BloodhoundBlog

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Month: May 2007 (page 6 of 7)

May 10, 2007

Hey, can I hop a train to that shack? ShackPrices.com introduces proximity to mass transit as a search criterion

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the most innovative of the map-based real estate search portals is ShackPrices.com. A house is a house and a neighborhood is a neighborhood, but a home is a lifestyle, and ShackPrices is doing more than anyone else to integrate lifestyle data in its databases.

The latest innovation is showing proximity to present or future mass transit services in its search results:

Beginning today, home buyers can search from thousands of homes for sale near bus stops along one or more King County Metro Bus lines or near Sound Transit Rail stops. Home buyers can combine their search for homes near mass transit lines with a variety of other factors including price, size, and keywords using ShackPrices’ intuitive map search.

“By letting home buyers search for properties near current and future transit stops, we are giving the public a valuable tool to find homes that fit an environmentally friendly lifestyle,” said ShackPrices.com co-founder Galen Ward, “Most importantly, we’re giving home buyers the opportunity to find a home that should substantially increase in value when transit lines are complete. Homes within 500 feet of rail lines are worth as much as $40,000 more than similar homes just a little farther away.”

I, personally, don’t like taxpayer-subsidized mass transportation, but “people like pie.” In the urbanosphere, proximity to mass transit is a very common question. Answering this question visually and automatically would seem to be painfully obvious — except no one else is doing it.

My frank assessment: ShackPrices.com should post a “Make Me Move” price to see if anyone in Seattle has brains enough to write an eight-figure check.

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May 10, 2007

A cry from the heart for every chip-on-its-shoulder burg in America: Stage true drama in the theatre, darling

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We saw a performance piece called “Love, Janis” last week. It wouldn’t do to call it a play. It was more of a fictionalized chronicle of Pearl cavorting with her inner child while blasting through her greatest hits at top volume. The music was beyond excellent, and the interstitial crap was no worse than Ray or Walk The Line or The Doors — no act of evil or self-destruction is ever your fault if your records chart well. Creepy and dopey (no pun intended), maudlin and mopey, but ultimately nothing. If they had cut all that and doubled up on the music, it would have been a knock-out tribute show.

Here’s the beef: Was this raucous rock ‘n’ roll encomium performed at an Indian casino, alternating with the Tina Turner and Michael Jackson impersonators? No, alas. Was it the 8 and 10 o’clock headliner act at an off-Strip locals resort in Las Vegas? Guess again. No, “Love, Janis” is part of this season’s “drama” from The Arizona Theatre Company, one of eight “plays” to be presented this season to audiences of rich white people, whose seats will be graciously subsidized by poor black and brown people.

This is “theauhtuh, dahling,” an allegedly high-brow undertaking undertaken in that high-brow “performance centre” downtown — itself graciously subsidized by people who only make it downtown when they are dispossessed by fate and taxes. And although I am speaking of Phoenix, particularly, everything I’m saying goes for every chip-on-its-shoulder burg in America. “We can’t be a true city without theauhtuh, dahling,” even if that “theauhtuh, dahling” turns out to be a complete joke.

What’s the real point of this ugly charade? Wealth is waste, but how can one justify the indulgence of a thousand-dollar gown if there is no “theauhtuh, dahling?” No symphony? No opera? No ballet? None of these boondoggles is profitable, and that by itself is an excellent argument for doing away with them. Mozart can’t make money, but neither can “pops” music conducted by TV’s Doc Severinsen. Cage fighting turns a buck, as do rodeo and tractor pulls, but how can one wear a designer Read more

May 9, 2007

Realtors Can Pre-Qualify Buyers If A Lender Isn’t Handy

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

It’s Sunday afternoon and the Phillies game approaches the top of the ninth inning. You, the professional Realtor, look at your watch and notice it’s 3:40PM. You’ll be locking up the door, uprooting the signs and heading home after a long afternoon at a particularly slow open house. You can almost smell the dinner your loving spouse has prepared.

