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This was in my email this morning, spam from LinkedIn.com:

Joel Burslem is no longer Director of Product Development at Vook

Means what, I don’t know. Deck chairs on the Titanic. There is no huge surging mass of sub-literates demanding even easier-reading access to the half-shouted profundities of Gary Vaynerchuk. Love him or hate him, the guys lives and dies in video. He cannot be caged by a page, no matter how stylish or expensive or electronic that page might be. The book is a dead letter, so how could the Vook not be an even-deader letter? You cannot even pretend to believe otherwise unless you are in the pay of Brad Inman.

But: None of that matters. The Vook is instructive because it teaches us a host of interesting lessons about how to fail in business. Big names. Big funding. Design budget. Attractive product that works. Fancy offices filled with bigfoot corporate types. Even Aeron chairs, I’ll bet. What could go wrong?

Only this: There is no market for the product.

Remember that “find a need and fulfill it” bit from Business 101?

Can you name even one person who has confided to you, “You know, I’d probably read more if books were more like television?”

“I’d sure like to read more books, but the books I want to read are interrupted at intervals by bad actors enacting bad scripts.”

“What I want from books requires a sub-woofer!”

That’s a disaster from day one, and I have been ridiculing the Vook since first I heard about it. But even now, I can see an actual use for this technology: How-To books: How to build a rocking chair in 24 easy steps or The Kama Sutra for Klutzes. Those could sell, because they answer a need that can be served by both text and video. Even then, though, they’d be better as web sites — easier to control, easier to revise, etc.

But let’s go back to the Vook’s original marketing problem and try to solve it in a better way.

Brad Inman is a choke-point dinosaur. His goal was to come up with a “blade” dispenser — a relatively cheap razor that could be used to sell higher-profit “blades” over and over again. Gillette’s razors, Kodak’s cameras and Amazon’s Kindle device are all examples of this very-common business model. Because he has worked his whole life in publishing — selling vast quantities of a publication no one reads — he naturally gravitated to publishing for his new venture. He has a background in video, also, and video — unlike paper — is not easy to produce, reproduce, exhibit or copy. If anything could make a book into a “blade,” it would be video.

Except that books themselves are dying as an information transmission medium, dedicated devices you have to schlep around are an anathema and no one is crying out in desperate need for badly-animated comic books starring Gary Vaynerchuk.

I had two words for this idiot product when it was announced: Market research.

The Vook is just a dumb idea, but the base idea — a dedicated device that people are willing to pay added-value fees to gain access to — that may not be completely off the wall. Or maybe the place for an idea like that is on the wall.

Look at this:

That’s a beautiful photograph. So it this one:

Those are just two news photos I found today on-line. There are hundreds more, just as striking, taken every day. And there are millions of other very striking photos that have been taken over the decades. And thousands of drawings, illustrations and paintings.

High definition video monitors are the perfect picture frames, and we are soon headed for the day of video fabrics that will work like wall-paper — and eventually like garments.

We are on the cusp of an age when the quantity of available video screens will be massively increased — and every one of them is going to need programming.

For now, a dedicated device could connect a big Aquous-like monitor to a net-based service that fed images to that huge screen.

This is programmable art as decor.

You already have big picture frames all over the place.

You already have a small USB-fed picture frame on your disk, filled with eight gigs of family photos.

A device like this combines the two: Huge, striking graphic images that change at intervals — an evanescent art far better than you can afford to purchase in atoms, but yours for pennies a day when sold to you as electrons.

You’re already paying for decor. All we’re doing is turning decor into “blades” — something you purchase continuously, rather than only when you change homes.

That’s a business.

Your mood is programmable — on the fly. The intervals, the arcs of the color wheel, the tone and tenor of the images themselves — all controllable by you.

This is something people would pay for. This is something I would pay for, and I hate everything.

And remember, the quantity of available video surfaces in our lives is about to explode. There are a lot of business opportunities in here, but there are a lot of Web 2.0-like options, too. What a DeeJay does is more than just records, and what an Image- or Video-Jockey does can be far more than mere images.

This could be huge…

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Saturday I took a mini vacation and visited my daughter Rian, who was taking a longer vacation in the Hocking Hills. If you are from the Mid-West, you may know about the Hocking Hills. It’s beautiful land- old forests, rolling hills. It was a treat to take a day away from normal life and I love driving through Ohio with its farmland and small towns. I’m a Realtor. Under all is the land.

Ohio is still, and always has been, an agricultural state. Our biggest business is agriculture- that’s large expanses of productive real estate- income producing dirt. I am, even in my inner ring suburb, surrounded by cornfields and soybean fields and small roadside farm stands and pick-your-own strawberries. And when I was a kid I hated it! Hated it. I was once much more cosmopolitan than the hayseed you see before you. I was once a citified mohawk wearing rabble-rouser. I was once on the fast track out of the Mid-West and onto somethinganything more exciting. And then I grew up.

I spent time with people who came from the same gene pool. I was accepted by the most gentle and loving people I’d ever met. Their quiet wit, their infinite love, their simple lives woke me up and let me understand that I could take the girl out of the country, but I never really wanted to take the country out of the girl. My mohawk grew out, my attitude softened- just a bit- and I learned to love the sight of a pristine barn rising out of tidy rows of cornfields. I know with the tiniest whiff on the breeze, whether I’m smelling cow, pig, or horse shit, and my husband Jamie, who has farming in his blood and spent his youth as an assistant to a large animal veterinarian, says that the dumber the animal, the better the smell. Hint: Pigs stink almost as much as humans.

