BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Cathleen Collins (page 1 of 3)

Realtor, Staging Consultant

April 13, 2008

Integrity — It’s more than just a word…

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

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We were just assigned our seventh Team Lead since Catholic Healthcare West had outsourced me to PerotSystems. I’d been part of Perot’s Business Applications team for about sixteen months, and this seventh Team Lead was the first to come to Phoenix to look her team members into our eyes. She was brand new to the account and now had to give us our annual reviews, without the benefit of ever having viewed us. Like so many other corporations, Perot has the employee review herself, then during the annual review the employee and her direct supervisor compare reviews to come to an agreement. I’m often my own worst critic, so I was modest in ranking most of the achievements I was being measured on. But when I got to Client Satisfaction and Integrity, I gave myself the highest possible scores. Nina (pronounced Nine-ah), had seen a few of the accolades given me by clients who I supported, so she conceded the penultimate score on Client Satisfaction. But she had no way to assess my integrity. So she apologized, explained she was handling everyone on her new team the same, and gave me the average score, what would be a “C” on Cameron’s report card, for my Integrity. My reaction? This was the most honest evaluation that Nina could have given, given the circumstances. How can anyone judge another person’s integrity without evidence?

First of all, just what is integrity? I like Wikipedia’s definition:

Integrity is the basing of one’s actions on an internally consistent framework of principles. Depth of principles and adherence of each level to the next are key determining factors. One is said to have integrity to the extent that everything one does on the same core set of values. While those values may change, it is their consistency with each other and with the person’s actions that determine the person’s integrity.
(Emphasis mine.)

Words have precise meanings, and it’s the imprecise use of words that causes so many problems.

(My Mom and I had this debate yesterday: She — “I heard it on TV today… we’re definitely in a recession.” Me — “Definitely, as Read more

February 21, 2008

Defining disingenuousness: Am I beating a dead horse? Or am I staring down a headless high-horseman?

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

This is a comment I just posted to Dustin Luther’s weblog. I’m putting it up here, too, so that people can see it (without the typos I found after I posted my 4Realz comment) and so that I can include links without getting shunted into moderation.

To be honest, I hate this kind of ugliness. But one of the reasons I am married to Greg is because I learned the hard way, a long time before I met Greg, that if you are not willing to stand up for what’s right, you are surrendering to evil.

This is my comment:

 
Dustin,

Disingenuous? From Dictionary.com: “lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere.” You believe that anything here is descriptive of me?

And let’s look at your entire concluding paragraph:

“And finally, Cathleen, I’ve been avoiding responding to comments on this thread because there is a small group of people (dare I call it a “pack”) who seem to be searching for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people who were offended by Greg’s comments (seeing as how we’re in the midst of a political season, it seems appropriate to call it “negative campaigning”). I don’t assume you, or anyone else, was offended by Greg’s post, but it certainly seems disingenuous for you to insinuate that those of us who were offended must have an ulterior motive.”

How is that not a personal attack? You are smearing the integrity of people who have disagreed with you as a means of undermining their arguments without addressing them. How is this not an ad hominum attack? Or, do you claim to be righteous in offending Teri, Mike, Brian, Russell, Geno and me (the only six from, excluding Greg, twenty-two BHB contributors who have commented on this thread) because you’re Dustin Luther? And, by the way, isn’t your blanket statement that the BHB contributor’s comments “search for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people…” a straw man argument? I certainly didn’t read the kind of defense you describe into either Teri’s or Geno’s comments. So that leaves Russell, Brian, Mike and me. Have you ever seen any Read more

December 24, 2007

Gifts of the Real Estate Magi, circa 2007

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Thank you, Russell, for the gold you so generously share.

Was Brian the mortgage industry’s Clarence this year?

I think the difference between frankincense and myrrh is appropriate to this metaphor: Compilation and organization of the holy oil of Real Estate Weblogging came to us by way of the prickly shrub.

Merry Christmas to all!

See you next year…

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December 7, 2007

Noodlin’ around with Social Media

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Teri Lussier loves Twitter so I’ll give it a shot

That was my “Hello World” last night on Twitter.

At the 2007 Star Power conference in Phoenix I learned about Jott, the safe and legal way to text message while you’re driving; so when I noticed Greg using it to send himself a reminder, I signed up, too. This is a tool that has really come in handy. When my dad was still alive he would tease my eighteen year old niece and me about text messaging. He couldn’t understand why anyone would prefer something so clumsy over simply using that cell phone to talk. But there are times when text messaging is more appropriate — for example, when the timing of your message might be an inconvenient interruption for the person who you telephone. You may want to connect with someone in a more passive way. You’re not disturbing them like you might be doing with a phone call, but your message is more intimate, direct, immediate than email. My dad was right… texting manually can be clumsy, tedious. And what do you do when you’re driving? Here’s where Jott is champ. I hold down the J key on my Treo, tell Jott I want to jott Cindy Client, say “please call Cathleen when you’re free to talk,” and hang up. My voice is transcribed to text and that’s sent to Cindy Client’s phone as a text message.