A couple walks in to the home and tells you that they are just in Philadelphia for the weekend. Dad’s finishing up his final negotiation for the new job and Mom’s trying to figure out if the kiddies will adapt to Philly.

They toured open houses all weekend. They need a Realtor with whom they connect. Mom announces that YOU are the perfect Realtor for them while the Phillies put away the Dodgers in the background. One catch… they REALLY want to see a home across town but it wasn’t open today.

“Will you represent them?” they ask.

You explain that your policy is pre-qualified buyers with a Buyers’ Brokerage Agreement.

“No problem !” they exclaim.

You dial your favorite lender while Mom and Dad review and sign the BBA. No lender answers your call.

Do you load them up into your SUV and show them properties?

You CAN pre-qualify that buyer in about five minutes; you just need to know what to ask. Seven Realtors from Active Rain gathered today to listen to my 20 minute presentation about “How Realtors Can Pre-Qualify a Buyer”

In this 20-minute podcast, I reveal:

1- How to talk about money without sounding intrusive.

2- The “Three C’s of Lending”

3- The one question that separates the buyers from the wannabes.

4- Red flags that require a conversation with a lender

5- Green flags that signify that a loan is imminent.

Download it to your iPod and get prepared for next Sunday afternoon (or just listen to it here).

May 9, 2007

A ProjectBlogger challenge: The ProBlogger Top 5 contest

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m swamped, probably not all that hard to figure out. As with the Tomato Gang, I’m kinda bored with ProjectBlowhard. I still have work to do, and and I have a couple of big ideas still to cover, but — without intending to insult the proteges — it’s kind of like a rose-growing contest: Activity at the start, activity at the end, a lot of waiting in between.

In true reality TV fashion we might have a snake-eating contest or a nude tug of war in a tar pit — but that might not be dignified. Here’s something contestants can do though: Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is having one of his semi-annual blogging competitions. The challenge is to write a Top 5 list of whatevers, with the prize — selected at random — being $1,001.

Hundreds will enter, one will win, so buy a lottery ticket if you need money and can’t do math. But the big prize from these competitions is getting involved in the great big blogging world — learning, laughing, linking and being linked to. I think every RE.net weblogger should do this, not just the contestants. Deadline is midnight Thursday, so get cracking.

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May 8, 2007

What Barenaked Ladies Taught Me About Scripting And Delivery

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

The most important part of my job as a loan officer is helping clients understand how mortgages work.

It’s a tall order sometimes and that’s why I spend a ton of time crafting answers to common questions and then rehearsing them until I can recite them backwards, forwards, and from any point in the middle.

This is called Scripting and Delivery.

Why do I do it? Because over the course of my career, I have heard the same questions from my clients thousands of time. Naturally, that’s fine with me. The more times I am asked a particular question, the more I know just how important it is to people.

  • “I’ve heard that interest only loans are dangerous. What do you think?”
  • “Our family is about add another baby. How should we incorporate that into our mortgage plan?”
  • “I just paid off a credit card. Should I close the card?”

Each of these questions is a springboard to bigger, more important discussions about mortgage planning. That’s when I am thankful that I know what I am going to say and how I am going to say it. A carefully-crafted answer makes a far greater impact to my clients that if I just spoke off the cuff.

But, scripting alone, though, doesn’t cut it. It has to be backed up with flawless delivery, too.

This is where a lot of mortgage and real estate professionals fall short. They rely on their experience/expertise and just figure that they’ll wing it when the time comes to respond to a client’s question.

Look: It doesn’t matter if you know what to say if you don’t know how to say it clearly. And I’m going to prove it.

Below, are the lyrics for the Barenaked Ladies tune “One Week”, courtesy of Rock It Old School. Look them over, print them out, put them on an adjacent screen, whatever — just get a copy you can reference while you watch the embedded YouTube video above.

You’ve got the “script” in-hand so how hard can it be to just sing along?