We have beautiful land in Ohio, and no time is it more beautiful than now, in the fall, when the trees become a spectacular raging colorfest, and the farm fields are golden, and the skies are the bluest they will be all year. It’s glorious in Ohio in late September and October, and I, for one, don’t mind the impending winter. I love Winter. The quiet, the calm, the anticipation of Spring. We are not only in touch with our weather here, of which we have quite a bit, we are also in touch with the land here. Even in the city or the suburbs, we watch the local farmers. Watch them as they harvest, as they prep their land for winter, as they turn the earth and plant in the spring. Every season brings a change in the landscape, and I’m quite unapologetic about this, but it’s breathtakingly lovely to watch.

An unchained life in the country: A photo of the Hocking Hills on Saturday, and Eva Cassidy singing “Fields of Gold”.

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The Notion

In my dream I’m always gasping for air; as if the trillion or so cubic inches of ozone I’ve already blown through in my lifetime somehow counts for nothing.  I awake, step over the dog, and scramble downstairs in my boxers in search of a physical remedy to a metaphysical dilemma. Something is bothering me and I can’t quite place my finger on it. Life is short and, on this crisp autumn eve, I’m clearly too underdressed to even be considering my last breath.  Our fifteen-year old cat follows close behind, his own mousy demons no doubt,  in tow as well.

‘Dear God, please don’t let me die with money in my portion of the Charles Schwab account,’ I think as I root through the herbal medicine cabinet,  next to the dishes, above the microwave.  ‘That’s what the Prudential life insurance policy in the house safe is for,’ I obsess. It’s an odd recurring thought, I realize. Just being forthcoming.

We keep no real drugs in our house.

Ginkgo Biloba, Paranil, Senna, Licorice Root. Green Tea, White Tea, Black Tea…where the fck is the Alka Seltzer?

Over the years I’ve developed an internal ON/OFF switch of sorts; a requirement for any man whose livelihood  simultaneously hinges on rejection yet somehow also depends on the act of a total stranger purchasing something of considerable value; house, condo, etc…. every month. It’s an Acceptance thing, I’ve learned. This emotional circuit breaker has, for a long time,  assisted me in affairs of the heart,  finance,  most of  the Deadly Sins—Fear, Greed, Anger, etc… not to mention social and personal guilt.  And in case you haven’t  been following the box scores at home this season,  I’ve been in the OFF mode for a while now.

thankyouverymuchhaveanicedaybiteme….next

Over time I’ve learned to appreciate  the next ‘Next‘  in life—I just haven’t learned not to  eat Mexican food before retiring for the evening or found a way to avoid the night scares that have startled me ever since that stupid monster began squatting in my childhood closet at 39 Vineyard Road in Levittown.  And as my Life flickers before me this particular night, I wonder:

‘What to do with the lingering wreckage of my Past?’

Just as my faithful canine companion would rather bark at intruders from inside the  picture window when it’s chilly outside, I too,  prefer to write a quick note or better yet, cower behind electronic messaging for all breaking news, good and bad, anymore. Even my foxhole prayers begin with OMG these days. I’ve become shrinkwrapped into a Twitter mentality, 140 characters at a time.   If I feel any emotion at all I toss in an exclamation point or two. Even Facebook is becoming a burden. I don’t even call it Facebook anymore. I call it FB. OMG. WTF…is @ 2 me?!!  Critical mass approaches as my social network expands and my personal circle contracts….

But I mentally carve deeper and in a brief moment of clarity,  it hits me as I hover over the sink swirling the midnight elixir in a half washed coffee mug,  old as hell goddamn cat on the counter beside me. I tip-toe into my office, dig out some dusty boxes,  and begin tearing through decades of loose leaf pulp in search of a single folded sheet.

An hour later it is in my hand.  I examine the inky yellow page beneath the reading  light on my desk.  The Amends.  One unchecked-off task remains although the list is from another millenium altogether.  A previous Life, to be sure.

I walk back into the kitchen and toast the harvest moon through the window. I  boil some water for a final cup of Sleepytime and snoop through the fridge for a quick nibble.  The  cold white light is blinding—Soy this, 1% that, Non Fat everything else. Yogurt? I think not.  Flax seed, Organic, Antioxidant…my wife is clearly trying to torture me into good health.

And,  like most things in Life that have challenged me since those early monster days in (bucolic by name only) Violetwood, once I let the problem go, the solution appears on its own…

The Reunion

I step off the commuter jet in Pittsburgh and walk across the terminal to Avis. The girl behind the counter thinks I’m ancient, I’m certain.

“What brings you to Pittsburgh today, sir?”  She asks.

“Class Reunion,”  Me.

“High School?”  Her.

“College,”  Me.

“Pitt?”  Her.

“No. Slippery Rock….”  Me.

Silence, as  always,  follows.  Two underachievers, we stand an arms length and several generations apart,  avoiding eye contact.

“…I’ve owed someone $100 for almost thirty years and I’m going to repay my debt today…”  Me.

“…then reunite with some old friends.”  Me still.

More silence.  Silence and Judgement, I sense.  I’m being judged by a rental car clerk in Pittsburgh.

OFF.

“You reserved a Chevy Malibu?”  Finally,  Her.

