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October 19, 2010

Investors to put toxic loans back on B of A

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

No wonder B of A is accelerating foreclosures. They will need the cash from the sale of REO’s to repurchase about $47 Billion of bad mortgage bonds that were sold with, shall we say, less than pristine origination paperwork. This is where the robo signing mess matters. If the chain of title can be challenged and your friendly union pension fund can recover part of the loss on the investment, some one will be making up the loss. Any guesses who? Rest assured it will not damage the administration’s bankster contributors’  bonus pool.

Dig deep, taxpaying America.

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October 17, 2010

Rule of Law and All That: The Foreclosure Mess

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Suffice to say, I take a different view of the current foreclosure – robo-signer – problem now confronting the mortgage industry. Where Greg calls the banks’ fraud upon the court “procedural laxities,” I say the banks are committing, wait for it, “frauds upon the court.”

Greg does a neat rhetorical trick, by shifting the focus from property rights to some kind of tort-based argument where the homeowner has to prove harm. Don’t be fooled. Property rights are not about harm. They are about who can prove superior title. And if banks bring fraudulent documents into court to assert that they own properties, they should be punished. In North Carolina, we call this Obtaining Property by False Pretenses, a Class H felony, punishable by up to 30 months in prison.

Where Greg says your home was foreclosed because you stopped paying it, I say your home was foreclosed because someone who could not prove an ownership interest in the home came along and committed a fraud by falsely asserting they could, thereby depriving you of your superior property rights in the home.

Where’s the “rule of law” I hear so much? Where are these sacred and inviolable property rights I hear about?

There’s been a lot of handwringing about consumers who should’ve known better when they were taking equity out of homes in 2005 and 2006. And about buyers who were mortgaging too much to buy those $400,000 homes on $50,000/year incomes. And about how, even though shady originators and greedy banks were selling these pipedreams, it was the buyer/consumer who should’ve known better because, after all, the buyer/consumer signed on the dotted line.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. In other words, cubicle dwelling robosigners (who I believe are not the real criminals, but merely patsies), were… ummm… not reading what they were signing.

Caveat emptor, and all that.

Yes, the timing is suspect because we’re in election season. This problem has been around for years. I first learned about it in detail last year, which means I Read more

October 15, 2010

The $100,000 a Year Agent – How That Can Be You

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

My company’s checks have a typo on them. I’ve left it uncorrected for years, in order to remind me of my lean beginnings. The company name is on the first line, followed by what should be Jeff Brown — Broker on the second line. Instead, it says, Jeff Brown — Broke. No, really, it does. Hardly anyone notices. In fact, we’re in the year’s last quarter and nobody has said anything this year. I think a couple people told me about it last year.

Every time I write a check it’s the first thing I notice. Much like muscle memory, the first picture that pops up is me, grabbin’ a commission check, (with much blonde hair blowin’ in the wind) and runnin’ down to deposit it in the bank. Back in those days, if it wasn’t for the backbone of the real estate industry, the working wife, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Real estate is, as I was told before California informed me I’d passed my first license test, the highest paid hard work, and the lowest paid easy work around. I’ve found that to be true, but not all-inclusive. As I’ve said a few times recently, .150 hitters can work as hard as they want, but if it’s not at the right things, nothing changes.

Here’s a thought to ponder. In real estate there are no minor leagues. In baseball kids learn their craft there. In real estate? Gimme a break.

There was a seven year period in which I worked for one of the biggest real estate firms in all of CA. The office sported 150 agents. They had a mentor program that graduated newbies as experts in protecting the company’s ass. Their career life expectancy was almost measurable. The office manager aspired to have that program bat .150 someday. The worst kept secret ever was the real reason that program was not axed. The newbies weren’t allowed in the ‘main office population’ ’till they closed three transactions — and their split was 50%.

