BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: January 2007 (page 8 of 9)

January 5, 2007

BloodhoundBlog’s Brian Brady hosts Phoenix-area webloggers forum

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

About twenty Phoenix-area webloggers, many of them Active Rain participants, attended a real estate weblogging forum hosted today by BloodhoundBlog weblogger Brian Brady at the Phoenix Public Library in Downtown Phoenix.

Today’s event was a sort of get-acquainted meeting, with the attending bloggers introducing themselves and talking about their weblogging experiences and marketing goals. Brady anticipates coordinating events like this on a quarterly basis.

Cathleen Collins and I were there, along with Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy and Jonathan Dalton. In a perfect expression of the weblogging ideal, Jonathan already has an excellent post up on the event.

One of the things I spoke about, and promised to elaborate on in a post, is the push toward local content, local interest, and, especially, local inbound links. I’ll write that up over the weekend.

Afterward, Brian, Cathleen and I spoke at length about Big Picture issues relating to real estate weblogging. One thought we had was to emulate the Bloginars held in Seattle and other cities by Dustin Luther and Russ Cofano of Rain City Guide. No promises — life is short — but a turnout of twenty people today was impressive — in a city that is home to thousands of Realtors…

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January 5, 2007

Uptown hound: BloodhoundBlog to contribute to Inman Blog . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jessica Swesey at Inman Blog has invited webloggers from six real estate weblogs to contribute posts to Inman’s real estate blog. Our initial post is a summary of my thoughts on MGM-Mirage’s Project City center in Las Vegas.

Going forward, I will be highlighting other great posts from BloodhoundBlog’s star-studded roster of contributors. Think of it as a sort of daily Carnival of BloodhoundBlog.

This is a great honor for us, of course, and, in recognition of this, I think I should hustle Odysseus off to the groomer…

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January 5, 2007

Communication a good reason to use Realtor

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me from today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Communication a good reason to use Realtor

Why do you need professional representation when you buy or sell a home? It’s not because of the Multiple Listing Service. As we have seen, Realtors can put a transaction together in ways you hadn’t foreseen. More importantly, an experienced Realtor knows how to keep your transaction from falling apart.

My wife had a house close on Dec. 22, just in time for Christmas. She was the listing agent, and the house sold in 21 days. The buyers came in without a contingency on the sale of another home. But they were coming from out of state, and their communication with their lender was beset by delays.

The sellers were buying their next home in Boise, Idaho, and that transaction was contingent on the sale of their home in Arizona.

Without discussing the date with either my wife or with their buyer’s agent in Boise, the sellers scheduled their closing in Boise for the same day as their closing in Arizona, Dec. 15. They scheduled their movers to deliver their furniture on that same day. And they invited their whole extended family to spend the holidays with them in their new home.

Now God loves the uninitiated in real estate transactions, and he graces them with the unshakeable faith that things always work perfectly. Especially with out-of-state buyers. Especially with delayed and incomplete communication with the lender. Especially with contingent sales. Most especially with simultaneous closings — in two states.

Consider the disclosure chain: The buyer’s lender to the buyer’s agent to my wife to the Boise buyer’s agent to the Boise seller’s agent, with my wife also keeping the lender on the Boise property in the loop, and with each Realtor and lender keeping their clients and the title companies up to date.

The buyer’s lender was late, making everything else late, with dozens of phone calls among the parties to keep everything together. Everything closed a week late, barely averting the disaster of a huge extended family spending Christmas in a motel.

Who needs Realtors? That’s easy.

Anyone who doesn’t do this Read more

January 5, 2007

Who Wants Ice Cream?!

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Ever ask a bunch of nine year old kids if they wanted some ice cream? Ever ask your 16 year old son if he wanted a new Mustang? Or my all time favorite — ever asked your wife if she wanted diamonds for Valentine’s Day? Did any of those questions need to be asked? Are the answers to those questions in doubt?