My wife always makes my travel arrangements so alas,  a sensible Mid-Size American ride awaits my AMEX imprint.  I immediately upgrade to a Cadillac, confirming I guess, that I am indeed… old. We’ve been doing this for years. Mona has yet to ever rent me a car I’d actually be seen driving in real life and I always end up getting a Caddy because they don’t rent German cars in this country for what-ev…..

I exit the airport complex and drive north for an hour, texting on my iPhone and fumbling with the satellite radio the entire way. I push On-Star by accident twice.  The third time they inform me I’m being charged.  Bite me.  Besides the makes and models of vehicles cruising  in either direction along I-79 (and the daunt figure that keeps staring back at me in the vanity mirror on my visor), Western Pennsylvania hasn’t changed at all in three decades.

I pull into my old college town as the Homecoming Parade disassembles. As Fate, I suppose,  would have it,  I find a parking spot directly in front of the Camelot Restaurant.  There is a line out to the sidewalk. A hand painted banner hangs from above the awning: 

Everyday.  99 cent Breakfast.

Nothing has changed. I ate a hundred of these meals for free  thirty years ago and then left town without paying the tab. What a schmuck.  I step  inside and push through the crowd into the kitchen. The interior has remained stagnant over the years. The aroma of burnt, bottemless coffee fills a crease in my mind.  An old man is hunched over the griddle frying  a dozen eggs at a time. An old woman stands beside him slinging potato hash onto chipped plates.

“I’m looking for Gary,”  Me.

“I’m Gary,”  Him.

I stare back at a gray ghost of  the man in my memories. I  hand him the one- hundred dollar bill already in my fingertips.

“I’ve owed you this for thirty years?”  Me.

“What?”  Him. A little miffed. He doesn’t stop cooking.

Hey, I’m not in the mood for perturbation on this day; not when I’m attempting to make a grandiose gesture.  I just want to get a good night’s sleep, for crissakes. I continue…

“I’m Geno. I ran up a tab here when I was in Grad School and left town without paying. It always bothered me.”  Me. (white lie)

“I don’t remember you,” Him.

“I was an actor. Streetcar,  Equus,  Hot L Baltimore.  And a writer. I had a little column in the Tri-City News…. Geno…remember? You let me eat here  free for like a year…”  Me.

“Whatever. I don’t remember.  Amateur theater around here has never been very memorable.”  Him.

“Well I wanted to make good on my debt.” Me, also a little miffed now as well but it’s too late to slip the bill back into my pocket.

“Whatever.”  Him.

I place the C-note next to a toaster.

“I remember him,”  The old woman.  But she doesn’t elaborate. No need to I suppose. Yet another disappointed woman to add to yet another unresolved list.  Not.

I turn and head off to the reunion hoping that my reception there is a little warmer and wondering if there is a Starbucks anywhere in the tri-county area.  Ironic… I never had a buck for a plate of eggs thirty years ago but I’m quick to drop a five spot on a decent cup of coffee in a heartbeat today.  I pull a Green Tea capsule from my coat pocket and swallow it instead.  WTF…

I  stroll down the Main Street  (actual name) of  my Bohemian years and stop in front of an ATM. I check my balance and withdraw the maximum daily limit  just in case I suddenly kick the bucket as I make this final turn in Life with no intention of ever looking back.  After all, they say an unrealized expectation leads to a Resentment.  And holding on to a Resentment is pretty much like drinking the poison and waiting for the other person to die.  Don’t you think?

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Were ready for step two of the series on how to effectively use a tablet PC to run your day to day real estate tasks.  I’m including a screencast to actually give you some visualization on how I actually use my tablet PC for working with buyers in the field. Warning: Please turn down volume on screencast prior to starting.
Using a tablet PC when out in the field

The basic premise of what I do with buyers out in the field is extremely simple but very effective for organization, having a go-to information source, and being looked to at a whole new light in your clients eyes.

What I do when working with buyers using my tablet PC:

• Fire up my MLS and find the homes that I will be showing to my buyer
• Go to File Print and select the Print labeled “One Note 2007″
• Once the spec sheet is in One Note I move it into a pre-created notebook for my specific client for organizational reasons
• You can also print specific tax bills or anything relevant to that specific house you can think of that maybe handy and impressive to show in-front buyers.  The most relevant thing that I have added into my showings is the listing history/price change sheet.  (We all know they ask they questions almost every time no more fumbling, time to be the expert we really are!)
• Next I go show the house and take notes on each property that we see so I can give relevant feedback to the listing agent.  Taking notes on every house is also a great way to remind buyers about the prior homes.

As you can see what I’m presenting here is really simple and should not intimidate anyone that is afraid of technology.  It’s as simple as Print/Move to a Notebook this is a good start of what we will be building in on future posts.
The real reason I’ve decided to take on this Tablet PC for Real Estate blog journey is to communicate with other people who share similiar interest’s and can share new ways of working with a tablet PC to become more efficient and profitable.  Time is money!

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Believe it or don’t, just yesterday I was telling Cathleen that I felt remiss in not having made fun of the Vook lately. The Vook, as you will recall, is Brad Inman’s latest attempt to prove that he stumbled onto half a billion bucks by accident. The trouble is, as he is discovering, pissing away that kind of dough isn’t easy, no matter how clueless you are — and Inman takes a back-seat to no one at cluelessness.

Even so, I need to issue a mea culpa of my own: The Vook has actually made it to the marketplace, a feat I would have bet against. Simon and Schuster — which has always made all of its profits from crossword puzzle books — turns out to be possessed of its own Inmaniacal cluelessness: The New York publisher is issuing Vook content, apparently because its printed books are not already selling badly enough.

