BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: April 2007 (page 6 of 8)

April 10, 2007

Profitable real estate weblogging: Burning the midnight oil to make family out of your farm

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Project Blogger is officially under weigh, so I thought now would be a good time to go read the rules. I had read an earlier version and hated them, but, at a certain point, I decided it wasn’t worthwhile to stand on principle. There is an extent to which this is what I would characterize as a Goofy Drive-Time Radio Stunt, and we have to assume that that extent extends at least as far as $5,000 worth of value to Our Sponsors.

If the new rules are actually less nebulous than the old rules, they are still nebulous enough that I cannot for the life of me determine what would qualify as a laudable achievement, much less the stroke of genius that denotes a decisive win. Fully fifteen percent of perfection consists courting good opinions at Active Rain, which will probably work out well for competitors who are actually active on Active Rain.

But: I don’t care. I decided to do this not because I expect Our Team to win, but because I wanted to talk about real estate weblogging. I have a lot of ideas, as we’ve seen so far, and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.

That changes now. Here is a vitally important idea about real estate weblogging that you should read, learn, mark and inwardly digest:

Real estate weblogging is very likely to be a very low-yielding prospecting activity, especially at first.

Say what? Almost any sort of real world, voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting will return more, better, faster, more-predictable and more-profitable results, at least in the short-run, than real estate weblogging.

Say what?!?

What’s the point of all this, if the fishing is better elsewhere?

There are two points that I can see. The second is that, if you’re doing it right, your yields should improve in the long-run. But the first is much more important, I think: Real estate weblogging is work you can do when you can’t do voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting.

What are the implications? The first is that if you let weblogging come between you and Read more

April 9, 2007

Who pays the buyer’s agent? Once we’ve divorced the commissions, we can stop worrying about it

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Joke Number one:
Q: If you came upon the Buddha in the guise of a hot dog vendor, what should you say?
A: Make me one with everything.

Joke number two:
Q: Top Drawer Listing Agent, why do you charge a 7% commission to list a home for sale?
A: Because the lenders won’t pay any more than that.

Jonathan Greene at Real Opinionated invited me to participate in a debate he is having on the question of who pays the sales commissions in the transfer of residential real estate. Todd Tarson has already weighed in with an argument I consider unassailable, so I would rather veer off in another direction: Divorcing the buyer’s agent’s compensation from the listing agent’s commission.

I have written a ton on this subject, with my views changing over time, so please forgive me for digging into the archives:

There’s a lot more, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that I agree with Todd: Except in a Short Sale, the buyer brings every dollar to the closing table, so every disbursement of dollars comes from the buyer. The seller brings the house. The idea that the seller is paying anything is an vestigial artifact of sub-agency, a reflection of the fact that the seller hires the listing agent to market the property, and, therefore, in most cases sets the amount of the buyer’s agent’s compensation.

It is plausible to argue that the seller pays the lister and the buyer pays the buyer’s agent, and, while I don’t agree with that argument, it’s not worthwhile quibbling about it.

Instead, it would be much more worthwhile to completely divorce the commissions, so that what should now be true de facto will be true de jure: The seller would Read more

April 9, 2007

Thoughts And Observations

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Jay Thompson hit a two iron to pin high today when he correctly said Greg Swann and Brian Brady won Majors with their many posts on the latest Zillow announcements. It wasn’t even close. Those two would have been hounding the 19th hole’s ATM for cash because they both had a couple holes in one. Their reporting and opinion pieces were not only astoundingly good, but apparently wildly popular too. They get this year’s first Bawldy awards.

Inman has the first part of a four part series reporting on the subprime to-do. It’s a read well worth your visit. Here’s an excerpt:

Although statistics are hard to come by, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that some lenders are working with borrowers to avoid foreclosure.

Captain Obvious predicted this long ago. Of course, since he’s the leader of the Duh! Brigade, nobody is surprised, right? I guess this might mean lenders don’t want a whole bunch of this goo on their books. Who woulda guessed?

John Lockwood had some solid and absolutely empirical evidence about how the real estate bubble is floating these days — at least in Sacramento. Some of the comments seem to say other places are experiencing similar numbers. Read this post. You won’t be sorry.

There’s an interview of yours truly at another blog. It’s not a real estate oriented blog, but one where bloggers are often interviewed. The decision was made to ask me one question a day this week. Every now and then I’m asked for an interview, which is a relatively new experience for me. I’m told an interview I gave to a new ezine targeting baby boomers looking to retire will be published around June or so.