So I have a question for you. But before I ask it, let me tell you in advance that I’ve been surprised more than once by the answer. Unlike the three questions above, this one sometimes gets run through some pretty funky filters, leading to surprising answers. In the time I’ve been doing this for a living, I’ve learned much about how people think. And the phrase ‘you never know’ doesn’t begin to cover it. What the mind believes can so easily overpower not only reality, but can lead people to do things against their own best interest. People will believe some things in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Here’s an example.

Myth: Putting butter on a burn will ease the pain.

Reality: Immediately after receiving a burn, it is important to cool the skin in order to stop the burning process. Putting butter or other greasy ointments on a burn may actually make things worse, since the grease will slow the release of heat from the skin, allowing damage to the skin from the burn to continue. The best way to cool the skin after a burn is with coool water, not ice or ice water. An antibiotic ointment and a bandage will aid the healing process. According to doctors, leave the butter for your toast.

Most of us have heard about using butter as a burn remedy. My aunt once told me to hold a stick of butter on my fingers after a 4th of July sparkler burned them. But don’t we all know someone who would, in the face Read more

January 4, 2007

Tomato soup in the rain: The Real Estate Tomato at Rain City Guide . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dustin Luther at Rain City Guide interviews Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato:

What do you think real estate blogging will look like 3 years from now?

The unfathomable amount of content that is generated because of this (gold)rush to blog will persist longer than you and I, no doubt… but in 3 years the blog will no longer be the tool that “gets it done”. TheVlog (video blog) will be the most effective marketing platform for real estate. As the internet, television, Xbox, music, etc. merge into one console, and we sit 15 feet from the flat screen with remote in hand, browsing through channels/websites/whatever do you really see us reading? Video will be the most effective form of marketing (it already is, duh), and learning how to embrace it on an independent basis (like the blog) will be crucial to real estate agents in 2010.

I knew we should have bought that sixty-inch plasma for Christmas. Read the whole thing. Tomatoes are too damn pungent, but Jim’s vision is to be savored anyway…

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January 4, 2007

Who Amongst Us Is Working For Free?

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Are you working for free?

I know I have – and still do… and I’m not alone.

Realtors often do a great deal of work for which we are never compensated. Not all of our listings sell, and not all of our buyers actually purchase a property.

For most of us, we perform a service – investing our time and money – with no guarantee that we’ll ever see a dime in return.

It is typical of many commissioned sales people.

And yet if you surf the Internet, you’ll see countless examples of people claiming that commissioned sales people don’t earn their money… and how they are only in it for the buck.

Let’s shift gears for a moment.

When I was checking out of the hospital a few weeks ago, my attending physician was writing up my prescriptions and we chatted for a few minutes. He told me that he would give me a referral to a pulmonary specialist.

Before I left the hospital, I bumped into this specialist out in the hallway – and our brief encounter went something like this:

Me – “Hi Doc – they gave me your contact information and told me to call and set up an appointment in the next week or so.”

Specialist – “When you call my office, if they try to schedule you for five or six weeks out, tell them you spoke with me and that I said to schedule you as soon as possible.”

Me – “No problem. I’ll tell them.”

That was pretty much it. If there was more, I don’t remember it.

What on Earth does this have to do with the subject at hand?

Well, you might draw the inference that this specialist was performing a little commissioned sales work. You might conclude that he was trolling the hospital for new patients… and he spent a few moments with me in the interest of future business.

Well that’s the inference I had, anyhow…

So I get this letter from his office today – marked personal and confidential. I’m thinking that it’s just a reminder that I should schedule an appointment, since – at this point in time – I had failed Read more

January 4, 2007

Twisted minds: Was BusinessWeek bamboozled by bubble-blogstress?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Was a big-time Sixth Avenue media giant flim-flammed by a Gilbert, AZ, housewife, nom de guerre “Twist,” who has set herself up as an authority on the residential real estate market and its feverishly-sought collapse? From BusinessWeek Online’s Hot Property:

In Phoenix, the numbers seem to go kerflooey every December. In December 2005, the number of houses that were withdrawn from the market plummeted to just 87, from 3,673 the previous month and 5,882 the month after. (Twist defines withdrawals to include listings that are expired, withdrawn, pending, or temporarily off the market.) In December of ’04 in Phoenix, withdrawals declined so much that they supposedly went negative–specifically, a negative 1,234. Of course, there is no such thing as a “negative withdrawal,” so this has to be some kind of bookkeeping fudge.