But: Don’t despair. Even though there are very few people who are stupid enough to buy this stupid gadget, the Vook will still serve a purpose in the history of marketing: It will make the Zune look popular by contrast.

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…Ten bucks tomorrow. Utility? Ask me later. Price? Hard to beat.

Calling Doctor DocuSign…

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This from my Arizona Republic real estate column (permanent link):

Here’s an intriguing question: Given that it’s so easy to search for homes on the internet, why do you need a buyer’s agent?

Face it, if you use the MLS search tool on my web site, you’re seeing exactly the same listings I see. And you know better than I ever could what you like and what you don’t like.

By now, the home search process is at best a partnership between the agent and the buyer. In some cases the buyer and I will work together to perfect our search criteria. But many buyers simply search the available inventory on their own, emailing me the MLS numbers of the homes they want to see.

So why do those buyers need a buyer’s agent?

Realtors hoarded the MLS data for so long that even they came to believe it was the source of their value to buyers. But this is very far from the truth.

You don’t need me to search for listings, although I’m happy to do that. And you don’t need me to open lock-boxes. You need a buyer’s agent to guide you through what is in fact an arcane and perilous process — potentially a financial disaster. You might not need me to find your next home, but you need me to make sure that you get it — or that you pass on it, if that is what is truly in your best interests.

A skilled buyer’s agent will write the kind of purchase contract that will prove surprising to you at every turn, with every term and condition tailored to achieve your best advantage. Your agent will supervise the inspection process and negotiate the optimal solution to the repair issues. Your agent will be prepared for every pitfall in the escrow process.

If you bought and sold houses every day, you could do all these things yourself. It’s because you don’t — and because the seller and the listing agent are looking to take advantage of your naivete at every turn — that you need a skilled buyer’s agent as your steadfast champion in the home-buying process.

 
Steal this book: I’m going to write one or two more columns on this theme. If you want to use any of them on your real estate weblog, feel free. Just give me a link back to http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/

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The base anticipation that precedes any journey to a new destination is always more vivid for me than the denouement that accompanies the physical descent to earth.  With rare exception (perhaps Paris and maybe Vegas), the image I conjure up in my two dimensional mind beforehand always seems to fall somewhat short of the real 3-D deal.  On our first trip to Maui, for example,  my notion of grass huts  and Woody Wagons clamped with surfboards was quickly dashed the moment I spotted a Costco and a  Wal-Mart just steps from the arrival terminal. It was raining  ukuleles that day and the lone, Port Authority hula dancer was, how shall I say… Samoan? I was expecting something a bit more, I don’t know….svelte?; like the subject of one of  those Sailor Jerry tattoos I threaten to get stenciled across my chest every 120  lunar cycles or so—-pure 1950’s  South Pacific paradise-of-the-mind stuff. I think we  bought our own leis for 8 bucks each at the gift shop, rented a Taurus from Avis, and called it a day.

And it’s not just Hawaii. The same holds true for Jamaica—or as I like to call it, The Bangladesh of the Caribbean, with its human squalor, smelly ceviche,  and over-abundance of  muddy water. Even the Antiquarium in Boscoreale, Italy, beneath the shadows of a nearby looming housing project,  is sequestered by a string of barbed wire and discarded heroin needles. Not that I don’t enjoy myself abroad, mind you. I’m an enthusiastic traveler, to be sure. The foreign landscapes that ultimately unfold just never fully mesh with the spatial images dancing around in my head before touch down.

Alaska was pretty spot-on but to be honest, I wasn’t expecting  too much from that particular latitude. And while I did not get a tattoo while docked in the port of  Juneau,  I was presented with a  shiny new Rolex Datejust in our cruise ship cabin later that evening.  Since I’m clearly never retiring from anywhere,  my wife decided to give me my ceremonial timepiece a few decades early— for my 50th birthday.  Just so you know, the name MONA, is tattooed on my left bicep. (It was only erased and changed to MOM once, and then back again to MONA as quickly as possible but as I often tell whoever will listen—that’s another story for another weekend writer’s block.)  I’ve long since  admitted to God, to myself, and to at least one other expatriot on foreign soil,  that I should have re-thought that whole laser/erase/redo episode beforehand. So what if  the Rolex is stainless steel and not gold. I’m just assuming its not a fugazi.

I’ve owned 20 different vehicles and  a half dozen dwellings in my 30+  years as an adult—each one, a little disappointing in its own way;  wrong model, too small an engine, obstructed view, wrong city.  Never ‘Sailor Jerry’ perfect like those carefree models on the vintage posters—forever young and beautiful.  Never what one thinks a tattoo is going to be before the alcohol wears off, the flesh begins to rip, and the ink sets in for good.  This causes me to think of the elder men who have preceded me in this life as I  ponder their own indelible whims.

My Uncle Zip never did move back to Hawaii after World War II, or own a brand new Coupe De Ville like he said he one day would, or meet Frank Sinatra in person (Vic Damone or Buddy Greco either, for that matter).  But every speck of his being, from here to eternity, let everyone within swinging distance know that these were items on his personal bucket list.  In my uncle’s case, the dream itself seemed to suffice in lieu of the destination or even the journey.  When the old Navy dog finally did make his final pilgrimage back to the Big  Island much later in life  he would, too, find his black sand paradise covered beneath a sheet of rain and asphalt.  He died in Levittown, Pennsylvania  with a  rusting Dodge Polara in the driveway.

