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Category: Real Estate (page 37 of 266)

November 30, 2012

Virtually belly-to-belly: Don Reedy’s salesmaniacal YouTube video voicemails.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Reacting to this post from yesterday on a better way to handle video testimonials, Don Reedy brought us this idea in the comments:

Greg, this is really easy, and does take planning, but not much time.

I’ve started trying to communicate with prospects, people I just meet coming and going, and folks in escrow by using my laptop, recording a 30-45 second message, posting as an “unlisted” video to YouTube, and then linking a picture of myself with a “play button” on my torso to that link.

I embed the picture with link in emails. They fly through, are almost always clicked on, and provide that belly to belly contact emails don’t always do. And yes, often that simply results in future actual phone calls, but the goal of creating value to and for the client is surely helped along by this methodology.

Here is the photo of Don he sent to me in an email:

And here is the video I see when I click on that image:

As constructive criticism, I think I want the photo to be bigger with a bigger YouTube-like Play button, plus also a reiterated call to action in text form: “I’ve made a ‘video voicemail’ just for you. Click ‘Play’ to see it.” For the video, I want Don’s head and shoulder bigger — closer to the webcam — and higher in the frame.

Those are quibbles, though. I love the idea, and the “Yeah!” special effect is fun. It might work to tack on a business card at the end, along with a link-back, in the video and in the description section, to any client-specific web pages.

This is cool, though: Using rough-and-ready tools to put a very personal touch on voicemail-like contacts. Using smartphone video with one-touch YouTube posting, Don’s technique would be useful for all kinds of client follow up.

As an example, here’s the ‘script’ for a movie you’ll have to screen in your imagination:

Hey, Jim and Shirley. Greg Swann here with a quick video voicemail about the houses I looked at for y’all today. I’ll have a web page for you later today with photos of the homes Read more

October 13, 2012

The Syndicator News. Then My Opinion.

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

First the news about a new organization set to try and take down Realtor.com, Trulia.com, and Zillow.com and replace them with syndication done REALTOR right. Or at the least to compel the syndicators to get the listings right.

Now my opinion. I think this is interesting. And I think it will get a LOT MORE INTERESTING if enough people join up to give them critical mass.

Did I mention that I would like things to get interesting? Or at least get fixed?

And for syndicators who want to hate on me for wanting things interesting… Fix the listings problem. Then gripe at me. Quit gaming the system. THEN let’s talk about the rest of it. 😉

If you want to dispute the WAV group’s survey linked in the news article…okayfine…but a LOT of us here in the real estate industry have a lot of empirical evidence that the study is true, namely people calling us about listings and us having to say “yeah that was sold a while ago.” That is a TON of empirical evidence that the WAV Group study is spot on.

Thoughts?

September 27, 2012

“Americans will downsize and live multigenerationally, in order to offset the fraud they know exists in real estate. Until there is wage growth, and that could be years or decades away, people will not trust any upward movement in real estate values.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A searing indictment of The Bernanking System in Business Insider:

Once people start to come out of negative equity, even more of them will sell and try to get out from under the cloud they are under. So, the housing bubble orchestrated by the Fed and by the hedge funds and by the wealthy could free up massive inventory. The average person fears negative equity. The Fed will not erase that memory.

The only way people will risk negative equity is if their house prices are cheaper than rent. But the artificial inflation of housing prices will do nothing but push the average Joe away from housing.

Keep in mind that about 4.4 million houses were sold in 2011 and only 2.4 million mortgages were taken out for purchase. That is a mortgage depression and the rise in house prices has not changed that mortgage depression.

People are learning that the uptick in prices is a scam, both by banks withholding massive inventory, and by the Fed making more easy money available to the rich. Once they own most of the inventory, they will be forced to initiate a housing bubble or they will be stuck with the properties.

September 22, 2012

I had a come to Jesus moment

by

Realtor, Family Man

Author website

I had a come to Jesus moment a couple of weeks ago. I had a bout of pneumonia earlier this summer and seemed to have gotten rid of it with some powerful antibiotics. It seemed to creep back a little while we were on a camping trip over Labor Day weekend. I felt winded and tired after doing the simplest tasks. It rained the whole time and was a real pain in the ass to pack out.

I was kind of exhausted when we got back and unpacked and didn’t do much the first day. That night my wife woke me up telling me my breathing was weird. The next day I had some real estate stuff and was trying to dry out the gear. I was ready to hit the sack early. Discovered it was hard to breath normally while lying flat. This had happened during the pneumonia, so I figured it was back and I would go back to the doctor in the morning. Did not really sleep much because I had to be almost sitting up to breath normally.