At this point in the year I’m going to break out the famous and very cracked crystal ball. Those who invest in the correct regions this year, and there are more than a few, will be very happy campers on New Year’s Eve next year. There are simply too many things happening — and are staying under the radar. Things like new job growth, continued migration to the previously mentioned correct regions, Read more

April 9, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy. The scheduled weblog had gone missing, so Jay Thompson jumped in to fill the void.

Brian Brady and I took top honors for our Zillow coverage. Brian wrote seven more entries on Active Rain and on his home weblog. Why so much coverage? Because, love it or hate it, Zillow’s new release has the potential to change the way real estate is promoted on-line.

Jay broke the rules to name us as this week’s winners, but I think he was right to do so. Whatever you think of Zillow.com, their announcement last week was big news.

But it wasn’t the only news, as you’ll see when you take a look at the other great entries. While you’re there, tip your hat to Jay for giving up part of his Easter weekend for the Carnival.

Technorati Tags: , ,

April 9, 2007

Thanks a lot, Glenn Kelman.

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Dear Industry Professional:

Kris Berg will be on vacation the week of April 2nd. Accordingly, any industry news of interest or import should be released during this time. We also advise that, where appropriate, you notify her in advance of any press releases (preferably while she is enroute to the airport for a four-hour flight) to ensure that she is fully informed yet unable to do a damn thing about it.

So it was that I knew about the Refin Consumer’s Bill of Rights and didn’t know about the Zillow changes. Either way, I spent the entire discussion somewhere between baggage claim and rental car hell. A week is a long time at the Bloodhound (about four pages) and, while I have so much I would like to say on both fronts, it has all been said. As my journalist-wannabe-daughter would put it, I’ve been scooped. Even Russell Shaw made sure he shared his secrets to getting the listing with everyone… but me. I was otherwise indisposed, discussing the fine art of cow tipping with my children in the middle of Missouri.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a trained professional. I schlepped my laptop through three airports and three hotels with the best of intentions. I foolishly envisioned quiet mornings reporting from the field (and I do mean “field”), but found myself lacking the necessary inspiration when seated in the Marriott Courtyard Business Center next to an eight-year-old playing “Dress Barbie” on her Internet connection.

Ah, Spring Break! Next year, it’s Cancun. This year, it was the frozen Tundra. Did you know that a professional baseball game can be canceled due to “cold”? It happened in Chicago. Did you know that it can be sunny, with not a cloud in the sky, and yet snow? Yep. The average Kris Berg Vacation Temperature was 200 degrees below zero. It was closer to 250 degrees below (not counting wind chill) when we found ourselves waiting on the street for what seemed like three months to gain admittance to the Art Institute of Chicago Museum. I saw American Gothic, but most importantly, it was WARM inside. Read more

April 9, 2007

Advances, none remarkable.

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

The blog is coming together. Our homework was to find a theme and artwork that represent our markets. Sounds like fun, huh? Well it was and it wasn’t.

I love to paint, but I work differently than many artisits. I work with 6 colors maximum: red, yellow, blue, black, white, and brown. From that limited palette, I can create any color I want. This means I create nearly every color that is put on the canvas as I rarely use paint straight from the tube. Much of my time is spent creating color and mixing paints, but I love the process and it gives my work color like no other artist. The only reason I bring this up is to confess that when I went searching for a theme, I kept finding the “feel” of computer generated color and art entirely too flat and cold and sterile and unnatural for my taste. Oh well, sorry about your luck, Lussier. It is 2007, so time to buck up and deal with it. There are thousands of themes available, and while I found them oddly similar due to the medium, I did find one that I could live with.

I had nothing whatsoever to do with the downloading and uploading and whatever else is involved in getting a theme up and running. I picked a theme, gave Greg the url, and he took care of the rest. Why? Because he can do that stuff in 15 minutes and I cannot. Greg is a great coach and I’m not only learning about blogging, I’m also learning about real estate, and here’s what I’m learning: if your time is put to better use elsewhere, then farm out the stuff you can’t/ won’t/ don’t do and let yourself do the voodoo that you do so well. So, thanks to Greg the theme is up.

But the default banner wasn’t up to snuff. Hmm. I thought this was going to be even more difficult than finding a theme. I spent a good bit of time looking at other successful real estate blogs. There are skylines or archtecture or buildings or Read more

April 9, 2007

More random notes on Zillow.com: Conquering fear, uncertainty and doubt to become the neighborhood superhero

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Michael Wurzer and others are tying themselves up in knots trying to prove that they understand what Zillow is doing wrong. My take is that they don’t even understand what Zillow is doing, so, necessarily, it’s going to look wrong to them from their frame of reference.