As it turns out, the only thing wrong with this is everything.

I have no idea why we’re talking about November and December of 2005 and January of 2006, but these are the actual numbers for Expired, Cancelled, Sale Pending and Temporarily Off Market listings from those months, as taken this afternoon from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service, the MLS system for the Phoenix area:

November 2005
Expired: 1021
Cancelled: 2444
Pending: 1
Temporarily Off Market: 1
Total 3467

December 2005
Expired: 2134
Cancelled: 2218
Pending: 2
Temporarily Off Market: 1
Total 4355

January 2006
Expired: 1568
Cancelled: 2582
Pending: 3
Temporarily Off Market: 6
Total 4159

November 2004 (amended to orignal post for completeness)
Expired: 640
Cancelled: 1200
Pending: 0
Temporarily Off Market: 0
Total 1840

December 2004
Expired: 1062
Cancelled: 1001
Pending: 0
Temporarily Off Market: 2
Total 2065

January 2005
Expired: 605
Cancelled: 1363
Pending: 1
Temporarily Off Market: 3
Total 1972

Why are so few homes listed as Sale Pending or Temporarily Off Market? Because the status of those listings has changed in the intervening months, most of them to Sold.

I have no idea what “Twist” was failing to measure, but a Realtor would only be concerned with Expired and Cancelled listings, recognizing that the other two categories are nebulous and subject to change.

And, obviously: Bubble bloggers are notoriously reckless with numbers. They have an agenda, so they tend to throw out any data that do not fit their preconceptions. I have no idea if that’s what has happened here, but I can’t see Read more

January 4, 2007

What Isaac Newton Knew About Mortgage Lending

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

I recently wrote about sub-prime loans for the first time in a long while because the sector should start taking more headlines in the papers.

I’d hate for you to be unready for it, of course. Sub-prime loans are a big part of mortgage lending.

“Sub-prime” is a broad-sweeping term for the large percentage of loans that won’t get bought by the quasi-government agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The opposite of “sub-prime” is “conforming”, as in: these loans conform to the guidelines set forth by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be eligible for purchase.

Typically, the credit profile of a sub-prime borrower includes one or more of the following characteristics:

  • Low credit scores
  • History of derogatory credit (i.e. bankruptcy, foreclosure)
  • Currently delinquent on their home loan
  • Lack of credit history or credit depth
  • Low asset levels
  • Low income levels or non-verifiable income levels
  • High loan-to-value combined with low income versus debt
  • Contains “random” circumstance that introduces risk

Just because a person exhibits one or more of these traits, however, doesn’t mean that he is automatically a sub-prime borrower. This set of guidelines is very general.

Even though “sub-prime” has negative connotation to it, sub-prime loans serve a very important purpose. Sub-prime loans provide home financing to people who otherwise would not be approved for a loan at all. Remember: they don’t conform to the government guidelines!

Recently, sub-prime lenders have fallen into a world of hurt because the default risk that is inherent in every sub-prime loan is being realized with alarming frequency. Lest you think these defaults are surprising the markets, this is a problem two years in the making and industry insiders know it.

See, the one very important difference between conforming and sub-prime loans is that conforming loans are eventually bundled and sold on Wall Street as long-term bonds called mortgage-backed securities. Sub-prime loans, by contrast, are short-term. Conforming loans are overwhelmingly of the 30-year fixed variety, but sub-prime mortgages are of the 2-year ARM variety.

To understand why this matters, it’s important to review how adjustable rate mortgages work.

With all ARMs, the lender agrees to collect interest at a fixed rate for some period of time. When that period Read more

January 4, 2007

Our Operators Are Standing By

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

In Dustin’s recent interview at RCG with the Bloodhound contributors, Brian Brady suggested that he might like to try Live Chat on his site to encourage participation from the fear-of-commitment contingent of his readership, those who are reluctant to post comments but might actually have something to ask or say.

