There’s always something to howl about.

Month: July 2009 (page 1 of 3)

What Lessons Have We Learned From Past Hard Times?

Most of us can remember a time, sometimes even a specific moment when our spirit was so beat up it seemingly had to look up to see down. I’ve had those times. They come and go for all of us, and come in so many different forms. It can be financial, health, family, or a combination of all the above. Although in my head I’m still roughly 22, and even though I’m healthy as a horse, very fit, blah blah blah, I can remember bad times like they were last week.

I was first licensed in a recession — went full time after school was done in a recession — saw my first child born in a recession — see a trend there do ya? I’d be the last guy to claim having lived a hard life, though I’ve had my fair share of, um, challenges. In our minds we tend not to step back and extract the lessons life so generously offers to teach us. But we do learn from our times in the barrel, don’t we?

You’ll not meet many folks more private than I, on that you can bank. I tend to keep to myself, though paradoxically I’m gregarious and outgoing by nature. Today I had one of those moments when it seems everything goes into super slow motion, and you begin to ‘see’ things you musta been missing. I’ll keep the subject matter to myself as it wasn’t directly about me, but suffice to say I was both emotionally and intellectually moved a great deal.

It reminded me of the lessons I’ve not only learned about life and living, but about myself — many of which were learned in the pressure cooker of desperate straits. I’d love to hear what some of you have learned when things in your life went to hell in a hand basket, but fair is fair so I’ll tell you some of what I learned in some of the darkest hours from my past.

I learned no matter how much family support there is, no matter how many friends there are, in Read more

In search of better, faster, linkier Craigslist Ads

I still get quite a bit of activity from Craigslist ads. I have been using Postlets, because it puts listings a bunch of different places, and adding a bit of html before and after their code with links to the individual property site, my blogs and my real estate site.

Even though Postlets doesn’t put links in the Craigslist ads, I wanted links! So, since I’m lazy about coding and not very fluent in html, I did a draft post in WordPress with the things I wanted to say and link to and put three lines above the Postlets ad with links to the individual property site, my blog and my real estate home page, clicked to have it shown in html and pasted it in above and below the postlets ad. It looks like this. With 20 or so of these running, I get a noticeable bump in google search results and traffic. No problems with being flagged or having the ads yanked.

But, I’m thinking I can do more.

Craigslist is a more time consuming than I would like because the ads expire every week. I want to automate the process where I can create a template that I can prepare quickly, much like the custom page creation for each property can be automated using Engenu.

So, I took the source code for a property page from Engenu and pasted it into a Craigslist ad to see what would happen. I found out right away that only 30,000 characters were allowed in the post description (the place I can paste in html code). Since the file I tried was 11,000 lines of code, I found that limit pretty quickly. I wanted to see what would come up and I at least found how many characters are allowed. 30,000 characters of code is enough that I should be able to do something better.

Then, I finally searched BHB for Craigslist and found Greg’s post on CL from last year. The comment string is pretty important on that post. After reading those, I was ready to experiment with making a new .html template Read more

Realbird’s Free IDX Alternative: (Eeeee….aaaaahhhh…aahhhhahhhhhhah)

 

I just recently realized that Realbird offers the syndication based total IDX solution on the cheap for Real Estate Agents that I was talking about here a little while back.

 

Considering the whole MIBOR thing that went down a few months back, here below is how we might expect some local MLS board officials to be reacting to the product?

[Click to play obnoxious but hilarious vid in new tab/window….]
picture-23
Caption: Local Boards React To Free Real Estate Data For Real Estate Agents

 
Shouldn’t the freak of nature that is a free, framable, “google based” solution for displaying all that precious real estate property data have a whole lotta folks up in arms somewhere?

Oh well…doesn’t matter. Dead horse maybe… The important thing is this. I found a relevant way to share that video.

That and…

The Realbird search can likely replace your current idx solution, and is pretty darn feature rich for the money. An ad supported version is free, and to remove ads and allow tight, framable integration with your website costs an easy $99/year (That’s $99/12 per month, if you’re doing the math.)