And as I now recall my own father, a soul whose passing is still within clear sight, I’m certain he would have preferred to  spend his final years gazing at egrets and herons through binoculars from an Adirondack chair in Cape May, New Jersey; much more so, I think, than being held hostage by the Fox News Network and ESPN via his north Philadelphia blue leather recliner while fretting  over the  pink ink of  his Wachovia accounts. Think about it—a  man can  probably die wherever he wishes with some  proper planning, enough dough, and  a little luck. He just needs a willing spouse to help  move things along.  That’s all.

Truthfully though,  I don’t give this all too much thought.  I see little use  in being disappointed in something as anti-climatic as my journey to the After Life. Obsessions, like tattoos, begin to fade after so many years in the sun. But you must admit,  those  four-color brochures that the Seventh Day Adventists leave on the front porch every summer do catch your cosmic eye—like a Sailor Jerry classic. In Paradise. ‘Forever.’  On a deep six holiday.

image by sailor jerry

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We’ve avoided DocuSign because ZipForms was so terrible in the Mac world. While the new implementation is not great, it’s better. And as kludgey and expensive as DocuSign seems, I really, really want electronic signatures.

But I have questions:

1. Can I use DocuSign to do my “broker oversight” signatures? That’s not a legal question. I’m just asking, is it possible?

2. If I receive a document — say a counter-offer — from another DocuSign-using Realtor, can I use DocuSign to get my client’s signature on that document?

3. Same question, but just an ordinary PDF? How about an ordinary fax?

4. What about added documents? We do a lot in the way of extended additional clauses, especially on listings, with each version of those clauses being unique. Is it possible to add our own forms in a DocuSign envelope?

5. What do you love about DocuSign?

6. What do you hate about it?

I’m grateful for any insights you can offer.

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So Goggle thinks it’s going to win the real estate search game.  As far as I’m concerned, there is no more meaningless a result in an online property search than a red pin designating the location of a property on a map.  Take the map above in the example - a snapshot of the the greater New York City area with little red dots designating search results.  New York’s a big city with alot of little neighborhoods.  Help me understand how this solution is any better than any of the others? How has Google upped the ante in providing a better solution?

They haven’t.

What I find interesting about the online search game is how many players fail to understand what makes a particular property unique - desirable - a one of a kind.  How does a little red dot convey the weighty significance of LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION?  I just read Joe Burslem’s post over at FOREM, regarding how Google is now getting serious about real estate.

Should Zillow and Trulia be worried?  Not if they view search as a value added activity.  SEO juice isn’t necessarily the fuel that runs an effective or valuable search.  The content around the search is key.  What makes a location important?  When consumers seek a home - not a house - what evokes the emotional response?  A view?  The possibility of walking to a farmer’s market on Sunday, while passing a Starbucks?

A street view is a “window” into a location, but it doesn’t define it’s personality.  Location has an identity.  Zillow has already done the homework to identify the boundaries to neighborhoods.  Perhaps a valuable next step may be to better identify a neighborhood’s identity - its personality - or maybe link the characteristics of a location to the attributes of a property.

If a search result can personify a property’s location, consistent with how a consumer lives, the red pin comes alive.  Search is meaningful.

Google - you’ve got your work cut out for you.

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To pluck a petal from the bloom of  friend and  recondite commenter, Don Reedy, I’ve been ‘face down in a slope of iceplant’  for 30 days. Yes, iceplant.  (I’ll let the man himself expound a little later but allow me to tempt you with the essence of his yarn—- it involves a houseboat in San Diego, a Belushi Halloween costume (including handcuffed briefcase), and a lost weekend somewhere in the bowels of the 1980s. Un huh.)

You see, I too have been on a pastoral  quest  of sorts this month and  presently find myself scurrying through the  Bloodhound shadows to slip this flimsy piece under the Big Dog’s door before the triple witching hour tonight—June’s last breath.  I take a peek around the literary pound and am relieved to  find that my Wordpress password is still active and that my name and mugshot are still posted on the BHB sidebar.  Only a handful of  hours remains between me and blanking an entire month on the hallowed front post page. Hopefully I’ll push Publish before the final strike of Midnight and keep the holy streak alive.  Admittedly, I’ve been remiss in my self-imposed dogmatic duties.

So this is what has gone down since I last posted Mother Nature is not a MILF on May 30th (an essay written mostly on my iPhone that netted a total of 6 unique comments including a few of my own trite responses). I pooled my talents, sunk my literary savings into a mental Ponzie marketing scheme, and found myself  nearly wiped clean from the blogarian grid as I danced 30 days straight ‘with the one who brung me’ to this economic station in life to begin with—real estate sales.  Eleven of them to be exact.  I’ve never done eleven of anything in a single month much less an activity involving commission checks with accompanying deposit slips.  And now, after eleven hard money contracts written and/or Closed in June, I come crawling back to my digital workspace on knees and elbows on this last day of the month, famished and thirsty for Google juice; mind, gut, and Adword account all but drained. On figurative creative fumes. A quip or two every few days on Facebook (again, via my iPhone) has been my only contact with the electronic media. I forgot to pay my Comcast bill. Twice.  When I finally booted up my laptop at home to begin this piece last Sunday, the bastards had already unhooked my shit. Some nice gentleman from a war torn Third World nation assisted me with the re-connect. I think he said his name was Billy Bob.  Billy Bob Pakhtoon.