I thought Brian might benefit from my own, personal foray into the world of Live Chat. Like many of you, I had been exposed to the concept many times, usually involving computer-blowing-up or other unfortunate technology-related mishaps. Frantically in search of a tech support phone number, I would happen upon (as in, after spending 4 1/2 hours in FAQ hell) a Live Chat option, wherein I am assured that operators are standing by. At this point in my Live Chat experience, I just saw the little button, which would ultimately lead me to a painfully long typing exchange with someone on the other side of the International Date Line who possessed no grasp of sarcasm or American Idioms, as just an evil corporate plot to assure that my computer remain in “blow up” state.

A little later, I read an article somewhere where an agent attributed a huge increase in business due to the Live Chat feature on her website. Interesting… I hadn’t really thought about the application as a business generator for real estate agents. Not to be left behind, I went directly to the Live Person website to get me one of those guys. Naturally, all questions and orders are handled there through Live Chat, and this should have been my first hint at trouble. A nice man named Ian (I don’t remember, I made that up) from Tel Aviv (that much I remember because it struck me as odd that he should open with Shabat Shalom) proceeded to set me up. In less than the time it would have taken me to run over to Alberta for a gallon of milk (I live in San Diego, so that is the joke), I had the feature installed on my website. You see, the beauty of Live Chat (for the busy operator) Read more

January 4, 2007

If Retirement’s Called Your ‘Golden Years’ Why Shouldn’t You Keep The Gold?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

If you’re in the state/fed combined tax bracket of 33.3% and your home mortgage is interest only at 6%, your after tax rate is 4%. But you knew that, right? And if your loan is say, $200K, then your annual interest deduction is $12k. At your 1/3 tax bracket your actual interest paid is only $8K. This means you are not paying $4k in income taxes just because you own your home. Big deal you say, everyone knows that. True enough. But is there a way to take further advantage of that tax break?

What if you’re married and you’ve been putting $4k annually in your 401k. Why do people do this? They do it because they’ve been pounded since they can remember — “you’re saving taxes on every buck you put into your 401k. Don’t be an foolish, keep doing it.” What if you took the $4k in tax savings from your home interest deduction and put it into something that might grow tax free? Why would you insist on taking an additional $4k and locking it inside a retirement plan that’s telling you up front it’s going to tax everything that comes out in retirement income? And that tax rate will probably be the same or more than what you’re paying now. And we’ll tax your heirs when both of you are gone.

Golden years

“But my retirement tax bracket will be significantly lower than it is now” you reply confidently. Not so fast. Aren’t you and your wife doing your best to end up with a free and clear castle by the time you pick up your gold watch? If you guys put the same $4k in the retirement plan (401k/IRA) every year for 35 years and it grows at an average rate of 8%, you’ll have around $690K. At that same 8% you’ll have an annual income to add to your Social Security check (laughing in backround) of roughly $51,750 — pretty nice, eh? Not so fast. You’re earning too much possibly. What? Social Security may become taxable with your increased income. In any case, your retirement income is about what Read more

January 3, 2007

Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs: The BloodhoundBlog interview with Rain City Guide . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Beat out the Dustman with the Rain Dogs for I am a Rain Dog, too. A snippet:

Q: What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

A:

  • Greg Swann: Totally unfair question: I have over 160 weblogs in my feed reader. From the RE.net, you can bet we like the weblog if we’ve recruited its author as a BloodhoundBlog contributor. There are people we can’t approach (such as RCG’s very talented talent pool), and some we love — such as vendors — who would compromise either us or their employers by working with us. By now, a significant part of my attention, in reading real estate weblogs, is devoted to recruitment.

    Away from the RE.net, I read a lot of weblogging blogs, marketing blogs, SEO blogs, Macintosh-fanatic blogs and techno-geek blogs in general. Lately, TechMeme gets a lot of my time, simply because it links to such interesting content.

