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Category: Technology (page 12 of 60)

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

November 15, 2009

Giving up the iPhone for the Droid?

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Updates Below 11/16/09

I live in the far suburbs (bordering on rural) of Raleigh, and have had the iPhone 3G (not the latest 3GS) since April.  I mostly love it. It integrates well with gmail, where I maintain my contacts.  It has a few really nice apps that make life easier.  And the design is very nice and intuitive. In fact, I’m in discussions with some folks from Bangalore about building an app for the iPhone that relates to part of my law practice. 

But AT&T’s network is terrible.  Lately I’ve been dropping two or three calls a day.  Back before I started my practice, it was mostly just annoying.  Now it’s getting to the point where it’s interfering with business.  On Friday, when I was in the midst of a major issue with a client, I dropped at least six calls. 

AT&T hooked me up with a new SIM card this weekend, and I went to the Apple store where they exchanged the iPhone with a new one.  But I dropped another two calls today.

So I’m thinking about switching to Verizon.  The Motorola Droid is out, and I played around with it today at the Verizon store.  I’ve gotten so used to the high quality of Apple software, that I was somewhat disappointed by the way the Droid moved from application to application and the fact that the same button did not have the same effect in each application. 

So I’m going to stick it out for a week with the iPhone.  If I continue to have phone troubles this week, I’m going to switch.

It’s unfortunate, because the iPhone has been great for me. But dropped calls are not acceptable.  If you’ve got some thoughts on a Verizon phone – Blackberry, Motorola Droid or Palm – that you love, let me know.  The Droid is appealing because of the open framework and the fact that apps are going to be developed for it in great quantities.

And if you know how to write an iPhone App, and are interested in having me pay you to write a simple one for my Read more

November 4, 2009

Vook dead yet? Doesn’t matter. If you want to sell blades, first you have to find stubble that people are willing to pay to have shaved.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This was in my email this morning, spam from LinkedIn.com:

Joel Burslem is no longer Director of Product Development at Vook

Means what, I don’t know. Deck chairs on the Titanic. There is no huge surging mass of sub-literates demanding even easier-reading access to the half-shouted profundities of Gary Vaynerchuk. Love him or hate him, the guys lives and dies in video. He cannot be caged by a page, no matter how stylish or expensive or electronic that page might be. The book is a dead letter, so how could the Vook not be an even-deader letter? You cannot even pretend to believe otherwise unless you are in the pay of Brad Inman.

But: None of that matters. The Vook is instructive because it teaches us a host of interesting lessons about how to fail in business. Big names. Big funding. Design budget. Attractive product that works. Fancy offices filled with bigfoot corporate types. Even Aeron chairs, I’ll bet. What could go wrong?

Only this: There is no market for the product.

Remember that “find a need and fulfill it” bit from Business 101?

Can you name even one person who has confided to you, “You know, I’d probably read more if books were more like television?”

“I’d sure like to read more books, but the books I want to read are interrupted at intervals by bad actors enacting bad scripts.”

“What I want from books requires a sub-woofer!”

That’s a disaster from day one, and I have been ridiculing the Vook since first I heard about it. But even now, I can see an actual use for this technology: How-To books: How to build a rocking chair in 24 easy steps or The Kama Sutra for Klutzes. Those could sell, because they answer a need that can be served by both text and video. Even then, though, they’d be better as web sites — easier to control, easier to revise, etc.

But let’s go back to the Vook’s original marketing problem and try to solve it in a better way.

Brad Inman is a choke-point dinosaur. His goal was to come up with a “blade” dispenser — a relatively cheap razor Read more

October 24, 2009

“See, the thing is, Don Corleone, I just want you to steal my competitor’s assets and give them to me. I don’t want for you to tell me what to do with them after you steal them for me. Capisce?”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Rotarian Socialism in action:

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don’t steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.

The impulse is to say, “What a schmuck!” But once they’ve screwed up the internet, that will be one more once-free aspect of American life that will be enslaved forevermore.

