BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: March 2007 (page 4 of 9)

March 22, 2007

Neighborhood-level real estate weblogging: Traffic is not about traffic, traffic is about conversions

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m quoting from comments to BloodhoundBlog posts, so I’m not going to show the links.

Brian Brady to Teri Lussier: “Soon she’ll be winning carnivals.”

Not to put any pressure on the girl, but I think this is a fine idea. Won’t win us the contest, but it’s a testament of excellence that’s kind of difficult to dispute. I like stuff like that.

John L. Wake: “Have you ever noticed that a common strategy used by many successful Realtors is to become an area specialist?”

But exactly! I don’t know how large or small an area Teri wants to work (or you want to work, for that matter), but it pays to think small. For now, Cathy and I target a very small region of Downtown Phoenix, but the neighborhood names that pop out of that are legion: F.Q. Story, Willo, Encanto, Palmcroft, Del Norte, Alvarado, Campus Vista, Ashland Place, Fairview Place, Woodlea, Yaple Park. Believe it or not, that’s only about half.

But we can get even smaller. If you search for Culver Street, the first two hits should be us. There are other streets down there for which we will pull very strong results, and, in the long run, we will tend to be category-killers for the names of the streets we list on.

Isn’t that the opposite of what I said the other night? Yes and no. We are looking for Long Tail search results on very arcane search terms, but our objective is not to capture random leads but to attract, enchant, delight, enlist and convert people who have a very strong interest in those same arcane search terms. How do we know they have a very strong interest? Because they’re searching for terms no one with a casual interest would ever use.

“Phoenix real estate” or “Dayton real estate” are difficult keywords to dominate, but neither would be all that useful, anyway. The Greater Metropolitan Phoenix-area is bigger than Rhode Island, maybe bigger than Vermont. I have to drive to make money, but I don’t get paid by the mile.

There’s more: By focusing Read more

March 22, 2007

We’re buying a new dog house — not a moment too soon

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From appearances — I haven’t called — why bother? — GoDaddy swapped servers on us last night at around midnight. I know this conjecturally because we lost around five hours of posts and comments. Only one post, which I replaced this morning, but six comments that I know of, possibly more.

If you posted a comment last night between 7:18 pm and midnight, MST, it’s gone with my regrets. Jason Benesch, Jillayne Schlicke, Jeff Brown and Loren Nason I know for sure were affected, because those four came to my email for one reason or another. I’m not sure what else was lost.

Again, please accept my apologies for these hiccoughs. Cross your fingers, they’ll be over for good very soon.

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March 21, 2007

Server issues: A quarter-gator to go . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I ended up buy a fourth of a file server at HostGator.com. I spent some time this afternoon looking at our disk space and bandwidth needs, and this is more than adequate for now. At some point we may have to move up to a true dedicated file server (which is what I was planning to do at GoDaddy), but this suits me better for now, if only because I won’t have to be my own sysadmin.

I’m waiting for the booger to be set up now. Once it is, I’m going to move one or two hosted accounts over to see how things go. We control 66 domains right now, but only about half of those are hosted. The rest, like BloodhoundBlog.net, are redirected to hosted accounts. In any case, in addition to BloodhoundBlog, we have four hosted accounts with WordPress weblogs on them, so I’ll be able to practice moving WordPress installations before I have to move the big dog.

Right now, I’m aiming for late Saturday night. Things could change, but I’ll give plenty of advance warning. We’ll certainly be down for some amount of time as Domain Name Servers around the globe take note of our new IP address. With luck, it won’t be a very long time.

And: This little problem sucked the marrow right out of my day. On the plus side, as soon I am able to play with the new host, I can start moving sites. The GoDaddy-hosted sites are all pre-paid, but a bunch of them are coming due shortly, with eggs hatching in succession thereafter. Smaller, low-bandwidth sites have never been a problem, so I’ll move them as I can.

