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Month: July 2006 (page 4 of 6)

July 20, 2006

7 (or more) creative ways to market your property in a cold housing market…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Real Estate Investing For Real Blog cites 7 Creative Ways to Market Your Property in a Cold Housing Market:

Properties are not getting multiple offers and selling within hours of listing anymore. Things have calmed down a bit across most of the country, and properties are now sitting on the market. The traditional method of listing your property with a real estate agent and waiting for people to buy isn’t going to cut it anymore, unless you price very aggressively.

What can you do? The market has gotten a bit cold – showing a definite slowdown. If you insist on holding out for top dollar, you may get a bit creative…

Some of the ideas suggested are better than others. Here’s my deal: For every one I don’t like, I’ll post a replacement suggestion. At the end, we’ll have seven for seven, just not necessarily the same seven.

  1. Auctions.
    I don’t love this. If you come in without a minimum bid, you risk giving up the house for peanuts. If you do have a minimum, you risk getting no bids. Auctions work well where demand is high or price is low. My alternative idea: Auction the house (with a reserved minimum bid) on EBay.com. Reveal this fact to every starry-eyed reporter in town. The buzz could sell the house if the auction doesn’t.
  2. Use all the mania in social networking to create buzz.
    Among whom? And assuming there’s a whom, why would they be buzzed about a house for sale? Try this instead: Put a great ad on CraigsList.com every other day. REIFRBlog continues:
    Create a simple website for your property, then post creative titles on the social sites like del.icio.us or reddit.
    Okay, but better yet, create a nice, clean weblog for the property, with an extensive web site as ancillary support — with dozens of photos — then promote it as a part of every other bit of marketing you do. This REIFRBlog list suggest many types of internet social marketing among distant strangers, but, in fact, your marketing should be targeted to people who really are likely to buy your home — for example, people currently Read more
July 20, 2006

Drop a dime on a relo, win $50

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

I have a listing that’s been on the market since June 15. I know, that’s only a bit over a month… not too long in today’s market. But, this is a gorgeous, well appointed house in a great community, with really smart sellers. They keep the home immaculate, it shows beautifully and it’s priced well, comping to or even less than what the same model in the same subdivision sold for last autumn, after last summer’s rabid housing boom in Phoenix had ended. We didn’t try to edge the price up, like so many sellers are still trying to do. And the house has been marketed well. I’m proud of the differentiating factors we bring to our marketing. I’m not talking about the typical post-in-the-ground, ad-in-the-paper and flyer-in-the-box, but the kind of marketing that I believe Seth Godin might give a nod to if we were on his radar.

When I met with the sellers last night, I couldn’t give a good explanation as to why the house hadn’t even shown since the end of June. Sure, the market has slowed. But there are still folks out there buying houses. Perhaps conventional wisdom would have them lower their asking price, but I don’t believe price is the factor. I explained that theirs is a move up house and until someone lower on the food chain is able to sell his house, he won’t have any freedom of movement. My idea all along has been that this is a great house for a relocation. Yesterday Greg posted this from the Business Journal of Phoenix:

A new report by a research group called Federal Funds Information for States ranks Arizona first among states in terms of economic momentum.

And the day before, this came from from the same publication:

Quick, what do Mesa and Milwaukee have in common?

The two tied as the least vulnerable to natural disaster among the nation’s 50 largest cities. But Mesa wasn’t the only Arizona city to land near the top of the list created by SustainLane.com. Phoenix and Tucson tied for the No. 3 spot along with Cleveland and El Paso, Texas.

So Read more

July 20, 2006

Is pet rescue good for business, or are we just chasing our Long Tail…?

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

This past week, Noah’s Ark Pet Adoptions, a no-kill animal “shelter” and adoption organization, was featured in the Northwest Valley Republic. The picture to the right is from the article. If you click on it, the full article will display.

I’m always looking for ways to support this fine organization, by fostering unwanted pets who need permanent homes, by adopting pets (current family includes four dogs and nine cats), by donating money and by promoting them in any way I can.

On the “Refer a friend” page of our website, we make this offer:

And because charity begins at home, if someone you refer buys or sells a home with us, we’ll donate 10% of our net commission to the charity of your choice (within limits — we won’t give money to people who kill people). You get to share BloodhoudRealty.com with people you love, and you get to share the proceeds with the people who need your love. Everybody wins!

And, if the referrer has no ‘pet project’ of her own, we’ll suggest Noah’s Ark. From our “About us” page, in the section about me, Cathleen Collins, we say

She devotes most of her spare time and all of her spare money to rescuing unwanted animals — including our Spokesmodel, Odysseus.

