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November 18, 2010

Wheeere’s Johnny?

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

   I happened upon an HGTV re-run the other morning while waiting, impatiently, for the French press water to boil. I stood before the ubiquitous 42 inches of plasma in our kitchen (itself, a residential multi-plex food prep/family room, laptop wireless docking station, and occasional espresso/dessert/wine/tapas bar for ourselves and the ever present house guest, or two, or six…) and recalled a simpler domestic time, back in….

The Day

   In the 1960s, the Petro family kitchen was barely big enough for two grouchy adults, three kids, and an AM radio. Our infrequent household guests were offered Maxwell House and served spaghetti and meatballs on big clunky plates. We had one army green rotary telephone attached to the wall, used mostly for sending and receiving bad news. When it rang, everyone’s heart dropped.

   Our dearly beloved Emerson TV/HiFi cabinet was reminiscent of a thick mahogany coffin. It had its own dedicated wall, in it’s own dark paneled viewing room beneath one of my mother’s oil paintings. The setting was proper, solemn, and predominately prime time. Back then, ‘wireless’ meant, well…it meant there was simply never any wire when you needed some. It was more of a bad thing than a good thing. You know what I mean. 

Reality Bites

   I steeped the morning nectar and settled in to watch an older segment of  House Hunters. At once I was cyber-sucked back to a virtual real estate WTF of a housing market long since past; a pseudo-realistic scenario starring three perfectly staged, non-foreclosed, dream homes, a deer-in-headlights couple with one in the oven, and a Stepford wife Realtor named Roxanne.   I laid back, clicker loose in hand, and unwillingly suspended my post-housing bubble disbelief.  I gazed on as my iPhone pinged an endless wave of inedible Spam (the even worse kind).

   Roxanne, the star of this particular episode, was strikingly unfamiliar. What is with all the famous nobodies on the tube today? If you’re a casual, part-time channel surfer, as I am, then it’s even more confounding.

Where’s Johnny?

   Back in the Day you had your Lawrence Welk, your Walter Cronkite and your Johnny Carson. Three totally Read more

November 17, 2010

Greg Swann is Just a Twit-Head and Other Common Knowledge

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Greg Swann is dead wrong:

I say that trying to sell real estate via Twitter/Facebook is a waste of time — and it is anti-marketing even if it seems to produce some results. Why?

I’ve said it, in public.  And I’m only being mildly gratuitous.  Because it’s fun.

It is productive to be on Twitter all day long.

It’s also productive to be on Facebook all day long.

Especially in comparison to the selling behavior of the average Bullpen Agent(tm).  That’s being on facebook and twitter bitching about their lack of business and appraisal issues.

Now, listen also to what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that it’s the most productive possible use of time. I’m not saying that the ambient, distracted entitled connectivity lifestyle is something to be. I’m not saying that the way the practitioners teach it is sensible.  It’s not prudent to crow-plain about every bit of work that they do as if each ordinary real estate transaction is this death struggle that only you can close because you are $(array_honest,kind,connected,smart).

I’m not saying that I’d follow an example of any of the Twit-Lumin-ati.

I’m saying that in damn near any market, a smart agent should be getting 12-14 deals a year via twitter.

They are there, daily.

And you can snatch them out from under the entitled noses of those folks that are “pillars of the twit-munity,” with ease.   With ease.

How?

1.) Search.Twitter.Com:  This is a godsend.  This is amazing.  “House hunting” in your area “realtor” in your area.  Say hi, send ’em to a squeeze page.

2.) MarketMeSuite.Com (disclosure: they are a paying client of ours). Geotarget local people.  Autofollow and autoengage.  Make contacts and add to your sphere.  They have an auto tool that lets you quickly add and kill it.

3.) TwitterFeed.com when I used TweetSpinner to build up my account (and the ratio of bots/humans is about 4:1) I noticed that my bit.ly links got more clicks.  Others had similar results, and if you happen to be blogging and cataloguing your city brute force style, you do it.

4.) DMs.  These are where Twitter rocks.  Build relationships, make sales.  Don’t hesitate, go balls Read more

November 17, 2010

A warning to loudmouths everywhere: Cathy’s into pain compliance . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[Kicking this back to the top. Cathleen is trying to get the very willful Ophelia to walk to her heel, and that put me in mind of this song, which I wrote almost four years ago. –GSS]

 
So: This is a long way in…

First, Ophelia, our newly-adopted Redbone Coonhound, gets all over the nerves of Desdemona, our English Coonhound. A deafening racket ensues. Fortuitously, Odysseus the TV Spokemodel Bloodhound, who is in fact the loudest dog on Earth, doesn’t add much to the cacophony.

