You guessed it. Seattle, San Diego and the rest of the country had better get off the dime.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Month: October 2007 (page 4 of 8)
…but you still have time. Cut-off is today at 12 Noon PDT/MST. If you know of something worthy of recognition, your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now while it’s on your mind.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Not so much, despite a prank posting on the realty.bot’s forums:
Zillow will be shut down on Nov 2nd
Their revenue stream is in concert with the real estate market. They simply ran out of money.
Hence no price updates for over a month.
The Cluetrain runs on Saturdays in Seattle, so David Gibbons rushed in to quash the rumor (once I had asked for a comment, I should add):
OK, OK – Zillow is not shutting down.
Quite the contrary. I’m sorry that Zestimate updates are delayed – there’s a sticky post in the Zillow forum that explains this further. The short story is that we’re preparing for a massive update to Zestimates and data – and have had to freeze site data while that project is ongoing. I understand that it’s frustrating and ask for your patience for a little while longer.
Financially, the company is very healthy – but thanks for your concern. Yep, Homer; we did just raise a 3rd round of venture Capital – $30M – for a total of $89M to date. Ad sales at Zillow are better than expected – please remember to support our advertisers!
New data will be on the site shortly – and much more cool stuff will launch over the next 3 months. We’re not going anywhere.
The rumor was obvious bunk, but it’s cool that it shook some news loose from the Zillowtree.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, Zillow.com
These are photos from the listing I was working on last night. Cathleen took all the photos for this house. I can do a house a lot faster than she can, but she comes home with photos that are just stunning.
Can poetic copy sell houses? Maybe not. Custom signs? It’s a long shot — but we do get a lot of sign calls. Elaborate web sites? You tell me. Photos like these? Everything’s a crap shoot, and, of course, nothing works if the price is wrong.
But: If you assume that more than one house could be a good fit for that elusive buyer, then what should you do to make sure that it’s your listing and not the other guy’s that sells?
Our answer: Whatever it takes. Dramatic photos can’t win the war alone, but they’re one more weapon in our arsenal.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
Sub prime mortgage are defaulting at record proportions. Lenders are closing their doors and confidence is waning on Wall Street. Greed, corruption, and irresponsibility have all been cited as the reasons for this contraction and collapse. While these factors might be contributing reasons, they are all byproducts from the underlying reason:
The real estate markets behaved better than were expected.
Understanding this concept will require a mastery of Dan Green’s presentation proving that real estate data is granular and not mosaic. Dan said:
But real estate is not a national story, folks. It’s highly, highly local.
To beat the point home, when you buy your next home, it won’t be a home that exists in all 50 states. It will be a home that exists in one state, in one town, in one neighborhood, on one street and that has its own character and economics. Much like the small pictures above.
And that’s what real estate is — it’s a series of very, very small pictures.
Lending developed into a national, or to use Dan’s analogy, mosaic, business. Local factors weren’t considered in the modeling when Wall Street developed the guidelines for Alt-A and sub prime loans. The Wall Street forecasters were correct in their assumptions that real estate was undervalued… nationally. The aging baby boomers and short supply would apply steady pressure on prices in the first decade of this millennium. Nationally, they expected properties to appreciate faster than the prior appreciation rate; they just didn’t anticipate that local markets would behave outside of their model.
Let’s set “ground zero” to Y2K. Wall Street forecasters expected real estate to appreciate at a rate exceeding 6% per annum. It did. They loosened loan guidelines, in a quest for yield, protected by rapidly appreciating collateral. Desirable areas, like Southern California Vegas, South Florida, and Phoenix, led the appreciation wave at rates that were double the expected appreciation rate. Other parts of the country, Idaho, Utah, and Texas, didn’t follow the boom until 3-5 years later. Nationally, the numbers made sense to Wall Street.
The Read more
When we list, as late as I have to…
First off, I’m gonna say right up front, I’m not a house agent, and haven’t been since President Jimmy was in office tellin’ all of us our attitudes sucked. Of course, becoming an ‘investment agent‘ back then wasn’t what one would call prescient timing. About the time I’d learned enough to become dangerous, we had what we now call a correction.
Since everyone’s all excited these days about transparency, I thought I’d disclose I’m not a house agent, even though I’m about to give a boatload of house agent advice. Furthermore, the advice I’m about to give, isn’t new — it’s just my angle on things.
