There’s always something to howl about.

Month: March 2011 (page 1 of 2)

ZestiBerry: Zillow available for your BlackBerry

If you are a Blackberry user, you can now access your Zestifarm on the go.
Thank you, Zillow! Blackberries are industrial strength communicators. They have the best keyboards and battery life in the business. Another reason I like them is that they have insurance available for the time when you drop it and it doesn’t dent the concrete. And one more thing… you can take a call and look something up on your phone without hanging up. That seems to be a big deal these days. Now you can see Zillow on a Blackberry as well. Are there any other happy blackberristas out there?

Is It Really Just The MLS?

Greg’s post a few minutes ago lit me up.

I’m pretty sure that just like Greg a majority of NAR members pay their dues each year for just one reason: To get access to the local MLS system.

If this is really true, then forcing changes at NAR or killing the organization altogether is likely as simple as building a really solid National Listing system that both pros and consumers would be comfortable with. Of course, the technology already exists and is out there. Adoption is another story, but nothing a souped up modern marketing plan couldn’t overcome.

But maybe let’s not get ahead of ourselves? First… let’s see for sure whether or not most pros equate NAR dues with little more than MLS access?

If you’re connected with a fair number of current NAR members and you want to help get a sizable sample for this poll, please feel free to tweet this, put it on facebook, or copy the widget to your website.

Thanks!

What’s the best thing the National Association of Realtors can do for the American economy? It could drop dead — but it won’t — so here’s how you can kill it, instead.

Hey there, toothy-grinned, glad-handing Realtor: How’s the world treating you?

Business is not so good? Your house is worth less than half of what you paid for it? Your kid has three degrees but can’t get a job?

Are you looking for someone to blame for your troubles?

Guess what? There really is a mastermind of evil in the American economy. A vast parasite, a vampire king, with an insatiable appetite to devour everything that used to be known as “the American way of life.”

Are you being preyed upon by banksters? By Wall Street tycoons? By Chris Dodd and Barney Franks?

Those are the folks we like to blame, when we seek explanations for the Great Recession.

But who is really at fault for your miseries?

The sine qua non cause of this disaster — of the national economic malaise and of your own personal financial situation — is… wait for it…

The National Association of Realtors.

It’s the NAR that obstructs consumers’ access to market alternatives to old-fashioned real estate brokerage.

It’s the NAR that insists on subsidizing homeownership at the expense of other, more-productive uses of capital.

It’s the NAR that manipulates the tax laws to induce thoughtless consumers to overpay for homes they never would have — and never should have — bought in the first place.

It’s the NAR that makes war on the rights of Americans to use and enjoy their real property as they choose.

It was the NAR that lobbied for each law and rule change that resulted in the housing boom, the sub-prime lending catastrophe, the wanton bundling of fraudulent loans, the on-going subsidization of the secondary mortgage market, etc.

The villain behind all the villains in the collapse of the American economy is the National Association of Realtors.

The NAR’s legislative initiatives are uniformly criminal in their objectives. The purpose of all economic legislation is to induce by force an outcome that would not occur in the absence of that force. This is crime, no different from a mugging.

As the author of every state’s real estate licensing laws, the NAR mugs consumers by preventing them from doing business with whom they choose — on the terms Read more

Slow Real Estate Market: I’m not going to take it anymore!

I haven’t been posting much at Bloodhound lately, or really for awhile.  Professionally, I did not make the progress last year I usually do.  I went backwards and was simply distracted by other things.  By this time last year, I was a very sick boy and it took until nearly Christmas to be back to having much energy or vitality.  But, it wasn’t time wasted.  From a personal standpoint, it confirmed what I already know, and that’s to just do the things that I want to do.  Since that’s pretty much how I’ve always lived, I looked at my life and decided it was perfect.

So, about January, I had the energy to get back to speed on business.  My brokerage wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do.  It wasn’t doing much at all.  So, I decided to fix it.  I did some Ryan Hartman type of web marketing and got the leads flowing again.  In my market, a market that hasn’t seen over 150 homes sold annually since 2007, I was getting 2 to 5 real buyers per week asking to do business and sending me their contact information.  That was a good start.

