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Category: Technology (page 18 of 60)

February 19, 2009

Monetizing What Counts – Don’t Rain on Their Parade

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

My brother called me late last week. He lives in Dallas with his wife and kids – he’s in his early 40’s, smart, tech-savvy and owns his own business. He wants to buy a new home. The home he wants isn’t currently listed with a real estate agent – it’s a pocket listing FSBO so to speak -the owner would like to sell but doesn’t want to actively list and sell it. She’ll sell at the right price – she’s not going to go out of her way to find a buyer.

My brother has bought and sold a few homes, rarely with the assistance of a real estate agent – he’s open to cooperating with an agent when he wants to sell his home, but simply not keen on paying a commission for something he feels he is more than capable of doing himself.

I am not an evangelist. If he wants to do it himself, more power to him.

Funny thing happened, however – his call was a plea for help. He wanted me to review the standard real estate sales contract – he doesn’t know what boxes to check – or at least wants to make sure that he’s checked the right ones. He needed to move relatively quickly so he could get his hook into the “unlisted” home before word got out that she would entertain offers.

“Listen Tom, I really need your help – I’ll even pay you.”

Putting the whole lack of being licensed in Texas aside, a smile came across my face. ALAS, my brother of all people understands the value of expertise and knowledge – and you know what, it ain’t free.

I asked him how he knew whether or not the house he wanted to buy was actually worth what the seller wanted?

Not sure but felt her price seemed reasonable. I told him to go to Zillow and find out what it’s Zestimate was – the good news was it fell within a few thousand of the seller’s target price of $1M.

I walked through the contract with my brother Read more

February 17, 2009

A big heap of Heap goodness: Revising my universal contact form to create Heap records, assigning initial drip campaigns to them

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve rebuilt my universal contact form to be Heap-friendly. Now, in addition to emailing you and the prospect with a quick follow-up, as well as optionally epaging you, the form will also optionally create a new Heap lead with the contact information and with the name of an initial drip campaign to be assigned to that prospect.

The revised form draws upon a new initialization file, which is called “HeapInitialization.txt.” This file works along with “HeapContactMeForm.txt” to specify the unique variables that apply to your situation.

So, for example, the first line of “HeapInitialization.txt” will contain your Heap account name, which is used along with your email address to establish your bona fides when we are communicating with Heap.

The next lines of “HeapInitialization.txt.” comprise the menu of choices you will make available to your users. This is the default menu:

Buying a home|Buying
Selling a home|Selling
Relocating to Phoenix|Relocation
Acquiring income properties|Investment
Real estate advice|Consultation

To the left of the vertical bar is the menu text. To the right is the value that will be assigned to that choice — and which will be transmitted to Heap along with the contact record. Ideally, that value should also be the exact name of an existing event template in your Heap installation.

You can edit either the menu text or the menu values at will, to reflect your unique circumstance.

If you elect to omit the menu lines, the form will revert to a text box in that position, and whatever text the prospect enters will be transmitted with the emails and epages. If you leave “HeapInitialization.txt” empty or delete it from your server, everything will work as before and nothing will be transmitted to Heap.

You can see the Heap-specific form live at our Phoenix real estate weblog.

If you want a copy of your own — guess what? Fill out the form:

< ?PHP $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/SendTheFormForm.php"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); ?>

It’s a pure geek thrill, but everything that happens after this is automated via Heap, untouched by human hands…

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February 16, 2009

Piling onto Heap: I’ll trade you a big bunch of CRM development ideas for an affiliate link click-through

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If your contact information is on any of the BloodhoundBlog Unchained interest lists, I spammed you last week with a form email that pitched the then-upcoming Seattle Unchained preview as well as the still-upcoming BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix event.

The form letter was sent out as bulk email from the Heap CRM software application, and I played a few games with the software: The letter asked recipients to click on a link that opened a web-based form that in turn solicited them to complete and update their contact information — not just name and email but also phone numbers and snailmail address. That form in turn fed its input back to Heap, in effect semi-automatically scrubbing our Unchained database.

The response rate is over 25%, so far, which is just astounding to me, but the essence of the thing was to put Heap through its paces. As I discussed a little while ago, I want a highly-programmable CRM solution that I can use to automate our databases. Heap seems to be the best solution for the work we need to do, as a compromise between power and cost–per-user.

I’m going to be talking about everything I do with Heap, going forward. I’ll make the tools I build with it available, starting with a new version of my universal contact form that will not only create new contact records within Heap but will assign those contact to the appropriate drip email campaign.

