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Category: The Odysseus Medal (page 6 of 7)

September 23, 2007

Voting for The People Choice Award: The long and short of short-listing Odysseus Medal nominations

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Week by week, I’m seeing more and more great Odysseus Medal nominations. To get to a short-list of twenty posts — which still may be too long — I’m having to cut some very good weblog entries. In consequence, this week I’m showing the rest of the long-list as well as the short-list of People’s Choice candidates.

In both lists, the posts are shown in random order. People will tend to favor the top or bottom of a list, so I’m trying flatten the curve of outbound clicks so everyone gets the exposure.

Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon PDT/MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

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Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.

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September 17, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: Propagating better ideas in real estate by celebrating better ideas in real estate

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is probably not much of a secret, but I really love ideas. I think the argument that smart people can improve the NAR cartel from the inside is absurd, but the instant form of the claim — that I could advance Realtors’ use of technology by wasting my time at committee meetings — is especially specious. It’s no goal of mine to change any life but my own, but, even so, the best technological benefit I can bring to Realtors, lenders, investors and thoughtful consumers is right here: Explicating our own new ideas and and drawing attention to other peoples’ innovations. Ideas are an attribute of active minds, and minds and meetings are sets with the tiniest of intersections.

Among all the other virtues I might claim for it, The Odysseus Medal competition is a celebration of great ideas in real estate. Here are this week’s winners:

This week’s Odysseus Medal goes to Dan Melson for Should Lenders Be Permitted to Sell Real Estate?:

Let us ask about real estate which has become owned by the lender. Why should lenders lack an ability shared by every other citizen, resident, illegal alien, and even people who have never set foot in the country – the ability to sell their own property? There’s no requirement for anyone else to use an agent. It may be smart to use an agent, but everyone else has the legal right to go it on their own. Why not lenders?

I’ll tell you why. Because not only would lenders being able to get into the business threaten the interests of the major chains that control most real estate, but this requires lenders to pay those same firms money if they want to get the property from their bad loans sold – and they need to get the property sold.

I have to admit, I’m not exactly eager to compete with yet more big corporations with huge advertising budgets. It remains the right thing to do. Right for the industry, and right for the consumers. As I’ve said many times before, rent-seeking is repugnant, and that’s what NAR is doing – seeking Read more

September 16, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We had a ton of very strong entries this week. I had to eliminate more than half to get to a short list of twenty nominees. If you didn’t make the cut, don’t despair. You’ll come back even stronger next week. Everything was terrific, a real treat for me going through them. These twenty survivors are must-reading.

Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon PDT/MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here or, more easily, here.

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September 14, 2007

Deadline looms for Odysseus Medal competition: Act now or weep incessantly Sunday afternoon

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are already a couple dozen nominees for this week’s Odysseus Medal competition. What are we missing? Only you know for sure. The deadline for nominations is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST, but if you know of something orbiting the skirts of perfection, your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now while it’s on your mind.

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September 10, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Superior taste, no overdone sugar coating which only masks the real product, and no nuts”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It is my honor and privilege to work with some of the best writers in the RE.net. There are other folks I deeply admire but whom it would be unseemly for one reason or another to recruit. But the people who write for BloodhoundBlog are first among the first rank, whether they are writing here or at their home weblogs. The Odysseus Medal competition gives me a chance to savor great writing from other great writers, so I am not twice-blessed but dozens-blessed every week — as are you.

Here are the winners of this week’s Odysseus Medal competition:

This week’s Odysseus Medal goes to Kris Berg for News You Can Use – Real Estate is a Business:

Any new agent who steps foot in the Broker’s door without basic technology skills or a strong desire to learn and embrace technology, should ahead of anything else be given a 2.0 crash course. A canned, unmanned page on your Broker’s site is not good enough; yourname@aol.com is not good enough. What they need to teach and you need to possess is a commitment to continuing education and an aching hunger to understand as much as you possibly can about the countless technological tools at your disposal in the big, wide world out there. Your business depends on it. Eighty-six your planned recipe card mailer, and reallocate that money and time to establishing and growing an online, relevant presence.

This post is a string of stunning Black Pearls all on its own.

But: This week’s Black Pearl Award belongs to Jonathan Dalton for Sell Your Phoenix Real Estate in Two Weeks. Not as local as the title makes it sound:

Take your home’s value back in November 2004 before the run began. Compute what your home’s value would be based on 5% annual appreciation. Then take the last sales price (or prices for currently active homes) and find the midpoint between that price and your adjusted home value.

For example: your home was worth $200,000 in 2004. Assuming 5% annual appreciation, your home would be worth roughly $231,000 now. If currently active homes are selling at $270,000, split the difference – $250,000.

Congratulations. You Read more

September 9, 2007

Voting for this week’s People’s Choice Award is open

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Vote here.

The short list just keeps getting longer. I’d apologize, but I’m cutting ruthlessly. We’re just getting a lot of truly excellent entrants.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon PDT/MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short list of nominees.

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September 9, 2007

Last call for Odysseus Medal nominees

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I changed the graphic at the top of the page for the better part of last week, an homage to Kris Berg’s excellent post, but I don’t think anyone noticed.

We have a bunch of great entries for The Odysseus Medal, but only you know what we’re missing out on. Deadline is 12 Noon PDT/MST, so make your nominations now.

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September 7, 2007

You can use the No-Hassle iPhone to hang up on the NAR, but first attend to those Odysseus Medal nominations

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Wanna hear something amazing? Twenty-one months into the downturn, and the NAR is still adding new members. Not much growth, mind you — not cancerous growth — but growth is growth.