24 trainees X 3 deals a year, at $500,000 median price, X 3% Read more

October 12, 2010

Foreclosuregate? A scandal? If you want to sue for damages, it behooves you to have suffered a real, actual, material injury.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had buyers back out of a purchase contract at the last minute, earlier this year. They got cold feet, and they had no remaining contingencies, so they understood they were losing their earnest deposit. The seller’s agent wanted to fight about it, making a lot of noise about specific performance. But here is what was interesting to me, thinking about the legal issues in the abstract:

The deal was a short sale.

In other words, had the sale proceeded to closing, the seller’s actual material gain would have been zero dollars and zero cents.

Taking account that we cancelled the contract, the seller’s actual material loss was — wait for it — zero dollars and zero cents.

Arguably, the seller might have suffered financial damages as a result of losing the home to foreclosure, rather than losing it in a short sale, but these consequences could never have been subject to my buyers’ control.

In other words, though we did not go to court, I could not see a way for the seller to claim any sort of material injury by the cancellation of the contract. He had no real, actual, material consideration at stake.

Why bring this up?

Because I think this is the end of the road in the so-called “Foreclosuregate” “scandal.”

To bring us up to speed, the Wall Street Journal wonders if we’re headed for housing armageddon. Not to be outdone, CNBC insists that foreclosure fraud is worse than you think.

Here’s what I think: If there were procedural laxities in the handling of paperwork, there was no intent to defraud. And laying that aside, there are no former homeowners who can claim that they were avoidably injured by mis-handled paperwork.

Why was your mortgage foreclosed? Because you stopped paying it. Did you have any rational reason to believe that you could keep your house once you had stopped paying your mortgage? No. If the paperwork that led to your foreclosure was not prepared to perfection, does that give you the right to retain possession of a home you are not paying for? No.

Voters are fools, of course, and the Attorneys General of the many states Read more

October 12, 2010

The defenestration of Don Draper: My take is that Mad Men will end Sunday with a bouncing exit from the biggest baby on Sixth Avenue.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t have time for this, but I wanted to get my bet down on paper so I can bask in the glory — or ignominy — come Sunday night.

1. Don Draper is a coward. Whenever things don’t go his way, he tries to run away.

2. This season, he has played tentatively with the idea of making a real, adult commitment to his made-up life, but, even then, he has successfully run away, again and again, from his own redemption.

3. This most recent episode, “Blowing Smoke,” shows Don actually making a commitment — to the ad agency, to his relationship with Faye and to Peter Campbell.

4. All of this will fail.

5. When it does, Don will make the flying exit foretold episode after episode in the opening credits.

6. This will be the end of the series.

Tune in to AMC Sunday night to see if I’m right.

October 12, 2010

Social Media has come home to Roost

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I just posted a quick note about this blog post that was posted by Roost on Real Estate Industry Watch, but wanted to throw in a quick observation or two as well.

First the facts, then my opinion. Roost has decided apparently to shift 100% of their effort away from generating “blind internet leads” (their words, not mine) and towards their social media efforts. Ok. That was the facts part.

Here comes my opinion. 😉

I am sure that there will be a fair amount of folks saying “You should defend what you do! (search engine marketing)”. Actually I think they made a very calcualted and shrewd business decision. There are too many agents in this business. There are too many brokers. And there are too many online lead generators. 😉 (in my opinion). They decided to try and pick a fight they could win. (Probably a good call.)

As for the search marketing vs social media arguments…they are two DIFFERENT games. They have two different sets of rule. In any given city you can win at either, neither or both. If your game is to see how much you can sell to how many agents, social media is a more attractive play. It is warm and fuzzy and has the bright and shiny objects that so many agents are mesmerized by…

If you are in the search marketing business, it is a play for less agents, because you really are better of being the lead generator for only one or a couple or two in a given town. You just need a person you trust and who is gifted as a closer to close the leads.

Oh crud…I would LOVE to stay and explain more about the differences between the two, but I am actually really busy getting business CLOSED off of the internet… 😉

I wish the folks at Roost the best in this change of direction.

