As of now, this is what I get there:
This kind of crap only happens to the WarBlogs…
Month: September 2006 (page 15 of 15)
I wrote this almost three years ago, reflecting back on Labor Day 2003. I happened to think of it this week when I heard a piece of Bob Dylan’s new album. With a few truly remarkable exceptions, a couple of which are discussed here, Dylan has been phoning it in since he met Andy Warhol — who taught him that pigs will eat anything. And, yes, I’m off-topic again. And, no, I don’t know if I’ll do something like this every week. But this post dips at least one toe into the depths of depth, so it’s entirely possibly that you will emerge from this experience enriched, edified — or at least, I can hope, entertained.
Peter Pan at the CD rack…
It doesn’t matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel that I’ll convey
Some inner truth of vast reflection
But I’ve said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it don’t matter who you are
If I’m doing my job then it’s your resolve that breaks
I’ve been thinking a lot about The Blues, which literally means the endlessly replicated, superficially variegated, ultimately massively redundantly meaningless Blues that was the focus of the Scorcese documania.
I said something stupid
Then I went and said it twice
Lord, I said something truly stupid
Didn’t I go off and say it twice?
I sold you the same old thing again
And suckered you in to paying full price
(I suckered you in to paying full price)
And that’s okay, really, because it’s stupid and useless and wrong, and just exactly as valuable as the paleolithic pottery people go ape over — for exactly the same reasons. The Blues is a primitive non-art made by people who had nothing to make art from — no instruments, no training, and no real talent except for a knack for hustling suckers. And that’s why this is such a wonderful work of art:
Because the hook brings you back
I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can relyThere is something amiss
I am being insincere
In fact I don’t mean any of this
Still my confession draws Read more
Labor Day is a day ostensibly set aside in our nation’s calendar to celebrate America’s workers by… taking off work. This has never made sense to me. Fortunately, Greg is of like mind, and so we celebrate Labor Day by working! We truly love our work, and this year, this week I am blessed with so many reasons to rejoice in the work we do.
I met Jurij and Tatiania in June 2005, as the madly escalating Phoenix housing market was racing through its two-year crescendo. I was representing buyers who were relocating to Phoenix, previewing houses for them, and Jurij and Tatiania were selling a house that had been, at the time, listed for about two months in a market where houses were looking long in the tooth after only two weeks. I was really green in this business last summer, so I couldn’t figure out why their charming house wasn’t moving… and it had already been through two price reductions, when everyone else’s houses were selling for more than asking price.
I ended up finding my clients a house that was much better suited for them, a beautiful old Craftsman bungalow that they are still thrilled about and which should eventually be very profitable for them when the time comes for them to move on. But before we found that one, my clients had me returning to Jurij’s and Tatiania’s house again and again to explore that possibility. 
Jurij was usually at home when I got there, and during my several visits to photograph and measure his house and yard, we formed a bond over our love of dogs. He has a wonderful, playful old Yellow Lab, Jake, who became my fast friend, and Jurij loved my business card, on which a photograph of our Bloodhound, Odysseus, is prominent where other Realtors typically have glamour shots of themselves.
Jurij and Tatiania’s home languished during last summer’s sizzling market, and then went through another, different, unsuccessful listing… both times, I now understand, without ever having been conscientiously represented, without ever having been actually marketed. At the expiration of their second unsuccessful Read more
…at Sellsius&176; blog. Good sense abounds. I’m not campaigning for a replay, but, a year from now, when the dew is off the Zillow rose, it would be interesting to see if opinions have changed significantly. Bravo to Sellsius&176; for doing all this work in any case.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Free the Drones, a saving and investing weblog I read every day, has a post today discussing our practice of building a custom web site for every home we list. I’m thinking that I should write on that one topic at length, because the strategy is more intricate than it might seem at first glance. For now, I want to address the caveats raised by Free the Drones:
When I searched for 1102 West Culver St in Google, the website doesn’t come up in the top 50. In fact, the Bloodhound Realty Blog only comes up at number ten with a mention of the street address in the text. What’s the deal?
The problem is the word “St”, which Google might just as well throw away. Search these three for contrast.
It might be the Google Sandbox
I don’t think there is one. If there is, the penalty is measured in days, not months.
It would be a lot better for [that page’s title] to be “1102 West Culver St., Phoenix, AZ”
Absolutely right. We do it that way now. (This site was built in January.) We do each page within the site with the headline from that page, as well.
What would I do instead? I’d have a subpage about the house on the main Bloodhound Realty site, buy the domain “http://www.1101westculverst.com,” and then do a 301 Redirect, which is a way of sending anyone who types in that web site to the subpage you created. That way you can advertise the house as having its own site, and anyone who tries to go to it will be sent automatically to the place on your site that’s about the house.
This might make sense if you were selling your own home, and if you only had one page of content. We are building canonical web sites about the homes we sell. One of their very important purposes is to capture the listing for that one home again and again, every time it sells.
The caveat is that you’re going to have to do your own advertising – getting people to know about your site through something like Google is Read more
This is me in today’s Republic (permanent link), another chance at infamy:
Escape clause would help all
Believe it or not, this can be a rabble-rousing column.
Sometimes I write about the perils of dual agency or why the buyer is actually paying for everything in a real estate transaction or why buyers as well as sellers should negotiate their agent’s compensation. While these ideas might seem simple and obvious to you, in fact they are hugely controversial within the real estate industry.
When I write a column like that, my day will be punctuated by testy calls from angry Realtors and brokers.
Oh, well.
The slim justification for our real estate licenses, and the earning power accruing thereto, is service in the public’s interest.
Too much of “the way things have always been done” in real estate strikes me as being of great benefit to the brokers and the agents, but of no benefit – or even of actual harm – to buyers and sellers.
Here’s another one, sure to make the phone lines light up:
There should be a firing clause in every employment agreement.
Brokers want employment agreements because we work “on spec.” That is, we don’t get paid until we produce the agreed-upon results.
That’s a good thing. It keeps Realtors motivated.
But an exclusive employment agreement with no exit clause traps unhappy buyers and sellers with an agent who may not be producing any results or who simply may not be a good fit personally.
This is language that will suffice:
“This agreement will be terminated upon written notice by either party.”
With this clause, the broker can fire the clients, too, if that seems wise. But the important point is that clients can get out of an unhappy situation if they feel this is necessary.
Their goal, as buyers or sellers, is to achieve their real estate objectives. Buyers and sellers are not buying and selling real estate for the benefit of Realtors or brokers.
Giving consumers the power to escape an employment agreement when things just aren’t working out is the best service of their interests.
I am much constrained by the space limits of the newspaper. I wrote here on the Read more