But think about new sites. I control a quarter-server with unlimited domain hosting. Every new site we build will be hosted “for free,” as a part of our overhead costs. Moreover, Teri Lussier just saved a bunch of money: We can host her to-be-built weblog “for free.” Right now, we spend about $43 a year for a new single-property weblog. As of tonight, that cost is around $7.50 a year, the discounted cost of the Read more

March 21, 2007

Persistence: The Investors Greatest Tool

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

People have asked me what it takes to succeed in real estate. Honestly, I really think it only takes one thing, persistence. Many people eliminate themselves right away by never starting or quitting after one bad experience. This business certainly has its ups and downs, but the people that keep trying eventually succeed.

Here are a few examples where persistence pays off. First, let’s look at the tenant from hell. No matter how great your screening process is, eventually the dice come up snake eyes. When a tenant refuses to pay rent or destroys the property you put in a lot of sweat and equity into, it can really push you to the edge. When you realize you just can’t throw them out on the streets, change the locks, and tell them to go to a hot place (and I don’t mean Florida), what do you do? How you deal with this situation defines how successful you will be in the business.

So how do deal with them you ask? First, begin the eviction process early. If a tenant is commonly late with the rent become familiar with the eviction process because you will probably need it. Additionally, never get antagonistic with the tenants. You can never win this battle because an angry tenant is a destructive tenant. Many new comers in the business feel like they can sue tenants. Think again. While you certainly can sue tenants, if they are being evicted they will probably not have any money for you to get from them. After the eviction process has started, the best situation is to convince the tenant to leave amicably. I have known some landlords to actually pay tenants to move out. On the surface this seems crazy, but paying a tenant say $100-$200 vs. spending $1000 (or more) for eviction plus repairs makes financial sense.

Another common situation that requires persistence is dealing with contractors. I have never personally had a project come in on or under budget. The bigger the project the more financial padding you should put in your budget estimates. Always have more money than you need. Read more

March 21, 2007

Want to do something to raise standards among Realtors? Charity begins at home . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Daniel Rothamel:

More extensive barriers to entry do not automatically create better agents.  As just about anyone with a real estate license will tell you, the education that you get prior to being licensed does very little to ensure your success in business, other than informing you of the legal requirements and obligations that, when followed, will allow you to keep your license.  The things that make for good agents are not covered in any licensing class.  They are learned after the agent begins working.  They are learned through broker training classes, or through mentoring, or through the time-tested technique of trail and error.  The idea that making it harder to earn a license will increase the quality of the agents is preposterous because it ignores this fact.

I like the idea of getting rid of licensing and making agents compete on the basis of reputation, but that ain’t gonna happen. Daniel has a good alternative:

If the goal of those who advocate the increasing of licensing standards is truly the reputation of the profession, then they should turn to themselves and seek out the new agents around them and act as a mentor or at least a positive example of the real estate professional.  That will have a far greater impact on the profession than any increase in education requirements.

Indeed. As I argued years ago, in a different context, if you really want to “do something!” about The Homeless — take one home…

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March 21, 2007

Something’s still amiss in GoDaddyland . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Gatos in email:

Just letting you know I’ve been trying for the past 45 minutes.

Check. We seemed pretty robust earlier, but now I’m getting a legacy side-bar — changed last November when we became a group blog. I’ll look into it. My guess is that the retards are restoring from antique back-ups, which is something I can fix on my end. Of course, I have nothing better to do…

 
Further notice: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.” I had thought all the MySQL stuff was working properly, but Jim also reports that reading comments also does not work. Akismet seems to be letting some spam comments through — we get thousands a day — but that may be unrelated. In any case, I apologize for the difficulties. We’ll get them worked out shortly — and permanently.

Whoa! Back to normal before I got off hold. Doesn’t matter. We’re movin’.

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March 21, 2007

How to Waste 45 Minutes of Your Life

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Every crazy person that works with us, we go crazy for them.