Now the interesting thing about this page is we ran stats yesterday on the key phrase people had typed into the search engine they used to click through to our site. We opened up the survey to every search engine and every phrase. Eighth on the list of unique search terms that brought people to our site was “no kill animal shelters in Phoenix”!

Now how to turn that Long Tail into gold!

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July 20, 2006

When is the best time to buy? When everyone else is selling…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I think this is exceptionally good advice from Craig King at RealBlogging.com:

No matter what you’re selling, conventional wisdom is that the FUD Factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt) tends to freeze buyers in their tracks. Purchases get delayed. Decisions take longer. Buyers follow the maxim, “When in doubt, don’t.”

At the moment, you’d think the “FUD Factor” would be a big cloud over the real estate market. Israel and Hezbollah have broken out into open warfare, and the conflict could broaden throughout the Middle East. Oil prices are skyrocketing, and supply is all but certain. Iran and North Korea are rattling nuclear sabers. And back home, we’re enduring a drought and bracing for a new hurricane season.

In short, I think it’s a great time to be buying — and selling — real estate. Real property has always been an investment haven in troubled times, and I believe it will play that role in the months ahead. Interest rates are still extremely low by any sane historical standard, and the Fed appears to be through with its tightening for a while. Volatility of stock prices has a lot of investors worn down and impatient with mediocre or negative returns. It may not happen overnight, but in times like this, people “return to the land.”

If we do a good job of telling our story, I think prospects will realize it’s a time to buy, not a time to stall.

There’s more to this, though. I spent 16 months racing around with investors while they bought everything that didn’t move, all the while wondering why they couldn’t find any bargains. Duh! Everyone else was buying at the same time, and no one was selling. Now the situation is reversed, a lot of sellers but buyers are thin on the ground. It’s counter-contrarianism, a carefully thought-out strategy of running with the herd.

Take a look at the cost break-downs on our investments page for Phoenix-area rental homes. Those are rigorous numbers, no blue-sky fantasies, but they still hold. It’s easy to get a 1,200sf home that will perform that well, and — for now at least — Read more

July 20, 2006

How much does The Long Tail weigh? Here’s a better question: In The Long Tail, how long does it take to Google from last to first?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Joseph Ferrara at sellsius&176; blog asks once and then again and then a third time here: How much does The Long Tailweigh?

Chris Anderson, the author of the book, has some answers, but they vary from industry to industry. But from my own point of view in real estate, The Long Tail is a very promising source of choice opportunities. If you can conceive of an under-served niche market where the product is avidly sought, even if only by a small minority of the buyer population, you have a business. This much is not news. We’ve had luxury home and vacation home and historic home specialists forever. The difference is Google, which is surely The Lord Of The Long Tail.

Consider this as an example:

I wrote my web page on No Dual Agency on June 28, 2006. I linked to it internally within our own site, but the page had no in-bound links, nor did I pursue any. On July 7, I ran this search, jut to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. My page had Googled up from nowhere to first place in nine days on the strength of content alone, with zero in-bound links.

But wait. There’s more. I first mentioned our No Dual Agency policy in BloodhoundBlog on June 29, but the first time I weblogged it as its own topic was on July 14 — Bastille Day.

On July 17, Jim Duncan of Real Central VA wrote a post called Dual Agency — Who benefits?, linking back to me. I saw the trackback and commented on his weblog.

Guess what happened?

Take another look at that Google search. Jim’s post is in second place. In three days — two days, really; I saw it yesterday.

This is truly a Long Tail keyword. In quotes, “no dual agency” yields 290 hits total. And it is probably vain to expect home buyers or sellers to sit down at the computer and type “no dual agency” into the Google box. But the basic point stands: First and second place are held — for now — by two web sites that weren’t even in the game on June Read more

July 20, 2006

How do you grow from 8,000 people to a million in 25 years? Do it the Buckeye way…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you don’t live in Arizona, or even if you do, it may help to put a little background on the Town of Buckeye, until lately a proud if tiny outpost in the midst of the wide Sonoran Desert west of Phoenix. Buckeye was the point in the car trip when thoughtful and experienced fathers would shout out, “Heads up, kids. This is your last chance to use the potty before we get to California.” This was not literally true, but Buckeye was at the frontier of a land where public facilities of any kind could be hours apart.