I said this the other day, and I thought I did a nice job, twenty-five words on the nose:

Web 2.0 creates an ongoing community of active users by integrating a user-modifiable database through an interactive, as opposed to static, web-based interface.

The important word is “community.” Wikipedia.org is not building a database of encyclopedia articles. Ebay.com is not building a database of merchandise.

Criticizing — or praising — Zillow about its databases is all but completely beside the point. They’re not building databases. They’re using databases — and incentives to user-initiated database maintenance — to create a self-sustaining community of users.

Ebay.com is not a reproducible phenomenon. Wikipedia.org is not a reproducible phenomenon. The technology is easy. Venture capital abounds. But the niches are already occupied, and neither of those two communities can be replaced as long as they are serving the needs of their members. It does not matter how much money you throw at the problem, they cannot be supplanted.

This is what Zillow.com is aiming for, in my opinion. The listing.bot traffic is nothing. It doesn’t amount to a fart in a gale of wind. Zillow’s own very impressive traffic is nothing, as we’ll see in a moment. What they want is a community of users as loyal as the Wikipedians, and potentially as profitable to its professional users as Ebay is.

Let’s look at the numbers: Zillow is getting four million hits a month, it says — with others saying otherwise. If each of those four million users is visiting three pages on average — which seems like a lot to me — then we’re looking at twelve million pageviews a month. It’s possible they do better than this, but it doesn’t much matter, as we’ll see. Assume three EZ Ads per page — where the average for now is probably closer to one. That boils Read more

April 9, 2007

The New Bait and Switch

by

Mortgage Banker

Author website

The term “bait and switch” is a favorite amongst consumers when dealing with mortgages. It’s a refrain heard every day in our industry. Somehow uttering this term gives consumers personal strength and a sense of confidence. “I’m not going to fall for any ‘bait and switch'” is a chant designed to ward off the specter of the deed made famous by unsavory mortgage brokers and loan officers. I can’t blame consumers for doing it either, I do the same thing to car salesmen by saying “I’m not going to want the dealer warranty” before I even take two steps on the lot. Even if it isn’t the perfect elixir, it feels empowering, which is something. What most mortgage borrowers don’t realize however is that their old foe the ‘bait and switch’ has morphed, like any terrible virus, in to a new strain of deceit which is being exacerbated by the current market.

First, let’s recap what the “old,” unsophisticated bait and switch schemes consist of. The “bait and switch” consists of promising loan terms that are good enough to get the borrower committed (“off the street” in industry parlance) and then, after they put their time and energy in to the process, delivering significantly different terms on their loan documents at the signing table. The hope being that the customer is too exasperated or desperate to put up much of a fight, and they accept the new terms. This can take the form of any of the following (and more based on loan officers’ personal proclivities):

  • A low rate that is suddenly higher
  • Loan type is suddenly different (i.e. from a fixed rate to an ARM)
  • Loan fees are suddenly significantly higher, much higher
  • Prepayment penalties suddenly arise
  • Significantly less cash returned to the borrower than anticipated

Luckily consumers can be vocal, and were in complaining about these unsavory practices; hence the “bait and switch” buzzword arose to describe this industry practice. However, while the “old” way of bait and switch was outed; a new, more subtle form has quietly arisen. The worst part? It is completely legitimate under existing laws; and very hard to prove.

The new Read more

April 8, 2007

I Want To Be a Lister – The Listing Presentation

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

A couple of important questions:

Chris writes;

Here is a question, I have never been on a listing presentation, I have not yet taken a listing, and I’m a brand new agent. But I want to be an excellent lister, and I don’t care what amount of effort that takes.Where is a good place to start with a listing presentation? I have Tom Hopkins book, but is there a good up to date one online somewhere? IE “this is an ideal listing presentation from start to finish, these are all the points you need to hit”. I think if I get the bones, I can probably expand on it, change it a bit for me and make it work.The top agent in my city sold 150 houses last year. Figure an average house is $400k around here. She is the top dog, so that’s who I am aiming for lol!

__
and Scott Cowan writes;

Thank you for the reply. I am looking forward to seeing the videos if you are able to post them online.