I finally got around to listening to the latest installment of the Glenn Kelman show, a video podcast by Robert Scoble (and posted on Sellsius). In all fairness, it wasn’t a complete waste of my time. I was able to learn or deduce the following important things:

  • Glenn may have skipped math class. He states that the average agent sells 8 homes in a year, yet “most (Redfin agents) do that many transactions in a week”. I seem to recall, and I will be generous here, that he told me that Redfin has approximately 300 transactions under their belt. I also seem to recall that there are 52 weeks in a year. Simple division; try it yourself.
  • Glenn cuts “commission refund checks… every day”. I seem to recall that there are 365 days in a year. More importantly, and assuming this wasn’t a figure of speech, if he is actually cutting checks versus offering a credit in escrow, I must assume that there are a bunch of 1099’s flying in the direction of the buyers. Given that I am not a tax guy, I could be wrong.
  • Robert Scoble’s house was SPECIAL. (No way!!!) As an example of just how special it was, he tells us twice that it sold for more than the Zestimate. We are all familiar with the power and the accuracy of the Zestimate, so enough said.
  • Robert Scoble’s house sold for what it did only because a family friend represented him. A family friend is naturally more concerned with protecting his interest than, say, a professional agent who is detached and therefore completely objective and who relies on the satisfaction of clients to generate referrals, a solid reputation, and future income.
  • A Redfin agent will “negotiate 1% better than another agent”. We are reminded that this is because the other agent makes more when the buyer pays more. This factoid is not substantiated by Glenn, so let me help. On a $500,000 home sale at 3%, let’s assume the agent sees 70% of the total commission (after office promo fee Read more
March 21, 2007

In Case You Just Tuned In

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

The story so far: “pat the bunny” has just hopped off the turnip truck and finds herself reshelved between Macbeth and Machiavelli. She quickly discovers that by coughing up a little Shakespeare (don’t worry Jeff, it’s a very minor infection) she can keep the alpha dog from growling too much… for now anyway.

Pat had the foresight to pack along a few books for the trip: “Realty Blogging”, which explains things like ‘Technorati’- (it’s not the Russian Mafia? Who knew?); “The Purple Cow”, because she’s so very fascinated by viral sneezing; and a basic grammar book, which shall remain nameless. If you are playing along at home, Pat is a green bunny and watching her fundage, so while she went to Amazon for “Realty Blogging”, she supported her local used bookstore for the others.

“Realty Blogging” is a step-by-step guide for blog-building: what, where, how, and why. Well-written and so easy to understand that even Pat can follow along. You, sir, will have no problem.

“The Purple Cow” Cliff Notes version- If you want your blog, your marketing- hell, even your business, to be all things to all people you are missing the point.

Grammar? zzzzzz Wake up! Yes, grammar because even though she’s only Pat the bunny, she is still a book and words, words, words are important. Besides, countinuing to count on what she thinks she thinks she remembers from English class, lo those many moons ago, just ain’t gonna cut it anymore.

Pat the bunny now aspires to become Spongebob; soaking up all the information she can, wherever she can find it.
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March 20, 2007

GoDaddy? Please, go . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ouch.

We were on pace for a huge day (the luck of Prince Hal) when GoDaddy.com clobbered us for three hours. This is the third outage in about a week, and nothing we have done on GoDaddy’s end addresses the glacial slowness of the site when we’re busy — which is only about 18 hours a day.

Drew Nichols has offered to host us for free, which I cannot permit. But I sure can pay the man for hosting. I’ll research this on my own, but if anyone has experience migrating a WordPress weblog (specifically the MySQL databases), I’d love to hear from you.

My apologies if you were trying and failing to get here between around 4pm and 7pm MST.

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March 20, 2007

The silencing of the lambs . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Exhibit one

Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

Romeo: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

Juliet: You kiss by the book.

Exhibit two

For young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being generally permitted the use of their fathers’ libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister’s ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridgments; which if they be fortunately so done as to prove delightful Read more

March 20, 2007

Another Sad Tale Of Another Unrepresented Buyer

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Bad things happen to good people

I received a call this weekend from a past client – on behalf of a friend who bought a home last summer, but who can no longer afford it.

The only thing you can be certain of in life – is uncertainty

This lady – we’ll call her Julie – was renting a home with a married couple as room-mates. They all got along well, so when the landlord decided to sell the property – Julie stepped up to be the buyer. With her room-mates kicking in each month, the payment was no problem.