 

Sure, I know… it’s not every listing in the local MLS system. Even though Realbird’s property search results appear to be limited to what’s available in google base, it’s enough in my opinion. All our search page needs to do these days is keep my visitors engaged for a while until they fall into one of our nifty lead capture traps, right? I’d argue that the day has pretty much arrived when a 3rd party providing a partially complete snapshot of local real estate market inventory based on data provided by syndication partners is pretty much as good as what most fully populated with local board data idx solutions have to offer.

 

To see what I mean, check out Central Pa’s cheapest and arguably most comprehensive Real Estate Search portal at Central Pa Living.Com.

 

And keep in mind just a few of the features on that page which the local board prohibits from being displayed on that page:

 

  • The ability to display property description remarks within the listings!
  • RSS feeds Read more

Want a free GPS-aware smart-phone client to search the complete Phoenix MLS? BloodhoundRealty.com has one, thanks to SmarterAgent

We signed up for our own version of the SmarterAgent smart-phone MLS client. We’ve been live since Monday, but it proved its value and then some yesterday afternoon.

Cathy was out with buyers, and they asked the most dreaded question of all: “What about that one?” Not every house with a sign is for sale, and, even then, most homes for sale don’t meet your search criteria. That’s why we don’t have that listing with us. But Cathy whipped out her iPhone and did a GPS-based search on her own location. Voile! Three bedrooms. Too small.

That’s not in the SmarterAgent marketing patois, but it doesn’t have to be. The software rocks in anyone’s hands. We had been looking at pure iPhone solutions, but the SmarterAgent tool is simultaneously more robust and more broad-based: It provides a GPS-aware MLS search from virtually any smart-phone. You can also search by map, by address, by MLS number, by neighborhood or subdivision, etc. The user interface is easy to navigate, and the level of detail on the listings exceeds many desktop-based IDX systems.

I wouldn’t want to use this client for showing purposes, but it’s a nice tool for buyers to use as they explore neighborhoods. And, as above, it’s very useful to working Realtors to deal with on-the-fly questions about properties. The best part is, if you follow through and inquire about a property, the phone call — and an email — comes to me. We have the email set up to echo to all of our mail clients, so we don’t miss anything. And the email includes the listing agent’s phone number, so we can track down specific information quickly, no matter where we might happen to be.

If you’re a Realtor working anywhere but Phoenix, I think you should get this thing. It’s a pain in the ass to get in Phoenix, and, besides, my plan is to suck all the oxygen out of the SmarterAgent space in Phoenix.

To that end, here’s how you can help: Write a post on your own weblog about how you intend to look into this cool new tool, and Read more

BingHoo

It’s official, Yahoo, the original search brand, is outsourcing its search function to Microsoft. I don’t think either Microsoft or Yahoo had a choice. It’s a shotgun marriage.

Those work out all the time, right?

Coming out with something that is noticeably better than Google’s Search experience is the only way anyone will  take significant search audience share from them, because despite all the hype around Tweets and FB, Search is still the fundamental App that makes the Web useful and people need a real reason to switch from what they like and are used to.

Failing that (as Microsoft  has with every incremental redesign of their search offering, including Bing), Redmond probably figured why not buy a solid, if distant, second place?

Yahoo knows how this works: A combination of loyalty and laziness is the only reason they still have enough users that Microsoft is even interested in this deal.

So what does this mean for your SEM efforts?

As Wired points out in a good take on this deal, “…by capturing one opposing army, (Microsoft) dramatically simplifies the battle lines and creates a two-sided conflict.”

Google knows how to hit Microsoft where it hurts, most recently by forcing Microsoft to sacrifice its cash cow, Office, by making it available on line next year to counter Google Docs. So far, Microsoft has not been able to land an equally  solid punch on Google.

