The Future of Real Estate Marketing rolled its own Google-based real estate search tool, as did BlueRoof.com. I think these are really sweet ideas about which I intend to do nothing, but I would gleefully hit a tip jar if someone were to set up a canonical real estate search on its own domain or on a third.level.domain on an existing site. Make it integrable and I’ll integrate it with credit into my sidebar. All the big-boy tools (Technorati, blogsearch) kinda suck, so a mission-critical real estate info search tool is a solid win.
I cited the Maverick entry at Mike’s Corner the other day, but I want to link back to it again. I think this is Serious Business, and it hasn’t gotten the hashing out it deserves. Daniel Rothamel from The Real Estate Zebra has a particularly insightful comment.
More from Three Oceans Real Estate — Electronic signatures: what are you waiting for? I’m on the lo-tech end of this, for now. I’m told it’s potentially legal in Arizona, but I haven’t dug through the nitty-gritty details.
Bonnie Erickson drew my attention to a post she put up on Active Rain in September: In changing from sub-agency to to buyer’s agency did with throw out the baby and keep the bath-water?
At 360Digest, Marlow Harris has a very thorough run-down on the relo racket.
RSS pieces (blogrolled) offers the “Top 5 secrets of successful blogs. I happened to hear from Jennifer Dizmang, who taught a class I took just lately on using self-directed retirement account to invest in real estate. That rocks, yes? Jennifer knows a whale of a lot of other stuff, too, all worth millions. Guess what she doesn’t know? Yup. She’s a blog-o-novice. She wants to take flight, but here wings aren’t ready. I sent her the RSS pieces piece, but if y’all have other ideas for her, you might send them along.
Hotpads.com wants you to know that it is courting controversy with electoral heat maps.
The XBroker (blogrolled) craves attention — but he earns it. This is a tearing back of the veils, and it’s kind of roughshod, even rapine, but it’s too long overdue. There will come a time when we won’t believe how bad things still were, even after they had gotten so much better.
Greg Tracy at BlueRoof.com: “If every home buyer and seller knew what I know- most large brokerages would be completely out of business because their value propositions are horrible- high commission rates, extra transaction fees, marketing that promotes the agent instead of the home, and poor advice on pricing.” Damn betcha.
Jeff Brown from Behind the Curtain on planning for retirement. There’s plenty more of value at that site, all of it delivered with style, charm and grace.
Finally, Jay Thompson takes on a bubblehead. More power to him. Much good may it do him. And may The Force be with him.
Yikes! I’m done. I get so far backed up, I think I’ll never get done. By this time tomorrow I’ll be behind the eight ball again, but, as Daniel Rothamel offers at Mike’s Corner, the conversation moves itself along…
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, compensation for buyer representation, disintermediation, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate marketing
Jeff (XB) says:
YES! Thanks for the plug Greg…
In human form I’m very reserved, almost shy, preferring to work in the background–away from attention.
Alas, that attitude won’t get one very far in this arena, amongst all the other ‘noise’ out there…
Looking forward to your continued posts, they are some of the best of the blogosphere.
October 26, 2006 — 9:12 am
Phil Hoover says:
Greg ~
We think alike on what needs to be changed with real estate.
Check out my latest post at:
http://www.boiseblog.com/journal/2006/10/26/real-estates-broken-business-model.html
I welcome your comments.
Phil
October 26, 2006 — 10:07 am
REBlogGirl says:
Gracias for the blogroll! I am a subscriber to Bloodhound, so that is a great honor in my book. Speaking about canonicalization and a very cool search tool- sounds like a challenge to me! We’ll put our geeky little heads together and see if we can’t come up with something to open source.
October 26, 2006 — 12:12 pm
Kevin says:
Electronic signatures would be a perfect complement to your business, Greg. I have no idea if they’re legally binding in Arizona, and that’s obviously the first thing you’ll have to check out.
Given that you’re going after Internet-savvy clients (that’s much of my client base as well), this would be a great fit. Plus, if your new business model succeeds, you’ll find yourself swamped with transactions (nice problem to have) and using e-signatures is a great way to scale that part of the business.
My part-time assistant (full disclosure: she’s also my sister) lives up in Seattle and gets all the docs ready for electronic signatures. It used to take me, say, 3 hours of my time, and 1 hour of my clients’ time, plus innumerable trips to the fax machine, to get a stack of 100 pages of disclosures signed and initaled. Now it takes about 15 minutes’ of my time, an hour of my assistant’s, and 90 seconds’ of my clients’ time. (Note: That’s 90 seconds to sign the documents; obviously they need to read them as well.)
The learning curve for a tech-savvy client is pretty minimal; on your end, there’s a bit more to figure out, but it won’t take long either. There are a few minor bugs I’ve encountered in Docusign; happy to share them with you if you’re interested.
October 26, 2006 — 12:18 pm
Jeff Brown says:
Jeff Brown at Behind The Curtain http://bawldguy.wordpress.com/ SAYS:
“Greg graduated from the Billy Shakespeare School of Writing which is my backhanded and mildly petty way of saying he writes better than I.”
October 26, 2006 — 4:46 pm