When I got to the doctor she told me I was in heart failure. …congestive heart failure. They wheeled me straight into the ER where I spent 6 days. My otherwise healthy heart had been infected by a virus. I had a cat scan in March and was told that I had 0% calcium in my heart and would very likely never have a heart attack. Even in the hospital they told me no clogged arteries, no damaged valves, none of the typical leading indicators. I don’t drink (for 13 years) I have never smoked, no drug abuse, no fast food, healthy diet, no diabetic tendencies, not a lot of stress….just a fucking virus. My heart is pumping about 25% of what a normal heart of someone my age pumps.  Now I am wearing an external defibrillator which is a harness and a battery pack designed to give me a shock if I have an abnormal racing heart that knocks me out.  I have to wear it for 90 days at Read more

September 13, 2012

Life after foreclosure: Cultivate indifference and press on regardless.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We just lost our house to foreclosure. Negotiations with the bank fell apart and we spent the last seven days bugging out. This was our third Notice of Trustee’s Sale. We had managed to redeem the note twice before, and we thought for sure we could thread the needle a third time. No joy. We didn’t know until yesterday morning that the bank had actually foreclosed, but we had to operate on the assumption that we could lose our pets and our personal property without notice.

That’s bad, but it’s not the end of the world. We are solvent even if we are not terribly liquid just now. We have business assets, art and artifacts and intellectual property, all of which we were able to conserve by acting quickly. Was I the bank, I would have hung in there for another month or two, taking account that we live on a cash-flow roller coaster and that we had managed to cling to the home twice before.

Over the past three months, we have cut our monthly nut by two-thirds, so we are well-situated to weather the economy we are living in. Had we done this seven years ago, things might be different, but we live with the consequences of our choices. We loved our home and we are sorry to have lost it, and sorry, too, to have defaulted on our promise to the bank, but life is suddenly a lot more joyous without that anchor around our necks.

Our real estate business is secure and solvent. All of the rental properties we manage are leased to solid, performing tenants, and our corporate bank accounts are all in good order. Our personal finances might be chaotic — this for many years, alas — but this has had no impact on the funds we hold in trust for our landlords and tenants.

And our marriage is stronger than it has ever been — literally as the consequence of these events. Cathleen had some teary moments, because we loved the El Caminito house, and because we spent many happy, loving years there, minus a few rough spots. Read more

August 16, 2012

Priceless: “Our home ownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The American Enterprise Institute on the premeditated assault on the prime mortgage:

When it comes to a government centered society and its deleterious consequences, our Government Mortgage Complex is the undisputed poster child. There has been no greater economic failure than the collapse of the housing market due to decades of government intervention and crony capitalism.

Voters need to be reminded about how this disaster came about. It began with the premeditated assault on high-quality, credit-worthy prime mortgages. The perpetrators were Fannie Mae, community groups, and Congress, each of which had the means, motive and opportunity for undertaking this assault.

As early as 1991, community activist Gale Cincotta, was laying the path for undertaking such an assault in her testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. “Lenders will respond to the most conservative standards unless [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] are aggressive and convincing in their efforts to expand historically narrow underwriting,” she stressed.

Using Fannie and Freddie as the means to expand underwriting standards caused an immediate problem for existing subprime lenders and insurers. In 1992, about 14% of new mortgages had impaired or subprime credit with a FICO credit score below 660. Virtually all these borrowers were already served by private subprime lenders or those using FHA insurance. As Fannie and Freddie expanded into subprime, something had to give-subprime lenders would have to abandon the field or move further out the risk curve. They chose the latter, with the result that both prime and subprime lending got into much more risky loans.

The motives of Fannie, community groups, and Congress were clear. Fannie wished to protect its valuable federal charter by using trillions of dollars in flexible loans to woo and capture its regulator: Congress. Community groups like ACORN relied on flexible lending to create multiple revenue streams from banks, lenders, Fannie and Freddie, HUD, and others, since they made money from counseling homebuyers, assisting in loan originations, and counseling defaulting borrowers. Members of Congress viewed the many trillions of dollars in flexible lending announced by Fannie and Freddie as a superior form of pork to help them get reelected. It was off-budget, costless, and Read more

August 13, 2012

Why Does Zillow Hate my House?

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

Why Does Zillow Hate my House?