That has to make Steve Ballmer’s forehead all purple with the veins popping out, like the evil aliens in the original Star Trek pilot. I don’t think I could work for Ballmer. I first saw those aliens when I was like 6, and I still have nightmares about them.

ballmer-talosian

….but I digress…

One way Steve could finally get some would be to introduce serious competition in contextual text ads, the Web advertising form that Google invented and the only ad model that works on the Web (Exhibit A: They made Google $5.5 Billion last Qtr.).

Real competition from Microsoft in the form of lower costs per click could drive Adword prices down, which all by itself does nothing to take overall search audience share from Google, but Read more

Is ActiveRain Selling Loan Officers An Exclusive Opportunity, Or Just Selling Their Real Estate Agents Out?

active_rain_making_money_off_the_backs_of_loan_officers_by_using_agents_as_a_carrot

I’ve received a few emails and calls from my loan officers this week about some new exclusive opportunity that Activerain.com is pitching to the mortgage industry.

Apparently, Active Rain is cold calling mortgage professionals who have an AR blogging history and offering them an “extremely rare opportunity” to pay $299 / month for the privilege of being able to re-sell upgraded AR products to real estate agents.

The following email is an example of what the new Active Rain business model appears to be:

xxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak with me.  As I said, this is an extremely rare opportunity.

WISCONSIN

Currently 848 Real Estate Agents

Currently 123 Loan Officers

You will have a full training course with ActiveRain to learn the knowledge on how to dominate the first page of Google.  With this knowledge you will train agents to do the same.  You will keep in contact with these agents as their trusted advisor who has directly taught them on how to fully market themselves successfully.  There will be loyalty here.  You will have full access to every single new and old agent in the whole state of Wisconsin.  You will be highlighted all over ActiveRain for this.

$299/month is your investment.

After 15 upgrades you will receive $700.

For every rainmaker upgrade thereafter, you receive $25.

The relationships and possibilities are endless.

Please let me know as soon as possible as time is of the essence.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Member Services
ActiveRain.com
xxxxxxxxxxxx

I’ve obviously blanked out the names to protect the people involved in this specific conversation, but I’ve already been given permission by my loan officers to talk about this on Bloodhoundblog.

________

Let me get a few disclaimers out of the way before I dive in to this Active Rain thing.

I’m a loan officer with several blogging platforms – some are free, and some cost money to participate.

My main objective with 99% of the group blogs that I build is to help my contributors expand their reach online with a little help from a few friends who share the same goals.

I understand the importance of having a well capitalized web project so that the development crew can stay on the Read more

VA Jumbo Mortgages: Determining The Down Payment

Sean Purcell and I are really figuring VA-guaranteed  jumbo loans.  We’re getting a steady stream of business from high-cost California counties.  One of the common misconceptions is that VA loans are capped at the county loan limit, like FHA and conventional mortgages.  I’m going to walk you through the formula to determine the required down payment and maximum loan amounts for VA jumbo home loans.

STEP ONE:

___Lesser of purchase price or appraised value +

___Add the 100% financing VA funding fee =

___Gross loan amount

STEP TWO:

___ VA county loan limit * (.25) =

___ Veteran’s maximum entitlement * 4 =

___ Maximum VA guaranty (including funding fee)

STEP THREE:

___ Gross loan amount (from step one) * (.25) =

___ Required Guaranty –

___ Veteran’s maximum entitlement (from step 2) =

___ Required down payment

STEP FOUR:

___ Purchase price –

___ Required down payment (from step three) =

___ Base loan amount (before adding funding fee) +

___ Applicable LTV-adjusted VA funding fee =

___ Total loan amount after down payment

Let’s try a $650,000 purchase price in Maricopa County, where the county loan limit is $417,000, for a first-time VA loan user.

