There’s always something to howl about.

Month: February 2012 (page 1 of 1)

Ask the Broker: Has going FSBO lost its fizz?

This came in over the transom. I’m not answering the whole question. To say the truth, I feel as if I’m being shopped with every conceivable infraction in the HUD handbook. So, you, too, please do also exercise restraint on the subject of commissions. For all of me, the FSBO question is more interesting, anyway.

From my interlocutor:

We are selling our home in a very upscale part of Atlanta. We want to do it “by owner” using one of several services advertised on line. Who pays the buyer’s agent and what percentage? We’ve been told its negotiable but too little and no one will show it. The home will sell in the $400,000 range if that makes a difference.

I start here: I want to know more about “one of several services advertised on line.”

I don’t know the real estate market in Atlanta, but this strikes me as being a very poor time to sell without the MLS. If the “services advertised” are limited service MLS listings — which is as far as anyone should go, in my opinion, down the “by owner” road — then those listing agents can address the commission questions.

The seller will definitely be paying the buyer’s agent, of course: If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product — an idea that never seems to occur to home buyers.

But I think it would be a huge marketing disadvantage to forego the MLS. In the age of the internet, an MLS listing is more valuable than ever before. (I think this has come up lately in the Dipshit Broker News, but I stopped following that crap years ago.)

But even more than that, I think the right full-service listing agent can more than repay his marginal cost. The house is unlikely to attract a lot of attention if it is not listed in the MLS system, but, even then, if it is not marketed to its fullest advantage, it will sell more slowly and for less money than it could have.

My take is that most listing agents aren’t worth a damn, but the right agent will bring home Read more

Lunchtime links: Will the robo-signing settlement fail? Will Western Civ collapse to ruins? Who cares? Sheldon Cooper lives!

From good friend of the dawgs, Jim Klein, comes this grim reminder of the times we live in: SurvivalRealty.com.

Todd Zywicki finds the robo-signing settlement unsettling.

But despair you nothing: There is a real-life Sheldon Cooper going to high school in Nevada.

Limited lunchtime? Give it all to the third article. It’s the best read, and the most inspiring. The world runs by itself, but your spirit does not. Feed it wisely.

Experts Smexperts – It’s About Results – Go Tear ‘Em a New One!

I love it when life presents an example in real time, don’t you? In pro sports, basketball included, the surprise superstar, even if it’s only potential, is fairly rare. What with video tape, computers, and sophisticated scouting systems, it’s very difficult for a player with serious game to fall through the cracks. Add so-called ‘super scouts’ to the menu, and it becomes even more unlikely.

Though I’m open to your take, in my lifetime, the biggest ‘miss’ in pro sports has been recently retired Major League Baseball catcher Mike Piazza. The only reason he was drafted at all was cuz his Godfather, Tommy Lasorda, as a favor to Mike’s dad, called his name in the 62nd round of the 1988 Amateur Draft. Apparently ALL of baseball’s vaunted experts, including their super scouts, deemed the 1,389 players taken before him as having superior potential.

How wrong were they?

He retired in May of ’08 after having hit more homers than any MLB catcher who ever wore a uniform. More than Yogi Berra. More than Johnny Bench. More than Carlton Fisk. More than all of ’em. There’ve been just 10 players in the history of Major League Baseball who’ve hit 400 home runs while sportin’ a lifetime batting average over .300 — while never striking out more than 100 times in a season. Piazza’s a member of that wicked elite group.

The Captain Obvious statement of the year is that he’s a slam dunk first ballot Hall of Famer when his name comes up in the next year or two.

He was drafted as a favor. Baseball’s brain trust appraised his talent as virtually without value. Think about it. Every single MLB team drafted over 40 players they thought had more potential to at least reach the Bigs than did Mike Piazza.

So much for reliable talent evaluation. ‘Course, there are the excuse makers who now say, in their defense, that he never showed the incredible talent he demonstrated so soon thereafter. We’ve all heard of late bloomers. Shoot, I are one. But a sure first ballot Hall of Famer never shows even one scout Read more

Schmoozing on-line with the Junior League may or may not get you a listing, but TwitBooking is corporate networking on steroids.

Spam from ARMLS:

On February 13, 2012, at a Special Called Meeting of the ARMLS Board of Directors, Bob Bemis tendered his resignation notice as ARMLS CEO, to accept the newly created position of Vice President of Partner Relations for Zillow, Inc. in Seattle.

Good on him. I’m thinking the retirement plan might be better, although I wonder how Bemis will fare in a non-DMV environment. I might start to worry about an echo-chamber, too, if it were me at the helm, but I don’t have much to do with social media — or with that kind of networking — to begin with.

