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November 13, 2008

Podcast: Teri Lussier talks about using weblogs to build relationships at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the song Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple sings, “I’m good at being uncomfortable so I can’t stop changing all the time.” You might take a census of the Bloodhounds to see to whom that sentiment applies. I know it does to me. I think it does to Teri Lussier, too. She’s not cranky or irascible, but she has a keen awareness of how far from perfect things can be — how much better they could be if we were to work a little harder.

Teri spoke at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando on using weblogs to build and sustain relationships. Linked below is an MP3 podcast file of her presentation, but we’ll precede that with an Unchained Melody, a bootleg video of Fiona with Nickel Creek:


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November 13, 2008

REALTOR.com features FSBO listings- The Excrement hits the Oscillating Rotary Blades

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Hat Tip to Jay Thompson

OK, here’s the Press Release

UPDATE: According to Mr. Brunner CEO of Virginia Association of REALTORS, he has talked with the general counsel of NAR and there is NO relationship between ForSaleByOwner.com and REALTOR.com. Ms Janick apparently as well told him that there are NO unlisted properties on REALTOR.com.

I want to make sure that we provide accurate information (which has been difficult in this case).

With that in mind and IF that is true then much of this post is now irrelevant.

We still have no official word from REALTOR.com saying that this press release was not accurate. (Would have made getting the truth out much easier.)

I am literally too P.O.’d for words. I have long considered REALTOR.com an enemy to the REALTOR. But this is a bridge too far. Whoever did this at REALTOR.com HAD to know what they were doing (IMO).

For them to allow FSBO’s onto REALTOR.com WITHOUT being on the local MLS shows CLEARLY who these @##%#$%’s are. They are no different than any other interloper.

My message to the folks at NAR on this one is short and sweet:

“You’d better come down HARD and FAST on this one… or this will make Bastille Day look like a picnic. And you know what? That might not be a bad thing.”

Thoughts?

November 13, 2008

Think Your Taxes Are Going Down? Think Again

by

Associate Broker

Author website

In A Few Years We’ll Be Calling These Days The Good Ol’ Days

Some believe that in the coming administration, their taxes will be lowered. Some even believe that they won’t have to worry about buying gas… or paying their mortgage… as Obama will make sure that all is well.

Let me tell you how the cow will eat the cabbage.

As of this writing, the federal government has pumped $2 trillion into places of which – thus far – they will not even divulge where the money is going. Keep in mind that is $2 trillion during a so-called “conservative” administration. At this rate, we will soon see a big spike in inflation as our money loses even more of its value. Our dollar has lost 27% over the last eight years… and these bailouts are nothing more than the government printing money – therefore making the remaining money supply worth that much less.

One of the changes that will take place at the end of the year is the revision of the capital gains exclusion – a change that will not benefit the taxpayer. Current tax law provides a $250K exclusion ($500K for married couples) from capital gains taxes on a primary residence that the taxpayer lived in for two of the previous five years. The new law will prorate the exclusion based upon how many years the taxpayer actually lives in the home.

Meanwhile, the inflation from the printing presses at the Treasury is going to cause a rise in the prices of everything – food, commodities, wages, housing… you name it. Higher wages will result in higher taxes due to the phenomena of bracket creep… and although real estate will rise in real value, it’s value on paper will appear to be much greater due to this inflation.

As many have noticed over the last ten years, property taxes have gone up as a result of tax assessors using higher property values as a means to get more money for the government coffers… and now as property values are declining, those same assessors are not interested in lowering those taxes. In many cases, Read more

November 13, 2008

By making war on private property rights, the National Association of Realtors is making war on everything we are as Americans

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m responding here to a comment from Dave Phillips, who is to be commended in advance for bearing up to the strain.

I will invite President Gaylord to read and possibly respond if you promise to be a good doggy and engage in polite discussion (i.e., avoid inflamed rhetoric like “Rotarian Socialism” and “inane kleptomania”). It would serve no useful purpose to just piss him off. He is a reasonable man and would appreciate your sound reasoning.

Is he a reasonable man or a daffodil? Rotarian Socialism and kleptomania are exact and perfect descriptions of the way our country is run. If the man can’t bear to look at the world as it is, he needn’t bother talking to me.