I posted my first blog in December of 2005  because my lead generation efforts had basically dissolved into sediment.  Momentum alone carried me through 2006. It was only after reading a Time Magazine article later that year that I decided to change my real estate physiognomy and commit to a low carb regiment of  dietary backlink fiber.  For the next several months I was more concerned with the BMI on my Page Rank scale than the actual dirty act of  soliciting….ahem…. property.  And as my writing skills appeared to flourish, my sales skills began to atrophy.  I showed up at my accountant’s office in 2008 with my 1099s in hand and his secretary asked for ID. I was fiscally unrecognizable. I had become the Joaquin Phoenix of  his client base. I told her she should check out my blog, that I was now a writer and a Realtor. I believe her response was, “Whatever. Cash or credit card only, Mr. Petro.”  Whatever…

So, as Mr Reedy so beautifully explains it in the comment section of a previous post, “A friend found me two days later, face down in a slope of iceplant (I’ll bring a sample, because iceplant only grows where it doesn’t freeze). It took another two days for my face to lose the iceplant imprint…”

And there, too, is where I only recently found the other half of my creative soul.  In Iceplant. Face Down. On a Slope.  Imprinted.   I’ve said it many times before on this venue; I can either write or I can sell.  I just can’t seem to do both at the same time worth a darn. So for the next 30 days or so I suppose I’ll write.  I’m in a  Francis Ford Coppola Zoetrope Screenplay Contest with an August 1 deadline. Now that’s as good an excuse as any for not selling jack squat in July.

Publish

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Anyone a member of the Texas Bar Association looking for Pro Bono work?  I think you may be able to rassle up a class action lawsuit in big “D”, little “a”, double “L” a, s (Dallas folks )

Texas is one of five states that do not require disclosure of sale prices, however, I believe the local MLS board in Dallas may be violating their fiduciary responsibility to their buyers and sellers.  I strongly suggest you read the following article.

Actual home sale prices are not being entered into the MLS.

Does this not blatantly fly in the face of transparency.  Moreover, how can the local board stand for this?  Without accurate data shared at least to local members, the guidance and counsel for properly pricing a property places sellers, but more clearly buyers, in a very bad position.  The article suggests that lower priced properties which have sold may be intentional left out in order to provide a perception that property values are higher.

Not only is this a direct violation of an agent’s fiduciary responsibility to his/her client, it is borderline fraud.

Real estate is local, consult a local REALTOR and find out how much your home is worth - or NOT.

Is it any reason why data aggregators are winning?

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One of the most powerful outcomes of attending an REBarcamp isn’t necessarily attending the many great discussions during the day, but the great conversations and discussions which take place over a beer after the meeting is over.  I also believe that REBC - now after experiencing yesterday’s REBCCHI - is the real personification of a virtual tool - a living and breathing example of how Twitter converts 140 characters into 140+ face to face meetings and discussions.  Followers carry more weight when they transform from the virtual world to the real world.

For me, the most meaningful discussion took place at the end of the day.  Todd Carpenter, NAR’s Social Media Guru, invited the CEO of NAR, Dale Stinton, to share his thoughts and address questions posed by the group.  His initial stance was somewhat defensive, however, during his discussion I gained a somewhat different perspective regarding the challenges that NAR is seeking to address and overcome.

NAR’s largest challenges is to address the needs and the ranks of the young professional.   Attempts by NAR to try to level the playing field may be difficult because of entitlement issues with older members.  Of the 1,500 boards throughout the country, 200 or so wield the most power.  Many of the larger, more influential boards may not embrace attempts to level the playing field for younger, more independent brokers.  Hence, Dale encouraged everyone to get involved in the boards to influence change.

I think NAR is evolving.

Come the end of 2009, NAR is rolling out two intiatives that have been more than a few years in development:

1. RPR - Real Property Repository - to all NAR members, a database consisting of the property attributes including tax records etc. for 70 million properties in the US, allowing members to provide comments and additional information to the unique property description.
2. A consumer focused website, equivalent to Realtor.org.  It is NAR’s response to providing everything a consumer needs to know about real estate.  Again, consumer focused versus member focused.

Timeline again for both is slated for fourth quarter, 2009.

Okay - so now RPR appears to be an almost national MLS, provides data like aggregators and looks like a potential leverage play against Realtor.com.

But why all the fuss about a consumer-faced website?

Well, here was the greatest value of the day for me - a discussion at the bar with @Ericstegemann and the notorious @robhahn taking a step back and taking a look at the big picture.   During Dale’s discussion with the group, he mentioned that the REALTOR brand is a Fortune 50 brand worth $4B.  But in the big picture, is $4B really impressive considering the size of its membership population of roughly 1.15M?

Do consumers really value the REALTOR brand?   Do REALTORs really value the REALTOR brand?

Apparently not.  Dale chastised the group for not actively participating and supporting in NAR’s Call for Action.  In fact of the 1.15M members, only 7% to 8% actually make the calls to their Congressmen.  From Dale’s perspective, NAR is only a 100,000 members strong, not 1.15M.

During the beer infused debate with Rob and Eric, the value of the REALTOR brand is essentially providing bully pulpit status to the average REALTOR, nothing more.

Maybe the biggest issue facing NAR isn’t the growth of the young professional, but the future value of the organization itself.  How does NAR increase the value of the REALTOR brand?

This may be the impetus to reaching out to the Consumer directly.  By providing a consumer focused website of all things real estate, NAR reaches potentially 70 million homeowners.  If the site reaches even 5% of the its intended audience, NAR’s voice reachs 3.5 million people, roughly three times the number of NAR members.