Those Entering the Arena Daily Know the Secret To Skinnin’ Cats – And It Ain’t About Tryin’ Really Really Hard

What I love about our business is that there’re no points awarded for effort. With rare exceptions, it’s a heartless, merit based culture. Trying really really hard is for first time T-Ballers. Real estate owners don’t sign contracts promising to pay us for our efforts. They agree to pay when we produce 100% of the results outlined in that contract. 99% = go fish, no paycheck. The rest qualifies as ‘the dog ate my homework’ crappola. Coincidentally, this is why the vast majority of new agents make like steam and disappear in their first year or two. They found out the hard way, that in the real world, the world refusing to pay for anything less than the bargained for results, attempting never equals achievement.

Apparently, to buyers and sellers of real estate, results matter — they matter big time.

I write this post to those agents who’ve been workin’ like dogs, without much reward. Been there, lived that. I sympathize and empathize. You’ve already demonstrated what’s most lacking in our industry, a consistently OldSchool work ethic. Allow me to gently redirect your energy.

Join the Brother/Sisterhood of Gladiators — enter the arena of those who value achievement, read: results, over the culture of ‘Participation Trophies’.

There are two kinds of licensees. Those who enter the arena daily, and those who work their asses off to avoid the arena at all costs. The former generally make an excellent to elite living. The latter either struggle from year to year, or find what we often refer to as a W-2 job. The key factor in the new career is that they get paid whether they produce optimum results or not. There’s no arena involved.

In real estate, we’re more or less bounty hunters. No skinned cat, no paycheck. No exceptions.

We’re almost at the halfway point of 2012’s first quarter. If you’re able to look at your activities since January 1st in written form, do so. What percentage of your time were you either prospecting, belly to belly with a prospective client, or, like one of my mentors used to say, ‘out among ’em, talking’? Read more

Two years ago, when the iPad was introduced, I said: “Google and MicroSoft can’t even copy genius.”

Vide licet:

With the iPad and its closed software universe, has Steve Jobs committed an unforced error — unnecessarily created an obvious opening for Google and MicroSoft to compete?

Today, Google says: “If you throw enough crap at the wall, sooner or later something’s gotta stick.”

Today, Microsoft says: “Pigs will eat anything.”

The revolution is not the technology.

This is the revolution: The consumer is now in charge.

Learn to love it — or get liquidated. PT Barnum’s day in the marketplace is done.

Picking Our Pockets One Wallet at a Time

“State and federal officials say the settlement could eventually help as many as a million households. Roughly 750,000 borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011 will get a cash payment of about $2,000.”

Oh, I appreciate there are gory details in this $25 billion settlement, but I don’t give a damn.  My money…your money, going to folks who lost their homes to foreclosure?  And by the way, before you tell me “the banks are paying”, please rely on one of the classic rules of economics:  “He has who has the gold makes the rules.”  This ain’t no free lunch for any of us.  Costs get (that’s right……everyone raise their hands) passed along to the consumers, which would be you and me, foreclosed upon or not.

Holy crap!  These are criminals who continue to pick my pocket, skim off some for themselves, and then redistribute to hard luck cases, while insidiously destroying all of the good faith any of us had in basic right and wrong.  This story gets a headline for a couple of days.  Then the banks entrench and stretch out their liabilities as far as the eye can see, with no apparent benefit accruing to the average homeowner, and a significant token of mea culpa passed along to a some small group of apparently disenfranchised, needier than their neighbors, down and outers.

 Well, you group of Attorney’s General, banks and the glorified Fed….you can’t pick my pockets any more.

 

 

Wow… And you thought the gonophs at ReMax were mercenary…

Spam today from RealtyExecutives, which really used to matter in Phoenix:

I love the monthly fee with the huge, larcenous split. RealtyExecs actually invented the 100% commission plan. It was that idea that Dave Liniger spirited away to Denver, where he founded ReMax. He discovered right away that a 100% brokerage is a giant cash sink — for the broker — but, luckily, his minions in Canada figured out how to combine the 100% claim with a hidden 5% split. Liniger flies in a private jet today because his 100% commission brokerages are all actually split shops.

Still, $95 a month plus a 15% split is a little steep. HomeSmart will do you a monthly deal for twenty-five bucks plus E&O. But before its ignominious bankruptcy, RealtyExecutives was charging on the order of $750 a month — nine grand a year! — whether you closed anything or not. In the interim, a whole lot of Big Names have moved from RealtyExecs to HomeSmart.

I love the rest of the ad, though: 78% of RealtyExecutives’ agents made less than six figures in 2011. And if the average agent closed 12 deals, that suggests that a whole bunch of those agents sold five houses or fewer last year.

And to think: You could be an “executive” too!

Debunking Artificial Intelligence — while programming your computer to be almost as smart as your dog.