“Everything the NAR does is anti-consumer.” I respectfully disagree. Defending mortgage interest deductibility (based on the current tax establishment) is very much in my favor as a consumer. Is it also self-serving? yes.

This is the seen and the unseen, classic Bastiat. You see a tax deduction and regard it as being to your immediate pecuniary advantage. You don’t see all the other taxes that are raised to make up for that deduction.

Worse, you don’t see that the NAR is not seeking your interests but its own: The deduction causes you to value housing above other investments, contrary to market forces, which results in your buying a home when you could and probably should be making more productive use of your surplus income. The goal? Commissions for NAR members, not your interests at all.

Still worse, you don’t see that the recession we are going into was caused, fundamentally, by overvaluing housing as a market good by means of tax deductions, credits, exclusions and deferrals. In five years you could be walking around shoeless, dining out of garbage dumpsters, but at least your mortgage interest will be tax-deductible.

In other words: You are a consumer in your every economic transaction, not just when you are paying your mortgage. Past lobbying by the NAR and CRA groups will result, at a minimum, in the pillaging of your retirement accounts. How is that “very much in [your] favor as Read more

November 13, 2008

Passion play: A working plan for working our brains until they explode at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I like Teri’s idea of an exploding brain. Or maybe we can think of the brain as a kernal of popcorn — hard and seemingly inflexible until just the right application of heat makes it explode into something eight times its original size. In addition to all the other things people might call me, I am most adamantly an evangelist for expanding minds, so here is the rough game plan I worked out for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix on the flight home from Orlando:


Click on the image to open a PDF version.
(Updated to reflect the actual dates of the event.)

Here’s the way this is going to work: If you come to Unchained, we want you staying at our hotel — even if you live in Phoenix. Why? Because the scenius we plan to build is going to look an awful lot like a boot camp. If you’re with us from 5 pm on Thursday to 5 pm on Sunday, you could end up working as much as 54 of those 72 hours. Some people need more sleep than others, but the harder you work at the work we plan to set before you, the greater the benefits you will reap.

What benefits?

Recall that you’re going to be completely overhauling your marketing profile. Each one of those eight labs will be hands-on, step-by-step explorations of the course matter. You won’t be working on examples or dummy versions, you’ll be working on your own marketing materials, making them better and more effective in collaboration with your instructors and team-mates.

Moreover, you’ll be building scenius scenes at all levels of interaction. The whole conference will be a giant scenius, a chance for you to learn and to teach with some of the hardest-charging minds in modern real estate marketing. Your labs will form smaller scenes, and the work you do in ad hoc teams will be the smallest of scenius scenes — as small as two people working together by the hotel pool. This kind of intense interaction, if you dare to immerse yourself in it, will leave you drenched in new knowledge, new skills — Read more

November 12, 2008

Paulson Translated

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

After listening to and reading the text from Paulson’s speech this morning, I had to sit down and translate it because there was so much he wasn’t saying and so much that he was saying that was just not “right.”   I hope that you’ll do two things:

  1. Take the time to read the entire thing.
  2. Make your opinions known – tell me if you think I’m all wet.  Talk to others about it, write your local paper, forward a copy of this to others, call your congressman.   Don’t just sit back and say, “I don’t like it.”

Here goes:

Paulson Translated – His original speech is in “normal” type, my comments are in bold.

Washington, DC — Good morning. I will provide an update on the state of the financial system, our economy, and our strategy for continued implementation of the financial rescue package. Keep in mind that this strategy is subject to change by tonight.

Current State of Global Financial System

The actions taken by Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC in October have clearly helped stabilize our financial system. Before we acted, we were at a tipping point. Credit markets were largely frozen, denying financial institutions, businesses and consumers access to vital funding and credit. He uses past tense verbs, but I’m not sure that isn’t still true. U.S. and European financial institutions were under extreme pressure, and investor confidence in our system was dangerously low.

We also acted quickly and in coordination with colleagues We told them who we were going to buy and we all slashed rates together around the world to stabilize the global financial system. Going into the Annual IMF/World Bank meetings in early October, I made clear that we would use the financial rescue package granted by Congress to purchase equity directly from financial institutions – the fastest and most productive means of using our new authorities to stabilize our financial system. Even though that really isn’t what the program was for. We launched our capital purchase program the following week when we announced that nine of the largest U.S. financial institutions, holding approximately 55 percent of Read more

November 12, 2008

NAR Promotes Housing Stimulus Plan

by

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

Here is a fresh bone for Bloodhounds to chew on.  This 4-point stimulus plan was approved by the NAR Board of Directors this past Monday and is being pushed heavily in Washington DC. 