What if 7% of NAR members and 7% of the 3.5 million consumers reach out to Congress?  The message is 3.5 fold louder.  This begs the question.  In the future, how important will the licensed agent be to NAR?

NAR is evolving to survive.

• Building a repository that could possibly compete with a powerful board’s MLS .  Could this be a path to leveling the playing field for independents by usurping the power of entitled boards?
• Playing catch-up to technology rivals with a plethora of data - if you can’t beat ‘em, change the market dynamics.
• A direct link to the consumer - does this change the mission of NAR to be consumer focused or allow NAR to influence consumers to bring its entitled dinosaurs into the 21st century?

Are these strategies the missing link?

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I have the heart of a trader.  If you read Mortgage Rates Report, you know that I’m fascinated with the forces that make markets move up, down or not at all.  One of the things I’ve noticed, since I started writing on Bloodhound Blog, is that the real estate industry is:

• very much protective of its sellers (often to the detriment of the buyers)
• unwilling to operate in a transparent marketplace.

That lopsided opacity was the real reason for the eventual implosion of the real estate market. We hid market information from the buyers while the Baby Boomers moved through the home ownership life cycle.   A huge generation, yearning for “The American Dream of Homeownership”, assured strong demand for houses in the post-World War Two housing boom.  Banks were all too happy to hand out money, even when forced to lend by the Government.  Lew Ranieri saw a 25-year boom ahead and found a way to create a shadow banking system that could “bury bad loans”.  Any agent dealing with a short sale understands the problem of buried loans because she’s heard:

“Well, we aren’t quite sure WHO owns this loan”

Kind of sounds like the forensic audit of Bernie Madoff’s books, doesn’t it?  That’s what you hear when the jig is up on a Ponzi scheme:  confusion, wagon-circling, and practiced deflection.  It eventually catches up with the schemers.  I’m firmly in the camp that no matter how many incentives we offer to stave off the inevitable forced sales, or to provide a middle-class tax cut, or to bribe the next generation of buyers, the simple fact remains that we have more houses than we need in this country…and the people just ain’t buying like they used to.

It’s partly the National Association of REALTORs fault.  They’ve hoarded supply data and intentionally suppressed demand data since inception.  Suppressing the demand data resulted in a valuation system that relied on false positives (comparable sales) as a standard that contributed to the Ponzi-like atmosphere in the real estate market.   Think about it.  When we ask agents about rising demand, they point to dwindling supply as a measure of it.  That deflects the question.

It’s party the appraisers fault, too.  They allowed themselves to be the lap-dogs of the NAR without ever addressing the demand-side of the equation.  Ask an appraiser about demand, he’ll point to the “absorption rate” which, as I’ve said, is a measure of available supply.

Let me give you an example of the unholy alliance between NAR and independent fee appraisers:

Have you ever been to the Port of Long Beach, CA?  This is what it looked like last Fall. The linked article shows that there are literally thousands of Mercedes and Toyotas, waiting to be warehoused rather than shipped to dealerships.  Can you imagine if the Kelley Blue Book guy came out to “appraise” the new Mercedes, to set the market?

C’mon boys!  Let’s get these vehicles into the sheds!  We can’t let the Kelley guy see the results of the poor demand.  Floyd?  Can you get those last three bills-of sale for the Kelley guy?  He needs to set a value for this model.

That’s how appraisers valued property until last year; they ignored current listings and went off historical data.  Nobody cared because we were in the middle of a long-term market paradigm where demand was greater than supply.  Remember, that chunk of people just turned 65 so they’re pretty much out of the market.  That paradigm is shifting- ask Gary Keller.

Oh, lenders weren’t innocent either.  Lenders (and their counterparts on Wall Street) were so willfully absorbed with the next quarter’s profits (produced by the shadow banking system) that they grew a cabal so powerful that its failure is defined now as “systemic risk”.  The days of what Greg Swann refers to as “flinty-eyed bankers” gave way to the crap-shooting S&L cowboys and gun-slinging investment bankers.

In the end, we had to  sell the former Second-World countries on the compunction of Joe the American so we could keep the taps running.  Joe the American turned out to be a bad bet and the Second-World sovereigns are pushing back.

We ignored the demand-side of the trade.  Now, when Mao and Ivan tell us to mark those mortgage bonds to the market, we have no reliable pricing service because we can’t see what the demand, property by property, is.  We can’t build a pricing model worth trusting because we have no idea about the true demand for the collateral behind the loans. This mortgage-backed securities market collapse goes deeper than the Fed’s unexpected flight from support.  It started when a bond fund manager suggested that our nation’s collateral, and confidence, was in jeopardy of being downgraded.  This rise in mortgage rates is as much a fear of  systemic failure as it is of inflation…

…and it ain’t over yet.

I met a guy last month who thinks he has a solution. It’s so simple it’s silly; an open market, like the NASDAQ, for real estate.  Watch offers for houses, in real-time, be accepted or declined.  NASDAQ Level Two Quotes go beyond the bid and ask; they show the “size” of the market for those prices. The implementation of that transparency greatly reduced the previous NASDAQ market manipulation, that stymied the individual investor to favor institutions.  It isn’t perfect but exposure to that data makes the market operate more efficiently.  Apply that model to real estate and you will quickly determine what the “real” market is for a property.