Although I had never met Julie, she knew of me. My client always brags to his friends about what a great deal I got him on his house – and how he is eternally grateful to me. But when she told her landlord that she wanted to use a Realtor – he told her that if she brought a Realtor into this, he would not sell her the house.

Well, she liked the house… and didn’t want to move… so she proceeded without the assistance or representation of a buyer’s agent.

The sale closed last August for $175,000 and Julie was officially a homeowner for the first time. I am sure she was very proud and pleased with herself and her accomplishment.

But there’s always calm before the storm

The room-mates developed marital problems that were quickly resolved by the wife moving out – followed by a speedy divorce.

Then the remaining room-mate was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and, at this point in time, is not expected to survive his current stay in the hospital.

Julie had been out of work for a while – and was looking forward to working in the restaurant that her room-mate was planning to open… prior to the divorce and brain tumor. Now she had no money left – behind on mortgage payments – and getting ready to start a new job that won’t come close to earning her enough money to keep the house. She needed out – and quick.

Most of us Realtors take on charity cases. We don’t advertise that we Read more

March 20, 2007

Got Voice? And other questions for which I have no answers.

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Putting the nuts and bolts of blog technology aside for the momement, isn’t it hard, daunting even, to find your own voice? What is the sound of my own voice? How do I find the voice in me that anyone else will want to listen to?

Which brings us to readers. Oh right- readers (Note to self: find readers). Who is going to read this stuff anyway? It would seem to me that’s the big question if you are blogging for dollars. Who is the audience I’m trying to reach, how do I reach them, and what do I want them to know?

Currently I’m poking around the internet looking at other local blogs, finding blogs I like and appreciate (birds of a feather, you know). Could this or that blog take me where I want to go? I’m checking out the blogroll, checking the comments. It’s very telling- who is reading this? Do they like what they read and why, and are the readers contributing in a meaningful way?

Conversely, what isn’t out there? Is there a void that needs to be filled, or does the void exist due to lack of need? Does every market really need a blog? Really? Can every market support a blog? Does my little-bitty Rustbelt town need a blog and would anyone even read it? How do I find like-minded residents and direct them to follow the sound of my voice? Whoop, there it is. It all circles back to developing a voice worth listening to.
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March 20, 2007

Hi. I’m Teri…And I’m aghast.

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Do you know Greg Swann? Yeah well I don’t, but for some reason he chose me to be his apprentice in the Project Blogger competition. He says it was due to my lack of experience in both real estate and blogging (Oh. Um…thanks?) and because I’m game (did he just call me a sucker?). I’m guessing that his intention is that he really truly wants to teach anyone (that would be you) how to do this, “wisely and well” as he says, but I’m just guessing all this because I really don’t know him.

But that doesn’t matter. Yes, he’s going to teach me, but Project Blogger is really about you. Greg and I have exchanged only a handful of extremely brief emails before starting this, which is great for you as it means we are all starting on the same page here- I’m learning exactly what you will be learning as you learn it. We spoke on the phone for 44 seconds, in which he warned me that he was “ready to post” and that I was going to be aghast, but just between you and me, I’m really not aghast, I’ve never used the word aghast, not that I have anything against aghast, I’m just not an “aghast” kind of girl. I will however, admit to being horrified, terrified, mortified, petrified, thrilled, honored, and excited-beyond-belief!

But enough about me. Like I said, this is really about you. I’m hoping (okay praying) someone…anyone? who is lurking, will play along with us and together we can build better blogs from the bloody beginning! I actively encourage you to try this at home. Think about it; if I can do this in front of God and everybody- me, in the middle of the Rustbelt, without decades of real estate experience, without a custom built website, without a Crackberry (my cell phone is 3 years old- no pics!) then you sure-as-hell can do this in anonymity, in the comfort of your home, in the booming Sunbelt, in your jammies, sipping your mocha latte (hold the Bailey’s or not) with your experience and whiz-bang gizmos at 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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