STEP ONE:

$650,000 (purchase price) +

$13,975 (2.15% funding fee) =

$663,975 (gross loan amount)

STEP TWO:

$417,000 county loan limit * (.25)=

$104,250 (maximum entitlement) * 4 =

$417,000 (maximum VA guaranty)

STEP THREE:

$663,975 (gross loan amount) * (.25) =

$165,993 (required guaranty) –

$104,250 (maximum entitlement) =

$61,744 (required down payment)

STEP FOUR:

$650,000 (purchase price) –

$61,744 (required down payment) =

$588,256 (base loan amount) +

$8823 (applicable LTV-adjusted funding fee) =

$597,079 (total loan amount after down payment)

Don’t be confused by the entitlement and loan amount; just follow the formula and any VA-approved underwriter will accept your figures.  As you can see, the required down payment, for this example,  is only 9.4%.  I’d probably round it up to an even 10% down payment so that the funding fee would drop to 1.25% instead of 1.5%.  Putting down an extra $3900 saves the veteran $1625 in the funding fee.

Very few jumbo loan programs allow for a down payment of 10% with no mortgage insurance.  This makes the VA-guaranteed jumbo mortgage tough to beat.  The first question you ask for  any loan application should be…

Did you serve ?

It could Read more

Goals? Plans? Tools? All Secondary — Teapots and Gyms As Teachers

So many of the lessons we’re taught growing up, or by life’s merciless classroom are not rocket science. First you learn to work hard, then you add work smart. Most of what we learn tends to follow that template. A brick at a time, right?

The teapot I’ve had for several years, and in which I boil water for my morning coffee, was lookin’ a lot older than it should. I wanted it to gleam the way it did the day I brought it home. So I found the elbow grease and broke out some serious scrubbin’ action. The results were, um, less than stellar. I tried all kinds of cleaners, different sponges and brushes, none of which produced. What to do?

Some time went by ’till I’d finished making coffee one morning and decided I’d spray one of the cleaners on the still hot teapot, then let it sit awhile. About an hour later I came in, used the rough side of a sponge, and quickly scrubbed and rinsed it. I repeated this twice daily for about three weeks. It’s shiny again! Who knew?

Seems the application of a mild solvent teamed with heat and time, followed by a little scrubbing — a couple times a day for 21 days or so, slowly but surely does the trick. It was an X brand cleaner, nothing special. The difference maker was showing up every day doing what had to be done. Again, not rocket science.

Like many of you, I belong to a gym, and workout frequently — usually six days a week. Due to tendon problems I’d let myself go, as I was pouting the last several years over the realization I was no longer a threat to Ahnold. (Talk about living in a fantasy world.) Then I met a guy who told me about a relatively different fitness approach, which wouldn’t, for the most part, mess with my tendons. It was anaerobic in nature, which in plain language means you’ll probably find yourself talkin’ with your long dead grandma more days than not.

I bought into the concept, and Read more

The Part You Give Away

Waits sings about The Part You Throw Away, and I did plenty of that once, but today, it’s about the part you give away.

For many reasons, I’ve been hesitant to discuss this except in the most general terms. It feels both invasive and self-indulgent to discuss my personal life here, but this post is about the part you give away.

I have a child who has been in and out of the hospital most of the summer, and she’s back there again. I’m not sure which is more strange- having a child in the hospital or, knowing exactly what to pack for the stay, and getting it packed in 20 minutes.

Things happen. We deal. And we deal. And we deal. And each time we deal, we grow stronger.

A mother becomes tempered steel, because she’s given away so much of herself that what is left, perhaps all that is left, is the very best. She’s dumped all the baggage, everything worthless, useless. What’s left is her essence.

I am now inside out. Stronger than I was two months ago, reduced and forged to my very essence.

I don’t want pity. I don’t want anything really, except to show you, and myself, that the part you give away is the part that creates the most strength and beauty in life.

 

Why should you enlist a buyer’s agent to help you buy a home? Because you’ll get a much better deal — even if you pay full price

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

Are home-buyers best served by the vigilant efforts of an experienced buyer’s agent? Consider a transaction we have in play right now.