But, that wasn’t enough.  I’m the rural hound in this crowd.  We have a group of brokers really happy with their own little MLS system that doesn’t track much data.  It would look pretty 1992 to the rest of you.  So, by digging into it and looking at what was actually selling, I noticed that foreclosure sales, bank owned and short sales, had gone from a handful of percentage of the market to at least 20%.  Even more instructive, the number was growing quickly.

While I had a bunch of buyers calling, I was having issues getting folks who could get loans and get deals done.  By dipping my toe in marketing foreclosures I found that most all of them were looking to spend cash.  And, in this resort market, most were wanting premium properties.  Awesome!  That solves the qualification problem

So, I found out that lakechelanforeclosures.com and chelanforeclosures.com were available.  In a matter of a few days I Read more

It’s the REALTOR Party, you can cry if you want to…

…But when push comes to shove, I’m a Midwesterner- practical, down-to-earth, not prone to crying over spilled milk. If something is wrong, let’s fix it. If there is a problem, let’s find the solution and move along. So when push recently came to shove and the NAR rolled out their latest membership shakedown benefit, my Midwestern mind mulled over what was really happening and whether or not there was a fix.

There is a video that’s been making the rounds in Ohio as public union options are being reconsidered. In 2007, Bob Chanin, General Counsel to the NEA for over 40 years, gave a farewell speech to the NEA. This is a fascinating look inside the history of one of the biggest, most powerful unions in the country, but at 25 minutes it’s a bit long. Let me break it down for you: Chanin describes in loving detail how the NEA was once-upon-a-time, a quiet little organization of long suffering do-gooders. Then they got politically organized. He says:

“It is not because of creative ideas, it is not because of the merit of our position, it is not because we care about children, it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power and we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.”

But wait, there’s more:

“When all is said and done, the NEA and its affiliates must never lose sight of the fact that they are unions and what unions do first and foremost is represent their members.”

If this doesn’t disturb you, fine. I’m not here to change your mind. And just so I’m clear about this: I’m a REALTOR because I’m forced to be, for access to the MLS, and not necessarily because I want to be (and just for the record, Dear NAR- I’m not anti-NAR per se, but I am anti-coercion. Force is coercion and coercion Read more

The Coffee House Crisis

With all the talk lately about the new lending regulations that will apply on April 1st, a similar set of new laws and regulations has been completely overlooked.  I felt it prudent to bring this unsettling situation to light.

As you may or may not be aware, over the past few years there have been quite a few problems “percolating” in the retail coffee business.  It seems that some customers have been over-charged, while others have ordered coffee that was too hot or just plain did not satisfy. This is a serious situation, not only because of the expense involved, but also the very real danger of severe burning.

The House sub-Committee on Agriculture and Imports has been holding hearings into this matter.  They brought a number of new regulations to the full Congress, which were subsequently voted into law and take effect April 1st of this year.  These new regulations govern the coffee purchase transaction within a retail coffee vendor.

I’ve highlighted some of the key components below:

  • The server must be paid (or tipped) the same for all beverages and may not earn more based on the time or effort involved.  (E.g. there is no difference between an Iced Cocoa Cappuccino 1 pump mocha, 1 pump white mocha, non-fat milk with a drizzle on top and a plain black coffee.
  • Customers must pay by credit card or cash, but never both.  If paying by credit card, they may not leave any cash tip for the server.
  • The Coffee House must distinguish between beans grown / brewed in-house and beans that are imported.  With beans grown / brewed in-house, the server must decide what to charge the customer before the customer ever enters the establishment and must then charge ALL customers that exact same amount.  (The server may only change what they charge once per “qualified period”.)
  • If a customer orders a beverage from the grown / brewed in-house selection and pays with a credit card, the server may receive no tip. (For purposes of this section, even the owner of the Coffee House is considered a “server”.)  Instead, they must be paid according to a compensation plan the Read more

Turning an iPad into more than a Toy

I recently upgraded from a iPad 1 to iPad 2. Two reasons: I’ve found the iPad app to be so useful that I wanted my wife/legal assistant/colleague to be able to use one as well. With the iPad’s Daylite Touch, she and I are able to update, add clients and prospects, and manage calendars on our Daylite database.

