BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Archives (page 172 of 372)

Project Bloodhound: Are you talking to me? Connecting to your community and avoiding the echo chamber.

“I wonder who was your intended audience?”

A question from my inbox, and one I hear occasionally. I’m always pulled up short by questions like this, or this, because they tend to come unexpectedly and in this case, it greeted me first thing in the morning, and the writer, who shall remain nameless but knows who he is (and is, I’m sure, laughing right now) was by his own admission, a bit grumpy when he asked this question. So Good Morning to you too!

Actually, this question, or variations of it, has been on my mind lately because I forgot this intended audience for awhile, and the post to which this writer was referring was my way of going back to the beginning of my blogging days, when I was writing to the very same people to whom I wrote this post- local bloggers. How did I lose my way? Quite honestly, I think it was Twitter, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s return to my blogging roots.

Possibly the first piece of advice Greg gave me when I started blogging on The Brick Ranch was to find other local blogs and connect with them. Notice he didn’t say other real estate blogs, but local blogs. A Google search, and Google alerts, turned up only a handful of blogs back then- March 2007. Seriously, I think there were about five non-political blogs, and most had only been at it for a few months, which is a cool thing as I’ll explain shortly. At first I simply left comments on their blogs without a return blog url, because I wanted to be there as a participant, not as a spamming Realtor- there is an implied accusation when visiting local blogs, am I really there to sell them a house? Um, no. I’m really there because I like talking with people, throwing ideas back and forth, and I know that most bloggers like comments, so leaving a thoughtful comment, using my name, not “TimbuktuHomesForYou” in that tiny little blogiverse where everything was shiny and new, was an easy way to say “Hello! Nice to meet you.” It was about Read more

RealtyBaron.com comes up with something new: Commission hedging

Has SellsiusRealEstate.com (“Just like Craigslist, only not free!”) hit the Dead Pool? The weblog rages on, but the main site doesn’t even 404. The “About” page for the weblog has been re-rendered as yet another those-who-can’t-teach pitch, and, of course, Sellsius was a pioneer in the suddenly-popular practice of making net.friends in order to sell them out to advertisers. Perhaps these business models are enough to keep the wolves at bay. Sic transit gloria mundi.

But despair not. Even today, there is something new under the sun. RealtyBaron.com is introducing an idea it calls “risk management for Realtors.” What it is is a hedging strategy — akin to an insurance bet in Blackjack — whereby listing agents pay a premium to insure that listings are profitable whether or not they sell.

Worth a thousand words:

Oh, wait. That is a thousand words. 😉
 
This is not quite stoopid, although it shares some genes with stoopid. It’s a Realtor-milking scheme, beyond all doubt. It’s not quite as scurvy as some scams, but it does amount to you betting on your own failure, hardly the food of a good attitude.

I don’t completely hate the idea. But, assuming it takes off in sufficient numbers to matter, it seems to be misaligned to rational market incentives.

As I’ve discussed in the past, we charge a non-refundable retainer to sellers for similar reasons, to cover our front-loaded costs if the rug is pulled out from under us. But the primary reason for the retainer is to impose a meaningful cost on the seller for pulling the rug out from under us. We want for our sellers to have some skin in the game, to make cancellation an unattractive prospect — and to make sure they’re completely committed before we start working. The hedge bet does nothing to assure the commitment of the seller.

Moreover, as above, the entire plan is built around a bet on failure. If you as the lister know your ass is covered both ways, are you as likely to do the whatever-it-takes to get your listing sold? And if you are not, what direction should you expect the Read more

The Belly To Belly Dilemma: Questions YOU Must Answer

I was inspired to republish this post, which was first seen here almost 18 months ago, after reading the answer my son gave to a Brown & Brown client yesterday via email. I’ve spent four years mentoring him within an inch of his life. Pride bubbled up from nowhere as I read his response. At 27 he’s already where I was at 40. (I just turned 57.)

His journey to full ‘agentship’ is another post altogether.

Not being a hi-tech guy by even the most lenient definition, I try to bring to the fore, skills required to actually list or sell real estate. Until GeekWorld figures out how to interact with prospects and clients belly to belly, cats will continue to be skinned in every conceivable way — except hi-tech. Even Hal hasn’t figured that one out.

The ability, the art if the truth is told, to answer questions is almost always the difference between consistent success, and consistently being just ‘this close’. You’re reading that and know exactly what I’m talkin’ about.

