Month: July 2007 (page 6 of 7)

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

Independence Day, in the United States, was a sweltering summer day in my hometown of Philadelphia. My favorite signer was the media entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin. Note that I didn’t refer to Ben as the inventor, statesman, or womanizer (he was known for all three things). I refer to Ben as a media entrepreneur.

Ben Franklin would have been a helluva weblogger.

Let’s try to parallel the life of Ben Franklin with how he might have done it today:

At twelve years old, he serves as an apprentice printer to his older brother in Boston. Today, he might have been a code writer, learning how emerging technologies work.

At seventeen, he runs away to London to continue his apprenticeship, returns to Philadelphia, and starts his own print shop. This makes complete sense. As a budding entrepreneur, Ben might have run away to San Francisco or Seattle to be near where the action is. Philly was the equivalent of what the Silicon Valley is today.

One year later, he becomes the sole owner and publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. Ben realized that the technology (the printing press) was merely a tool; it was content that would sell newspapers. Rather than provide the tools, he opted to vertically integrate and own the content, too. Three years after buying the Pennsylvavia Gazette, he publishes Poor Richard’s Almanack, an original content journal which shaped early American thought about business, life, and politics.

Now, Ben is wealthy. Rather than rest on his laurels, he expands his influence to provide a solution to the information delivery problem in the Colonies and is appointed Postmaster General. Talk about Bill Gates controlling information, Big Ben now has his hand in two influential publications and the government’s communication system. Ben establishes a “think tank” which becomes the brainchild for the University of Pennsylvania. Now, he becomes the indisputable expert on intellectual thought.

At the age of 42, Ben sells his printing shop but retains the rights to the Gazette and Almanack. Ben is considered by many Colonists as the wealthiest man in the Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s an enlarged image from BloodhoundBlog on the iPhone. Cathy and I spent about an hour yesterday at the Apple Store at the Fashion Show Mall toying with demo units. We’re rarely early-adopters, so we have no exigent plans to switch, but the phone is a lot of fun to play with.

The iPhone’s strengths are well-documented. We had no trouble figuring things out, and doing things — anything — is a pure delight. But: The phone’s short-comings render it less than ideal as a laptop killer for Realtors:

• As Will Farnsworth reported here, neither Zillow.com’s nor Trulia.com’s mapping seems to work
• Our MLS system did not fail in the Safari browser, but I could not get search pages to fully load, leaving me in doubt about listings pages; this may have been the fault of the MLS system, since I’ve had the same failures in MSIE 6/7
• The YouTube integration is H264 video only (that is, iPod/Apple TV video), not YouTube’s vast library of Flash-based video; if you’re doing iTunes video already, you don’t need to duplicate your content in YouTube

Connectivity over EDGE was not horrible, although the in-store Wi-Fi was much better. Tabbed browsing was wicked easy.

The iPhone needs Flash and Javascript — the essence of AJAX for real estate — but those can easily be added with a software upgrade. I need to satisfy myself that it can handle our MLS system. Beyond that, it was fast, intuitive and fun.

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

This is perhaps a regional topic. I admittedly don’t know how it is done in other cities, but in San Diego we still have the time-honored tradition of the weekly Broker Caravan. This is an entrenched ritual which has historically been preceded by a “pitch session”, a practice originally born out of necessity. Steve shared his disdain for the archaic ritual this morning at our home blog, and being in the same philosophical camp, I felt compelled to add my two-cents.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, absent a computerized MLS data base, the “book” was published, weekly or monthly depending on the region. The “book” held the key to the real estate agent’s business: All active listings. For new listings taken between publication, the only way to get the word out to the real estate community was to have a little social gathering. The homes were the draw, and the free donuts and coffee were a nice side benefit. Agents shared information, networked with one another, and truly brokered homes. The term caravan was appropriate to describe the pitch session aftermath, where the agents all piled into their respective Realtor Mobiles and visited the new offerings in succession. Ah, the good old days.