If you are a real estate geek like me, you are obsessed with real estate valuation.  It’s bad enough that I spend most of my day performing real estate valuations for numerous investments, but my passion for real estate sends me off to open houses on Sunday’s just looking.  You know it’s bad when the realtors know your name and worse when they give your that disapproving stare of disdain as you ask them for the 50th time, “how long has this home been on the market”?

To be fair, my fiancé and I are in the process of searching for a brownstone in Brooklyn.  While we probably won’t be in the market for two or three years, I like to stay on top of pricing and opportunities, so I can jump on any wayward / misinformed price.  Plus, I am a real estate nerd.  Given this, I am also considering selling my New York City condo.  It’s too small for a family, and I haven’t lived in it in three years now.  It will make an awesome pied-a-terre when I am 50, but I am not sure I want to keep paying the gap between my rental income and the very large mortgage / ever increasing condo fee.  I dread the day when the fee will be larger than my mortgage payment, but its coming.

This leads me to a very real problem.  How can I determine the true value of my home without putting it on the market?  I work in real estate private equity.  To determine the price of an asset, I can call an appraiser, three or four brokers and ask a friend what he might pay.  Averaging all those numbers gives me a good approximation of the price of my asset and best of all its free and takes about 10 mins, including idle chitchat.

But what about my home?  It has become easier to see what other people have recently sold their homes for.  Websites like Property Shark, Street Easy, etc. offer a good real estate detective past sales data of comparable property. Read more

August 4, 2012

The Inman Two Step – Errol Samuelson has an opportunity to get it right…

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Warning – long post ahead. I had a lot on my mind. 😉

This last week and my trip to Inman has been a whirlwind and I just walked in the door from the airport.

I have literally been too busy to write some of the things that I experienced and I really want to have some time to put them in context and “digest” some of them so that I can (hopefully) use what I saw to provide something useful in future posts.

That said, the first of my impressions was the most clear and thus most easy for me to put out into the arena of public ideas while it is still fresh. One of the panel discussions was the “Syndication Discussion” which included the usual representatives, (Saul Klein, Spencer Rascoff from Zillow, Errol Samuelson from Realtor.com, and others) including Mark McLaughlin of Pacific Union. (Note to Mark – I don’t know you personally, but nicely done. The crack about “I’m not outnumbered the audience is on my side.” was priceless. There were many people in that audience that wanted to get up and say something, but did not…)

Ok, now to my main point. At one point in the panel, Mr. Samuelson turned to Mr. Rascoff and pointed out that they include FSBO listings on their site at which time Mr. Rascoff replied that REALTOR.com included non-REALTOR listings in THEIR site as well. (gulp–start the music and Mr. Samuelson proceeds to do the “Inman 2 Step – a dance done by executives when they want to avoid continuing the line of discussion that THEY started…) This is a point which I had made recently in a post on Real Estate Industry Watch. And the folks at Realtor.com had actually asked to meet me about at Inman (and we did…).

If you read what I wrote at REIW, I specifically was concerned that REALTOR.com has a HIGHER LEVEL of ACCOUNTABILITY because they are the OWNER of the REALTOR trademark. (Please, we can leave the anti-NAR stuff for a later post, I am trying to stick to one issue here) Since they HAVE Read more

August 3, 2012

Primary Home – Investment or Liability

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

Pre-2007, I am not sure this topic would have even been controversial; people not only regularly utilized their home as their “primary investment”, but often, treated it as their personal piggy bank.  In hindsight we can all judge others as we secretly lick our own wounds from a vicious downturn no saw coming, but that experience left a visceral taste in many mouths.

Most experts would suggest that your primary residence is not an investment.  Why, you ask?  First, you purchase a home based on need.  Your buy and sell decisions rarely spring from analytical thinking around market timing.  Instead, most times, they are rooted in your changing life needs.  Second, investment strategy wages a secret war with your personal desires.  For example, I want a tricked out man cave equipped with a full wet bar, bathroom and other appropriate amenities.  Am I thinking about the return on my investment, or the endless joy my friends and I will have watching football on Sunday, Monday and Thursday?  Sure, I will likely increase the value of my home with these upgrades, but the anemic return on investment, if any, would never be worth the money.  Said differently, would you make the same upgrades to your rental property; probably not.

If it was that easy, I wouldn’t write the article.