But: We were running out of seconds of silence in which to place hurried phone calls. This is not the ideal way to run a real estate business.

I try not to be one of those guys who pretends to have three testicles, but, nevertheless, it usually falls to me to be the bad guy. When there’s constabulary work to be done, the constable’s lot is a terrible one.

So this Monday just past, I decided more or less unilaterally that Desdemona was going to get a shock collar to control her barking. Cathy was all in favor of painless solutions, but we have tried all of these, at considerable expense. I knew that I was going to have to take the blame for inflicting pain on poor Desdemona, but we were all but entirely unable to communicate in our own home.

So: We got the collar. Desdemona moderated her behavior almost immediately. And, biggest surprise of all, my dear sweet tender-hearted Cathleen has become the world’s most vocal champion of pain compliance for dog training. She’s so happy with the results Desdemona is exhibiting that, yesterday, she bought a remote-control training collar for Ophelia.

All this is hugely funny to me, and it all seems to fit so well with with the rest of our insane lives, so I wrote a song about it — up-tempo and loud. And with all that as introduction, here are the lyrics:

Cathy’s into pain compliance

Don’t bark, don’t bite
Don’t growl at night
Don’t post anonymous tripe
Don’t sniff, don’t snivel
And spare us your drivel
You’re hardly the last word in gripes
     Attorneys yearn to cluck defiance
     But Cathy’s into pain compliance

Don’t spout Read more

November 16, 2010

Looking for a Realtor designation that really means something? How about this? “Too Outspoken For Redfin.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Redfin.com is in the long, slow process of firing us from their referral partnership program. I’ve known this was going to happen since last Tuesday. It’s what I was writing about in my most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate post:

  • They piss and moan to each other about me behind my back.
  • They campaign with each other to try to damage my interests.
  • They pester contributors here to try get them to abandon BloodhoundBlog.

The actual coup de grâce hasn’t happened yet, but Glenn Kelman placed a sweet call to me last night to apologize to me, as a friend, for not countermanding the bold policy initiatives of his middle managers.

This is nothing to me, for a lot of reasons. I grew up hiding from my poor long-suffering mother, so she wouldn’t have the opportunity to tell me what to do and not do. I spent the first half of my working life hiding from my employers, doing truly remarkable work, like a cobbler’s elf, after the bosses went home. This is why I don’t have a job now, and haven’t had one for decades. I know from experience that if I have anything that looks at all like a job, sooner or later, my fated role will be to serve as the rag doll in someone else’s self-destructive fit. I actually felt that gloomy foreboding twice, on the way into Redfin’s referral plan, so it’s not as if I can claim to have been taken by surprise.

It’s a stupid thing to do, of course, but, while I’ve been fired several times in my life, I’ve never been fired for a good reason. Cathleen and I responded rapidly to every inquiry Redfin sent us, even though many of the referrals they passed along were from loosely motivated, suspicious folks with serious qualification issues. I tried to explain to them that, even though I sell a lot of cheap houses, I’m selling most of them to millionaires, while Cathleen almost always works with very well-heeled homeowners. That entreaty hit a corporate policy wall, with the result that any financially well-qualified buyers Redfin Read more

November 15, 2010

One Lucky Son of a Bitch

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

What I like so much about BloodhoundBlog, is that as a general rule all points of view are welcome. However, along with that welcome mat comes a price. Those harboring contrary beliefs tend to make themselves heard, and more in ways reminiscent of the streets of 1880’s Tombstone than Mayberry. 🙂 Frankly, I prefer the Mayberry approach. Others opt for the OK Corral.

To each their own, which is also a Bloodhound policy.

It’s always fascinated me the way some insist others who are successful with a capital ‘S’ are merely beneficiaries of more bountiful injections of luck than the next guy.

It was a hard life-lesson for me coming to terms with the reality that regardless of my best efforts, there were others who could produce superior results. Realizing I was never gonna be a Hall of Fame baseball player was traumatic. There’s always a faster runner, etc.

Does luck have a part in our lives? Of course. Is it the deciding factor? Sometimes. You just won $200 Million in the lottery? I’m thinkin’ talent wasn’t part of the equation, and luck was the only factor. You’re worth eight figures, and it wasn’t inherited? It’s my contention and core belief that you earned your wealth, and that luck wasn’t a huge component.