If you failed on your first go around, try again. If you fail on Read more

May 8, 2007

A world fit to be conquered: Five steps to total real estate listing dominance

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the thing: We want to be excellent real estate listing agents. But there’s more to it than that. We want to be so good at listing real estate that no one can compete with us. The idea of selling “by-owner” pales in the light of what we do, but we want to be so effective, and so thorough, that not even our fellow Realtors will be able to compete against us. We want to charge top dollar — take that, Freakonomics! — and we want for other Realtors to get only the work we turn down.

That’s not very nice, is it? We’re not actually mean about anything, but to be the best necessarily implies that everyone else will be less than the best. Plus which, it kindasorta matters to our clients that we get the job done — and we don’t get paid until then, either.

Before I get to my list of five techniques, there are a couple of lists of three to consider. First, a successful listing praxis consists of three parts: Hiring the seller, marketing the home and servicing the transaction. I’ll be addressing marketing tactics below, but note that I said that we hire the sellers. Too many agents think the seller is hiring them, and it leads them into one obsequious error after another. We work with people who know that we know more about selling houses than they do. We interview them very carefully, and we turn down the ones who can’t or won’t do what we need them to do. We can only sell the houses that will sell — and whose owners are willing to sell — so we avoid the others.

Second, contracting a real estate listing actually entails three sales. We work very hard to sell the house with our marketing, but, before we can do that, we have to sell the sellers on working our way. And, as an ancillary consequence of working our way, we are going to sell a certain portion of the neighbors on working our way in the future. We don’t use our listings to market ourselves Read more

May 8, 2007

A Case (by Case) For and Against Dual Agency

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Trevor Smith’s answer to Dual Agency?

Let the buyer represent himself, and give him the commission regularly paid to the Buyer’s Agent. (Granted, this would still leave the buyer relatively unprotected, but at least if something goes bad, its his own fault and not the agents).

Your obvious question is, “Where are the customary apostrophes to indicate a contraction or possessive noun?” No, wait, that is just me. What you are really thinking I suspect is that this sounds suspiciously like a Redfin philosophy, but then, Trevor is not so coincidentally a Redfin agent from Seattle.

By the way, according to Trevor, Redfin’s Blue Collar Spokesmodel, they are gaining market share there at warp speed. In 2006, it was reported that Redfin closed over 200 transactions. Now, it seems they are putting those deals to bed at a clip of 90 a week. I feel a press release coming on!

In light of Trevor’s recent remarks, I’ll take the opportunity to open old dual agency wounds. Is dual agency truly the root of all evil? It depends on who you ask. Even here at the Kennel Club, we have two camps. Now, let’s make that three.

I fall somewhere in the middle on the subject. Steve and I have acted as dual agents in many transactions. We do not like it, and we do not seek it out, but at times it is so very appropriate that any argument suggesting we are compromising our agency duties is simply ludicrous.

BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS ME

Greg Swann is a well-known critic of dual agency transactions.

Disclosed Dual Agency cannot possibly be effected — in reality — without repeated, overt agency violations.

I will offer one example of how this statement is not only wrong but offensive to those of us that bend over backwards to protect the rights and interests of our clients – all of them. We closed escrow recently on a transaction involving our listing and our buyer. The reasons dual agency worked in this situation relate back to Russell Shaw’s contention that we have less control over our client’s decisions than one might imagine.

The idea that the Read more

May 7, 2007

A questionable practice?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Christopher R. Dunn writes:

A questionable practice?It would appear that numerious RE firms here in the Bay are making it real_estate_book_sma practice to List, market with open houses, advertise properties at a below market number with no intentions of selling at that number.The listing broker will take offers and hold them until a later date, usually two weeks or so to generate “competitive” offers.

Are Real Estate Firms practicing this in other areas?

To my knowledge, not in our area. If it is as you describe it, I don’t see it as “questionable” but intentionally deceitful. It is in direct violation of the Realtor Code of Ethics (download a copy of the code here) Article 1 (treat all parties fairly), Article 2 (avoid exaggeration, misrepresentation, or concealment of pertinent facts) and Article 12 (shall be careful at all times to present a true picture in their advertising and representations to the public). It would also likely be actionable by the California Attorney General’s office, as well.