I do have a request for a bit more detail about a topic. Currently on BloodhoundBlog you have posted that it is vital to have a really good listing presentation. Currently my listing presentation is nothing more than the research I have completed on the house and the area. I have some local and national statistics that I share. Much to my disappointment (although now that I have been doing much more reading not to my surprise) my success rate is perfect. A perfect 0 for……… Would you be willing to point me in the direction of resources for putting together the really good listing presentation that you have been talking about? I have been reading online and everyone says that theirs is the best etc. I am overwhelmed with the amount of fluff and hype that I am seeing.

Your advice that I have listened to and read has been the most practical of the information available online. I am curious what your thoughts are on a rock solid listing presentation.

Thanks again for being such a valuable resource to the Read more

April 8, 2007

Easter reading: BloodhoundBlog’s Top 50 posts

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a tough time with major holidays like Easter. Say the Mass, do the eggs and candy with the kids, choke down some desiccated ham — then what? It would be a relief to run to the net to read, but, of course, everyone else is doing the same damn things — some more graciously than others. You crave new content, but there won’t be any new content until Monday.

The same goes for us, too, I expect. I have some numbers I may want to post about later, but I doubt that there will be a lot of other new stuff.

But: How about a lot of old stuff? Friday night I ran our stats, and Saturday Cathy built an Excel tool to combine them into something meaningful. Not canonically meaningful, mind you. What we can calculate are hard clicks on specific posts. Most people read BloodhoundBlog by RSS feed. Many more read from the front page, seeing some or all of the most-recent 15 posts at any given time. Hard clicks, clicks into specific posts, denote a special interest from feed readers, an off-site or on-site link, a desire to comment or to read comments, a Google search, etc.

What we end up with is a list of our 50 most popular posts as expressed by people who pulled the trigger on their mice. This is a reasonably reliable if not perfect measure of popularity. In any case, it’s what we have, so it will have to do.

Many of these posts were written by me. I write a lot, and I’ve been writing on BloodhoundBlog longer than anyone else. As you’ll see, many of these entries have enduring appeal, so our other contributors will account for more and more of our Top 50 as we go along.

Anyway, if you’re as bored as I am on Easter, divert yourself onto the paths of our past. Just remember, it’s not an escape from tedium, it’s professional development.

April 7, 2007

TheBrickRanch.com: As warm and fuzzy as an Easter Bunny

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We finally settled on the WordPress theme and look-and-feel for TheBrickRanch.com. There’s more work to come, particularly the sidebar, but the site is ready for Monday’s official start of the Project Blogger competition.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a reasonable example of what I’ve been talking about. We’re selling real estate, yes. But we’re selling to people, and I think it is important to connect with people immediately on an emotional — even visceral — level. Not: I am a good Realtor. Rather: I am like you. I share your values. I want for you what you want. Yes, I want for your family to be safe, protected from the weather, financially secure. But much more than that, I want for all of you to live the life of quiet, undoubted serenity you see in that child’s face. I want your children to feel that safe in our chaotic and sometimes hostile world. And I want to communicate every bit of that in a glance, without saying a word. I’m not selling houses. I’m selling the idea of a better life — because that is what you’re buying.

Can we do all that with warm colors and one photograph? Probably not. But the first close is to keep them from clicking away, and I think our theme can do that job. If we can keep them for ten seconds, we can keep them for ten minutes. If we can get them to come back once, we can get them to come back twenty times. If we can get them to agree that Teri Lussier is the Realtor to help them find that better life, we’re done. The playing field is cleared of competitors.

Can we do all that? Sufficient unto the day. For now we have a visual theme. Take a look at what we’ve done so far. The weblog is as warm and inviting as a dozen pastel Easter eggs — without all the indigestible hard-boiled chicken embryos inside…
< ?php include ("REWL101.php"); ?>

Technorati Tags: , ,

April 7, 2007

Caveat lector: BloodhoundBlog’s Amazon Affiliates earnings might someday fund a war of global conquest

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had a snippy comment, clipped for flame-baiting, that in part complained that our participation in the Amazon Affiliates program is not disclosed. The beef is stoopid, but it’s nevertheless accurate, so I have added this text to our About page:

Amazon Affiliates information: When Greg Swann set up this weblog, he joined the Amazon Affiliates program for what seemed like good reasons at the time. Amazon Affiliates is a promotional program whereby websites are paid commissions in the forms of cash or same-as-cash Amazon merchandise credit in exchange for promoting and brokering the sale of Amazon.com products. Does this affiliation produce income for BloodhoundBlog? Yes. How much? A little over $5.25 a month, on average (much of which is occasioned by our own personal purchases). Our pro-rated hosting cost, excluding domain costs, is around $37.50 a month, so our Amazon.com windfall has us on the dot.com path to profitability. It seems absurd to make this disclosure, but we heard from a rancorous busy-body who wanted to make a big deal about it, so there it is. So far, we have used our vast Amazon.com earnings to buy a book about Robert Moses for a young real-estate-tycoon-to-be whom we know and admire. God alone can guess what nefarious ends we will finance with future earnings. So: Don’t say you weren’t warned.