I will start with a question.  Is it easier to invest in stock or buy a house?  Right now, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) trades at $128,175 per share.  Its five year performance has been strikingly similar to the performance of many real estate markets.  If you have a job making $50k and $7k in the bank, do you think you will ever in your lifetime own a share of Berkshire Hathaway A outside of a very lucky lotto ticket?  The answer is unequivocally no.  You don’t qualify for the right to buy on margin and even if you did, where would you get the 50% required to do a margin buy?  And how would you live on the prison food when the margin call comes?  All important questions to consider…

Now, let’s take that same fellow Read more

July 27, 2012

Where is the Real Estate Market Going Today???

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

If you are like me, you have a random sampling of news websites to keep you abreast of the happenings of the world every hour or so.  It’s the age we live in; every data point, story, press release, blog post triggers a monsoon of pundits and analytical analysis that either sends you running for the hills or tripling down on your latest investment.  If you don’t believe me, scroll through this reputable blog and tell me how I should be the most confident in years on Tuesday then be disappointed in home sales twice only a week later.  With everything out there, how do you find the truth?

First, understand the underlying data.  As it relates to real estate, one needs to be especially cautious.  Data may or may not be adjusted for seasonality, it may or may not be a selection of particularly poor or particularly good markets, it may be new homes vs. existing homes, etc.  With the need for new headlines every hour, data can and will be manipulated to tell whatever story is the flavor of the moment.  Personally, I always start at one of the sources.

Second, understand the basics of real estate.  Unlike the stock market, real estate is slow moving, plodding, and a hyper-local asset class.  Despite what the headlines might say, you have not missed the bottom in many locations.  If you are looking to buy a single family home, tomorrow will be just as good a day as yesterday, as will six months from now.  Interest rates tend to move on a quarterly basis and rarely increase more than 0.25% in that time span.  Sure, your neighbor might have a 3.75% interest rate, but your 4.25% will put your payments close enough and will still be historically, the lowest in our history.

Investors will likely need to act with more urgency.  In most of the hardest hit markets, institutional investors (i.e., private / public corporations with lots of money to spend) have quietly been buying up homes at a breakneck pace.  Trying to find a bargain in Florida or Nevada is no longer a Read more

July 21, 2012

Not everything can be coordinated in cyberspace. When you gotta move, don’t take a turn without Twist.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Twist screen shotCathleen and I have been playing with a new iPhone app called Twist. (Hat tip: GeekWire.)

What is it? In the shortest possible summary, Twist is ETA software. You tell it where you’re going, it tells you and the people you’re meeting there when you will arrive. Or they can tell you when they will arrive, so you don’t waste time thumb-twiddling. ETA is calculated on your actual motion, so it doesn’t tell anyone anything until you actually hit the road.

Twist integrates with iCal (which integrates with Google Calendar). It will tell you when you need to leave for an appointment so you won’t be late.

It also taps into your contact database, so you can select any destination you already know about. Twist keeps track of your past destinations, so reusing them is a breeze. And you can set up favorite destinations you use all the time (like your home or office), adding in the contacts associated with that site, for one-touch Twisting. (Realtors: Think about how many times you go back to a house you have listed or put under contract.)

And it integrates with Google Maps to give you driving directions and real-time progress updates on your travels. I don’t use GPS, and I’m off-the-charts kinesthetic, so this is more gee-whiz fun for me that something I need, but the people on the other end can track my mapping, too.

Here’s the PR movie for Twist, which for some reason is focused on dating:

Who (besides nervous daters) can use Twist? Happily-committed couples; if you’re cheating, Twist will tell on you. Bosses with drivers on the road, stipulating that the ability to supervise creates a liability for failure to supervise. And: Real estate professionals. Twist makes it easy to plan your day, to coordinate with clients, vendors and other team members — and to tell your spouse and kids when they might expect to see you again.

What would I change in the software?

I want every event in my calendar to be Twisted automatically, in the background, without my intervention. Moreover, I want the calendar integration to be more heuristic: It it looks like Read more

July 20, 2012

Creative Destruction as celebrated in the Huffington Post. ;-)

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I was all set to write about how you should NOT use the new Zillow sites because I happen to agree with Don Reedy that they are sleeping with the enemy…when sleeping with friends is ONLY an FTP and a little bit of money away…c’mon people. 😉 ( I was even going to title it “A Mess of Pottage” just to get people talking… )

But then I saw this on the Huffington Post. Check it out. SERIOUSLY. Check it out.