Prudential California tried a similar approach with its range-pricing model. The range pricing model reflected a bid and ask price but withheld any “size” of those numbers…so the numbers were useless.  Range Pricing then, is a marketing gimmick, not real market transparency vis-a-vis the demand side of the trade.

How then, can we solve this problem so that confidence is restored in property valuation?  I gotta tell you that The Second-World Nation investors don’t trust our Government.  Our Government doesn’t trust Wall Street.  Wall Street doesn’t trust the banks.  Banks don’t trust real estate agents and the public doesn’t trust anyone right now.  Money flows where trust goes so restore trust in the valuations and the money will start flowing again.

Prominently display the terms and dates of the rejected offers, verified by participating market professionals, in the MLS system, and you solve the demand side of the equation because you identify the “size of the market”.  Share that information with the banks and they’ll start trusting you.  Show it to the prospective buyers and they’ll throw their arms around you in joy.  The sellers will “get real” about the market, also.

We all know that ain’t gonna happen because “The Man” doesn’t want to release his clutch on the market.

That’s the real problem.  We don’t have a real estate market, we have a real estate industry created market.  Since the real estate industry isn’t going to restore confidence in the real estate market, I suppose we’ll have to look elsewhere…

…like this guy I met.

Expect to hear a lot more from me, about this topic, as I learn more about it.  Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I go pester this guy via e-mail.  Thanks for letting me vent.

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My query is sincere.  But first, I want to make a distinction between a REALTOR and a licensed real estate agent.  NAR tells consumers to seek the counsel of REALTOR - in fact, make sure they are working with a REALTOR, leading consumers to believe that a licensed real estate agent and REALTOR are synonymous.  They are not.

A REALTOR is a licensed real estate agent who is also a  member of the National Association of REALTORs, who’s mission is:

The core purpose of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® is to help its members become more profitable and successful.

Clearly absent from the mission is any reference to the consumer.

The vision of the National Association of REALTORS is equally insightful:

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® strives to be the collective force influencing and shaping the real estate industry. It seeks to be the leading advocate of the right to own, use, and transfer real property; the acknowledged leader in developing standards for efficient, effective, and ethical real estate business practices; and valued by highly skilled real estate professionals and viewed by them as crucial to their success.

Working on behalf of America’s property owners, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® provides a facility for professional development, research and exchange of information among its members and to the public and government for the purpose of preserving the free enterprise system, and the right to own, use, and transfer real property.

I find NARs Vision statement to be interesting. While the concept of advocacy is referenced - It seeks to be the leading advocate of the right to own, use, and transfer real property - NARs advocacy serves first and foremost its members.  Again, distinctly absent from the vision statement is a direct reference to the consumer - ultimately the guy or gal who parts with their money to own, use, and transfer real property.

As licensed real estate agents, our behavior is bound and regulated by our state laws, written in the interest of protecting the public from unscrupulous professionals.  Licensing is the state’s way to insure that a minimum standard of knowledge and behavior is achieved prior to allowing a licensed real estate agent from practicing his or her profession.  Licensing falls outside of the juridiction of NAR, however NAR is actively involved in influencing the standards of real estate practice.

Under license law, we as licensed agents have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients - we are required to do what is in the best fiduciary interest of our client, not our own.

There’s been a great discussion lately here around the issue of transparency and compensation.  This issue brought about my question regarding the compatibility of REALTOR and consumer advocacy.  In my opinion, transparency is at the very core of consumer advocacy.

Here’s the rub for me.  NAR’s final paragraph of its vision statement states:

… research and exchange of information among its members and to the public and government for the purpose of preserving the free enterprise system, and the right to own, use, and transfer real property.

Ah Yes - preserving the free enterprise system.

Help me undertand - in the interest of defending the free enterprise system - why so much emphasis is placed on defending the current business of how agents get paid?  No one to date has provided to me a convincing arguement as to why compensation as a percentage of a sale price is justifiable compensation to a buyer or selling agent?

You’re an expert negotiator?  So what.  Have you tracked the value you have saved clients over the past 50 transactions?  Can you determine the value?  Does your client need an expert negotiator in every transaction?  If the selling agent did their job correctly, the property your buyer may want to purchase may actually be priced right to begin with - wow, what a concept.

You earn every penny?  I’d rather earn every dollar.  In fact - I’d like to earn alot of dollars, but perhaps more importantly, I want my clients to understand the real value of my services, not have it buried in a lump percentage of a transaction.

Guess what - your clients should understand how much you earn - and even net - for a transaction.  Why?  Maybe - as a first step - because you’ll first understand whether or not it is even profitable to serve a certain client or not.  I don’t want to make $10 an hour when I can work with other clients and make $150 or even $1,000.

Wake up people - this is a business.  In fact, you’re a professional.  In order to run a business, you need to make something and sell something - ideally for profit.  If not, GM is a fine example of how not to run a business.  You make knowledge and experience over time.  Unless you learn through osmosis, when you are a newly minted agent, I highly doubt you are worth the same amount as the agent that’s been doing this job in the trenches for several years.

Why as experienced agents do we allow our compensation to be equivalent to those who simply don’t have the same level of experience?  Maybe they can better articulate their value.  If they can’t - is this in the fiduciary interest of our clients?

Oh - I forgot - we’re upholding free enterprise.

Why are you carrying inventory you can’t sell?  Ask GM how that’s working out for them. If you’re clients think you are working for free it’s time to tell them otherwise.  If you typically make $150/hour working with buyers - tell them.  If you make more, I’d tell that too.

So my last question is this:

Will that be a tall, grande or venti?

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