After that, I want to build code that will do a truly robust round-trip contact scrub, because I’m thinking you can get people who really want to do business with you to tell you anything you might want to know.

For now, I need some help from you:

If you are signing up for Heap, I’d appreciate if you would use this link. I will get credit in Heap’s affiliate program. We’ll donate the affiliate fees to charity, but with each new sign-up, I will gain clout with the developer. As always, I’ll be sharing every new idea I come up with, but if we can demonstrate that wired real estate professionals are a significant portion Read more

February 15, 2009

Making the Scene: How to create new public Scenius scenes

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve written a ton about Scenius scenes, but, until lately, we’ve kept the scene creation praxis fairly close to our vests. I had documented the process very early for the folks who were involved in the original discussion of the Scenius idea, then shared that video how-to with other folks by email.

But we’re doing things differently than we were last November. And I took up the topic of scene creation in public in Seattle both Thursday and Friday. On Friday, I promised to cook up newer, better documentation by Monday.

I’m a day early. Click on this link to be swept off to a comprehensive site on how — and why — to create a public Scenius.net scene.

The site features three videos, including a link to the one made by Jim Reppond at Friday’s presentation.

There are also links to some of the pages mentioned in the first video, which is intended to be the canonical scene creation reference, as well as links to BloodhoundBlog posts on the how and why of Scenius scenes.

Let me know when you create a new public scene and I will add it to the index at Scenius.net.

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February 14, 2009

Living that Seattltude: Bloodhounds listening above the Sound

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Still recovering from two exhausting days in Seattle. Brian Brady and I both had a great time. Taught a ton, learned a ton and met a lot of truly wonderful people.

The Zillovians were excellent hosts, pulling out all the stops for both the BloodhoundBlog Unchained event and for REBarcamp Seattle. They basically gave an entire floor of their offices to the RE.net, with spaces big and small for people to get together.

Zillow’s offices are on the 41st and 46th floor of a vast office tower. I would marvel that the building has its own Starbucks, but so does every other structure in Seattle. Here’s the view, looking north and east over the Puget Sound:

Here’s a panel from the Unchained conference featuring Rhonda Porter, Marlow Harris, Brad Coy and Rich Jacobson.

We capped off the day with a debate featuring Glenn Kelman and me. The photo shown here was taken by Marlow Harris. Marlow also shot some video clips, and I may post those later today.

REBarcamp Seattle was a lot of fun for me, mostly because I just did my own stuff and didn’t worry about it. Here’s Zillow’s Drew Meyers delivering the convocation:

On Thursday night, Scott Cowan approached Brian, asking him if he thought I might have time to talk to him on Friday. Brian laughed at the question saying, “If I know Greg Swann, he’s not going to go to any classes. Just grab his ear and ask what you want to know.”

Brian knows me better than I know myself. He signed us up to lead a session on group blogging, then later sent me off to teach a class on setting up Scenius scenes (for which I will provide better documentation Real Soon Now). Other than that, I spent my day in small offices (with incredible views) going at things one-on-one with anyone who wanted to talk to me.

Notably…

Al Lorenz is building a media empire in bucolic Lake Chelan, Washington. He wanted to learn how to build a Scenius scene, but he ended up teaching Brian and me a ton of juicy tidbits about Joomla.

Al later drove the computer Read more

February 12, 2009

The Way of the Farmer in Downtown Seattle

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ll be doing a different version of The Way of the Farmer in Seattle today. I know we won’t be able to do a lot of hands-on stuff, but still I’m keen to take on some practical, real-life marketing problems.

Here’s my syllabus, for which I have about a zillion open tabs:

  • Expired package, physical and PDF
  • Listing card, physical and PDF
  • Set up a Scenius scene
  • Engenu
    • Set up a single preview page
    • Incorporate that pages into a site
    • Add a day of previews to the site
    • Add another day of previews
    • Completely recast the structure
    • Build a site composed of PDFs
    • Engenu and real estate weblogging
      • Historics
      • Investors
    • Illustrate Beryl sites
  • Listing praxis

I don’t know what we’re doing in the way of recording today’s event, so my advice is to be there if you can. See y’all later today.

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February 11, 2009

How can you benefit from the sexiest search site in the Real Estate 2.0 world without becoming an employee? Redfin.com is going into the referrals business

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had this news last night, under embargo, but I was tied up with geek stuff. The Cliff’s Notes: In areas where Redfin.com has MLS reach but does not have its own agents on the ground, starting today it will begin offering client referrals to agents it has screened and whose performance it will monitor and publicize on its website.