Now for those of my friends that are more liberal, RELAX. 😉 Just because I saw a Google alert for Real Estate Blog from HuffPo does NOT mean I am drinking your Kool-Aid. You should know me better than that. 😉

And for my conservative and libertarian friends, RELAX. 😉 I am not drinking THEIR Kool-Aid. 🙂 🙂 Boy this political season has me stressed. hehe. Oh yeah…conservative friends..go back and read the post, don’t skip it just because it is HuffPo…you aren’t gonna die or go blind…grin

My goal was to offend EVERYONE politically in two paragraphs…how did I do?

I guess my points (I have THREE) with the above article was that I was well and truly surprised to see HuffPo celebrating the creative destruction of one business and noting the rise of another as an entreprenurial journalist shifted from Journalism to profitable blogging and made good at it. (Or is in the process of it).

And a corollary to that point. Creative Destruction WORKS. Even in our beloved real estate industry, just because things are the way they are today does not mean that they will be there for long. I am headed out to Inman this year (after a long hiatus from Connecting and Conventioning and etc) to enjoy some further reflection on where this industry is going and how to profitably stay in front of it.

We need to embrace change. Enjoy it and thrive on it.

How essential are brokerages? How about Franchises? How about Offices? How fast will business models change? Third party lead generators – are they vital? Or just an interloper?(All good questions IMO)

Oh yeah…the other two Read more

July 20, 2012

The Chupacabra, Loch Ness Monster, and the Most Rare Sighting of All; an Amazing Broker

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

It’s been quite a while since I last wrote on Bloodhoundblog.  It certainly doesn’t mean that I have been absent; frankly, it just means I have been too busy to take 30 minutes and compose an interesting thought provoking piece of writing up to the standard we have all come to know and love on this site.

But I digress, as a real estate investor I have only worked with two great brokers in my entire investing career.  I find most run-of-the-mill brokers to be under-educated, uninspired, and more interested in cashing a check by any means necessary than actually meeting my needs.  The first broker was a dynamic “buyers” broker, who understood my investment goals and my available capital.  Rather than over promising and under delivering, she relentlessly showed me house after house for 4 weekends straight until we found the right quaint little fixer-upper in my price range.  Her reward, a $2,000 commission on a $40k home sale and my testimony.

What was my testimony worth?  I did two more deals with her, both taking much less time and for a much higher dollar value in the next year (+$10k to her bottom line).  I did another deal with her the following year for another $10k to her and I referred her like crazy to all of my investing friends.  Even if none of them bought a single thing from her, she turned a $2k commission into $20k, at no additional cost to her and very little time thanks to her investment in me and her in-depth market knowledge.

Realtor number two is basically the same story, but add a few more zeros given some career advancement and price appreciation (Detroit vs. New York City).

From a buyer’s perspective, I am looking for the following qualities:

  • Market Knowledge – I don’t need you to print off a list of 80 comps (not reviewed 90% of the time) and ask me what I think.  I need you to send me a targeted list of homes you have been inside and already know will meet 90% of my needs.  I need you to know why this Read more
July 19, 2012

Zillowpress Agent Premier–(Fairly Nifty)

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I just fired up one of Zillow’s new Agent Premier sites and poked around.

It’s pretty impressive stuff.

I run a number of WordPress multisite networks for Real estate, and at a glance, Zillow’s done a really good job of offering a really functional wordpress install, with great design options, idx integration, and of course, easy bloggy wordpress content creation…

Out of the box.

In a few minutes.

For Just $10 Bucks A Month!

But Of Course These Sites Won’t Get You Leads (Yet)

Look, for the price Zillow’s agent premier sites are a fabulous deal. You’ll instantly have a site that’s probably better than what you’ve got going now.

But you’ll still be missing 3 very important things.

  • A Traffic Generation Strategy
  • A Core Lead Capture Element [Your IDX Search doesn’t count, nobody will trade an email address for what they can get for free on the Z 🙂 ]
  • And a Consistent Follow Up Strategy

You can find good help and layer these things on.

And Zillow can make implementing a modern (post 2007 real estate lead generation strategy) easier by looking into these 2 feature quick requests.

  1. Add a “below post” widget area so folks can link out to a lead generation squeeze page, or include some kind of opt in form… (for something, anything other than a property search.)
  2. And/Or include a totally blank page template so folks can build their squeezes on the fly.

There are also some minor things missing like Facebook commenting, advanced SEO options, and other minor stuff that can be added via a plugin here and there.

But otherwise… for $10. You kidding me?

I maybe sorta wanted to not like it…

But geez… we all have to admit. Zillowpress is pretty nifty….

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