The National Association of Realtors® will offer a four-point legislative plan to reinvigorate the housing market, calling on Congress to act during a lame-duck session. NAR believes the plan will give a boost to the economy and help to calm jittery potential homebuyers.

The plan features such consumer-driven provisions as eliminating the repayment of the first-time homebuyer tax credit and expanding it to all homebuyers, making higher mortgage loan limits permanent, pushing banks to extend credit to Main Street, and prohibiting banks from entering into real estate.

“Housing has always lifted the economy out of downturns, and it is imperative to get the housing market moving forward as quickly as possible,” said NAR President Richard F. Gaylord. “It is vital to the economy that Congress take specific actions to boost the confidence of potential homebuyers in the housing market and make it easier for qualified buyers to get safe and affordable mortgage loans. We are asking Congress to act right away.”

Gaylord, a broker with RE/MAX Real Estate Specialists in Long Beach, Calif., said NAR, as the leading advocate for homeownership and private property rights, believes it is important for Congress to address the concerns and fears of America’s families, much in the way it has addressed Wall Street turbulence. “Housing is and has always been a good, long-term investment and a family’s primary step towards accumulating wealth,” Gaylord said.

NAR recommends Congress pass new housing stimulus legislation that includes the following priorities:

1. Remove the requirement in the current law that first-time homebuyers repay the $7,500 tax credit, and expand the tax credit to apply not only to first-time buyers but also to all buyers of a primary residence.

2. Revise the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 2008 stimulus loan limit increases to make them permanent. The Economic Stabilization Act, enacted in February, made loan limit increases temporary, and Read more

November 12, 2008

The Paulson Clarification (a Tin Foil Hat production)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Henry Paulson figured out that buying troubled assets does not help the cause.  If you want to own the financial industry you don’t get there by purchasing their problems, you get there by purchasing them.  (Or at least watching over them with Tin Foil Hat firmly in place.)   Read the full article here.

On the other hand, King Henry is watching the Democratic machine rev up in support of auto maker bail-outs and keeping his distance.  Either he recognizes this as a straight donation to the unions or he understands how little an ownership stake in the backward facing auto industry contributes to the nationalization of our economy.  In my opinion both are correct.  For an insightful read on the auto industries’ brazen beggary go here.

November 12, 2008

Using Google Docs to Track Your Goals for 2008: Part 1 of 3, Maybe 4.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Greg and I have talked from time to time about CRMS.   We both like them in concept, but have a hard time using them.   He doesn’t use REST, and I don’t use HEAP.   I have been using my blackberry to track stuff, aweber, and that’s it.   But I needed a way to track GOALS. Pure numbers, how many/how much. I didn’t want a new account, and I wanted to be able to draw my own conclusions from the data, not have some goofy stats telling me I was on pace for 1291% of my goal.

Enter google forms. Not specifically designed for this purpose, but still a sweet way to easily input stuff. You can be set up in an hour, and that’s if you’re new to Gdocs.

I made a 3 part video on Google Docs.   Many of you will get the gist, take it & run after one part.  To you: Kudos.   Don’t wait for part’s 2 and 3.  You can refine your system after, but don’t wait.    For those of you who DON’T get it, just stick around, you’l get all the ratios you could ever want.

I’d start by tracking:

  • contacts made
  • leads generated
  • lead followup calls made

Those things you can sort of control.   Calls made, quotes/listing packages/GFEs sent, etc.

But it starts with a lightweight way to collect your numbers.  Made a 5 minute video to start this off.  You might get better results by going through to viddler, but i think you’ll be able to see everything here:

November 12, 2008

Social Media Marketing Conversion: You Are Permitted To Get Paid

by

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

Author website

“Screwing around on social networks is fun but it isn’t gonna get me paid !”

Say it ain’t so, Joe !  I addressed this topic in my “Ninja Social Media Marketing” session at Unchained Orlando.  I’ll lay it all out in Phoenix, this May.  The truth is that a disciplined plan for social media participation...WITH THE IDEA OF CONVERSION in mind, can be very profitable.