It’s shameful the way I used to answer questions from prospects or clients. The excuse of age is available, as I was only about 25 or so. But even youth, or having just transitioned from homes to investments doesn’t wash as an excuse for my pitiful performance back then. It’s truly a blessing there were no hidden cameras or recorders in the office back then.

Clients would ask me if the rents in the area would tend to rise during the holding period. And I’d answer yes. The problem? Most folks asking questions want the answer, of course. But what they really want is the ‘why’ or ‘how’ behind your answer. Back then it irritated me no end that they wouldn’t just accept my answer as if I was quoting from the missing third tablet Moses forgot on the mountain. I knew the answer. Why couldn’t they just take my word for it? What a moron I was. I could have been more full of myself back then, I’m just not sure how.

That’s about the time I was blessed by Read more

Tech talk: Chrome, a theoretical MacTablet, session tracking and a cheap and reliable phone-based amanuensis — is that too much to ask?

Chrome: Yawn. Firefox, OTOH, is coming along nicely. I now run it side-by-side with Safari on my Mac. Safari is still my fave, but I don’t rail at Firefox like I used to.

The user interface of the iPhone is actually a hugely subversive paradigm shift in computer design: Tapping, multi-touch, micro- and macro-spatial awareness — these are all new things under the sun. Cathleen has been hearing interesting rumors about this UI being the basis for a MacTablet computer. And Apple has an event scheduled for next week…

I mentioned a week or two ago that I’m having Cameron build a session-tracker for our web sites. What he’s working on will live at the top HTML level of our server, so that, if necessary, he can track activity from the same one IP address across multiple domains. In other words, if someone follows a link from here to BloodhoundRealty.com, then from there to one of our single-property web sites, we should be able to see every movement.

I find myself wanting something like Jott without the limitations. When I’m previewing a house, I’d like to be able to dictate my impressions on the spot. I’d also like to be able to dictate emails, weblog posts and miscellaneous memoranda. Is there anything out there like that, ideally phone-based like Jott?

Technorati Tags: , ,

To Whom Shall I Pledge My Allegiance?

The Pledge of Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance

Alright now – simmer down – relax – this is not a political post.

With the advent of a new school year here, I couldn’t help but be reminded of days gone by – in the classroom – Ms. Sukula, my second grade teacher – with Bewitched hair – stood proudly at the front of the classroom, hand over her left breast – slowly reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.   She told us to stand like soldiers – hand over our chests with pride – you’re an American!

Now if you didn’t recite it along with her – her eyes would focus on you with the deep intent of causing bodily harm – lips firmly and taughtly pulled back to bare her brilliant white teeth – still slowly reciting the words – almost melodically.

It was definitely not a smile –  believe me – her message did not lack clarity.

Ahh – memories

Now – surprisingly, this draws parallels in my current day-to-day life as a real estate agent deeply embroiled in the pursuit of sorting out of all the new technology solutions in the Real Estate 2.0 cyber space.  You’ll notice from my last post – this is a taking some time.

Greg has shared with us the cool new Trulia app for the iPhone here on Bloodhound.  I recently saw on Twitter that Trulia has already surpassed over 10,000 downloads – this new functionality not only is cool, it clearly has legs.

But why am I not running to Trulia?

I am a member – I participate on TruliaVoices.  I’ve claimed all of my listings and have subscribed to Trulia Pro – but their latest feature has me frustrated – blogging.  While it is a great feature, I can’t help but ask myself, why do I want to put all of my eggs in the Trulia basket?

I have spent the last several idle months re-alphabetizing my CD collection, sorting through my closets and more importantly, really being focused on learning the new Web 2.0 tools and building my online presence.  I’ve invested in my own domain for my blog and Read more

We’re eating ourselves

I was installing a new Genie garage door opener one Friday evening on my very first house back in 1980-whatever. Basking in ‘pride of ownership’ and eager to….

Pause.

Deep breath.

Now, let’s be honest Mr Petro… (inner voice)

Okay. Let me begin again:

I was spending an entire weekend trying to replace an old Genie motor with a new one I had purchased, on a dump I never should have bought in the first place, with just a screwdriver, a hammer and some vice-grips; the Holy Trinity for those of us born without the dominant handyman gene. This was back in a time before Fixer-Upper actually meant Tear-Down but I was a young insurance salesman born with the recessive sucker gene so what did I know? Rookie sales guys are the biggest suckers. Everybody knows this. My Realtor certainly did.