Yet there are many, albeit a minority who will ascribe the creation of that wealth to luck. Many will go further, believing that sans luck, those who’ve succeeded on a grand scale, (however they define that) not only wouldn’t have achieved that level of success, but literally couldn’t have.

Luck, as Grandma taught me, is often the last gasp excuse for some who’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge others’ superior results. They literally cannot allow the concept of superiority through merit to become reality. She followed this up by saying that even though Sandy Koufax will always be an infinitely better pitcher than even I could even dream of, it would never mean he was a better person.

Throughout my life I’ve been exceedingly blessed by having rubbed shoulders with, and/or having direct access to, some very successful men Read more

November 14, 2010

The politics of dancing: Mothertongue and the art of negotiation.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I could argue that much of what goes on in the social sciences consists of pseudo-scientific “proofs” that the human mind is nothing special. Sure, volitional-conceptuality — the ability to engage in mental self-reference by means of abstraction and the ability to act upon those abstractions as a free moral agent — is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, but this dolphin has learned four of the first five letters of the Roman alphabet, and that chimp can stack three boxes on top of one another to steal a cookie. If that ain’t human, they don’t know what is!

Here’s what’s funny: They don’t know what animals are, either!

Monkeys don’t need to do a charmingly poor job at deploying human tools to survive, and cetaceans are perfectly adept at communicating with each other without a notation system — without what I would call fathertongue.

When I’m showing real estate, I’m careful to teach people, especially children, what a dog is doing with his tail. Up and wagging? Take it slow, but the dog is friendly. Straight down? Proceed with caution. Between the legs? Back off. The tail is a dog’s primary signaling device. That’s why people who want dogs to fight bob their tails.

But that wagging tail tells such a tale: “Hi, there!” the dog seems to say. “I am thrilled to make your acquaintance. As you can see by my wagging tail, I’m eager to make new friends. Might I have permission to sniff your anus? Full reciprocity, of course. Really, I’d be put out if you didn’t give mine at least a little sniff, too.”

That’s mothertongue, a complex initiation of negotiations expressed entirely in bodily signaling, with zero conceptual content — with no fathertongue. Animals are perfect the way they are. They are not somehow “better” if they master what are, to them, ontologically-useless parlor tricks. Moreover, human beings are exalted, not diminished, by dancing bears: The vast chasm between emulating human behavior and actually living it is only made more obvious when we see how pitiable that emulation actually is.

The higher animals communicate by mothertongue, and all but one species is Read more

November 14, 2010

The Implied Accusation in real estate: How to win the war on your attitude…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kicking this back to the top. I wrote this years ago (urf!), but it’s one of the most important posts I’ve written here. –GSS

 
I had this as a comment late last night:

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

The author is Keith Brand from Housing Panic, writing under one of the half-dozen or so sock-puppet email addresses he uses. Don’t go looking for the comment. I have him blocked completely.

The comment was in response to my post last night, Stopping traffic to sell houses.

The remarks themselves are stupefyingly stupid, of course. Obviously I am arrogant and cocky — I think for good reason, but good reason or bad, I will be the first to lay the charges. “Insufferable bastard” fits me to a tee. “Incompetence” is simply comical in this context. I invented the idea of the custom real estate sign, was grasping for it through two generations of our signs before it was physically possible.

Oh, well. Who besides Keith Brand does not know that Keith Brand is an idiot? It’s very funny that he has chosen me as his poster child for a dumb Realtor, given who I am, given what we’ve done here. You could argue that this is the perfect testament to his stupidity, but there is more to be unearthed in the graveyard that is Keith Brand’s rotting soul.

Consider: Do I know I’m cocky? Do I know I’m arrogant? Do I know I am supremely competent — as a Realtor, as a real estate weblogger, as a real estate marketing innovator? I not only know that all of these things are true, they are among the very many proud facts of my life. So what could Keith Brand hope to achieve by saying,

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

Is this supposed to move me to despair? Me?

But: A different remark in a different context with a different person might have that effect. I am impervious to criticism. It’s either true or it isn’t. If it’s true, I am enriched for having learned better. If not, so what? But other people are different, Read more

November 12, 2010

All Things Being Equal… You’re Not Even Close

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I was working with a group of agents this week on their 2011 business plan.  We were going through various forms of marketing and the expected returns when one spoke up and said: “The problem is, I hate calling people.  I can send letters and even emails, but I don’t want to call anyone.”  She is a very good agent as far as real estate agent activities go: she works well with clients, she shows homes well, she negotiates well and so forth.  She just doesn’t want to call people.  At all.  