Second, while Verizon has customer service problems, AT&T’s coverage where I live is really awful. In certain courtrooms, I’d have to turn the iPad just so to get a signal. Verizon’s network is ubiquitous. While AT&T is purportedly faster, I’d prefer ubiquity and decent speed, to spotty coverage and top speeds.

The iPad 2 is noticeably faster than the iPad. It’s lighter, and since I use the iPad as basically a book at night in bed, the weight difference is nice. I thought the new cover would not stay on, especially in my bag. But once it closes, it doesn’t move.

The cameras on the iPad 2 are shockingly lousy. And Face Time is basically useless since no one I know has Face Time.

I posted a 10 App list on my Raleigh criminal blog and thought I’d share it here, taking out one application which is of use only to lawyers. That makes it a 9 app list. I’ve got no financial interest in any of these products. I use them in my daily law practice. All of these apps could be used in any number of professional settings.

  1. Daylite Touch – This app will only be useful if you use the MacOS Daylite as your database. This is not the place to review Daylite, which is mostly a great product, with a couple of significant flaws. But Daylite is the best solution I’ve found in a Mac environment to manage customer or client relationships. I remote host my Daylite database so that I can reach it anywhere in the world. Daylite Touch is simply awesome. It lets you add new clients (if I get Read more

Is it just me…?

Or is it getting interesting out there?

I showed to twelve different parties this week, and I put the ball through the basket four times — two of those with Property Management Agreements after COE. At least two leases, too, with other leases still in doubt. I’m working all day from my car, but that’s always been my favorite place to be.

Is it just me, or has the worm turned?

IDX and BLOGS A match made in heaven.

I was trying to respond to Jeff Brown’s last post about successful blogging and my comments just kept getting too long. So I thought I would send it to Greg as a blog post and see what he thought about posting it. Now, here we are! Thanks Greg!

While some people are out there looking for the most experienced, thoughtful, succinct and eloquent agent they can find, I actually think those folks are in the minority. I have always felt like the average Joe doesn’t think that we are rocket scientist type consultants, they think we are salesmen.

Most sellers are looking for the listing agent who has the most signs and success in their neighborhood, or someone who has been referred to them. A few will call based on good blogging, but the vast majority finds the agents that help them by looking at homes that are listed in their area. They have two ways of contacting them, either by calling on the sign or by finding them online in someone’s IDX.

Most buyers don’t think they need an agent to help them; they just want to see houses.

A successful blog in my opinion doesn’t have to necessarily convince the potential seller or buyer that you are the one; it has to convince Google that your site has enough authority to place it near the top of the results when someone searches for real estate in your area. Blogs do this in two ways. The first is that Google just loves the blog format. I have written a blog post hit “publish”, realized I had a typo in the title, fixed it immediately and found it indexed in Google with the typo. The post was indexed within 3 minutes of posting.  My website is a blog, even though it has 128 static pages and I have only posted 28 posts. The posts add content; the comments add content (my 28 posts have about a thousand comments).  I would like to post more but I am too busy dealing with the leads.

I would suggest that when you are measuring bankable results from a Realtor Read more

A new hound in the pound: Introducing Dan Connolly

How could Dan Connolly need an introduction? He’s been running with the dogs in our comments for years. My fault for not inviting him to join us sooner, but Dan took the hound by the ears in his own behalf. He’ll have a post up for us shortly to let us know what we’ve been missing.

I asked Dan for a brief bio, and this was his response:

Bio? I was licensed in 1986, w/RE/MAX since 88… Internet marketer… family man.

I don’t like to toot my own horn.

I am committed to ethics and will always go the extra mile.

I don’t really know what else to say.

Ah, well, the man might be demure, but I don’t think we’ve ever found him to to be shy of thoughtful opinions. Please make him feel welcome.

Successful Real Estate Blogging

Let’s begin with a basic truth. I have nothing whatsoever to add to any blogging conversation veering into technology. I don’t get it, don’t understand it. Did I say I don’t understand the technology of blogging? Hell, I don’t even understand much of the basic nomenclature. Most of us learned early on to take so-called technical advances with a truckload of salt, especially after watching most of them fizzle like a water soaked cherry bomb. It’s gotten so bad, some have viewed the geek crowd’s constant prophesying of website TechNirvana as the eighth plague of Egypt. I’m not nearly that harsh in my view, but their general credibility could use some R & R — Rest and Restoration. (badda boom)

I’m not talkin’ here about agent sites with an IDX for lead generation. That’s a whole different herd of cats. Not my bailiwick. When it comes to that subject, I ‘call the guy’, and have.