The best advice I can give participants is to treat the social media platforms like a wedding reception.  You would never push your business card on some unsuspecting schlub at your cousin’s wedding but you better be prepared to answer the question, “Where’s the market headed?” if asked.

What is your ultimate goal from your social media marketing?  Conversion. Jeff Turner gives us a nice starting point with this quote from his panel at the NAR Convention:

Your overall business goal of social networking should be to expand your sphere and move conversations offline, panelists said. “There’s always going to be need for face-to-face communication in real estate,” Turner said. “Find a way to marry the two worlds.”

I’ll take it one step farther…  I know the way to marry those two worlds.  Pick up the damned phone ! In this world of hi-tech toys, the single best device you own is a real-time voice interaction tool (READ: telephone).

If you connect with someone on a social platform, you’ve exercised the second pillar of social media marketing; declaration of identity.  While that can be beneficial as a standalone virtue, the hidden gold is not your new found social network contact, its buried in his contact list.  In a world dominated by legislation designed to prevent you from cold-calling people during dinner, you must think creatively to build up a potential client list.  Social media represents the single best way to operate within the current business unfriendly environment.  Jump from the second to the fifth pillar as quickly as possible.

Remembering the wedding reception analogy, your initial call should be designed to point out a common interest and give you a chance to introduce yourself and your business.  If someone has befriended you Read more

November 11, 2008

Podcast: Sherry Chris delivers the keynote address to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando, November 7th, 2008

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We had the honor of hosting Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate CEO Sherry Chris as the keynote speaker for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando. I can’t promise we’ll do this indefinitely, but this is twice now that we’ve featured executives in do-or-die situations — and who can deny that this makes for interesting speeches?

Here’s a short FlipCam clip I made of Chris while she was speaking:

Linked below is an MP3 podcast file of her complete address.

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November 11, 2008

Absolute War

by

Free Market Cowgirl

Author website

ABSOLUTE WAR (1944)
General George S. Patton

Now in war we are confronted with conditions which are strange.
If we accept them we will never win.
Since by being realistic, as in mundane combats fistic,
We will get a bloody nose and that’s a sin.

To avoid such fell disaster, the result of fighting faster,
We resort to fighting carefully and slow.
We fill up terrestrial spaces with secure expensive bases
To keep our tax rate high and death rate low.

But with sadness and with sorrow we discover to our horror
That while we build, the enemy gets set.
So despite our fine intentions to produce extensive pensions
We haven’t licked the dirty bastard yet.

For in war just as in loving, you must always keep on shoving
Or you’ll never get your just reward.
For if you are dilatory in the search for lust and glory
You are up sh*t creek and that’s the truth, Oh! Lord.

So let us do real fighting, boring in and gouging, biting.
Let’s take a chance now that we have the ball.
Let’s forget those fine firm bases in the dreary shell raked spaces.
Let’s shoot the works and win! Yes, win it all!

May this Nation never forget: Freedom is obtained through military victory. God bless all the brave men and women that have and continue to serve in the military.

November 11, 2008

How I spent my Orlando vacation, or; The exquisite feeling of an exploding brain

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

I completely by-passed the NAR, Orlando is big enough to do that. I was in Orlando for BHBU, and as a participant in both BHBU I and BHBU II, I can say that Orlando out-rocked Phoenix, but wait, there’s more! Greg and Brian are about to blow your mind. How do I know? I experienced it myself.

The presentations were great, but the scenius rocked my world.

You ever walk into a room that crackles with energy? Ever had the privilege of hanging out with the very best at anything? You know that synergy that ignites and sparks ideas and discussion? Hanging out with the Bloodhounds was an incredible experience for that. Watching these minds toss out ideas and information to each other was a real treat. Yeah, I was there, but I felt like a fly on the wall most times- I can’t keep up with these guys. They would dial back occasionally, just as my brain exploded, tangent off to another subject and- cue the squealing tires- 0-60 in 3 seconds. They have Ferrari brains and Lamborghini brains, while I have a minivan brain. 

As the resident X chromosome, it was a joy to not have to suffer through a pissing contest. These guys seriously respect each other for their unique outlooks, their unique strengths, and most wonderfully, they respect an atmosphere of sharing. If you are used to a world where hording information and knowledge is the norm, Bloodhound is a luxurious foray into a rain forest of ideas.