I was a house guy for my first seven years. My main source of business was generated by farming activities. I’d read a few books, and was unimpressed. Then I was given one by my broker, and after reading it, I’d thought he’d given me the key to the vault. 🙂
It was written by the owner of the well known real estate licensing school, Lumbleau. He was the founder, John J. Lumbleau. It told about a concept called Farming, which really furrowed my brow. Remember, this was the early ’70’s — farming? In real estate?
Even though it involves a little technology, I guarantee you, if I can handle it, your Aunt Fannie can do it. My son Josh’s favorite question for me is, “You made that up, right? You can’t be serious, asking me that question!” It’s almost always a software or a basic computer question, so honest, the hi-tech will be easy.
I’ve been speaking to a few agents around the country this year. I’ve said the same thing to all of them: Build a hyper-local farm as a website/blog.
See? Told ya it wasn’t anything new.
The problem as I see it, is nobody (that I’ve found so far) does it the way I think would work like gangbusters. I keep hearing agents, a couple whom I know, say they tried it, but there just wasn’t any traction. In my opinion they didn’t give it even half a chance to take its first Read more
The poet gets the girl — and sells the house:
Our homes are structures, shelters, domiciles. But the idea of a residence encompasses so much more than mere tentage, mere respite from heat and cold and wind and rain and the relentless summer sun. If all we needed was a place to escape the elements, we might just as well live in insulated barns.
But your home — your residence — is much more than that. It’s love and marriage and family, of course, home and hearth, kith and kin. But at a more fundamental level it is a reflection of who you are, an enduring stake stuck into the earth that declares to all: This is who we are, this is what we believe in and stand for and cherish.
This is not where we live, not how we live. This structure, this shelter, this domicile — this home — is our lives, as much an essential part of what we are as our heads, our hands, our hearts.
Home is where the heart is? A home like this is the beating heart of lives lived wisely and well.
Like love poetry, if you’re not right there, it’s treacle. But for people swept up in the swirling emotions of a home search, this is warm butterscotch syrup for the soul. This is the kind of stuff that puts us completely beyond the reach of the listers we compete against.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). I’m posting it now in the hopes that Realtors reading this will email it to all their sellers. I’m showing a lot lately — curse this slow market! — except I’m not because I can’t get into the houses:
Your house can’t be sold if it can’t be shown
Here’s a simple fact about the sale of your home:
If I can’t show it, I can’t sell it.
When I’m working with buyers, the ideal home is listed this way: Available, lockbox, vacant. The house is empty of occupants — although it would be great if it were staged — but there’s an MLS lockbox so I can get in with my party. I don’t want to have to call the lister, and I don’t want to talk to the seller. I just want to show the house.
The next easiest homes to show are not very easy to show: Alarm activated. Now I have to talk to the listing agent — who may be unavailable. I can’t go into the house until I hear back from the lister, which might be hours too late. This is not the worst form of seller self-sabotage, but it can be more than enough to sell another home instead.
What’s worse than an activated alarm? How about no lockbox? Now I not only have to make contact with the lister, we have to coordinate with each other. By-appointment-only listings might make sense at $3,000,000. At $300,000, you’re getting in your own way.
Buyers hate occupied homes. They feel they are invading your privacy at the same time you are invading theirs. Occupied homes are almost always stuffed with stuff, which makes it difficult for buyers to imagine their own stuff in its place. Still worse, half the time, the sellers will be hovering around. Even if they’re not trying to eavesdrop, buyers will feel that they are.
Pet advisory is another obstacle to be overcome. Now, even if the sellers have sense enough to be out of the house, I have to protect my party from the pets — Read more
You hear it here, you hear it there (there being here), and you know it in your heart. Real estate is so darn personal.
Ah, the personal touch! That is why I blog, and why I am very responsive to my emails and voicemail. That is why I love, and my clients love, the ability to electronically sign contracts and to view all contracts online from any Wi-Fi hotspot in the Delta Quadrant. Heck, what’s more personal than that daily auto-generated online update of home sales activity in your neighborhood… with MY PICTURE at bottom and YOUR NAME at the top?
I know what you are thinking – All that stuff is impersonal, but we are in a “people” business. Well, it depends on which “people” we are talking about. It’s a matter of communication, which we all know requires a sender and a receiver. When wearing the sender hat, I need to know in what form my client prefers to receive, which means I need to listen carefully to what my clients are telling me.