  • Brian Brady: Active Rain Real Estate Network. I’ve developed online friendships and a reader following there. I love Freakonomics Blog because of the off-beat hypotheses they formulate to otherwise explained problems.
  • Doug Quance: BloodhoundBlog, of course… and I have many others, but I wouldn’t want to offend those who, because of brevity, wouldn’t make the list.
  • Dan Green: My non-real estate blog list includes a strange mix of PopSugar, Olson’s Observations, Sabernomics, and Copyblogger.
  • Kris Berg: At the risk of sounding gratuitous, Rain City Guide was the first blog I encountered that really made sense to me. Since then, I have discovered many, many others that seem to strike the same, often elusive balance of having local and national appeal, of being instructional and entertaining, and of speaking to industry professionals and consumers. My first stops each morning include Sellsius, The Real Estate Tomato, 360 Digest, 3 Oceans, Bawldguy Talking, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Real Central VA, RealEstateUndressed, Blue Roof, and (of course) The San Diego Home Blog, to name but a few. My feed reader includes about forty blogs at the moment, which is far fewer than for a lot of bloggers I know of, but barely manageable for me. I have been slumming over Read more
January 3, 2007

The frumpiest little dump in the Midwest makes news again . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

O, the ignominy! Danville, IL is in the news again…

This time, my frowsy little fly-blown hometown amends its past notoriety as the cheapest-of-the-cheap housing markets by refusing to release its abysmal sales data at all:

[T]he Danville Board of Realtors in Illinois has decided to withhold sales data from the National Association of Realtors trade group after the Danville metro area ranked as the lowest-price market in the nation during the second quarter of 2006.

“We looked into it – all avenues of what we should do,” stated Debbie Borgwald, executive officer of the Danville board, in the article. “We want to let people know Danville is a great place to live.” She also told the newspaper that the low prices for the metro area had generated negative publicity.

I personally am only interested in rental homes that will appreciate in value. It’s nice to be cash-flow neutral or even mildly positive, but all the money from residential real estate investing comes from leveraged appreciation. An “alligator” in a growth market is the world’s most lovable pet.

However… If you’re the kind of investor who likes to buy cheap dumps for the positive cash-flow that can accrue from providing affordable rental housing to motorcycle enthusiasts and tenants even less savory, by all means go to Danville. You can pick up single-family homes for $20,000 or less. The rent might only be $300 or $350, but the houses will throw off positive cash-flow no matter how you finance them. Plenty to choose from, too…

January 3, 2007

Project City Center in Las Vegas: Now that’s a model home!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What you’re seeing is an over-the-shoulder peek at the new model home center for Project City Center in Las Vegas, to be built on the Strip-front parcel formerly occupied by the Boardwalk casino-hotel-resort, as well as behind the Monte Carlo and New York-New York properties — all owned by MGM-Mirage. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The $24 million sales pavilion for the residential components of MGM Mirage’s $7 billion Project CityCenter isn’t your average model home community.

The nearly 30,000-square-foot pavilion, which opens today, is on the Strip between New York-New York and Monte Carlo.

With a spacious design, two different scale models of the CityCenter site, high-tech features and information about the project’s four residential developments, the sales pavilion is designed to give potential CityCenter owners a taste of what life will be like inside the 66-acre urban village.

“We’re using a number of audio visual tools and state of the art technology that will put the perspective buyer inside their residence and present to them information about CityCenter that they might not know,” said Tony Dennis, executive vice president of CityCenter’s residential division.

The sales pavilion, which is a temporary structure, has individual boutiques dedicated to CityCenter’s four residential developments; Vdara Condo Hotel, The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Veer Tower and Residences at The Harmon. In total, CityCenter will encompass 2,700 residences.

The sales pavilion includes model units, floor plans, unit locations, interior design options and other details.

Project City Center (we can only hope this clunky name will be changed) is the kind of real estate development I’ve been waiting to see for more than twenty-five years: Residential, retail and commercial all in one structural footprint.