Everything you’ve been taught about Artificial Intelligence for your whole life is false. AI researchers are not frauds, I don’t think, but they’re exuberant when they talk to reporters, and the reporters are ignorant, thoughtless and brash. In real life, AI is Siri, which can reliably lead you to the nearest closed-down super-market. In your imagination, AI is C-3PO, who can lecture you on Chinese lithography while clobbering you at backgammon.

This is the truth — and telling the truth about AI is as rash as telling the truth about Anthropogenic Global Warming or abortion, an incitation to a frothy wrath: There is no Artificial Intelligence anywhere — nor will there be any time soon, if ever. This is a case where new theory really is required. The theories currently being deployed in AI research will produce ever-more-competent Siris — which achievements will be hailed as “proof” of Artificial Intelligence — but they will never produce any actual intelligence.

Why? Ontology and teleology, of course.

AI fails because it is not actually attempting to model intelligence but simply to mimic the effects of intelligence. In this respect, AI is a cargo cult, and its argument of “proof” is the same as that of any cargo cult: Post hoc, ergo propter hocafter this, therefore because of this. If the destination turned out to be a super-market, even if it’s a bankrupt super-market, then Siri is “intelligent.”

Just that much is an error of identification. When you play chess against your iPhone, this is not “man versus machine,” it’s you versus a team of programmers — and they’re cheating, which is how they win. If you could pop out to do 50,000 pre-programmed calculations per move, you’d kick their program’s ass.

It is that error of identification that produces all the absurd AI claims in the popular media: Someone is doing something differently! It must be a miracle! So far, there is nothing in AI that cannot be adequately explained as human ratiocination. The fact that software is written in advance does not mean that the process is driven by anything other than human intelligence. The Read more

Building the perfect beast: A round-up of my recent technology posts.

Caveat lector! The words you are about to read are unvetted, unhomogenized and unlicensed. One of my longer-term projects is to write essays on reasons why you should dismiss the things I have to say. I’ve only done two so far: You should dismiss me because I don’t care if you do and because I can see right through you. There are zillions more reasons, whether I get to them or not, but the one that matters most, in this context, is this one:

I am completely without credentials.

That’s a statement I could quibble with, but I don’t want to. There is no limit to the caviling to be found on that road, and I don’t care, anyway. I am writing about tools that could and should exist, and if you want to dismiss what I have to say because I don’t fit your profile of a nerd — so much the worse for you. The world is awash in a billion blends of stupid, and credentialism is hardly the worst of the bunch. Looking outside yourself for your intellectual self-defense is the parent of that error, though, and that one is deadly.

Whatever. I think these ideas are fun. I’m looking at a much bigger picture, philosophically, but the technology I’m talking about here is a way of effecting those larger ideas in everyday life. You might plead for better organization — and, truly, there is a book scattered around in this stuff — but I believe reading these essays will repay your effort.

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There’s more. Here are the essays I wrote about the iPad, at the time of its introduction. Entries #2 and #8 are the best of the bunch, in my opinion.

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That’s a lot of reading, I know, but what else are you going to do with your time — watch football?

Q: Your smartphone has just been stolen. What should happen next? A: Your phone should get the cops on the horn and lead them to the thief.

Here’s the truth of your life: Your so-called smartphone is pretty damned dumb. For one thing, it’s always interrupting your work with phone calls, wiping out whatever screen you happen to be working on. It does this because Steve Jobs, genius though he was, never quite wrapped his head around the idea of the cell-phone function as just another arrow in the quiver of your smartphone’s capabilities. What you actually want, when your phone rings while you are working at something else, is notice that you can drop everything to take the call — or not — without the phone making that decision for you.

I can do more: There is no reason for caller ID to be as stupid as it is. I want Heidi, of course, a full-blown database look-up when a new caller shows up on my phone. But lacking that, a truly smart smartphone would at least Google the number and display whatever information that search suggests about the caller.

But once we’ve gone that far, we get to an important question: Why is your smartphone shipping phone calls to you as phone calls? Data is data, and there is no longer any hardware or software reason to transmit phone calls by Ma Bell’s antiquated protocols. There may be cost or efficiency reasons, but it remains that a file-server-based “switchboard” could be a whole lot smarter than present-day cell-phone vendors seem to be. A lot of the Constance the Connector ideas would be best implemented on a truly smart phone system — one that pre-manages your calls before anything in your pocket sets off a racket.

But here is an entirely new way of thinking about smartphones, one that lets me solve a problem Jim Klein threw my way way back in the last century: Your phone can manage your online security better than any other means devised so far. With the right hardware and software, your phone, together with Sarah and Constance, can manage all of your financial transactions with perfect security and impenetrable encryption. Your phone can identify you — by way of your Constance profile — to Read more