The Origin of Species

Darwin would be proud. With time and progress came change. In many instances, thankfully, the pitch session was eliminated. All listing information is now available online, real time. If an agent has a new listing, I know about it, and no 60-second oral presentation is going to give me more information than the MLS already has. The Broker Caravan still has value, that value being a convenient opportunity to allow agents to gain access to a home without having to make appointments and preview. It is a convenience for the sellers as well – Give them a two hour window to get it, get out, and get it over with.

Survival of the Fittest

About a year ago, a local title company got the fabulously fabulous idea to reinstitute the pitch session in our local community of Scripps Ranch. To my amazement, they successfully sold the concept by Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

The following essay is taken from a lecture by Todd Duncan at the Strategic Equity Summit. Mr. Duncan opened the conference of 3,000 mortgage originators with an electric speech chock full of useful information. Mr. Duncan is an author, a highly sought after speaker, and a business consultant. His company, Todd Duncan Enterprises, serves salespeople in general and mortgage originators specifically.

The Six Daily Disciplines of Purposeful Advisers Are:

1- Knowledge Acquisition: We work in changing markets. An daily hour should be dedicated to learning more about our industries. Much of the weblog reading I do helps me stay on top of mortgage markets but I supplement it with podcasts and books. Originators would do well to examine a monthly investment of $59 in Mortgage Planning University.

2- Partnership Planning: Purposeful Advisers have a referral-based business. Planning your communication each month with these referral partners helps to drive your integrated approach to client advisory. I spend approximately one hour daily on this function. Mostly, it’s a few phone calls to that partnership base but I supplement it with online conference calls and personal meetings.

3- Prospecting Engine Maintenance: Purposeful Advisers have a prospecting engine which drives potential clients to them. Direct mail, radio advertising, telemarketing, and cold-calling are traditional engines for newer originators. I use online seminars, weblogging, online advertising, and direct mail.

4- Prospect Follow-Up Program: A system should be in place for sufficient follow-up. Nothing hurts more than when you get the news that a potential client chooses another adviser because of insufficient follow-up. I use drip e-mail campaigns tracked by Salesforce.com CRM. This is my most glaring weakness.

5- Client Consultations should take up most of your day. For originators, you’ll be talking to past borrowers, current borrowers, and potential borrowers about lending strategies to build wealth. For Realtors, you’ll be showing property, negotiating contracts, and following through with contracts in escrow. If you aren’t in a client consultation, you should be calling to set more up for Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We tipped our way into the most amazing room we’ve ever had in Las Vegas. There are at least 13 cranes visible from our window, looking south on the Strip, most of them at MGM’s Project City Center. We plan to take a closer look at that today.

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

Hard money is not stupid money. Pragmatic underwriting guidelines are followed so as to insure the principle that the private mortgage really is a temporary loan, designed to solve rather than to perpetuate the underlying problem. I attempted to define this niche in one of my first posts on Bloodhound and followed it up with an hour-long conference call with two private mortgage investors.

Private mortgage loans are not asset-based lending. There must be a demonstrative ability to repay the loan. If the borrower opts to “state” the income, the trust deed broker has an obligation to the investor (and the borrower) to perform due diligence that would suggest that the borrower has that ability. We sometimes eschew traditional underwriting guidelines to demonstrate that ability to repay. Often, we accept a statement of future earnings from the borrower (useful for entrepreneurs). We will review the assets in a retirement plan as reserves to draw upon should that statement of future earnings not materialize.

Private mortgage loans are not a license to jack up the fees. I often turn away brokered business because of originator greed. Lenders charge points to enhance their yield. A common practice in our industry is for the originating broker to increase his/her brokerage fee to equal or better the lender-charged points. The result is an unrealistic fee financed by the lender and subsequent decline. If brokers are charging a borrower 1-2 points for a subprime loan, and the loan turns into a private mortgage loan, brokers should not automatically raise their fees because the borrower is “stuck”.

Values are carefully scrutinized. Appraisals can be manipulated to reflect an approximate opinion of value. It may very well pass the test of a FNMA/FHLMC underwriter but not the careful eye of the private mortgage lender. Originating brokers would do well to check the local MLS for model matches. If you have an appraisal for $650,000 and two model matches are being offered for sale at $599,000 and $580,000, with an average of 45 days on the Read more