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There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Supplanting the NAR (page 3 of 10)

March 24, 2011

It’s the REALTOR Party, you can cry if you want to…

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

…But when push comes to shove, I’m a Midwesterner- practical, down-to-earth, not prone to crying over spilled milk. If something is wrong, let’s fix it. If there is a problem, let’s find the solution and move along. So when push recently came to shove and the NAR rolled out their latest membership shakedown benefit, my Midwestern mind mulled over what was really happening and whether or not there was a fix.

There is a video that’s been making the rounds in Ohio as public union options are being reconsidered. In 2007, Bob Chanin, General Counsel to the NEA for over 40 years, gave a farewell speech to the NEA. This is a fascinating look inside the history of one of the biggest, most powerful unions in the country, but at 25 minutes it’s a bit long. Let me break it down for you: Chanin describes in loving detail how the NEA was once-upon-a-time, a quiet little organization of long suffering do-gooders. Then they got politically organized. He says:

“It is not because of creative ideas, it is not because of the merit of our position, it is not because we care about children, it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power and we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.”

But wait, there’s more:

“When all is said and done, the NEA and its affiliates must never lose sight of the fact that they are unions and what unions do first and foremost is represent their members.”

If this doesn’t disturb you, fine. I’m not here to change your mind. And just so I’m clear about this: I’m a REALTOR because I’m forced to be, for access to the MLS, and not necessarily because I want to be (and just for the record, Dear NAR- I’m not anti-NAR per se, but I am anti-coercion. Force is coercion and coercion Read more

December 3, 2010

This Article is a Waste of Your Time

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

The NAR has come out against the Debt Reduction Commission’s recommendation to eliminate (actually, not eliminate but rather greatly reduce and alter) the mortgage interest tax deduction (MID)…  Isn’t that a shock?  No? You knew those dip-shits at NAR would knee-jerk react to their sacred cow?  Hey, I warned you in the title that this article is a waste of your time.

What has caught my eye is the speed with which the NAR propoganda hit mainstream agents and found its way to popular social media sites like Facebook.  A quick look this morning and I must have caught half a dozen agents I know personally, out there spreading the bullshit around on behalf of the NAR; not realizing how hypocritical and stupid they looked.

Attention All Agents:  Taxes are theft.  You may acquiese to some form of theft in the ignorant belief that it somehow does some good. But tax deductions? They are pure evil.  They are, by definition, designed to separate you from your natural freedoms through bribery and penalty.  The mortgage interest tax deduction is no different and in some ways worse.

You might make allowance for the mugger on the street stealing your money because (he says) his kids are hungry. (I think you should kick his ass, in no small part because it may be the best thing you can do for his kids… but that’s a different post.)   But do you really want to defend the guy who takes your money and then tells you that if you will walk where he tells you and stop where he tells you and wear what he tells you, he might (MIGHT!) give you some of your own money back? Are you that spineless?  Let me see if Ican put this into perspective:

I (the government) have declared that all real estate agents must give me 30% of their commission checks. But, I think funny underwear makes people laugh and laughter is a social good… so if you’ll wear funny underwear on your head I’ll give you some of your commission back.

Feeling pretty good about your deduction? Take that stupid underwear off your head and pay attention!  It’s not even true!  The vast majority of tax payers Read more

November 1, 2010

Never forget: The collapse of the global economy was caused by the National Association of Realtors.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Vickie Cox Golder, current Grand Poobah of the National Association of Rotarian Socialists, sends this little note:

Tomorrow is election day. As a proud member of the REALTOR® Party, I hope that you will join me and the entire NAR leadership in casting your vote tomorrow for the candidates at the local, state and federal level who will provide needed leadership to restore a healthy housing market and who believe strongly in the value of homeownership.

Here’s a very simple fact to be mastered:

More than any other person or group, the collapse of the global economy was caused by the National Association of Realtors.

There are plenty of other grafters to be blamed, of course, but without the tireless lobbying of the NAR, property rights in the United States would not have been so grievously undermined, and none of the economic monkey-wrenching in the real estate market would have occurred.

When you’re going over your wrecked finances, the key villain, at every turn, turns out to be the NAR.

Big, history-making election tomorrow. Chances are, it will turn out to be meet-the-new-grafters-same-as-the-old-grafters. But if there is real change to be seen in American political life, it will start with the restoration of the rights of property-owners.