And to this day I’m still not sure if she was actually my Realtor. She shanghaied me from her Open House I’d happened upon one Sunday, hustled me into the back of her 2-door Caddy (the passenger side front seat was stacked with MLS binders the size of phone books, briefcases, and boxes of direct mail envelopes. Piles of loose, legal length paperwork and blue carbon sheets rose from the floorboard to the glove box) and shot me over to another, much cheaper Cape Cod on the northeast side of Baltimore, blowing cigarette smoke in my face the rest of the afternoon and staring me down in silence until I signed the paperwork in her office and wrote an initial earnest money check to her brokerage firm. I was nowhere near my car or I would have run like Updike’s Rabbit but like I said earlier, I was shanghaied.

Truth is, had I hung on to the place (I shuffled it off to another sucker 24 months to the day later; old tax code) it would have been paid off a few years ago and worth about $350,000 today for the land value alone. I paid $65,000 and almost cried every month the $495 mortgage payment was due. Now, I do cry every Read more

It’s September 1st: Do you know where your next paycheck is?

Time is physics, the stately transit of the stars and planets. Time is space is mass is energy, four faces of the same one thing, elegant in its simplicity.

The passage of time — or, rather, the awareness of the passage of time — is a human artifact, a man-made thing. The Greeks or their forebears gave us seconds and minutes and hours — elegantly composed of factorials. Days, weeks, months, decades, centuries, millennia — time marches on, don’t it?

Here’s my thing, and it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about with other people: I am constantly aware of the passage of time. It matters to me that I get things done, so I am always measuring my performance against the clock.

Even moreso if I have set aside time to complete a task.

Even moreso at the end of the workday.

Even moreso on Friday afternoons, when I look back to see what I accomplished for the week.

And much, much moreso at the start of a new month, when I not only look back at what got done in the month just past, but also look ahead to what the coming month promises.

If you’re in straight commission sales, you live out of a pipeline, that’s understood. It’s nice to watch those paychecks coming out of the pipeline, but the haunting question — always — is what am I doing right now to put future paychecks into the pipeline?

Like many people reading here, August was a great month for us. I won’t know until I see the final numbers, but it may have been our best month ever. Certainly it’s in the top five.

September shows real promise, both because lenders are getting back on their bicycles and because Phoenix is suddenly very appealing to all-cash buyers.

But still… I look at the calendar and I think about that pipeline…

I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to go to work.

Technorati Tags: ,

Prom night in Dayton: Politicians pucker up, but I’m keeping my assests close to home.

Ah yes, it’s an election year. How do I know for certain? As Jeff Brown, who’s married to a native Ohioan- smart guy- recently twittered to me: “Ohioans’re gonna be very popular in the next 9 weeks. As usual, you guys are the babe at the prom without a date.”

Every four years we are courted and kissed by those same folks who forget we are here the rest of the time. I don’t welcome or enjoy the attention. I wish the federal government would forget we are here completely. I don’t want to be trotted out as an example of what went wrong with this or that administration. Don’t use Dayton to push your agenda and don’t use Dayton to make yourself feel good. Don’t do me any favors.

Dayton native Emily Langer wrote an article, Excuse Me, But I’m From Ohio, in the Washington Post today, accurately describing the strange political position in which Ohio, and the Midwest, finds itself every four years. In part:

Presidential candidates, in their efforts to look like regular folks, are among the chief purveyors of one of the most destructive stereotypes of Midwesterners: the working stiff who can’t work, thanks to the Rust Belt hemorrhaging all those jobs. During a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry set up shop outside a boarded-up building so that photos and television footage would show the city’s “ugly rump,” as the New York Times wrote, rather than the new office building across the street. No hard feelings, senator. The voters of Youngstown understood: It was easier for you to show that Ohioans needed your help if you pretended that they couldn’t help themselves.

Reporters do their part as well, stocking their dispatches from the Midwest with caricatures of down-at-the-heels factory workers and embittered waitresses. If you read enough of that prattle, you might start to wonder: Don’t these people have anything better to do than sit around carping about NAFTA? Don’t they know that McCain was just being honest when he said that some of Michigan’s vanished jobs won’t reappear? And by the way, don’t they Read more

With its new iPhone application, Trulia.com is taking on-line real estate search to the streets

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). There is a fuller review of this new technology here.

 
With its new iPhone application, Trulia.com is taking on-line real estate search to the streets

So who is winning the Realty.bot race, Trulia.com or Zillow.com? Your guess is as good as anyone’s, but this week marks a decisive change in the game: Trulia just released an iPhone application.