Times, they are a-changin’. That doesn’t mean that our business is becoming, can become, fully automated and physically detached. It simply means that our world is different now, and we are redefining “personal”. The ways in which we interact today are dramatically different than yesterday’s methods (smoke signals and dot-dot-dash). My children phone me from their bedrooms asking for the ETA of dinner, and they IM me from 100 feet removed to tell me that the Jonas Brothers are coming to town (to marry THEM!). I suspect they visit my home blog periodically to take a peak at the Trulia side bar widget of our active listings just to gauge the likelihood that I will be available to drive carpool to the movies on Friday.
As agents, we work with a wide cross-section of people and personalities. The key is to understand their definition of “personal”. My grandmother does not have a Meebo account, and you won’t find her on Facebook; she is the type of person who would prefer a phone call, a personal visit, and contracts in triplicate. My typical Qualcomm client, Read more
A combination of magic and the truth seems to be where it’s it. In regards to the selling of homes, in this current market, agents are willing to try anything; witchcraft, voodoo, incantations, an appeal to Jesus Christ, and aside from these, more orthodox approaches, including bribery, trickery, flattery, and simple marketing. Having tried some of these methods (of which my conscience would dictate), I have discovered that Russell and Greg are right. In this market, price matters most.
I had begun to view myself as one of those scantily clad women at boxing matches parading with a placard. Instead of “ROUND 2,” my placard read, “A STEAL AT ONLY $739,000!!” Generally speaking, these women are afforded a certain measure of respect, even if only for their outward attributes. I, on the other hand, was being pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes. This was evident because my “steal” was in fact, not a steal, and at the worst of times, my glorious placard was entirely ignored.
So began the quest for Truth. Having searched diligently, I discovered what others before me had discovered: price will sell anything. An old Floyd Wickman adage goes something like this:
“I can’t sell this house. Nobody will look at it!”
“The price is too high.”
“No, it can’t be that. I comp’d the property every which way. It is priced right.”
“Are people going to see it?”
“Uh. . .no.”
“Then it is priced too high.”
“Nonsense. Maybe I need some new photos. Maybe some more advertising, or an open house.”
“Do you think you could sell it for $100,000?”
“Well, of course! That’d be like giving it away!”
“Then the price is too high.”
I determined to really get to know my market. I needed answers. I began to study and research the hard numbers. How many homes are selling? What is peculiar about these homes. Are they the nicest? Are they the cheapest? Are there agent bonuses? Are there buyer concessions? What I began to learn is that the ones that were selling were, in most cases, both the nicest and the cheapest. If I wanted to sell my homes, I needed to have the nicest Read more
The stakes are high, as Brian has pointed out. You yourself have been smart enough to build a Web 2.0 marketing strategy, but now you’re faced with the possibility that your broker, with or without the help of the brokers’ cartel, the National Association of Realtors, may try to take it all away. Here are some things you can do to pursue independence now:
- Get rid of the licensing laws. A minimum standard enshrined in law becomes the de facto maximum standard. Consumers have been deluded into thinking that the fog-a-mirror license denotes quality, so they don’t dig deeper for the added-value you bring to the marketplace. Even better, if there are no licenses, there are no brokers to tell you what you can and can’t do.
- But: That won’t happen, so work in your state to get rid of the broker level of licensing. This is already the law in a few states. Every agent can fly his or her own flag as an actual entrepreneur. Even if you should elect to affiliate with a Keller 21Max franchise, you’ll be at liberty to take flight whenever you want, since all your contracts will be your own.
- But even that is probably a long-term proposition. What will happen if your broker tries to shut down your weblog tomorrow? You need your broker’s license now — or as soon as you can get it — if your state still makes the distinction between salespeople and brokers. Even then your contracts aren’t your own, but you will have the ability to plan an orderly exit. And, having that mobility, you will have the power to negotiate with your broker as an equal.
- I mean no slight to our vendor friends, but take and keep control of your marketing technology. Of particular importance: If your broker controls your marketing, your broker controls your business.
- I despise laws, so I have complete contempt for “reforms.” The only reform that matters to me is repeal, which never, ever happens. Even so, a “reform” that would make a remarkable difference in the way the real estate brokerage business is conducted — even Read more