If some Realtors are doing this sort of thing I believe it should be stamped out and stamped out hard.

May 7, 2007

Pachelbel versus Warhol: Taking desktop real estate video to the streets

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I stand accused of being the “Andy Warhol of real estate video”. I’m pretty sure them’s fightin’ words, but, rather than exacting my vengeance by making a nine-hour film of a dripping faucet, I have chosen instead to assert my classical roots.

Vide: I had planned to do a video for this listing, but it sold before I could get it done. So I did one now for practice. This is just another randomized slide show with music, but it works better for me than the kind of slow, blurry pan and stammer we see too often in real estate videos: “This. Is. The. Formal. Dining. Room. The. Residents. Dine. In. This. Room.”

But: I’m learning a lot by playing with this software. I have this same slide show in a rock video-style presentation, Ken Burns-style fauxtion with angled cuts and dissolves — completely MTV-creepy. What I want to learn how to do is supplant the images from recorded video, retaining the audio, so that the kind of interview I put together last Friday becomes more visually appealing and more informative.

This is doable. As with high-end graphics production, the software is takin’ it to the streets. Neither desktop publishing nor desktop video are necessarily as high in quality as a professional might achieve. But the price is right, and, most often, close enough is good enough.

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May 7, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at Lansner on Real Estate at the Orange County Register. Writing from The San Diego Home Blog, Kris Berg took fifth place for her playful rant on open house signs. Russell Shaw came in second place with his not-at-all-playful rant on the folly of real estate discounting.

The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is at the Real Estate Investing Blog. We entered a great Jeff Brown post, but Jeff and the CoREI are writing the other chapters of The Secret — The Law of Mutual Repulsion — so he didn’t win. He’ll be crushed if he ever does, so here’s to his unbroken streak of ratifying if not totally gratifying disappointments.

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May 7, 2007

What’s the antidote for a dubious statistic? A countervailing dubious statistic

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seventy-seven percent of home-buyers start their home search on the internet. Except, sixty-nine percent of Americans think the internet is a pain in the ass. What’s the real truth? I like to say that forty-seven percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. It’s not true, but, unlike all the other dubious statistical “news”, it’s funny.

May 7, 2007

The lead to loan cycle of an Internet lead aka Distrust Mountain

by

Mortgage Banker

Author website

My mortgage company works primarily with Internet leads — we’ve found it far more effective than direct mail, telemarketing or any other of the dying mass marketing techniques. We’ve developed and implemented systems and processes to effectively convert Internet leads in to customers and those customers in to repeat and (hopefully) long-time clients. As the marketing guy at our company I spend a lot of time looking at Internet leads and where and how we are converting them. I look at our successes and our failures and try to build marketing to support our chosen business channel.

I wanted to share with you all the lead to loan cycle that is typical with an Internet lead in terms of trust. Everyone talks about being a trusted advisor to your client, but what does that mean and really look like through the loan cycle? I’ve developed a (crude) graph that I show to all of our sales people to explain the challenges of working with a person who has solicited a refinance or purchase quote via the Internet. I call the graph Distrust Mountain.

Distrust Mountain

While I’ve documented the Internet lead here, you can apply this with varying levels of correlation across all lead sources. It also does a nice job of documenting how much better referrals or repeat business are, because that initial hump is so much lower.

As an originator, when you first receive an Internet lead, you must understand that although that person has expressed a varying degree of interest in some part of the refinance or purchase transaction they haven’t expressed any interest in you or your company. When you conduct the first phone call you are faced with a very high barrier to earning the person’s business. You are calling them (one of four or five people) and soliciting your services. They may have talked to others before you and will definitely talk to people after your initial conversation. Their defenses are up and they are looking for any reason to not continue the conversation with you.