If the NAR had any sense, it would become a stridently pro-ownership lobby. Instead, it will continue as the blood-sucking vampire it has been since its inception. And for this reason, you should lean all over your congress-creeps to ignore the NAR’s every grasping entreaty.

Do you actually want a free economy — so your children can earn as much as their hard work can gain them? If so, you have to stand for the repeal of every law affecting real estate transactions. Their sole purpose is to enrich the members of the National Association of Rotarian Socialists at the expense of consumers — leading, ultimately, as we are seeing, to the impoverishment of all of us.

The NAR is a cancer on the body politic. If they won’t learn better, at least you can.

June 29, 2010

Real Estate Declaration of Independence

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

I’ve been a bit quiet on BHB due to some personal issues I’ve been working through.  But, I was very happy to see Greg’s latest post on challenging everything!  I had a little holiday brainstorm today and wrote a post on my local Lake Chelan blog on a Real Estate Declaration of Independence for the consumers of services from Real Estate Professionals.

I want to share it here on BHB and get your thoughts on what I missed, should add or could have said better!  So, without further ado here is my Independence Week start to the Real Estate Declaration of Independence:

Real Estate Declaration of Independence

We, the people who buy and sell real estate, hold these truths to be obvious:

  • We the people believe that information on real estate for sale should be readily accessible without surrendering our private information.  We reject having to register on a web site in order to view listings in an area.  We value our time and will contact a real estate professional when we are good and ready for their services.
  • We the people reject all policies of the National Association of Realtors that are not in the best interest of the real estate buying and selling public.  Limiting our access to information, restricting our ability to a free and open market through regulation and limiting our market choices are all examples of policies we reject that are designed to line Realtors pockets at the expense of the public.
  • We the people reject “Dual Agency,” where a real estate agent has an inherent conflict of interest with his agency and fiduciary duties by attempting to Read more
June 22, 2010

First time home-buyers tax credit, the morning after: “The government’s ‘gift’ to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the National Review Online:

Things are looking worse on the housing front, with a severe drop-off in existing home sales following the expiration of the home-buyer tax credit. It’s hard to overstate how stupid this policy was. The government marketed it as a measure to boost residential real-estate prices by providing new home-buyers with a tax credit in the neighborhood of $8,000. Did you see the ubiquitous ads featuring the couple that gets an envelope full of cash from Uncle Sam? The idea was to convince potential home-buyers that they were the ones who would benefit from the subsidy, when in fact the opposite was true. The tax credit was a subsidy for sellers, not buyers, allowing them to increase their asking price (or avoid decreasing it) by $8,000.

The government’s “gift” to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it, and falling fast thanks to the sharp drop-off in demand that accompanied the expiration of the tax credit. Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam! I’m not sure the “predatory lenders” Obama likes to talk about ever did anything that sketchy.

This is good, but it’s still wide of the mark. As everyone here knows, the purpose of the tax credit was to churn transactions, so that realtors and their brokers could get paid. You’ll see more evidence of this later this week, as the NAR pushes you to lean on your congresscreep to support Harry Reid’s extension of the expiration deadline for the credit. There are still 180,000 unclosed transactions out there, and that means 180,000 commission checks held hostage by the demons of time. We can’t have that…

June 14, 2010

The NAR Backs the FHA… Who’s Backing You?

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website
Late last week the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5072, the so-called FHA Reform Bill.  One of the major components of that bill (you can read the text of the bill here), raises the monthly insurance premium for all FHA buyers.  What does that mean to your bottom line?
 
Currently, the FHA monthly premium is .55% and the new legislation Congress is looking at will raise the premium a wopping 272% to 1.5%.  What does this mean to your buyer?  If they are at the limit of their eligibility on a $300,000 purchase price now, they would have to lower their interest rate by over 1.25% to still qualify for that house.  In other words, if the current market rate is 5.00%, it would have to drop to 3.75%!  If you think you might have trouble locating a lender who will do 30 year fixed loans at 3.75%, don’t worry; you can also lower their purchase price to bring them back into eligibility.  Their new price would only have to drop 10%!  A buyer looking at $300,000 today will be looking at $265,000 to $270.000 as soon as this bill passes. Does that change your market opportunities for the better… or the worse?
 