What follows is a piece of an email sent me by Redfin.com CEO (and BloodhoundBlog contributor) Glenn Kelman:

Maybe this seems like deck chairs on the Titanic because it doesn’t fix sub-agency – which I agree needs to be fixed — but it seems like a step forward to us. I mentioned it when we increased our prices and offered unlimited tours, that we had one more rabbit in the hat.

Starting tomorrow Redfin is going to start connecting folks in outlying areas to real estate agents who work for other brokerages. This has been done many, many times before, and it’s something Redfin could have done years ago, given all the traffic we have in outlying areas.

The Redfin twist – and the reason we waited so long — is that we wanted to do in a customer-centric way that also works for agents. Here’s what that means:

  1. Data: We suck in data about all the agents’ deals for the past year and we survey all their clients and then we publish *everything* — reviews, deals – on a continually updated web page. We survey every new deal too. The reviews we got are mostly good – too good right now – but that’s because response rates are low for long-past deals with only happy people replying. We do show every no-response, and every deal where the agent did not provide an email address for a past sale (they can’t do that going forward).
  2. Consumer in charge: The consumer is in charge, choosing the agent he wants to work with based on all this performance data (see attached screenshot) & he can fire the agent any time – no procuring-cause, no leads, no fees for leads, & the consumer always knows what he’s signing up for.
  3. Referral fee Read more
February 9, 2009

How bad can the weather in Seattle suck? Come see the Bloodhounds this week and find out

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have been in Seattle in the late Summer, an idyllic time of year when it barely rains twenty inches a day and when the Banana Slugs start to think about snuggling up with you for warmth. I have been on Mount Rainier on Labor Day — playing in the snow.

(People say “ray-near,” but it should be pronounced “rainy-er.” I live among a bunch of mountains, but not one of them suffers from excess precipitation like Mount Rainier.)

Brian Brady and I are in Seattle later this week. We’re flying up to do a BloodhoundBlog Unchained preview, then we’re hanging out through Friday for REBarCamp Seattle.

The weather in Phoenix actually sucks right now, but, by state law, I’m forbidden to disclose just how badly it sucks. But our sucky weather is utterly nothing compared to what I have to look forward to later this week in Seattle:

Water freezes at 32 degrees. That never happens where I live, in North Central Phoenix. It can happen once or twice a Winter out in the sticks, but in town ice is something we buy at the supermarket to make Irish Whiskey more refreshing.

My plan is to go totally gnome, comfortably numb, in-to-it like an Inuit. A vast and cumbersome leather overcoat, with a sweater, a scarf, maybe even a hat. To understand how big an exception this is for me, right now I’m wearing a tee-shirt and shorts, no shoes, no socks. And I’m sweating.

Totally gnome for my presentation, too. Everything we do at Unchained is going to be hands-on, learn-by-doing, but I can’t count on being able to do that in Seattle. Instead, as with The Way of the Farmer from last May’s BloodhoundBlog Unchained, I’m going to go through a lot of hard-headed, practical stuff that you can take home and deploy at once, if you like — if you take good notes.

It seems likely to me that I’ll be sneezing and sniffling, too. I moved to Arizona from North Andover, Massachusetts, which makes Seattle look like a tropical resort. For the life of me, I cannot remember how I used to survive Read more

February 7, 2009

Thirty-three touches from the cloud: Seriously seeking CRM

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We need a CRM solution, and it’s making me crazy that we don’t have one. We wrestled with REST for a couple of years, but we never got it cranking on all cylinders, and it lacks features I don’t want to live without. Chris Johnson raves about Heap, but I’m not sure it’s everything we need.

I need help, it’s true enough.

What I want:

  • Cloud-based. I don’t want any proprietary apps running on dedicated hardware. I want to be able to do my CRM business from any web-enabled computer and any iPhone anywhere.
  • iPhone empowered, therefore, of course. Needs to integrate with Contacts, iCal, etc., and it needs to sync periodically through the cloud.
  • Email-based data entry. Heap can do at least some of this. What I would like is to be able to have a form on a web page produce an email that is mailed to my CRM, with that email initiating a sequence of events: Create client record and initiate a particular set of sequences of follow-up contacts. These should be selectable by the email received: Investors should be subscribed to different campaigns from sellers or first-time home buyers.
  • Jott-able. Heap does some of this, also.
  • As tightly-integrated with Google Apps as possible. For example, I want the calendar to be the Google Apps calendar.
  • Action scripts or event scripts or whatever, as automated as possible, ideally already scripted with the text already written. By now we’re talking about the “33 touches” idea from The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but I want as much of this as possible to happen automatically and hands-free. As above, there will be different “8×8” scripts for new clients, and possibly also different “33 touches” scripts, but, once these are assigned, I want for them to proceed “untouched by human hands.” Agent 360 seems to be well-equipped in this regard.
  • Action scripts that require real live human action should create to-do lists for the affected team members.
  • We own our own data. That means we have the ability to move our data off in a usable format whenever we want, and our data is never shared with anyone else.
  • Simple to use, with Read more
February 3, 2009