PS – Jeff Brown is right…his last couple of posts are really well written…ah heck, his stuff is almost always great. (grin)

October 10, 2010

Talent and Hard Work — Overrated? Do Results Factor In?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Most marketing and branding efforts fail miserably. We all know a ton of so-called talented folks who’ve failed — and they worked their asses off. How’s that possible? I used to ask myself that question all the time. Then one day Dad pointed out a guy in the office who looked completely average. One might even say he blended into his surroundings. He made beige exciting.

He’d been a teacher for 20+ years, was in his 40’s, and had been licensed about three years. He was the fourth highest producer in terms of commission dollars in the highest volume real estate brokerage in San Diego. I was 16 at the time. Dad said to watch him and learn whenever I was cleaning the office. (I was company janitor.)

Watchin’ this guy was beyond boring. All he did was make practice calls to FSBOs. Then he practiced cold calling. Then he practiced listing presentations. Then he practiced showing property — all in the office. It was irritating. His name was Bob, and since I was still in school at the time, I could only imagine how terminally bored his students must’ve been.

In his third year, 1967, he made over $35,000. To put that in perspective, the median income for the nation then was about $7,500 or so. In today’s figures, and adjusting for currently available splits, his earnings would be roughly $700,000. More about Bob later.

Many times after monthly TechTard meetings adjourn, I walk across the hall to attend similar get-togethers with those equally handicapped in the disciplines of marketing and branding. No real point here, except to establish street cred when it comes to my lack of expertise when it comes to these subjects.

For the purpose of this post we’ll leave out selling, which is a stand-alone skill, generally not reliant on marketing or branding. Yeah, I realize bad marketing or branding can significantly hinder selling.

I hereby publicly plead guilty to multiple counts of Marketing By the Seat of My Pants, and Branding By Default.

If you know how to sell, great. If you suspect you could improve, do so. Read more

October 7, 2010

I had a hugely productive day yesterday, despite everything, so I got to give all that time back today.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re back, after some travails.

Yesterday, I showed with two different clients, wrote five contracts, opened one escrow and moved 39 domains. I finished the day in South Phoenix, just as the mother of all storms was rolling across the Valley of the (cloud enshrouded) Sun. Y’all think you have weather where you are, but you ain’t seen a storm until you’ve lived through one of ours.

Witness:

That’s hail, forty-five minutes after it pummeled everything, followed by heavy rainfall, followed by still fairly warm temperatures. In other words, that’s some hardy hail. There are more photos here.

I left my clients soon after that photo was taken. The streets were paved with rushing rivers, and the trip home, which should have taken 20 minutes, lasted a full two hours.

Even so, the server swap was grinding on without me. We had a little trouble getting the (very big) BHB database back on line, but all else was pretty smooth. Scenius.net is down, and I have to make a host of minor fixes to some of my PHP files, but everything else seems to be normal.

Was all this worth it? We’re faster than a raped ape, and i haven’t done anything to supercharge our performance yet. It sucks when things don’t work just as you planned, but this — at last — was the right move.

October 5, 2010

Wanna Be a Big Hitter? Spend Some Time on Your Legacy…

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

“A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants. A final end, a funeral’s toll, a little wisdom for your soul.”

Legacy is a bitch for most of us. What will you be remembered for? Do you know? Are you sure? Me? Heck, right now I’d be happy to simply know it’s not the little ditty you just read in ode to life and death! I attended a memorial this weekend for a truly remarkable man. In my lifetime I’ve had over 50 teachers, from Catholic grade school nuns to Princeton University professors. Of those, three stand out for their impact on me: there was Miss Carlson in 5th grade, who first taught me that life was fun even in a Catholic school; and my anthropology professor at Princeton who asked me a question so powerful, I finally left the church for good. But in between those two wonderful theological bookends, was Mr. Jerome “Jerry” Lipetzky, for whom the memorial was held. He taught me that there’s no end to learning and nothing quite so liberating as the exploration of a new interest. He was also one of the smartest and sarcastically humorous men I’ve ever met. (In his classroom there was not one square inch of wall space that was not covered with something funny, educational or challenging and usually all three at once.) My favorite memory to this day: a bumper sticker casually stuck to a small, flat boulder near the back of his room that read:

The World is Flat
Class of ’91

Think about that for a minute… humor, history, a little sarcastic jab at what we think we know, and how often we are wrong; that’s an amazing sticker and trust me when I tell you he was an amazing man.