I understand why the NAR supports this, it keeps FHA alive and well, doing sub-prime loans for people who can’t afford to buy a home, which in turn keeps dues paying agents busy and coughing up their fair share.  But why do agents support it?  It’s going to have a devestating affect on your clients, and therefore on you.  Do you support it?  Have you let anybody know?
June 10, 2010

If the National Association of Realtors were to back the repeal of the mortgage interest tax deduction, it could do three very patriotic things: It could reduce the debt load on all Americans, help consumers make wiser use of their money — and get itself off the dole!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had thought I had said my piece yesterday about the move to repeal the mortgage interest tax deduction as a means of reducing the federal deficit, but today I feel I have not said enough.

Here’s what I would add: The National Association of Realtors should lead the charge to rid the nation of the pestilential subsidy. Very far from being a good thing, it is an undiluted evil.

How so? Two reasons. First, it rewards homeowners by raising taxes on everyone else. This is true of every sort of tax deduction, tax credit or direct subsidy, but the mortgage interest tax deduction is especially pernicious in that it tends to reward the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Frankly, any sort of governmental favoritism is vile, but the NAR is doubly vile in this instance, since poor people are being despoiled not even to benefit the rich, but to benefit Realtors themselves.

Consider this, written in response to a defense of the tax deduction:

Defending mortgage interest deductibility (based on the current tax establishment) is very much in my favor as a consumer.

This is the seen and the unseen, classic Bastiat. You see a tax deduction and regard it as being to your immediate pecuniary advantage. You don’t see all the other taxes that are raised to make up for that deduction.

Worse, you don’t see that the NAR is not seeking your interests but its own: The deduction causes you to value housing above other investments, contrary to market forces, which results in your buying a home when you could and probably should be making more productive use of your surplus income. The goal? Commissions for NAR members, not your interests at all.

Still worse, you don’t see that the recession we are going into was caused, fundamentally, by overvaluing housing as a market good by means of tax deductions, credits, exclusions and deferrals. In five years you could be walking around shoeless, dining out of garbage dumpsters, but at least your mortgage interest will be tax-deductible.

In other words: You are a consumer in your every economic transaction, not just when you are Read more

June 9, 2010

What if they reduced a tax deduction hardly anybody gets? If you’re the the National Association of Realtors and you’ve been spinning lies for decades about mortgage interest deductibility, your whole make-believe world just collapsed…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kicking this back to the top. It’s news again. I wrote this post more than a year ago, but, per The Hill, the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest is back on the table:

The popular tax break for mortgage interest, once considered untouchable, is falling under the scrutiny of policymakers and economic experts seeking ways to close huge deficits.

Although Congress last year rejected the White House’s proposed cut to the amount wealthier taxpayers can deduct for home mortgage interest payments, the administration included it again in its 2010 budget — saying it could save $208 billion over the next decade.

And now that sentiment has turned against all the federal red ink — and cost-cutting is in vogue — Democrats on President Barack Obama’s financial commission are considering the wisdom of permanent tax breaks such as the mortgage deduction and corporate deferral. Calling them “tax entitlements,” senior Democratic lawmakers have argued they should be on the table for reform just like traditional entitlement programs Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.

Nothing has changed in my response to this news, so let’s dial the wayback machine back to February 26, 2009:

    The bay-trees in our country are all wither’d
    And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
    The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
    And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change;
    Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap,
    The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
    The other to enjoy by rage and war:
    These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
        — William Shakespeare, Richard II

I was out showing this afternoon and came home to find that President Barrack Obama has proposed giving the NAR’s cherished mortgage income tax deduction a very small haircut. From The Wall Street Journal:

The tax increases would raise an estimated $318 billion over 10 years by reducing the value of such longstanding deductions as mortgage interest and charitable contributions for people in the highest tax brackets. Households paying income taxes at the 33% and 35% rates can currently claim deductions at those rates. Under the Obama proposal, they could deduct only 28% of the value of those payments.

The changes would be phased in gradually over the Read more

May 15, 2010

@tcar’s manifesto: “Toothy chumps of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your brains.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Witness: “The next big project from 2nd Century will be Realtor University. A fully accredited educational institution[.]”

I do not for one second hate to say I told you so:

We know sheep will follow a Judas goat to their slaughter, as will cattle. Now the NAR is testing the idea on lemmings…

Todd Carpenter becomes one with the Borg and the charming little lemmings elbow each other out of the way to dive off the cliff head first.

One of two things will happen: Todd will discover he’s made a terrible mistake and will quit this job with dispatch — I hope very loudly. Or: Todd will deliver us to our slaughter.

Anyone who expects anything other than evil from the National Association of Realtors has either not been paying attention, or, much worse, embraces that evil.