This is the most difficult part of the transaction for inexperienced loan officers. The Read more

May 7, 2007

Odds & Ends

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

In no particular order:

Who has the most irritating driving habits, men or women? I don’t think this question has an answer but found the comments section funny.

__

The other Russell Shaw. Actually, there are several. This one I’ve been in touch with several times over the past few years, as people sometimes send him an Family Marketemail in an attempt to reach me. Russell always forwards them to me. He is (in addition to being a very nice and very bright
guy) a VERY prolific blogger. And until now he had not been blogging about real estate. He is now. As much as I might like to take credit for some of the insightful things he writes, I don’t want to risk getting caught – so I wanted to point out that I am not “that Russell Shaw”. In the past it was Russell the blogger and Russell the Realtor. The line became blurred once I joined BloodhoundBlog and now the distinction of “the one who blogs about real estate” just went away too.

He damn sure better not move from Portland to Phoenix and go into the residential real estate sales business – because then we are going to have trouble. 🙂

__

Years ago I read a book (now out of print) called the Robert Half Way To Get Hired in Today’s Job Market. Robert Half had and has one of the largest employment agencies in the world. As I’ve always considered the process of me “getting a listing” me applying for a job – I got a lot out of it. About two years ago I happened to run across this website and was very impressed. His name is Nick Corcodilos. He has a free weekly email newsletter where he responds to letters from people looking for jobs. Lots of smart employers and business people read it regularly. There isn’t something I can use in every issue but there is often enough to make it worth my time.

__

I received the following email from Kerry J. Grinkmeyer:

—– Original Message —–

From: Kerry J. Grinkmeyer

To: Number1Expert@nohasslelisting.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:47 PM
Subject: Your Recognition Plaque

Russell Shaw

Congratulations on Read more

May 6, 2007

So, Boss…You Want I Should WACC Dis Guy?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

You know how lenders are. We’re always talking about WACC-ing a guy who borrows money. Do you REALLY know what we’re tawkin’ about, though?

The Weighted Average Cost of Capital or WACC, is a corporate finance term used to measure the true cost of debt. You can find that figure in any bank’s annual report, on the Sources and Uses of Funds Page. They refer to it as a Cost of Funds.
It’s a pretty simple analysis. I use WACC analysis to determine whether you should refinance your home loan.

I can just WACC a property, I can WACC a certain person, I can even WACC your whole family if you want me to. Here’s how I would do it:

Let’s assume this homeowner has a $210,000 first mortgage at 6%, a $60,000 second mortgage at 9%, and $30,000 in consumer debt at 12%.

1- Add up all of your debt.

$210,000 + 60,000 + 30,000 = $300,000

2- Determine what the percentage each loan is to the sum of all the debts.

First mortgage= 70%, Second Mortgage= 20%, Consumer debt = 10%

3- Multiply the loan rate by that percentage for each loan.

First Mortgage= 70% * 6.0= 4.2, Second Mortgage= 20% * 9= 1.8, Consumer Debt= 10% * 12= 1.2

4- Add up all of those figures. That’s your WACC

WACC= 4.2 + 1.8 + 1.2 = 7.2%

Now, compare that WACC to the loan you could get to refinance those debts. If it’s lower than 7.2%, dat’s an offer you can’t refuse. Pretty simple, huh?

Fuhgeddaboudit.

P.S.- I tried this earlier and it seemed awfully confusing. You can figure for after-tax WACC to be more accurate but this post is probably easier to understand.

May 5, 2007

The Almeria Files: 318 photos in 60 seconds

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I made another short movie to demonstrate that real estate videos don’t have to be small and crappy and void of colorful details. Better than this, it seems to me to illustrate the real life of the wired listing agent. Believe it or not, the film features every photo we took for the Almeria listing — in 60 seconds.

This is for your eyes only. I’m not sharing it with potential buyers. If I can impose a theme upon it, it’s about the accelerated crush that goes into putting one of these listings together. I think the music — Midtown by Tom Waits — sets just the right tone…

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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