Here’s a little rule of thumb to head off objections: If an allegedly-valuable social objective cannot be effected without force, it’s crime.

October 20, 2009

Real Estate Sales Transactions In Phoenix

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I don’t know if the local board in Phoenix allows agents to display recent sales transactions via idx feed, but it seems to me from talking to others around the land that most boards don’t.

Doesn’t it kinda sting that Trulia can display this info, but Realtor folk can’t?

Or can they?

How To Display Real Estate Transactions On Your WordPress Site Via Trulia’s Pretty Up To Date RSS Feed

1. Install and activate the “EXEC PHP” plugin
2. Do A General Property Search For Any Area On Trulia.
3. Click the “Recently Sold” Tab
4. Once the results are up, click on the link for more details on the first property.
5. When the info shows up, click “back.” – [This is key! 🙂 ]
6. Now there will be an RSS feed link at the very top right of the page.
7. Click On It, Then Grap The RSS Link That Pops Up Slightly Lower To The Left
7. Insert the RSS feed into the code below within a blog post, where indicated by “PUT YOUR JUICY SALES TRANSACTION FEED URL HERE”

< ?php // Get RSS Feed(s) include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php'); $rss = fetch_rss('PUTYOURJUICYSALESTRANSACTIONFEEDURLHERE'); $maxitems = 30; $items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>

< ?php foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>

  • < ?php echo $item['title']; ?>

< ?php endforeach; ?>

Phoenix Real Estate Sales Transactions

What you’re seeing below is actually a screen capture of the transactions on my own site… didn’t want to mess with plugins/php over here at bhb (or cause other trouble for ma and pop.)

Which leads to the point of all this. Can you see adding pages upon pages of dynamic content to your site using this little trick? Or is this content theft? Does Trulia own the data? Does your local board?


Phoenix Real Estate Transactions...

October 6, 2009

Want buyers to think you are better than sliced bread?

by

Realtor, Productivity Guru

Author website

Were ready for step two of the series on how to effectively use a tablet PC to run your day to day real estate tasks.  I’m including a screencast to actually give you some visualization on how I actually use my tablet PC for working with buyers in the field. Warning: Please turn down volume on screencast prior to starting.
Using a tablet PC when out in the field

The basic premise of what I do with buyers out in the field is extremely simple but very effective for organization, having a go-to information source, and being looked to at a whole new light in your clients eyes.

What I do when working with buyers using my tablet PC:

  • Fire up my MLS and find the homes that I will be showing to my buyer
  • Go to File Print and select the Print labeled “One Note 2007”
  • Once the spec sheet is in One Note I move it into a pre-created notebook for my specific client for organizational reasons
  • You can also print specific tax bills or anything relevant to that specific house you can think of that maybe handy and impressive to show in-front buyers.  The most relevant thing that I have added into my showings is the listing history/price change sheet.  (We all know they ask they questions almost every time no more fumbling, time to be the expert we really are!)
  • Next I go show the house and take notes on each property that we see so I can give relevant feedback to the listing agent.  Taking notes on every house is also a great way to remind buyers about the prior homes.

As you can see what I’m presenting here is really simple and should not intimidate anyone that is afraid of technology.  It’s as simple as Print/Move to a Notebook this is a good start of what we will be building in on future posts.
The real reason I’ve decided to take on this Tablet PC for Real Estate blog journey is to communicate with other people who share similiar interest’s and can share new ways of working with a tablet PC to become more efficient Read more

October 4, 2009

The quest for the paperless office: Scanning

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

If you want to build a paperless law office, then avoid the practice of criminal law. While other parts of the legal system are slowly, but surely, moving into an electronic and paperless future, all important documents in a criminal practice need to be produced in hardcopy form.

And so I do have to maintain and secure client files.

Still I’m finding ways to minimize the paper flow. My discoveries may make sense to you in your real estate business, so I’ll share them here from time to time.

Today: The scanner.

I need something that is fast, produces good quality scans (but need not reproduce the Mona Lisa in all its glory), and is inexpensive. Right now my firm is me. But later I expect to add a support person and additional attorneys.