In any case, this is not something to be celebrated, not even to affect to be “nice” in chorus with the rest of the lemmings.

The NAR may want to infest our world in order to destroy it. More likely, they want to take it over.

What they certainly do not want is to approach the public as we do — openly, authentically, concealing nothing. The entire edifice of residential real estate is founded on secrets and lies, and, as long as it is, the NAR will be nothing but a cesspit of tyrannical motives and vendorslut con games.

And — more is the pity — Todd Carpenter cannot take their money without being their shill and their Judas goat — or worse.

I’m saddened by this, because of all the gutless big-name real estate webloggers, Todd has more guts than most. But nothing good for us will come of this, and the only good that can come of it for Todd is for him to escape with his scruples intact as quickly as he can.

Too late for that now. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.

Four years ago, almost, when I started this little project, I had huge hopes for a newer, cleaner style of real estate, one based on integrity and transparency. I’ve watched as Read more

March 20, 2010

So there’s this huge interent scandal at the NAR, except there are no details about why it’s a scandal, and the “researchers” behind the claims are keeping their names secret. Want to know more? All you have to do is cough up twenty bucks a month.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Do you want potent evidence that the #RTB movement has nothing to do with actually raising standards of service and care among Realtors? The organizers of the so-called Raising The Bar push did not try to enlist our support here, even though BloodhoundBlog is by far the loudest voice on the net on the subject of real estate professionals bringing better value to consumers.

In the same respect, I am deeply suspicious of putative anti-NAR movements that do not contact us. This is the philosophical home of the idea of supplanting the NAR. Doing anything to undermine the real estate vampire cartel without us is a non-starter.

So I didn’t know, at first, what to make of NARScandal.com, a web site that spammed me this afternoon. I tried reading the articles, but they’re all implication with no actual details. The word “scandal” is thrown about liberally, but I saw no evidence of anything even remotely like a scandal on the site.

As an example, the implication is that RPR is some kind of evil scheme concocted by arch-villains like Dale Stinton — who goes about cleverly camouflaged as a fat old dotard to confound his enemies. I’m a beta tester for RPR, and I can tell you with confidence that RPR is reasonably interesting as yet another Realty.bot and extremely boring as the lynchpin of a conspiracy plot. Do not ever expect me to say anything good about the NAR, but RPR, for what I’ve seen of it, is tapioca in technicolor, no threat to anyone, not even to Zillow or Trulia.

So where’s the scandal? Moreover, who is the scandal-monger? I dug all through the site — and its whois record — and could not find anyone willing to stand up on his hind legs and claim to be the creator of the site or the author of all the going-nowhere “exposés.” One could argue that Stinton and other NAR poohbahs have a libel claim, except that nothing potentially libelous — or even interesting — is published at the site.

So I kept digging and finally came to this:

Of course…

The NAR is a criminal conspiracy Read more

March 2, 2010

Dawn In America- Part 3-Can We Educate the Masses (For Profit?)

by

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

Author website

Information can be a glow in the  darkness. Traditional higher education models are losing market share to cheaper education delivery systems.    Young people now have the opportunity to learn the very same principles for free that are taught to the people they may eventually hire to run their businesses.  I think this free market trend will eventually overtake the traditional post-secondary education models.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find a fully-funded college education available, competitive with some of the best traditional colleges, in the not-too-distant future.

I can see a future where the ultimate end-users of that education (private industry),  see the benefit to developing accredited curricula, and offering them to current and potential employees, at a greatly reduced cost (maybe for free).  I’m not just talking about an MBA from “Mutual of Omaha University“.  Think “University of the American Way“, delivering bachelor’s degrees to the masses- graduates might receive checks from the alumni association rather than sending checks to it.

Education via extension isn’t a new idea.  This ACC school has been granting degrees, to off-campus students, since the 1940s.  Online education is now a pop culture phenomenon. If this educational delivery system grows like I think it will, how can the real estate brokerage or mortgage lending communities profit?

The idea that education can get cheaper (moving towards free) and more readily available will be an irreversible trend.  No longer can we hide behind the phrase “proprietary information” or “specialized knowledge”.  Consumers may educate themselves about how to get a VA condo complex approved and find that my “specific knowledge”, while helpful, doesn’t permit me to charge a one point premium to my lesser educated competitors.  My specific expertise DOES drastically reduce my marketing costs, allowing me to retain more profit than my competitors.