The buyers are a young couple, about to be married. They have about $10,000 in cash.

With a conventional loan, they could put 20% down on a dismal starter home. Or, with Private Mortgage Insurance, they could put 10% down on a nicer home.

But with an FHA loan, $10,000 is 3.5% down on a $285,000 home. We can argue the wisdom of making so small a down payment, but the FHA loan program is the path to homeownership for millions of Americans.

And $285,000 is too much house for our buyers. They found a nice lender-owned two-story home in the suburbs selling for $169,000. The down payment on that home would be $5,915. But the closing costs would probably run to another $5,000 — which comes to more money than they have.

They qualify for the $8,000 first-time home-buyer tax credit, but they won’t get that until they file their tax return. They also qualify for a state-funded grant program that will contribute up to 22% of the purchase price — but which can’t be used for the down payment or the closing costs.

Here’s the deal we put together. We offered $175,000, $6,000 over list price. In exchange, we asked the seller to contribute 4% of the full purchase price to defray the buyer’s closing costs.

The down payment will be $6,125, leaving the buyers $3,875 in cash to pay for the endless expenses of moving into a new home.

And there will be about $2,000 left over after the closing costs are paid. This will be used to buy down the interest rate. The buyers will end up with just over 25% equity in the property for a cash outlay of $6,125 — all at a very low monthly payment. And they’ll still have their $8,000 tax credit to look forward to.

This is the kind of outcome a skilled buyer’s agent can achieve.

 
Steal this book: So far I’ve written two columns on this theme. If Read more

Too Stupid To Do Business With?

I’m not that guy who loves forwarding funny emails, but my father-in-law sent one to me that I had to share because it could totally apply to our industry.

Either way, I thought it would make for a little Friday fun.

___________

This is a true phone call from the Word Perfect Help line which was transcribed from a recording monitoring the customer care department.

Needless to say the Help Desk employee was fired.

>>>

“ABC computer assistance; may I help you?”

“Yes, well, I’m having trouble with Word Perfect.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went
away.”

“Went away?”

“They disappeared.”

“Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“It’s blank, it won’t accept anything when I type.”

“Are you still in Word Perfect, or did you get out?”

“How do I tell?”

“Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?”

“What’s a sea-prompt?”

“Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?”

“There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”

“Does your monitor have a power indicator?”

“What’s a monitor?”

“It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it
have a little light that tells you when it’s on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power
cord goes into it. Can you see that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into
the wall.”

“Yes, it is.”

“When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two
cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?”

“No.”

“Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the
other cable.”

“Okay, here it is.”

“Follow it for me, and tell me if it’s plugged securely into the back
of your computer.”

“I can’t reach.”

“Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?”

“No.”

“Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?”

“Oh, it’s not because I don’t have the right angle — it’s because it’s
dark.”

“Dark?”

“Yes, the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in
from the window.”

“Well, turn on the office light then.”

“I can’t.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because there’s a power Read more

What’s an “Exit Strategy” and why does it matter to the housing market?

I originally wrote this and posted it on my new site, Straight Talk About Mortgages – The Bigger Picture, but I’ve been urged to post it here as well.    So, I’m doing that.   Why have I set up another site?   It’s pretty simple…..

The financial and real estate world that we are in are much more complex than most of us have ever experienced in our life times.   As part of what I’m going to be rolling out soon which I’m calling, “Straight Talk Lending,” I believe that it’s important that people have the an understanding of the bigger issues that are and potentially will be influencing their business, lending and real estate decisions.

Typically once a week, I’m going to take an issue and dive into it on a much deeper level.   The opportunity to explore what it really means and how it’s going to impact the mortgage and real estate worlds is an exciting challenge and I hope it will be beneficial for many others as well.