That’s all changing, of course. They discovered a huge aquifer under Buckeye, and now it’s on track to be the fourth, third, or even second most-populous city in Arizona — and possibly the largest in land area. From the Arizona Republic:

Buckeye is a place where the best breakfast in town is right on Main Street, where a man still feels comfortable leaving his car running as he jets inside a corner store.

It’s a place where you tell someone to meet you at “the Sonic” because there’s only one.

Signs, though, hint things soon will be sharply different for a town that could someday be as large as Phoenix. The acres of empty land are filling up with plats for homes that will make up more than 30 master-planned communities like Verrado. Town Council meetings provide standing room only and are filled with developers holding poster boards with more plans for Buckeye’s future. The numbers say the town could have 1 million people by 2025, up from about 25,000 now.

And most of those 25,000 people are new arrivals. The town’s population was 8,000 in 2000. Folks in other parts of the country have no way of getting their minds around that much growth, that fast. This is one of the signal triumphs of the Phoenix metropolitan area, sixty years of expertise at managing — and surviving — extreme growth.

At 230 square miles now, Buckeye already is larger than Tucson, Mesa and Seattle. Even one of the town’s planned communities, Douglas Ranch, is 55 square miles, larger than Tempe.

The proposed annexation would put Buckeye closer to its planning area of 600-plus square miles and further away from its past as a sleepy, rural community.

“Most people don’t have any idea how big Buckeye is,” said Bob Bushfield, its community development director. “If we continue to annex all the property around, we will be every bit as big as Phoenix.”

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July 19, 2006

“What does it feel like? Home.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dave Winer, the man who invented the incalculable wealth that is weblogging, talks about a home buyer’s sense of peace and joy when he knows he is finally home:

I bought a house in Berkeley this morning. It’s a real beauty, an 80 year-old stucco, built on a hillside, with a view of downtown SF and the Golden Gate Bridge. I spent six months looking, it was by far the best house I saw. As with my first house in Woodside, there was a moment when I knew I’d own it. In this case, it happened as I walked in the front door. The place has a magic feel to it. What does it feel like? Home.

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July 19, 2006

“Arizona first among states in terms of economic momentum”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Business Journal of Phoenix:

Arizona ranks well in terms of economic growth and potential, according to a study released Tuesday.

A new report by a research group called Federal Funds Information for States ranks Arizona first among states in terms of economic momentum.

The FFIS study found Arizona with strong growth in terms of jobs, personal income and population. Nevada ranked second, Louisiana last.

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July 19, 2006

Strike the Big Top!: BloodhoundBlog to host Carnival of Real Estate October 9th

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’ll post reminders as the date draws nigh, but be sure to hoard all your really good blog ideas for the week of October 2. That way, we’ll be able to feature them when we host the Carnival of Real Estate on October 9th. This week’s Carnival is at Zillow Blog. Next week, the big show moves to Searchlight Crusade, and from there to The Future of Real Estate Marketing, one of our favorite weblogs. It will be a while before the carny caravan pulls into Phoenix — but that just means you’ll have plenty of time to think up really good posts!

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July 19, 2006

Location, location, location: Refusing Dual Agency puts Realtors above reproach . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I may have stirred up a hornet’s nest on the subject of No Dual Agency. Jim Duncan at Real Central VA posted his thoughts, and the sellsius° real estate blog posted a round-up, asking Are Buyers Customers or Clients? From Arizona, taking a trip Back East is also taking a trip back in time: Agency as it is understood in New York has been absent from this remote cultural backwater for at least 15 years.

That’s as may be. I work in Arizona. Plus which, if seller sub-agency is not already in the past in your state, buyer agency is definitely in your future. There’s a new sheriff in town.

This is all to the good, by me. The slim justification for our licenses is consumer protection, and it seem obvious to me that exclusive representation is the only way to achieve truly transparent protection for both of the parties to a real estate transaction.

Ardell DellaLoggia, in comments posted here, seems to disagree:

Due to the internet access of homes for sale, the trend is UP and not DOWN with regard to buyers calling listing agents direct vs. seeking separate and distinct representation. When the Buyer Consumer chooses to call the listing agent, if you outlaw Dual Agency, you leave them with NO representation at all.

It sounds good to say “outlaw Dual Agency”, but it leaves the Buyer Consumer back where they started, if and when they call the listing agent direct, with NO representation whatsoever.

I see that as a false dichotomy. In that circumstance, the listing agent can either refer the buyer to one of several trusted buyer’s agents (we do this) or simply advise the buyer to seek separate representation. The Buyer’s Broker’s commission is already built in to the MLS listing. There is no reason for the buyer not to seek representation.