So What…

“Yes, yes, so what’s the point of this post Sean?” Coming to it. At the memorial, one of the speakers stood before us and read aloud a list of seven rules, for lack of a better word, that Mr. Lipetzky tried to live his life by; each rule came with a short explanation. As I heard Read more

October 2, 2010

Giving a .150 Hitter More At-Bats Only Leads To More Runners Left On Base

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

The title is an analogy — for the .150 hitter, substitute a real estate agent who couldn’t sell a house for a nickel to a homeless person — and for ‘runners left on base’ a sales board filled with prospects but no sales. Though unmentioned, it’s the manager penciling the .150 hitter into the lineup on a daily basis, who gives him 4-5 at-bats game after game. Continuing the analogy, the ‘manager’ in real estate in this case is technology, which often gives .150 hitters far more opportunities to strike out with the bases loaded.

What managers learn early on, that is if they wish to remain managers, is that continually sending .150 hitters up to the plate with runners in scoring position leads to losin’ a bunch more than winnin’ — the last loss being their job.

Just as .150 hitters often think more at-bats will improve their average, real estate agents often believe that if they only had the technology to give them more at-bats, they’d be drivin’ a Ferrari in no time.

This is what passes for wisdom in the world of real estate brokerage.

The reality is that the lousy hitter needs to learn how to hit, and the starving real estate agent needs to learn how to sell. Why is that concept so elusive?

BawldGuy Axiom: The next time you master a skill by continually doing it wrong, but more often, will be the first. Duh

A Simple Example

As a hitting coach in youth baseball for several years, I learned to spot the flaws in hitters’ swings. We had a strong kid join our team in the middle of the season once, who wanted with all his heart to be a great hitter, but had never been taught. He struck out over half the time, and weakly popped up or grounded out otherwise. His mom told me he’d never been actually coached, one on one. After practice that day, Mom looking on, I had a couple of our pitchers throw him fast balls right down Main St. After about 20 swings, he was frustrated. Turns out more Read more

October 2, 2010

It’s October the second. Do you know where your goals are?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That, literally, is a snapshot of my goal-pursuits for September 2010.

W is for walking every day for 30 minutes, a little over a mile, with Cathleen, Shyly, Odysseus and Ophelia. I sneered at walking before we started doing it, thinking it nothing compared to a hard half-hour on my mountain bike. But wrestling with 150 pounds of Shyly and Odysseus makes a work-out out of a walk. Ophelia is only 60 pounds, but she’s so puppyish and impulsive that she gives Cathleen and even better work-out.

The X is for weight-lifting, also 30 minutes a day. I’m doing this at around 6:20 in the morning — up at 6, then just enough time to deal with the overnight email as I hydrate and put two Tylenol into my bloodstream. Free weights work best when you are pushing yourself to the outer limits of your endurance. I do 30 repetitions each of ten exercises, all upper-body for now. The last four or five reps of each exercise are right on the verge of being agony. I literally feel as if my bones are not just going to break but to snap with a resounding crack. But like hitting your head against the wall, it feels so good when you stop.

S is for software, and you would not believe how easy it has been, this past month, for me to put in at least 30 minutes a day on our web sites. I started the month with a great idea that gradually destroyed the SplendorQuest server. While that train wreck was progressing, I built another set of cool tools that is generating huge quantities of new content — and a huge number of click throughs. But by the time that got cooking, I had created a monster on our dedicated file server, so I got to finish the month moving us into four new homes. The last three domains of that effort will be done today and tomorrow. Meanwhile, I know how to rebuild the first monster project on its own new home in such a way that it will be sleek and fast 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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