincinnatus won the war, set down his arms and picked his plow where he had left it.

We honor the citizen-soldier in the conduct of George Washington, who could have declared himself king of America, but who instead, like Cincinnatus, surrendered his power and went back to his farm.

Politicians will tell us that we owe our freedoms to representative government. This is twice false. The interest we share in government is the land we each own individually, like the Hoplites. Moreover, representative government without free ownership of the land is tyranny in camouflage.

Americans are free because we have the uncontested right to buy, use, enjoy, rent, let and sell the land we live on. If you have any fire-crackers left over, you Read more

Seven years of the dawgs: Reflections on BloodhoundBlog’s anniversary.

We started here, and still the question rings in my ear:

If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?

Big changes in the world since then. Brick ’n’ mortar retail is all but dead. Books, records and software ‘apps’ are aiming for a price point under ninety-nine cents — many of them all the way under. The supermarket real estate magazines are gone, and the thinning out of the classifieds put the newspapers on a strict diet. Their putative replacements, realty.bots like Zooliapads.com, are by now just sleazoid lead vendors. Unwired Realtors are enjoying their retirements while we are doing business without a fax line or even a land line.

That much is cool. I’m less sanguine about the people in this business than I am about the business itself. One of the things I haven’t loved about real estate has been seeing some of the incredibly scummy things people will do. Most of my clients have been great, and I love all of the people I work with long-term. But I’ve fired people who have left shit on my shoes forever, and this is not a happy outcome for me.

BloodhoundBlog has been a similarly-mixed blessing. I’ve met some wonderful people through this blog, and we’ve published some remarkable content. But I’ve seen the howling mob at its worst, and every day I get to see sleazy SEOs working overtime to make me regret sharing link juice with commenters. And meanwhile, the vendorsluts and their raving wraiths have turned our part of the internet into just another Realtors’ brothel. Don’t get any on ya.

And I am off to Planet Elsewhere. I wanted to hit the road for a while in the first quarter, but my Mammy died and then Odysseus started looking all deathful. So here I am mounting the expedition in the third quarter instead. I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the last three weeks (three nundinae, actually, but who’s counting?) of July, and then I will be in Orlando for the last three nundinae of August. I’m interested in making plans for September, October Read more

Practical ontology in real estate? Who ever heard of such a thing?

NewHomeBuildingInPhoenix

From KJZZ Radio in Phoenix, The Way of the Bloodhound:

‘“From now on whenever you’re driving on the freeway look for a truss,” Swann said, referring to a roof truss on the back of a truck. “And when you start to see a truss every day, then things have turned around. If you see three trusses a day, then things have really turned around. But if you can go five days without seeing a truss on the freeway, then no one is building anything.”’

The linked story is from Peter O’Dowd, a journalist for whom I have huge respect — not alone because he listens when I talk about bug’s-eye-view real estate.

Reason Magazine: “How established homeowners use regulations to stop new low-cost homes.”

It’s not mentioned in the Reason article, but the real curse of zoning is the prohibition of innovation. By forbidding all projects, land-use tyrants exclude not just the dreck but also the sheer genius. Some builder coud have come up with the modern equivalent of Wright’s Five-Thousand Dollar Home, but that guy works in software instead, where innovation is celebrated and rewarded.

Meanwhile, the hard consequences of coercive land-use regulations:

When a news crew showed up to film a public meeting in tony Darien, Connecticut, in 2005, some of the residents were less than thrilled. “Why don’t you fucking shoot something else?” one demanded. Hundreds crammed into the hearing, sneering and jeering during the presentation.

The fresh hell residents showed up to protest? A proposal to replace a nondescript single-family home on a one-acre lot with 20 condos for senior citizens.

In Snob Zones, journalist Lisa Prevost describes the heights of entitlement to which property owners ascend when faced with the prospect of new development, especially multi-family dwellings in neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes. Prevost tours New England and finds an aging, declining populace bent on excluding outsiders. In town after town, affluent and working-class alike, residents line up to shout down new development no matter how modest.

In Darien, the need for the proposed project was clear; the town’s senior housing center had a long wait list, as did the last condo development built in the area (in 1994). Still, many townsfolk, expecting the project to open the floodgates to more high-density projects in the resolutely low-density burgh, were incensed.

Incumbent homeowners have a powerful weapon for vetoing change: zoning. In Darien and other exclusive zip codes, mandated minimum lot sizes kneecap developers who want to build something other than super-sized homes. In the process, they put entire towns out of reach for all but the wealthy. In hardscrabble Ossippee, New Hampshire, where it’s not uncommon for the working poor to live in tents during the summer months to save on rent, the zoning code flatly prohibits new apartment buildings.

Though Prevost, who covers the real estate beat for The New York Times, has no problem with Read more