So I want something that can be networked so that colleagues can share the scanner.

I think I’ve found a solution: The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. I got the S1500M – the “M” is for Mac. It’s roughly $400 from Amazon, although I bought mine slightly cheaper. For the $400, Fujitsu throws in the latest version of Acrobat Professional, which itself runs more than $250 retail.

I haven’t fully exploited Acrobat Professional, but I’m sure it’s got some features I could incorporate into my workflow.

But I have worked with the ScanSnap for the past two months, and it’s been nearly flawless. It’s fast – Fujitsu claims 20 pages a minute – and handles a pile of documents of all sizes, automatically adjusting the scanner to accommodate different sizes.

Very rarely the multi-document feeder jams on a document that’s folded or wrinkled. But fixing the jam is painless. Most of the time the scanner powers through like a champ. Just put the documents into the feeder, and press the scan button. The scanner handles the rest.

This is a color scanner, but I have not used it to scan in photos so couldn’t say whether the scan quality is good enough for anything but the most basic color scanning.

Best of all, the scanner is only 12 inches by 6 inches, so Read more

October 2, 2009

Is it time for a second Vook at Brad Inman’s latest brain fart?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Believe it or don’t, just yesterday I was telling Cathleen that I felt remiss in not having made fun of the Vook lately. The Vook, as you will recall, is Brad Inman’s latest attempt to prove that he stumbled onto half a billion bucks by accident. The trouble is, as he is discovering, pissing away that kind of dough isn’t easy, no matter how clueless you are — and Inman takes a back-seat to no one at cluelessness.

Even so, I need to issue a mea culpa of my own: The Vook has actually made it to the marketplace, a feat I would have bet against. Simon and Schuster — which has always made all of its profits from crossword puzzle books — turns out to be possessed of its own Inmaniacal cluelessness: The New York publisher is issuing Vook content, apparently because its printed books are not already selling badly enough.

But: Don’t despair. Even though there are very few people who are stupid enough to buy this stupid gadget, the Vook will still serve a purpose in the history of marketing: It will make the Zune look popular by contrast.

October 1, 2009

DocuSign may be the best friend Realtors have ever had

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, so all the Realtors know that short sales are like a jack-in-the-box: You crank and crank for weeks or months and nothing happens, then everything pops all at once.

Happened to me today, with the Sphinx-link bank suddenly lurching to life in order to issue two must-rush-now documents that reiterate terms my buyers have already agreed to.

That doesn’t matter. Must-rush-now! Must-have-today! Must return to hibernating state no later than 5 pm.

So Mom is at home and Dad’s at work — and both of them are 35 miles away from me.

We could trade faxes, but the originals are already barely readable.

But: No worries: We’ve got DocuSign on our side.

I set up the whole workflow: I sign, Mom signs, Dad signs — and then the whole package goes back to the lister, all untouched by human hands.

Note that I set everything up so that I could leave if I needed to, once I had signed, and the rest of the job would percolate through the ether on its own. I love this feature, since I no longer have to nurse documents.

But, as it works out, the whole job, Tinkers to Evers to Chance, was done in seven minutes flat.

I plan to write more about DocuSign when I have more time, but for now: If you don’t have DocuSign, get it. Your time is your money, and, in consequence, this is some of the best money you will ever spend.

And now the bank can roll over and go back to sleep…

 
P.S.: Just got confirmation that the lister has the documents. Twenty-two minutes total.

September 29, 2009

BHB-style lawyer marketing – from the trenches

by

International Tax Lawyer

Author website

This is a long-delayed post. A thank you to BHB. A clue for others to see, use, follow. This post is about marketing techniques. A case study. A “you can do this, too.”

Apology in advance

Gregg, please pardon the backlinking to myself. I don’t like to pee in the pool by hyping myself, but the project I’m backlinking to is almost over, and will be worthless by the 15th of October, so I have no long term benefit from this. I’m deliberately not linking to my main website.