Are You an Innie or an Outie? The Answer May Be an Ancient Chinese Secret

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, The Story of Success.  I found it a facinating read.  If you have not yet read his book, or any of his others, I strongly suggest it.  The premise of Outliers discusses the contributing factors, opportunities and cultural legacies that help shape the outcomes of individuals whom we recognized as highly successful.

One of the most enlightening discussions in the book provides perhaps a new perspective as to why people of Asian decent traditionally outperform people of Western cultures in math.  We often believe that academic achievement is attributed to IQ and intellect, yet Gladwell’s explanation is more basic.  It may very well relate to how Asians count and the character length of the actual numeric characters allowing them to retain more information in a smaller period of time.  Again, I found the author’s insight facinating.

Success is not solely a factor of intellect.  At a certain point, cultural influences/rules and situational circumstances contribute more to why an individual or individuals are successful.  Even more at the core of real success are the long hours of dedicated hard work.

I began thinking about how this all relates to the nature of real estate, both as a professional as well as the profession itself.

No doubt, we are currently experiencing a significant confluence of events both culturally and economically.  The theory that real estate was a fairly sure bet, rarely if ever losing value has been more than proven wrong.  Business models which leverage technology are not offering transformational change in how value is created in the real estate transaction.

Why did Rockerfeller become wealthy?  Gladwell surmizes that he became wealthy due primarily to his time of birth, coupled with America’s dynamic economic transformation.  Along with his hard work, his fate collided with enormous opportunity.  It seems Bill Gates too collided with good timing – he came of age during the era of the birth of the personal computer.

It takes more than just smarts to make it to the top.

I sense we are again at a cross roads of transformational change, both culturally and economically today with even farther reaching Read more

January 21, 2009

Selling real estate the engenu way: Because I can make content-rich web sites so easily, I can make my points more convincingly

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Can premium rental homes in suburban Phoenix throw off positive cash-flow at 75% of market rents?

An investor asked me that question the other day. It’s an academic problem, really, a matter of costing out typical homes to see how they perform under that scenario.

I can do that much standing on my head, but answering a question like that with a spreadsheet is not terribly satisfying. We live in a data-rich world, and I wanted for my investor to understand exactly what we were talking about. So not just the spreadsheet, but also MLS listings of typical homes. And not just the listings, but also detailed photos of those homes, with descriptions of what might be wrong with each one.

In fact, I could have answered the question any way I wanted, from tap-dancing on the telephone to an attempt to set a showing appointment. But I know from experience that the more questions I can answer in a completely credible fashion, the greater my chances of forging a long-term client relationship.

And that’s a big “Duh!” — isn’t it? How would I want to be treated if I were thinking of dropping some substantial fraction of a million dollars on investment real estate?

And this is where engenu comes in. I can shoot the spreadsheet across immediately, as an appetizer. But I’m not selling spreadsheets, I’m selling houses, so I put together a list of houses that I thought might be financially impressive. I toured each one, taking photos of everything, then came home and built an engenu web site from my findings.

I’ve been talking about engenu for nearly a year, but I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten the point all the way across. We use engenu to build our single-property web sites and to provide supporting documentation when we blog about homes for sale. We use it as a way of previewing homes for out-of-town buyers and investors, and as a way of communicating staging advice to our sellers. The language of real estate is photography, and engenu enables us to build (and rebuild) large, photo-rich web sites with minimal effort.

So: I came Read more

January 18, 2009

A Tale of Two Paradigms

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

Glenn Kelman’s recent Call to Arms brought to light for me the two  paradigms that exist within the realm of transacting real estate – the traditional broker/agent-centric view and the evolving consumer-centric view.  Ultimately both paradigms attempt to better serve the consumer, however, the perspectives are very different.

Glenn’s post queries why traditional brokers, i.e agent-centric business model, don’t embrace the consistent measure of customer satisfaction on an agent by agent basis after the completion of a transaction.   The question is extremely valid – measuring customer satisfaction is a way to preserve the integrity of the broker and/or agents’ brand.