Trulia Mobile will offer a limited set of location-based searches from Apple’s iPhone, from an array of other smartphones and from Dash Navigation GPS devices. The user-experience will differ by device, but the design premise is based on location-sensitivity: Your iPhone always knows where you are, so it can interact with Trulia’s file servers to show you a list of nearby listings or open houses. You can get a detailed summary for each home on your list, and you can then email the listing to a friend, contact the listing agent directly or map the home so that you can hop over for a quick peek.

It’s hard to argue with the design premise: If people are going to go out house-hunting on their own, whether they are really looking for a house or simply touring open houses for decorating ideas, why not use the location-sensing power of modern electronics to hook them into Trulia’s listings database?

The ability to contact the listing agent plausibly increases the likelihood of dual agency transactions, but the fact of life is that many, many people are at least starting their home search without the advice of a buyer’s agent.

But here’s the bonus that popped out at me when I heard about Trulia’s iPhone application: Listing agents who want to compete for mobile-empowered buyers need to get their listings into Trulia and they need to keep their open house schedules up to date. I like anything that makes listers more diligent in their duties to their clients.

The iPhone application is slick and useful as written, this because “data is the new Intel-inside” and Trulia has a rich store of data to draw upon. The usual caveats about opt-in versus Read more

Adam Brickley – Do you know him? You should.

Who is Adam Brickley?

Well before I go there, let me say that this post is NOT political. It is about the power of blogging. When Dan Rather and CBS news botched their report of George Bush shortly before the 2004 elections, it was bloggers who brought it to light. A novel concept at the time. But those bloggers went largely unnamed. This one won’t.

Now enter Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, but a virtual unknown to the Washington DC power circles. Besides, who would want someone from ALASKA to be a VP candidate? It went against all of the normal calculations of the electoral map.

Enter a 21 year old college sophomore and blogger, one Adam Brickley. Hat tip to Slate.com. He and a few friends started a blog to DRAFT Sarah Palin as the Republican VP candidate. The month was February 2007. They started into Facebook, Wikipedia and other venues as they went. Totally new media at first. 100% EARNED media.

Then some media members started to notice. Notably Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard. Later that exposure grew to include Rush Limbaugh. This merry little band started to grow and even some of the campaigns took notice…

And then Sarah Palin was named to be John McCain’s running mate.

This last Friday, young Adam got a phone call from two new friends, Todd and Sarah Palin, on the day she was announced as a candidate for Vice President. Here are the details. And he has not slept much at all since then, handling all of the press. Pretty cool, huh?

Like I said, this post was not about politics, but rather about the power of blogging and its ability to influence the media and the powers that be.

If a 21 year old college sophomore blogger can impact the presidential elections, we (collectively) should be able to impact the constant negative spin of the mainstream press on OUR industry, don’tcha think? (grin)

Living in the cloud, Part I: Rethinking our email strategy

The other day I went through our cloud-centered email strategy:

I have my mail set up like this: From my iMac in the office, certain categories of email — initial client contacts plus mail from anyone in my Address Book — are redirected to a unique iPhone-only gmail account. That way, I get echoes of the mail that matters to me, with zero spam. The iPhone’s mail account won’t honor my gmail Reply To setting, which sucks, but, as above, the advantage is that I have my important email wherever I happen to be working.

I thought it was adequate at the time. But then the power failed…

In circumstances like these, I have fallen back to SquirrelMail, a Unix-based server-side mail client. That turns out to be less than ideal.

We got the power back today, and I was ready at once to implement our new email strategy.

Note that this little episode illustrates why it is so useful to control your own web hosting, at least at the mail-server level.

Here’s what we’re doing, as of this afternoon:

At the file server, my main email account (GregSwann@BloodhoundRealty.com) is being echoed to a new gmail account I created today. That account is simply intended to be a duplicate catch-all for all my inbound mail.

My iMac continues to receive my mail and to process it according to the rules discussed above — provided my iMac is working.

Under normal conditions, my email will be handled just as described above. But in the event of a power failure or serious crash, I will still have access to all of my mail from any computer anywhere, including my iPhone, without having to screw around with SquirrelMail.

Our cloud strategies are all about redundancy. I don’t care that I might have to react to up to three copies of any piece of email. My fear is that instead of three copies I will have zero copies to work with.

I worked out a redundant cloud-based fax strategy, too, that I’ll be talking about later.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Zillow.com: The “REconometrics” Firm of the Future?

Have you been watching Zillow.com lately, in the press? They’ve done a nice job at selling the mainstream media that they are the “real estate statistics” firm of choice. With the introduction of Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, they are aggregating real-time live quotes and are positioned to trump other media sites for accurate mortgage rates reporting.