“Okay,” I told her, “that’s not the end of the world.  If you’re not willing to call clients you can still be an agent, you just need to join a team that provides the clients or partner up with someone who has more clients than they can handle.”  That’s where the conversation got interesting.

Turns out this agent has tried my suggestion in the past and is looking for the right relationship right now.  “But,” she says, “the agents I’ve found so far are all so greedy.  They want a big piece of the commission.  All they do is hand me the name and then I do all the work.  I’m trying to meet an agent that understands our roles are different, but we both equally are growing the business.”

This is the problem with many self-employed people and real estate agents in particular.  They seem to think their value is tied to their time.  “All you did was give me the client’s name.  I did all the work so I think we should split 30/70 my way.”  This couldn’t be further from the truth and the faster you understand “value” in an open market economy, the smoother your business life will become.  Your value is not tied to the time you contribute.  It’s tied to the value you bring.  Hmmm, your value is tied to your value.  Can I get a big “Duh” from the Jeff Brown camp?

Apparently this comes as a surprise to some agents, but you are not all equal.  As a matter of fact, I’d estimate that 5% to 20% of you (and I’m Read more

November 11, 2010

Veteran’s Day

by

Realtor, Surfer-in-Training

Author website

I was standing in line at Starbucks when I overheard a young girl (around 4 or 5, I would guess) ask her dad about a man wearing a ‘funny hat’. He responded ‘it just means he was in the navy or something’. The man in question was an elderly gentleman proudly wearing a baseball cap that said ‘Retired Marine’. As we were standing waiting for our coffee, I asked him about his military background and he said he is a 3rd generation Marine, giving 30 years to military service. We sat and I was happy to listen to his stories, some of which dated back to the Korean War.

Regardless of political affiliation, religious beliefs, profession, etc. Veteran’s Day is a day to be grateful for the sacrifices that have been made by our men and women who have donned uniform to serve our country. Not only are our service members asked to give more and more (longer, more frequent deployments), but also face a populace in which anti-military sentiments are common.

Having grown up in a third-world country in the midst of a civil war, where suspicion was given equal weight as facts, I know firsthand that freedom isn’t free. Regardless of my opinions about Obama, today, and everyday, I give thanks to those who selflessly serve for principles and values that transcend all.

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” George Orwell

November 11, 2010

New Math… or An Old Game?

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

General Motors is preparing a public stock offering… you know, because it’s primarily owned by the government and unions right now.    The sale is expected to raise $10.6 billion, most of which is going to the government against the $50 billion bailout last year.  Since government is literally us (I mean, the $50 billion didn’t come from some savings account the Fed has from working nights and weekends as a pizza delivery boy, right?), that means we are selling an asset we purchased with bail out money… back to ourselves… and then putting the money we took from our left pocket into our right and claiming to have paid ourselves back.  Not sure, but I think there’s a nice big dollop of irony in there somewhere. 

This is all well and good so far as socialist, potato-passing goes.  I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that, while I don’t speak political gobbley-gook, I understand it just fine.

What bothers me here is the math.   The plan is to sell about 365 million shares at between $26 and $29 each, raising an estimated $10.6 billion.  This will value the company at around $48 billion which, surprise, surprise, is Ford’s capitalization.  As a matter of fact, if the shares sell near the high end of the range, GM’s capitalization will be closer to $60 billion – which means bigger and, ostensibly, better than Ford.  (Side note: Ford saw the problems ahead of time, made the difficult choices, accepted no public welfare, didn’t forever alter the bond market and our basic understanding of risk/reward investing, came through the worst economic times the auto industry had ever seen and recently reported record profits… but they’re market capitalization is the same as or less than GM’s? I suppose that’s the price you pay for actually thinking the rules of the market place should apply to everyone equally.  Makes one wonder though, how happy Ford’s stock holders would be – and how much money they might be spending right now – if Ford’s efforts had been properly rewarded in the free market and they were not in competition with the US Government.)

Back to the math.  Most of this ($10 Read more

November 10, 2010

I’m a time-waster. How about you?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the point: My name is Greg Swann, and I am a time-waster. My next closing is Wednesday, November 17th, 2010.

It’s news that is my special poison, a quick check of major news and opinion sites several times a day. Stir that in with email, some of it work, some of it work-ish, some of it just more time-wasting. And blend all of that with lots of tiny little brief chores done for clients at various stages of “the process.”