I want to get back to the idea of alternatives to the NAR, but I’ve been busy — that’s because the real estate market is bad.

Dan Green and Tom Royce are all over the idea, but, among other things, I’ve been busy selling a Russell Shaw listing. Definitely no-hassle on my end. His team members are as sweet and thoroughgoing as the man himself.

Meanwhile, Apple’s stock price is down for three days running, so Robert X. Cringely hints that it’s time to buy. What did he miss? The show-stopper at the end of the Leopard product release is going to be a 16GB iPhone for $499. You heard it here first.

Why would you need that much memory in a mobile phone? So you can watch the Compleat Russell Shaw on the flight home from Christmas at Grandma’s, of course.

But: Until then, there is an Odysseus Medal competition to consider. Deadline for nominations is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST, but if you know of something insanely great, your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now while it’s on your mind.

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September 3, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Government was never intended to bail out corporations”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I was at a party Saturday night, and everyone kept telling that it’s a great time to buy. I’ve been showing all weekend, so, who knows?, maybe it’s true. In any case, I’m short on minutes, so we’ll do this week’s awards on horseback.

The Minnesota Association of Realtors has a peculiar talent for inviting scorn and ridicule. This year’s fun-fest, the winner of our People’s Choice Award, was kicked off by Teresa Boardman, with Has MAR forgotten who pays the bills?

I would love it if half of the agents in the twin cities quit. That would mean more money and more business for me. It just doesn’t work that way and it never will. When it gets easy everyone wants to do it, and they do. When the going gets rough they quit.

Glen, your letter is just another example of how an industry in turmoil has started eating it’s young to protect old business models instead of innovating to better serve the consumer. Real estate is a self eliminating market driven profession. It works on the principals of supply and demand, as does the housing market.  When agents can’t make ends meet they will seek employment outside the industry and maybe they will sell a few homes too. We call our economic system capitalism and I just love the almost endless opportunities the system brings. Anyone can start their own business, how cool is that? 

You don’t get to decide who will stay and who will go based on earnings and years in the business. Each of us will make that decision on our own.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Morgan Brown’s Taking advantage of convertible home equity lines of credit, which teaches us how to encumber a Jumbo-priced property without a Jumbo loan:

Instead of taking the whole loan balance as a 1st position HELOC, take a conforming 1st mortgage up to $417,000 and then take the remaining as a convertible HELOC. Once you sign the loan documents you can convert the HELOC to a fixed rate and achieve a blended interest rate (the effective interest rate of Read more

September 2, 2007

The People’s Choice Award voting is open: Vote for your choice of the best RE.net posts this week

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The voting for this week’s People’s Choice Award is open. The short list is not short — 24 entries — but it’s rich in quality writing.

Voting will run until Monday at 12 noon PDT/MST. The ballot form will permit you to read every article, but here are the links to the nominated posts:

The Odysseus Medal competition is a weekly carnival of the very best weblog posts in the RE.net. If you would like to compete — or to nominate someone else’s excellent work — this is the nomination form.

I’ll announce this week’s winners tomorrow early afternoon.

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August 31, 2007

Have a great Labor Day, but don’t leave town without submitting your Odysseus Medal entries

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cathy just made me think of this, bless her beautiful soul. Deadline for this week’s Odysseus Medal competition is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST. The People’s Choice voting is Sunday afternoon as usual, so take a break form your end of summer reveling to cast a ballot. But take care of those nominations now, before you forget. You can nominate yourself or any post you admire here or, more easily, here.

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August 27, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: Keeping pace with a very fast crowd

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I am in love with this idea, The Odysseus Medal competition.

We judged ordinary Carnivals several times, and I was persistently underwhelmed with the overall quality of the entries. We judged hard, so the winners were truly worthy of their honors. But too many of the also-ran entries were just link-bait, entered solely to get the link back from the judging weblog.

We have none of that. I cut pretty ruthlessly to get to the short list, but we get nothing that is wildly off-topic or trooly stoopid — or stolen from another site. Instead, we’re seeing some insanely great posts, and picking just one winner is proving to be a very welcome but very difficult task.

It’s that way for you folks, too. I can tell by the People’s Choice voting, which is always broad and deep.

Together as writers, readers and judges, we are building something that matters, something that calls enduring attention to works of the mind that might otherwise just scroll away. The winners are worthy of note, to be sure, but simply to make the short list in this competition is a mark of excellence. If you make it this far, you’re keeping pace with a very fast crowd, an achievement hard to match.

And with that, to the winners:

Jeff Turner wrote an excellent post on why real estate video is unlikely to supplant virtual tours. I agree with his take and then some, and it’s something I’ve been meaning to write more about. But there are other, better uses for video in real estate. I’ve discussed a couple — videotaping your first tour of a home at the listing appointment, or taping the final walkthrough as a gift to the buyers. Russell Shaw brings us another, using video as a real estate sales training tool. Russ is just getting his sea-legs in the oceans of do-it-yourself video podcasting, but his initial effort won him this week’s People’s Choice Award.

Who is not rapt paying attention to the world of mortgage lending? Yesterday at open house, seemingly, it was all anyone wanted to talk about. As the Times rundown on Countrywide makes Read more

August 26, 2007

Voting for this week’s People’s Choice Award is open

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Another not-very-short list of posts. We set out to attract the best, and we’re seeing it and then some.

Vote here.

These are this week’s nominees:

Voting will end Monday at noon, and I’ll announce the winners soon thereafter.

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