Prove my point, Greg. Buyer calls you on your listing and only wants to deal with you personally when making an offer on your listing. Where do you go with that scenario if Dual Agency is “outlawed”, without leaving the buyer high and dry with regard to representation in the Read more

July 18, 2006

Are traditional Realtors being undercut? There’s always room at the top . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Let’s see… Our customers are leaving us in a steady march. They’ve found an alternative that is easier to use, more convenient, overall just a better fit to their lives — and to top it all off, it’s much cheaper than our product.

What should we do?

Here’s an idea. Our customers are telling us in no uncertain terms what they want: More! Newer! Better! Faster! Cheaper! So let’s do the same things we’ve been doing all along, only less!

From Reuters.com:

The New York Times Co. plans to narrow the size of its flagship newspaper and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday.

The changes, set to take place in April 2008, include the closure of a printing plant in Edison, New Jersey. The company will sublet the plant and consolidate its regional printing facilities at a plant in Queens, the paper said.

The newspaper will be narrower by 1 1/2 inches. The redesign will result in the loss of 250 production jobs, the company said.

The New York Times said it expected the changes to result in savings of $42 million.

The narrower format, offset by some additional pages, will reduce the space the paper has for news by 5 percent, Executive Editor Bill Keller said in the article.

The Times will join a list of several other papers from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times that have reduced their size as they cut newsprint and other production costs and try to stem a loss of readers and advertising to the Internet and other media.

It might be fun to chortle about someone else’s troubles — and who doesn’t love seeing the New York Times get it good and hard?

But what they are doing is what the real estate industry, in general, is doing. In both cases, the consequences are likely to be unhappy. The Times would argue that theirs is strictly a financial decision, but it’s one that is likely to be repeated over time, a persistent policy of retrenchment. And even if its customers are not consciously Read more

July 18, 2006

If there is a nexus conjoining the subsets of paradise, it might just be… Mesa, Arizona…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Three suburban Phoenix cities made Money magazine’s list of the 100 best place in America to live: Scottsdale got in, of course. In high school, Scottsdale was voted ‘most likely to be picked first for everything.’ And bucolic Gilbert made the list: Good schools and white-fenced horse properties — like catnip to big-city alley-cats who want desperately to be Connecticut fat-cats instead. But, perhaps as a surprise to some, Mesa also made the cut — and it came in third among cities over 300,000 in population.

From the East Valley Tribune:

Clear skies, plenty of recreational opportunities and rising home values were common attributes for all of the Valley cities on this year’s list, yet each of them had a unique personality that helped it stand out.

Mesa, for instance, was favored because it’s a relatively affordable place to live.

Scottsdale has a lot of golf courses and other recreational opportunities.

Gilbert has seen exceptional job growth, and its residents are among the highest earners in the Valley.

But wait. There’s more good news for Mesans. From the Business Journal:

Quick, what do Mesa and Milwaukee have in common?

The two tied as the least vulnerable to natural disaster among the nation’s 50 largest cities. But Mesa wasn’t the only Arizona city to land near the top of the list created by SustainLane.com. Phoenix and Tucson tied for the No. 3 spot along with Cleveland and El Paso, Texas.

We’ve said all along that the Phoenix metropolitan area is the most disaster-proof region in America.

Here’s an interesting question, though: Given that Mesa and Phoenix are essentially the same place, two huge cities separated only by svelte Tempe, why would Phoenix rank third and Mesa first?

Here’s a theory: At the same time that Phoenix was voting to raise property taxes, Mesa was cutting its taxes to the quick. Could it be that property taxes are the most perilous disaster of all?

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July 18, 2006

The sky is always falling — except when it isn’t…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Foreclosures are up in Arizona for the first six months of 2006, as compared with the last six months of 2005. The will be cause for sustained gloating at the Arizona Republic, so here is the real news, from the Business Journal of Phoenix, before it goes through the Spin Cycle:

Although the 8,321 Arizona filings in the first two quarters of 2006 represent an increase compared to the last six months of 2005, the number is down by about 800 from the first six months of 2005.

Maricopa County accounted for the bulk of foreclosure activity, 5,215 actions, for the first six months of the year. However, the majority of defaults are being settled prior to the actual foreclosure sale of the property, according to Foreclosures.com figures. About 1,100 Arizona properties initially in foreclosure came under new ownership in the first half of 2006.

McGee also said home prices will not crash like they did in the early 1990s. “Back then, overbuilding by developers led to excess inventory and what we call competitive liquidation of unsold new homes,” she said. “This time, the inventory just isn’t there.”

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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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