I was lucky if I got 4 hours of sleep a night, but I am energized by the weekend, and ready to tackle the work that I need to do and take on the world- that doesn’t happen too often at a conference, not to me anyway.

I am a very fortunate girl, I understand that more than anyone else. But you have an opportunity to put yourself in my shoes for a few days. If you’ve ever thought that one-on-one training or hanging out with the resident brainiacs and salesmaniacs sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it is- then jump. Unchained is now Read more

November 10, 2008

Thinking out loud about BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s where we start, and we knew this last May in Phoenix, but we hadn’t yet figured out how to pull it off:

BloodhoundBlog Unchained is not a conference or a seminar, it’s a workshop, a lab. We don’t want to talk about or teach or lecture about our style of marketing strategies, we want to deploy them. We want for the people who entrust us with their time and their minds and their money to come away having implemented their own unique versions of our tools, tricks, tips, tactics and techniques.

So that’s the beginning: Unchained in Phoenix will be a hands-on overhaul of your online and offline marketing.

This is a Unique Selling Proposition — totally unlike all of the redundant twitwit echo-chamber festivals — but don’t get too excited yet.

Why? Because overhauling anything is a big job. What we’re planning will take a lot of time, a lot of hard work, a lot of skull sweat and possibly repeated conquests of your own self-imposed mental limitations. Translation: We plan to wear you out.

When we first started talking about this “boot camp” kind of approach, we thought about doing it in two tracks, one more advanced, one less so. In both cases, it makes sense to me to work toward the goal of a complete overhaul of your marketing profile. How do the journeymen gain access to the master-track material? Don’t worry. We have plans for that, too.

So now we look like this: BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix will be a hard-charging boot camp for journeymen and masters at modern real estate marketing. I worked out a class schedule yesterday, and I think we can cover — and I mean thoroughly cover — eight major topics over the course of three days.

We’re not set in stone on these, but here are some classes that make sense to us:

Search Engine Optimization
    Guerrilla SEO — Optimizing your blogsite
    Advanced SEO topics

Search Engine Marketing
    Maximizing organic SEO results
    PPC, Analytics and ROI

Social Media Marketing
    Establishing a ubiquitous presence
    Working in the salt mines to bring home the salted bacon

Living in a web-wise world
    Building, customizing and maintaining a web presence
    Practical PHP for non-geeks

Direct Read more

November 10, 2008

Basic SEO: How to Choose a Domain Name

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Lately I seem to be getting this question a lot. At BHB Unchained it was asked of me several times. Finally, a good friend asked me today: I am looking getting a site and choosing a domain name and I KNOW I need to get one full of keywords.

“How about CityRealEstateStateHomes.com?”

My response?
“How about
CityRealEstateStateHomesCondominiumsSaleBestAgentHomeSearch.com?”

I mean, if you are gonna get (what we call at EricOnSearch) a marketing turd, why not go all the way? (grin) ( I know, I am being absurd…but hopefully this helps illustrate the point.) I think THAT one is available.

I made the statement at Unchained. From an SEO perspective, QUIT trying to keyword stuff domain names, thinking that you’ve just helped yourself in a hugely meaningful way to get great rankings. I said it. I meant it.

If there is ANY benefit, it is small (there are exceptions to this, which I will explain.) and it is MORE than offset by the marketing damage that you are doing by SOLELY looking at your domain name through SEO eyes. Notice I am NOT saying there is NO benefit. I AM saying simply that it isn’t worth it.

Do yourself a favor and use marketing eyes and not SEO eyes alone when buying domain names.

Now before people start throwing tomatoes, please allow me to explain in detail:

Search engines are smart.

Depending on how you break them down, there are hundreds of variables that make up a typical search engine’s algorithm. The name of the domain is only ONE (1) of those. So even if ALL of the possible variables carried the same weight, it would still NOT be a big deal.

Google (and other search engines) evaluate apply different weights to these characteristics to determine where your site will rank. They KNOW which of these characteristics are easily spammed. They know which ones are NATURALLY self correcting.

A Title Tag is somewhat self correcting in that it forms the TITLE that you see in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). Characteristics that affect how text looks on the screen are also likely to be self correcting since it makes 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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