Tom Vanderwell

Now for the post that I wrote:

What is an Exit Strategy? and Why Does It Matter to the Housing Market?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

By admin

Okay, anyone who has watched the news, or at least the financial news in the last week, especially after Bernanke’s testimony before both the Senate and the House has heard talk of an “Exit Strategy.”    I think that it would be well for us to take a few minutes and look at a couple of questions relating to that issue:

  • What is an “exit strategy?”
  • Why is an exit strategy necessary?
  • What does it mean for the housing and mortgage markets?
  • What should I do to prepare myself and/or my clients for what’s coming?

Before we get into those questions, here’s a clip from Bloomberg that talks about an exit strategy and what Bernanke might be thinking and planning.   This interview was done last week and was looking forward to Bernanke’s testimony this week.

Now, time to dig into the details of it.  What is an exit strategy? It’s pretty simple:

How in the world is the government going to get out of owning an Read more

Americans and Hard Times

Born in the summer of 1951, I’m one of those Boomers who’ve lived the transformation from simpler, more innocent times, to the hi-tech, everything’s gotta be in the fast lane, in your face 21st century. 1951? Possibly the best debut year in post WW II Major League Baseball, as both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays broke in that year. I grew up watchin’ both of ’em in their primes, as they played at levels normal human beings could only daydream about.

America was a country in transition. The big war victoriously concluded, albeit at horrific cost, the Korean ‘Police Action’ about done, and Boomers were being born by the dozens everywhere you looked. So many paradigms were shifting all at once it seemed. The GI Bill was sending thousands of young men and women to college — folks who before the war would only have fantasized about affording a college degree and the life it promised. Suburbs entered our vocabulary. Home ownership begin to grow at prodigious velocity. Cars became a must have item.

It all sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? It was, but it wasn’t all Channel No. 5 and Willie makin’ basket catches.

My memory really only goes back to around 1956, when I turned five, started kindergarten, and got to attend ‘regular kid’ Sunday school at Dad’s church. Of course, it wasn’t ’till much later in life that I realized why I had such a good time with the older kids — duh, I was the preacher’s kid, but wasn’t anything in the same zip code as a goody two-shoes. Yeah, even back then.

Ironically, like many in my generation I learned how Americans handled hard times by listening to my grandparents tell about the Great Depression. Once you’ve heard enough of those stories from folks who lived through it as teens and emerged as adults of tempered steel, you tend to shy away from self pity when hard times come knockin’ at your door — hard times hardly in the league about which they talked.

Grandma was the oldest of eight kids who were born and raised Read more

Search Engine Marketing is about Conversations – my (errr…) Manifesto

Somewhere near the top of the Cluetrain Manifesto, you will find the following statement:

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

These words were penned in same general timeframe (read: +/- a couple of years) that Sergey and Larry were cooking up a way to measure and evaluate those conversations for their relevance.

It was the late 1990’s and while the conversations, the communities that house those conversations and the algorithms that evaluate them have all increased in complexity, THE FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE (in my opinion) HAS REMAINED RELATIVELY SIMPLE AND UNDEFILED.

I offer the following opinions for your consideration:

The goal is to BE an authority.

To do that is more than just knowing your stuff.

You must enter the arena of ideas.

You MUST write. (see above.)

You must converse. (markets are conversations…)

You must converse on other peoples sites as well as your own. And in their online communities as well. And even borrowing their authority where allowed if you do not yet have enough of your own. (If you only discuss your thoughts with yourself, then you by definition cannot be considered by others to be an authority.)

You must be authentic. (see above again.)

You must build and form solid lasting relationships that are reflected online as well as off. That includes respecting the writings of other and linking to ones that are authoritative. You cannot get long term without giving.

You must participate in the ongoing discussions of your industry AND MORE IMPORTANTLY LOCALLY – with people who can actually become clients. You need to be a respected voice both by colleagues and potential clients.

You need to find the biggest microphone available to reach out to the widest audience, not to overtly promote or argue, but to converse, engage, brand, market and build.

That may include many types of earned media.

My authority building approach over the past couple of years has morphed to coach and consult and teach folks to have conversations in places where Google and other search engines Read more