Can Real Estate Agents Generate Income From Blogs?

The short answer is yes. But most are horrific crash ‘n burns more suited to the next Jackass sequel. In fact, most agents don’t know an agent who blogs, successful or not. They’re told to blog cuz it’s online, and that’s where the industry is these days. Well, kinda sorta, but that’s another discussion.

Though I’m still an enthusiastic proponent for hyperlocal, most think it’s either A) Intrinsically worthless or B) WAY too much work. Too each their own. I’m all about content, though I promise not to mention the cliché about blog content that just entered your mind. 🙂 It’s all about what you bring to the table. Is it any different than all the other yawners out there? Or are you steppin’ up with real information, expertise, and superior knowledge?

Here’s the deal

Given your specific market, will readers of your blog come away thinking you’re the go-to agent? We all search the net about subjects in which we’re interested. When that interest becomes serious, we become more critical. In my opinion that’s pretty universal.

It’s at that point a blog’s author either wins ’em over or loses ’em.

Over Read more

Sane People Don’t Comment on Real Estate Blogs, You Don’t Need 1,000 Facebook Friends & Other Valuable Lessons Learned From 3 Years Slinging Stuff Online

The real thing that pissed me off about the well intentioned jackals at Agent ReBoot was not what was explicitly taught: it was what was implied.  Somehow you need oodles of traffic to be successful.  Somehow, you need oodles of Facebook Likes.  That somehow all being able to be at the center a tepid and tense noisy murmur was what it takes to be Real Successful in Real Estate.

And I’ve made the mistake too.  For a long time, I thought it was simple math: converting a tiny percentage of mostly indifferent people would scale.  You would LinkIn a bunch of people on MyTwitFace and voila! Winning!

So you take every friend request you can, and you add the pople you connect with, as force of habit.  If someone has 6-7 friends in common, you add them too.  Winning.

You fire up a blogpost or two,pass it along and your new friends and strangers dutifly comment something often indistinguishable from the stuff that winds up on the wrong side of your akismet filter.

“Nice post, you laid it on me.”  they dutifly say. And you in turn go through the WP dashboard to their sites.  “You make nice post to, I love to hear you on this topic! ” It’s all about the dofollow, baby.  Getcher linkbacks here, and on to the next one.

Winning.  You have a metric to measure: friends, contacts, twitbacks, clicks and raw traffic.  Woot.  Winning. You’re winning that game, the war for comments.  You’re marching your army of 12,000 Twitter Bots, 2100 indifferent Facebookers, and another few hundered people that are still shuffling around the empty halls on LinkedSpace.  Duh, winning!

Bad contacts- just  like bad money –drive out good contacts.  You had a Facebook full of300 friends, coworkers and neighbors.  You were connected to these people.  You were warmed when you saw the pictures they posted.  Now?   You have 300 of your friends.  But now your Facebook had been “improved” by the 700 Realtors from across the country, the 200 vendors that follow them, and just recently a herd of zebra showed up.  Now, instead of the people you love and know, Read more

Social Security and the Tyranny of NOOMPs

The debate over Social Security and America’s mind-boggling debt is going to get more heated.  We’ve seen over and over in polls that people favor cutting spending… unless that spending involves them directly.  In my industry we see it with the NAR and every Rotarian Socialist program that comes down the pike.  But we see it with everyday homeowners too.  “Yes!” they scream with their signs and their votes, “cut spending across the board.  I’ve been taxed enough!”  But suggest eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and see what happens.  “It’s way too important,” and “What would that do to the real estate industry?” (virtually nothing, by the way).  What’s to be concluded?  We are dealing with a nation of NOOMPs. (You remember NIMBYs, right?)  NOOMPs are people who support spending cuts, so long as those cuts are Not Out Of My Pocket.)  And I suggest there’s no greater concentration of NOOMPs than within the AARP.