I question the validity of the metric – customer satisfaction – what is the criteria?  In fact Glenn asked, “how do you measure customer satisfaction?”   Defining the criteria is critical to measuring the ultimate value of the outcome – is 9 out of 10 a valid measure?  What does 9 mean?

I’ve held the QSC – Quality Service Certified – Certification for almost 6 years.  After each transaction, a third party administers a survey to measure how satisfied my clients were with the service level I provide.  Interestingly, never once in 6 years have I had a potential client or prospect contact me because of my rating.   In an agent-centric model, I measure customer sat by referral and repeat clients.  I get measured on a scale from 1 to 5 and have been able to maintain a high level of satisfaction, but ultimately my clients have spoken more effectively about my skills and knowledge rather than my score.

While it may be important to know whether or not a particular consumer may recommend or even use the services of an agent and/or broker, I believe I need to know the “why?”.

The question has been asked many different times – what do consumers want?  Again, Glenn asserts that consumers are seeking more metrics on agents.  Depending upon whether or not a client is buying or selling, their wants have remained fairly consistent.

Buyers want assistance finding the the right home.  They also want help negotiating the sales terms and price.

Sellers want to price their homes competively Read more

January 18, 2009

From Blogs to Klogs: How Blogging Will Become Useful

by

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

Blogging is a fad and by definition, it will eventually run its course and fade away to a small niche. Blogs will be the bell-bottom pants of Web 2.0. The technology of Blogging will not go away, but the style of what we now do on Blogs will change significantly and will be renamed “Klogs” (more on that later).

How can I make such a claim in the face of overwhelming statistics documenting the growth and popularity of Blogs? That’s an easy question. My answer: because this is a Blog post and I can spew whatever opinion I wish and the only thing you can do is try to out-spew me with your own opinion. But spewing opinions is not what is going to undo Blogging – lack of civility will keep Blogs out of the mainstream.  Simply put, corporate leaders have not embraced the Blogosphere because many Blogs often spiral down into a pit of venom and character assassination while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. Many Blogs revel in being snarky because it gets them quick exposure and generates lots of readers and comments. It is all in good fun until someone gets their eye poked out.

Corporate leaders are fearful of Blogs because these freeform formats of fun are too risky for the image of the Company.  Sure, many corporations have started a Blog, but most are tame, humorless, boring sites used for product promotion and press releases.  The NAR Blog is a good example of that.  These are not real Blogs because the writers are not free to say what they think; rather, they must say what the company wants to say/hear.

Because there is not widespread adoption of Blogging on the corporate level – and VERY few individuals are making money off their Blogs – I can only draw the conclusion that Blogging will fade away to the fashion status of bell-bottoms, or at least not reach a significant level in business communications.  Without adoption by the business community, Blogging will not have sustainable cache’ and, I believe, has almost peaked in popularity.

Currently there are about 4 Blog readers Read more

January 15, 2009

The Wild Wonderful Web We Weave. How tightly wound it will be.

by

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Author website

Yesterday was Teri Lussier’s Birthday in case you missed it.  If you did, then by all means go and give her your well wishes already.

Aside from working on your birthday, Teri and I have a few things in common.  Beyond real estate, our shared interest might have a lot to do with why I’m writing on Bloodhound.   A little over a year ago, after reading this blog for probably a year-plus prior, she pulled me out of lurking and into commenting on this post about twitter. It was not the utility of twitter that was as much of interest, but rather the evolving way that we communicate with one another on the WWW.   Twitter, as we all knew was offering a new line of communication at the time in the micro-blogging arena, and Teri was sharing her thoughts on the concept by using a shared favorite film as a metaphor.

It was her use of something that was of great interest to me that attracted me to her post.   Timing, curiosity, and a shared interest can start relationships in a heartbeat. Since then, Teri and I have become friends on and offline.  Meeting last year at Bloodhound Unchained in Phoenix and again at REBlogWorld in Vegas.

I value her viewpoint and honesty as I do everyone I have come across that contribute to Bloodhound.   Being so, we occasionally message each other with ideas or join in what has been dubbed a scenius.

None of this is ground breaking except for the idea that it is becoming easier to connect.  Since I spend so much time in the machine, I rarely take a step back in reflection as I did yesterday morning.

What Teri said via email is what got me started:

” I’m quite partial to grainy B&W foreign movies… a joke… sorta…. Brad will laugh.

I went on YouTube to search for a trailer for Wings of Desire” to send to Teri in a message and what I came across was fascinating to me.   There is a whole sub-culture of people on YouTube that have edited different music over the top of parts of the 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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