That’s a half-productive day. I start at six, finish at six or nine or one — the next day. And if I spin in place like that all day, I can get half as much done as I should have.

It’s not that I’m working from home. I’ve worked from home for almost twenty years, and I’ve always been able to get a lot done when I need to.

And it’s not the internet as such — duh! I’ve worked on the internet for most of my life.

And I’m not even really a bad, bad boy. It’s just checking this for a minute and that other thing for a couple more, all while taking care of business, yes-sir-ee-boss. By the end of the hour, I’ve rarely wasted more than 20 minutes, so what’s the beef?

The beef would be the stuff that’s missing between these two slices of bread, as it turns out.

I don’t care for the example being set by prominent members of the RE.net on social media sites, but I also don’t care if their seemingly-constant TwitBooking helps or hurts them.

This is what I care about: Hundreds and thousands of ordinary working stiffs are mimicking those poor examples, in the mistaken belief that scrupulously documenting every burp and bowel movement will make them successful.

But, from my own corpus: “Egovangelist, motivate thyself!” It’s all one thing, and the way to help other people get good at getting things right is to get good at getting things right. I love to think of myself as a hugely productive being, and the job that matters most to me is not scolding other people for being Read more

November 10, 2010

Things That Make Ya Go Hmmm

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I was born and raised in Southern California. Learned to swim in the ocean under the watchful eyes of local surfers we knew wouldn’t let us go permanently under. I’ve lived in the suburbs of L.A. and Orange County, and along its coast. Life in Manhattan Beach in the late 50’s to early 60’s is the closest thing to Heaven on earth we’ll ever know. From around eight years old or so, you could walk anywhere without adult supervision, sans fear of anything but not makin’ it home before Dark:30.

Just before turning 16 I opted to move from Orange County to San Diego to live with Dad. Mom wasn’t pleased, but understood the need for a boy of that age to be around his dad. It was only 100 miles down the 5, not exactly an intercontinental move. Just two months short of my 16th birthday, it wasn’t horrible timing.

A San Diegan for over 43 years now, I’ve seen it morph from a kind of citified, relatively hick free Mayberry, to what it is today, which is, I’m not sure what. If ya peer in closely, you might be able to see, as I certainly do, remnants of the barely surviving infrastructure of its Mayberry past. But honestly? It’s just for show — we can’t go back.

None of this is really the point though, as I’m taking advantage of the platform here to harken back to days when character mattered, and political correctness meant you voted.

Even a month ago, if you’d told me I’d be seriously entertaining the idea of putting 59 years of SoCal in my rearview mirror, I’d of been confused as to why you’d even think such a thing. But for the first time in my life, the thought of leaving California doesn’t seem abhorrent to me.

I’m now thinkin’ the unthinkable — moving to another state.

At first I thought it was a transitory mood, melancholy brought on by California’s childish, mostly entitled electorate. Please don’t think I’m being unkind, as my words are being chosen carefully. But after a week of Read more

November 10, 2010

Realtor Prayer for Veterans

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

The National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics starts with this:

“Under all is the land……..”

Today, on the 235th birthday of the U.S. Marines, and in anticipation of tomorrow, Veteran’s Day, I suggest that every Realtor, every American, and every freedom loving citizen of the world stop to consider the cost of that freedom. I dedicate once again this article that is reprinted from a 2007 post. I was lucky enough then to work with a young Marine and his wife to help them buy a home here in Oceanside. Meeting them moved me. Hopefully reading about them will move you as well. I’m dedicating this post and calling it….

Under All are the Graves….

Saturday, December 8, 2007
It’s Hardly An EOD

I took a young couple out looking for homes today. First time we had met, and our initial introduction had been through my web site and a couple of emails.In the course of our meeting I engaged in my usual convivial chatter, finding out in small snippets where they were from, what they were dreaming, and of course, what they “did for a living.” Now an old philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once wrote “if you label me, you negate me”, and being not quite that old, but old enough to remember and revere the 60’s, I always ask “what do you do” hoping it creates something that really takes me to the core of that person, not just to the superficial meaning of his or her life as labeled by a job.

So today I asked “what do you both do?” She said, “I’m ex-military, and he’s still on active duty.”

“What branch?”, I asked.

“I was in the Air Force”, she said, “and he’s in the Marines.”

We’re here in Oceanside, California, home of Camp Pendleton, and some of the finest young men and women in the whole world. I myself served as a Marine many years ago, but continue to find that meeting and interacting with young service people always makes me glad I live in the San Diego area where so many opportunities arise to do so.

“What do you do 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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