Robert Samuelson wrote a good piece in Newsweek recently entitled Who Rules America? It’s The AARP.  In it, he suggests “the AARP sets overall priorities (in government).  Its power derives from the fear it inspires in senators, congressmen, presidents and political candidates.”  He went on to say “No one wants to strip needy seniors of essential benefits.  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid provide crucial protections for millions of poorer and older households.  But for many relatively healthy and economically secure Americans, these programs constitute middle-class welfare.”  That last bit of analogy apparently caused such an uproar (ostensibly from middle-class Americans who don’t appreciate it when someone points out they are on welfare), that he felt obliged to write a second article entitled Social Security: A Form of Welfare to try and set the record straight.  I applaud Mr. Samuelson for his frank and honest discussion, but I don’t think he goes far enough…

The Social Security system has been a welfare scheme since its inception.  If it had been a situation where people paid in and then later withdrew – what we might call a retirement account – and which Congress then went in and stole from (leaving Read more

Heresies for the Sects of Prospecting: I do not believe my clients need me to be their buddy and I never get hung up on.

This is a response to a comment from Robert Worthington. I’ve turned it into a post because I talk too much.

> On average how many visitors are you getting monthly to your site?

I have no idea. I’ve never been fastidious about analytics, and by now I’m useless. I have no idea which pages are tickling Google (known to my stupid soul as Urchin — that’s how long it’s been since I bothered with any of this) and which are not. Most everything is new, so most pages, presumably, are not even hitting my Analytics account, which I have not visited in years, in any case. I suck at SEO, too. And my CRM-life is CRM-free, still, after years of kvetching about it.

I need a high-C to bring order to my life, clearly, but there’s more:

I don’t do Twitter or Facebook. I don’t write much on my real estate weblog and I never go off topic. I don’t get many comments from normal people, I don’t unmoderate comments from real estate professionals, and I don’t encourage comments in any case. The calls to action are email or phone. I write here and there and nowhere else.

I do not believe my clients need me to be their buddy.

I do believe they need me to be an expert on residential real estate and how to go about buying, selling, renting, leasing, improving and profiting from it.

So: I have written tons of content over the years, and I deliver it all on my real estate blogsite. I have no idea how many people see it, nor how many dig in and read it. But I know that the people I hear from are almost always pre-sold on working with us, and most of those contacts turn into closed transactions — many of them multiple transactions, some with multiple-transaction referral trees.

On top of that, we deliver tons of dynamic content, mostly in the form of MLS listings. Every dipwad in town has search, but we have the best MLS search available from any Phoenix real estate brokerage, and we’ve optimized it in ways that other brokerages Read more

If you have any time to spare from catching all those paper fish on TwitBook, I have a no-fee referral for a Bloodhound in McKinney, Texas.

My tenth house for this year is closing today, and I may be leasing up my two vacant rental properties between now and five o’clock. I know, I know — I’m missing out on all those wonderful paper fish on TwitBook, but my experience is that paper-fish chowder doesn’t make for a fulfilling meal.

Oh, well. Each man to his own saints. But, unlike TwitBook, where spitballs cast at other Realtors come back a thousand fold, when I say the words “I have a no-fee referral,” what that means is pretty simple:

I have an opportunity for you to catch a real fish — and cash a real paycheck — and all you have to do is deliver the frolicking goods!

It’s not nearly as much fun as wasting time on line while you pretend you are doing work, but everything’s a trade-off, ain’t it?

Here are the notes from the seller:

I am a huge fan of your blog. And though I am not a real estate agent, I used many of your sites articles and initiative to help me locate and buy my current home. Unfortunately, I never came across an informed agent who understood the value of proper high tech research and the value I was bringing to the deal. Sadly, the agent that I settled with for the purchase was nothing more than a functional tool for me to direct. Much disappointment (though I worked a great 25% off market buy in the end!)

And as I now I am selling my previous house – I beg you assistance: How can a well prepared seller locate a forward-thinking agent?

I do want a energetic agent. I do want a marketing savvy realtor! I do want a custom yard sign that shows the price! I do want the listing to appear where the buyers are looking online. And on and on.

Get it? You have to be a Bloodhound. You’ve got to be prepared to do the work.

But if you are, I’ve got a deal for you, all tied up with a bow, and all you’ve got on TwitBook is a Read more