I”ve admitted that I’m a Zillow-phile. As a mortgage wonk, I love the data they gather and the reports they publish. I read Spencer Raskoff’s Active Rain Blog, weekly. I’m constantly comparing my terms offerings to the realistic quotes on ZMM (I’m a few hundred bucks more expensive but a helluva lot cheaper than the average quote-ask me why sometime). Their Zestimates are getting more accurate as they rewrite their algorithms and gather more market data. As a reporting service, Zillow could and should take the national lead.

Lately, I’m starting to see Zillow try to emerge as an advisory firm of sorts which is fascinating to me. I’m not speculating here, watch what’s happening:

I started reading Spencer’s blog with this post about trading commissions; I realized that we had a common background and that we probably speak the same language. This recommendation confirmed that thought.

This was the first time I saw Zillow offering its data as analysis, by Zillow economist Stan Humphries. Then, Spencer Raskoff suggested that Zillow would have prevented the rampant speculation, from 2004-6. Interviews on Bloomberg, radio shows, and CNBC, all “reporting” about the rapid decline, with really cool granular data. Most recently, I spotted Spencer on Bloomberg, reporting about the decline and offering his prognostication about the market. Today, Spencer took a well-deserved pot shot at the NAR economists.

Silly Active Rain chatter? I think not. It’s my opinion that Zillow.com is fashioning itself as the econometrics firm for real estate, I call it “REconometerics” just to give it a name. Where will they take that “new” product? They can:

  • Publish the data, like a newspaper, as interesting content for readers,so that Zillow can sell more ads.
  • They can Read more

Mortgage Market Week in Review…..

Sorry this is a little late.   Had a closing out of town and it tied up a lot of my afternoon.

Happy Labor Day weekend! I hope that you take some time to enjoy a very relaxing weekend on the last long weekend of the summer.   Due to the fact that it’s the Holiday Weekend, I’m not going to make this as long as some of the others have been.    So here’s what’s been going on in the mortgage world:

1. Fannie and Freddie – while nothing has changed substantially, the immediate market fears over Fannie and Freddie have diminished somewhat.   I guess you could describe it as a situation where it’s still cloudy and rainy, but the worst of the storm has passed for now.

2. Credit Markets – there is continuing fear and questions regarding the status of the credit markets.   How big of a problem is there floating under the water yet?  I’ve heard rumblings that as Fannie and Freddie’s shares have fallen in value and as it’s rumored that when (not if) the Fed does bail out Fannie and Freddie, the shares will go to zero.   Many banks own substantial shares in those two companies and a reduction in their holdings to zero will require additional writedowns and additional belt tightening on their parts.   That doesn’t bode well for the health of the banks.   Speaking of banks, there’s some questions about a certain bank out in California (Washington Mutual) because they are currently offering CD rates that are approximately 25% higher than the going rates most banks are paying.   The thinking is that they are paying higher rates because they need cash and need it desperately.

3. Economic reports – the Gross Domestic Product report came in much stronger than expected.   Does that mean that the economy is going well?   Let’s put it this way, the aircraft industry had a very good quarter.   The vast majority of the increase came because of the aircraft industry.   Apparently some airlines are upgrading their fleets to improve fuel efficiency.    Consumer Confidence came in higher than expected as well.   The market consensus seemed Read more

Power Is Down in Phoenix

As jarring as Senator Mc Cain’s announcement, in Teri-Town, was, an Arizona monsoon was the culprit for the Phoenix power outage.  Greg Swann’s mobile and headed to an undisclosed location to keep the wheels of BloodhoundBlog turning.

If you’re a first-time commenter, you may have a comment held up in moderation.  Please be patient until the lights come on, in Phoenix.

Every picture tells a story: Orphaned lockboxes…

I see this all the time lately. The blue lockboxes are Supra boxes. They cost about $75 each.

The vendor box and the front blue box belong to the current lister of the home.

We do our homes this way, too, with a Supra box for Realtors, appraisers and inspectors and a vendor box for any tradesmen we send into the house — and also to have a spare key on the property. For reasons that seem obvious to us, we don’t put the two lockboxes in the same place.

The blue box in back belongs to the last listing agent, for whom the home didn’t sell.

I’d have to run the lockbox to know for sure, but when I see more than one blue box on a property, my assumption is that the previous agent has left the business. Otherwise, why leave a $75 asset hanging on the hose bib?

We’ve thought about offering $20 for the release codes for these orphaned lockboxes: A little dough for you, and we’ll pick up the lockbox.

A sad story, but it’s not the liquidator’s job to weep over the mess, but simply to clean it up.

Technorati Tags: ,