This is not a brand new idea. Rockefeller Center in New York combined retail and office spaces. Copley Place in Boston is a shopping mall with office towers above it, anchored by two hotels — all of it built on top of the Massachusetts Turnpike. By now, the mantra “mixed use” is intoned for every new condo project cooked up.

This is not enough. The ideal — at least my ideal — would be to create a structure that, at least Read more

January 3, 2007

Kibble and Bits

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

KIBBLE

Odysseus, meet Simon. Tell me, can you really teach an old dog new tricks?

Simon

Odysseus is our resident cover boy, a Bloodhound, described as a large, powerful dog tireless in his keen pursuit of a scent. Simon is a Golden Retriever, my family pet, or as we like to call him, the world’s dumbest dog. Goldens are a friendly and people-loving breed valued for their high level of socialability, yet they make poor watchdogs.

Astute and inquisitive versus dumb-as-dirt and lovable – You make the call.

BITS

Agents, as I see it, generally fall into the Bloodhound or Golden categories. I can’t speak personally for Odysseus, but I know Simon all too well.

  • Puppy Agent: Fresh out of their Principles class and newly armed with a License to Sell, these agents attend the mandatory company obedience school. They quickly learn to perform rote tasks, such as announcing their new and exciting career to all of the people in their Sphere of Influence, sending letters to Expired Listings, dropping notepads at the doors of the neighbors, and shoving business cards in the hands of unsuspecting waitresses. Puppy Golden: I did my “business” where they told me to. I’m a Good Boy!
  • The Programmed Agent: You know him. He is the one that spends all of his business development time sitting in costly training classes in search of the “answer”. He is the first in line to purchase the costly books and cassettes which will reveal the “secrets”. While he is being coached and trained and recoached and retrained, others around him are building actual businesses and establishing successful careers. The Programmed Golden: Look! Another tail to chase! I bet I catch this one!
  • Myopic Agent: A conversation was related to me in which the broker of a small, local real estate firm said, in reference to our blog, “I could have a blog, but I prefer to spend my time serving my clients. Meanwhile, at the office holiday party, I was chatting with two veteran agents about the latest Zillow news to learn that neither had ever heard of Zillow. Myopic Golden: My snout is stuck in this soup Read more
January 3, 2007

Glow, baby, glow: The revolution will be illuminated . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth Godin is on a tear about fluorescent light bulbs, and I join him in it not just because he’s promising a link for a trackback.

No, there is a matter of profoundly-important principle here: The redemptive power of Capitalism. The curly fluorescent bulb shown above is one of many in our home. Bulb-by-bulb we are swapping out the old Edison-style bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.

Is it because we’re granola-fed greenies right down to our Birkenstocks? Not hardly. It’s because we’re greedy, and we want to hold on to as much of our money as possible. Lumen for lumen, fluorescent bulbs are a lot cheaper than incandescent bulbs, and, because they are outrageously long-lived, they are cheaper to replace as well.

I have zero faith in the good intentions of capital-E Environmentalism as a movement. I see it as a further expression of the global totalitarian movement. The original Marxist argument — the vicious exploitation of the incredibly rotund poor people — is so obviously absurd, Environmentalism was cooked up as an unanswerable substitute.

If there were such a thing as a true environmentalist movement, its very first target would be government interference in real estate — starting with the collectively-owned roads that yield up thousands of acres of pristine land to taxpayer-subsidized development every month. The fact that capital-E Environmentalism does nothing to combat the massive environmental destruction caused by government argues to me that its actual objective is — surprise! — more government, not “saving the earth.”

But this is not about Environmentalism, it’s about Capitalism. Just as companies like Pur and Brita used the free market to solve the problems resulting from government mismanagement of the potable water supply, so, too, are entrepreneurs using simple market solutions to reduce the costs of government-regulated energy — “saving the earth” as an unintended consequence.

You have to give Marx his due, though. World-wide, 159 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marxism has produced nothing but mountainous mounds of corpses — 160 million and counting. In that same time, Capitalism has taken us from coal oil lamps to fluorescent bulbs (and light-sensitive LED night-lights in 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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