That notwithstanding, we’ve sold some cool books, some genuine make-a-difference tomes of self-improvement. Among them:

  • Broker to Broker: Management Lessons From America’s Most Successful Real Estate Companies
  • Everybody Wins: The Story and Lessons Behind RE/MAX
  • Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
  • Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
  • Real Estate Agent’s Business Planning Guide
  • Real Estate Rainmaker: Guide to Online Marketing
  • Realty Blogging
  • Small Is the New Big: and 193 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
  • The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
  • The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
  • The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money…It’s About Being the Best You Can Be!
  • The Millionaire Real Estate Investor
  • Unleashing the Ideavirus
  • What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting: Real-Life Advice from 101 People Read more
April 7, 2007

Are Glenn Kelman & Dave Barry Soulmates?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Dave Barry sues Realtor associations. He has been suing Realtor associations for years. I don’t know that anyone could say that he sues Realtor associations for a living because he almost always loses. And it is hard to imagine that any lawyer who had a pot to piss in would keep doing the same stupid thing year after year after year – even though it was obvious to any rational person that it could not succeed. If Dave would like to send me a threatening letter or sue me for what I am writing here, this is my contact information. Dave Barry is behind Trust MLS. This is his “Open MLS” program that he tried (and failed) to get on the ballot in California in 2005. Now he is trying it in Maine. A much smaller state where it would require a LOT less money to try and shove this down everyone’s throat. I believe (Dave, please notice I said I BELIEVE, not “IS“‘) Dave to be a charter member of the “What’s Yours Is Mine Club”. This is also sometimes referred to as “something for nothing” or simply “criminal”. I don’t know if it would actually be libel to characterize him as a litigious lunatic, so we won’t do that here. Certainly, the NAR lawyers and the various state association lawyers aren’t going to come out and physically say that. Almost all lawyers (at least in the U.S.) have a “lawyer to lawyer respect” rule that they follow. It just isn’t right to say something unkind or inflammatory about someone who finished law school and was admitted to the bar – not if you finished law school and were admitted to the bar.

The following was reported yesterday on Inman News:

He is also a part of Trust MLS, a group that is supporting the Maine ballot initiative and encourages supporters in other states to pursue similar measures. This group, along with real estate companies Redfin, Catalist Homes and Voyager 360, among others, had offered financial support to the institute, and Trust MLS plans to submit a bid to operate the proposed Read more

April 6, 2007

Web site builds community of real estate consumers, vendors

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link).

This is adapted from my main post Tuesday night, of course. I get 350 words in the paper. They cut me today to 330, so I used my own version of the text for the permanent link.

But here’s the sad part: This is breaking news in the Republic. This is the first word of Zillow’s new release to appear in the newspaper. Aren’t you glad you have a choice about where to get your news?

 
Web site builds community of real estate consumers, vendors

Zillow.com, the national Realty.bot growing out of the popular automated home valuation service, released a new version of its popular web-based software Tuesday night. The system’s new functionality comes in three broad categories:

  • Any user of the system — not just homeowners or their real estate agents — will be able to report that a particular home is for sale and at what price. Only owners and/or listing agents will be able to create more elaborate listings for homes for sale.
  • Any user of the site will be able to ask or answer a specific question about a home, whether or not it is listed for sale. The questions and answers will be stored with the record for that home, and each user’s questions, answers and Zillow Wiki contributions will be recorded on that user’s personal profile page on the system.
  • Agents or other users wishing to promote either themselves or their homes listed for sale will be able to do so through a new “EZ Ads” system. The ads will be sold by the zip-code at a cost of one-penny per impression.

“With this release, Zillow becomes a community,” said David Gibbons, the company’s Director of Community Relations. Zillow’s home value “Zestimates” have been very popular with home sellers. Zillow.com is giving buyers and Realtors incentives to join its community.

Zillow wants agents to submit at least limited-data listings, which will in turn bring it buyers, which will in turn reward sellers and listing agents for inputting full-data listings and other information, which will in turn provide a stickier and more satisfying experience for buyers. Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

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.

Media Contacts