The world we live in

BHB is interesting to me. The philosophy (treat your customers like humans, get ’em smart, treat ’em right), the approach (use the tools that Teh Interwebs give ya), the people.

The real estate world is hidebound and burdened with useless historical debris. But the law world is worse. Lawyering is a closed shop industry and the State Bar is hellbent on protecting union members. Using ideas imported proudly from Elizabethan England.

BHB-style thinking and action to me is what the individual can do — constructively — to rage against the machine. (Hmmm. Good name for a band, I think.)

The opportunity

First, background. The IRS announced a voluntary disclosure program in late March, 2009 — people with money hidden offshore could Come to Jesus and avoid criminal prosecution for tax evasion.

I’m an international tax lawyer. Ding-ding-ding.

Seizing the opportunity

With help and coaching (ha! Chris hates that word!) from GenuineChris I launched www.foreignbankaccountamnesty.com. Simple WordPress install, various plug-ins, no biggie.

With me so far? Yep. All of you have launched blogs. Ain’t but a few of you who have made money on them. Listen up.

Get to work

Here’s what happened next. Chris Johnson harangued me. “Write!” he commanded. I wrote like an SOB. I remember one time when he said “It doesn’t matter what you write, just write.” As if content doesn’t matter. My “A” student overachiever feelings were hurt. But I wrote. Brute Force SEO. That’s what we Read more

September 27, 2009

Google Voice: Ready for Primetime?

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Greg’s written: “The trouble with free software, is that you don’t really explore what you’re getting with it.” When I read that, I thought, “True, but…” The “but” being Google, a company whose free products I’ve (mostly) explored to death, even when they’re not very good. I’m looking at you, Google Docs.

When Google announced that it was entering the telephony business with Google Voice, I was excited, and applied for an “invitation” that came in July in the midst of preparing to take the North Carolina Bar. I couldn’t seriously play with it until August. But now I’ve spent two months with it, and here’s my take: I’m not sure Google Voice is ready for primetime.

Here’s how it works: At sign up, a user selects a phone number. That number can become the new primary number, which the user gives out to family, friends, clients, and so on. Google Voice allows the user to set which phones will ring when people call the Google Voice number. (Outside callers have no idea they’re calling a Google Voice number. To them it’s just another phone number.)

The setup was a cinch. Within a few minutes I was up and running with a new phone number that now rings my cell phone, but could also ring an office phone and home phone all at the same time.

Eric Bramlett has posted about Google Voice’s killer feature: Voicemail Transcription. Since I spend a good deal of time in court, where answering a phone will get you tossed out by an annoyed sheriff’s deputy, being able to glance down at my iPhone to read a voicemail that’s been transcribed for me is fantastic. Even if the transcription is not perfect, getting the gist of the voicemail without having to leave the courtroom saves a ton of time.

I’ve found transcriptions to be marginal at best, but still good enough to give me a sense of the message. Maybe it’s the southern accent that Google has not yet nailed, but Google still has a ways to go.

There are other nifty features: the ability to route calls to specific phones, Read more

September 27, 2009

iMovie lets me produce six short real estate videos in three hours

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve never loved video as a means of promoting real estate listings. I much prefer lots and lots of really big, really detailed photographs.

But: The SMS marketing we’re doing with DriveBuy Technologies makes video a necessity. The integration of YouTube into smart-phones is simply too compelling an opportunity to pass up.

Hence, on Thursday I pounded out six videos for three of our listings, all in about three hours total labor. That’s everything, from set up to sequencing to background music to recording voiceovers.

How is that possible? I used iMovie, the more basic movie-making software for the Macintosh. I also have Final Cut, but iMovie makes making basic plug-and-chug videos a breeze. Even better, it integrates directly with YouTube, so I can publish from within the app.

I’m promoting houses, so I’m using photographs, not full-motion video. Assembling these little films is quick and fool-proof.

How’s the quality? You tell me. I think these are more than adequate to the task.

Let’s take a look:

For 5415 West Hasan Drive:


The house…


And the neighborhood…

This is just plain vanilla Ken Burns stuff, and you can take it the way the software does it or manipulate the effect yourself.