Information can be exported inexpensively. Imagine holding a webinar online, explaining the benefits of owning a Costa Rican vacation property, to German pharmaceutical executives.  Then, imagine holding a different webinar, to a group of retired Americans in Costa Rica, about investing in mortgages so that those Germans could borrow their money and buy from those properties.  Would that add Read more

February 8, 2010

Agents of Change

by

CEO, Redfin.com

Author website

Don Stewart posed an interesting question this morning about whether real estate is changing top-down from the broker or bottoms-up from the agent. In a post about how Redfin sees the real estate industry changing, Don suggested we had focused too much on the laws, the brokers, the MLS data sharing rules and the system by which sellers pay buyer’s agents:

I think that many agents are becoming more client focused, less afraid of discussing value for money, and are happy to be judged by their performance. They are not just trying to grab commissions, they want to build a professional practice. Real change happens from the ground up, not the top down and I see some very encouraging signs.

Don’s right. When I first got into this business, Redfin focused on structural ways we could make real estate better: by surveying customers and publishing responses, by paying agents at least in part based on survey results, by sharing as much data as possible with consumers.

But the most profound change has probably come from our agents. I’m not sure if we attracted the most progressive agents, or if those agents were in fact what made us progressive in the first place. But the longer I’m in this business, the more I’ve come to realize that what I think doesn’t matter as much as what our agents do every day.

What do you think? Is change coming via the agents or the brokers?

November 17, 2009

Further thoughts — mostly non-thoughts — on RPR

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Reacting to John Rowles’ post, Jim Duncan has been talking about the RPR idea for years, and I read a little more about it today, having been tipped over the weekend by Tom Johnson. My take: Yawn.

RPR is not the generals fighting the last war, but the war before that. Apparently, the NAR still believes that the added value of real estate representation comes from hoarding data. RPR is their attempt to put a new fence around the data, having let the last set of barriers fall to Realtor.com and to IDX.

It’s twice funny to me, because not only is that war already well won — by the consumer — so is the true last war, the Battle of the Realty.bots. After all of this chatter, none of this shit has turned out to mean anything in real life.

I mean nothing. I’m convinced by now that no one who does not actually represent buyers and sellers has any clue about what is going on in the real estate market. We don’t search for listings — our clients do — and our position is stronger than ever. We post our listings wherever we can — and our position is stronger than ever.

I’m no friend to any restraint or restriction on trade, but buying or selling a home is a lot more complicated than it was four years ago. Our clients don’t need flashy web sites, they need agents who know how to navigate the shoals of the transaction.

RPR, MLS, VOW, IDX — all of this goes away when we do away with the co-broke. In the mean time, it’s deck chairs on the Titanic, at best, one more dipshit time-wasting “tool” to mask sales-call reluctance.

Notes for the grunts on the ground:

1. Motivated buyers and sellers will not go through a middleman in the early phases of their search. This is 1974-style thinking from the NAR.

2. Motivated buyers and sellers don’t care how they found you. They care about what they found: Do you know your shit? Can you deliver the product? Is your word any good?

3. Whether or not the information you Read more

October 29, 2009

With help like this…

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

Robert Worthington is right.  Do you want to know how right he is?  According to Goldman Sachs, who ought to know about government intervention, the feds interventions into the housing have pushed home prices 5% higher on a national average than they would have been otherwise, Goldman Sachs estimates in a report released late Friday.

The government over the past year has slowed the pace of foreclosures through moratoria and the drive to modify mortgage terms to keep more borrowers in their homes. It also has pumped up demand for housing by giving tax credits to many first-time home buyers and by driving down mortgage interest rates. As a result, home prices in some areas have risen in recent months, particularly for homes that appeal to investors and first-time buyers. Bidding wars for the more attractive bank-owned homes have become common.

But these artificial props won’t last forever and may have created a false bottom in the market. “The risk of renewed home-price declines remains significant,” Goldman economist Alec Phillips writes in the report, “and our working assumption is a further 5% to 10% decline by mid-2010.” – WSJ

If they’re right, rather than a healthy market heading into 2011, what do you think we might actually have?  We could be looking at falling home prices, rising interest rates and a government whose currency is faltering.  Does it sound like a double dip?  Will you be happy that the functions of the market were tampered with once you realize the misery has been extended, for years? Remember to say thanks to the NAR, thanks to the NAHB, thanks to the Feds and most of all, thanks to us realtors who supported the larceny.  But, at least you may have universal access to a health care waiting list.

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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