Here are two more, made for 1946 East Vista Drive:


The house…


And the neighborhood…

These two were done using iMovie’s Scrapbook theme, and all the transitions were done automatically by the software.

One more: 5708 East Paradise Lane:


The house…


And the neighborhood…

These videos used iMovie’s Photo Album theme, again with no manual intervention.

Without doubt you could do even cooler stuff by intervening with the software, but these results seem pretty sweet to me without my having to do a lot of manual tweaking.

September 10, 2009

Have RE BarCamps lost their way?

by

Realtor, Newlywed

Author website

I attended the recent Seattle version 2.0 of RE BarCamp earlier this week. Also attending was fellow BHB contributor Al Lorenz.  Held at the Armory on Lake Union, it would be hard to find a location that was more beautiful to hold an event. And yet, I did not come to the event looking for beauty. I came to the event to learn more about techniques that we discuss all the time about marketing and salesmanship. What I discovered was a trade show masquerading as a grass roots event. The main hall of the Armory was lined with various vendor booths fully stocked with the obligatory vendor salespeople. Guys wearing crisp white button-down shirts standing in front of a large tradeshow booth. Bored looking salespeople just hoping that someone with a pulse would stop by their table and inquire about what shiny silver bullet they were selling. To entice agents to stop by and visit, there were all manner of free pens, flashlights, discount coupons, and much, much more…. I don’t know how much business any vendor did. I did pick up one flyer which has already found the way into the recycling after I looked that the product in greater detail online.

The attendance of the event was outstanding. There were over 600 RSVP’s for the event. The Armory easily held the crowd. The challenge of noise was something that everyone struggled with throughout the event. The PA system was difficult to understand simply because the hall was a gymnasium in previous years. The Keynote was by Ian Watt from Vancouver BC. It would have been a very entertaining and enjoyable speech had we been able to see the slides that he brought. The sheet hanging from the balcony was not really the best way to show off all that is glorious about PowerPoint. Ian is a very entertaining person and his presentation was the highlight of the event for me (even with the technical challenges).

The number of real estate professionals that had glazed over looks was disconcerting to me. I overhead a number of people mention that they did not Read more

September 8, 2009

Is Social Media Marketing Worth The Effort ?

by

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

Author website

Greg Swann and I are working together, later this week.  We’re meeting in Phoenix to do some video work (mostly Q & A stuff), discuss the what we want BloodhoundBlog Unchained to look like,  and host a discussion about SMM at the  Phoenix Association of REALTORs (with Kerry Melcher).

We KNOW social media marketing works because we’re both busy but we really want to start measuring the efficacy of each effort.  BloodhoundBlog Unchained is a labor of love.  Our profits have been miniscule but we learn so much from the process of hosting the conference.  Hobby or not, we’re still committed to producing the premier three-day workshop, about online real estate and mortgage marketing, in the industry.

One of the reasons Greg and I have such a great partnership is that we approach the same issue from completely opposite camps.  Many of you have seen us “do our bit” about filling the funnel vs. pure pull marketing. I’m gonna let y’all in on a secret; we both practice what the other preaches.

I watched the forced registration issue with great interest.  I’m spending thousands of dollars to have a similar IDX for mortgage rates developed.  Naturally, I want to recoup the thousands as quickly as possible without threatening the customer to the point of having her click away.

I’ve watched people preach expertise about SMM who have never dealt with a bad Yelp rating, never engaged a stranger about their profession on Facebook, and haven’t monitored their blog comments in a year.  We’re all trying to find the highest and best use of our time while providing good content for the stranger who graces our websites with a question.

I want those people to become prospects, then customers, then clients, then sneezing fans but I don’t want to spend all day wired to the laptop or answering questions via e-mail.

Our critical mission is to find out what works and what doesn’t.  Most of the ideas we develop come from questions in these little workshops we do. People ask us questions and Greg and I try to find the answers.  Those answers usually come from you; we Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

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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