I know I’m behind the times… as long ago as last month blogs were abuzz with the cool ways the cool people at the NAR convention were mashing up Jott and Twitter and Utterz and WordPress. And here I was, like my dad when he was questioning texting: Why use Twitter? How will that help me, my family or my business? Since last night, when I signed up on Twitter, I’ve connected in a different way with people whom I’m already reading and feel kin to by blogging. And I’m not sure yet whether this Twitter-difference is better. It’s not as though I’m going to save any time by reading a 140-character version of Read more

December 1, 2007

Memories of my Dad in the house he never got to see

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Remember Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Well, Broker Greg’s theory is Men are Sellers, Women are Buyers. His observation is that prominent in a selling couple is the man — dickering over commission then exacting justification for those commissions; and when offers come in it will be he who will haggle over the details. On the other hand, when shopping for the new house, he doesn’t want to shop: “Garage for my stuff? Fridge for my beer? Sold!”.

So Thursday night, Husband Greg was perplexed. First, he surprised himself by doing physical labor. This is against his credo — the human mind is supposed to engineer methods to circumvent physical toil. But it was time for me to unstage Oregon. It closed yesterday and I had to get all my stuff out. When I buy staging inventory, I’m always careful to limit the heft of each item to something I can move in and out of the house without (Greg’s) help. However, I’m just recently recovered from pneumonia — a solid month of complete bed-rest. So there was Greg, huffing and puffing with the grunt work as I daintily packed my pashminas and platters.

But what really floored Greg happened after he had packed up our last load, while we were sitting in the drive-through line at Wendy’s, waiting to celebrate with Frostys. And I broke down crying. Through my sobs I hiccuped that I would probably never be inside of 718 West Oregon again. This brought my dear articulate Greg to speechless amazement.

We Realtors know we bring value to the real estate transaction… each in our own particular way — our value proposition; but we all offer the consumer the value of our experience from sheer numbers of transactions we work with. In comparison, years and years typically pass between transactions in which any individual consumer is involved. What is so easy for us Realtors to lose sight of, specifically because we do handle so many transactions, is the emotion involved in the process. Those of us who work with buyers get to see the elation of clients preparing Read more

October 8, 2007

Christopher Columbus… a top producer for the ages!

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

I had a buyer in my car the other day. A nice, interesting, serious lady whom I’ve been emailing back and forth, and talking to for the past many months. But this was the first time we had met face to face. I thought we had built a truly congenial rapport over the summer. She was a referral. She is a dog-lover. Sadly, her mother had died during the past year after having spent some time in hospice. A lot of common ground and mutual respect. She was ready, willing and able to buy a house and I wanted to help her buy her ideal house for a price that’s right for her.

This should be easy. In this market there are ten homes for every buyer. We like each other. And I had an armful of worthy listings and a tank full of gas. So I was admittedly surprised when hours into our house-hunt I started to sense hesitancy from my client in response to some of my questions: basic questions like, “How much cash do you have to put into this transaction?”; “Have you thought about the earnest money?”; “Your loan officer said he can close within two weeks, how quickly are you planning on moving?”. I was surprised to find myself having to explain that I will be better able represent her if she’s forthright with me.

Later that evening I described the situation to Greg, my mentor, broker, husband, etc. He suggested that I still don’t see myself as a salesperson. I’m still operating in the project manager mode of my previous livelihood — facilitating the outcome rather than influencing it. But even though I don’t see myself as a salesperson, my clients all do. And along with that perception comes all the baggage that clients bring from having had a bad experience with a salesperson, or having heard of someone else’s bad experience, or having seen a movie like Glengarry Glen Ross, which portrays slimy salespeople.

Greg’s solution? Address the problem head-on. Go beyond where I had gone, which was to justify my need to know: Acknowledge that I’m Read more

June 29, 2007

Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five Days of the Dog: Happy birthday, Baby…

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

During all my running around today, I had meant to buy a silly little party hat for Odysseus to wear to celebrate BloodhoundBlog’s first birthday… but I never got around to it. And by the time I had picked up Ophelia from doggy-day-care, I’d missed my opportunity… can’t leave a dog in a 110&176; car. So on the way home I thought of the balloons Kris and Steve had sent us to commemorate the occasion (and show off their slick marketing swag… oops shouldn’t have said “show off”… didn’t I read that showing off is bad?). Anyway, when I got home, Greg voiced what I was already thinking, but he in a much more practical way, “Don’t be silly! Don’t go out any more tonight! Use Kris’ balloons, take your picture, write your post, then let’s raise a couple of glasses of Bushmills!” You see, I needed some sort of prop to take a photo of Odysseus because I love photos of my pets, and didn’t I read somewhere that you should always use photos on your blog posts? ‘Course neither hat nor balloon could guarantee a good picture, not when we’re talking about getting one dog to look into the camera long enough without other dogs and cats breaking his concentration or outright getting in the way. Anyway, here’s the best we could get:

(Sorry Kris and Steve, we couldn’t get one that shows your phone number, but you can see “erg” and the castle.)

All this just to illustrate (poorly I fear) my pure joy with being a part of this wonderful site and fabulous group, as we enter Year Two. If you’ve put up with me this far, I ask you to stay awhile longer as I share my favorite moments during the pup’s first year.

Yesterday, Greg wrote about our humble beginnings, so I’ll fast forward from there to my first honor here… being featured in Zillow’s inaugural edition of the Carnival of Real Estate. During the next few months Greg wrote a lot, I wrote a little, and Greg incorporated posts from an earlier failed blog by attributing them Read more

June 13, 2007

Department of redundancy department: How to get those living subjects to hold still for photographs

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Today our ever more irrelevant Arizona Republic demonstrated again that it is clueless about what over 1,100 daily readers of BloodhoundBlog.com know, which is… here on BHB you will find some of the finest weblog writing by real estate professionals available anywhere in the English speaking world. With the addition of so many fine writers with awesome credentials, since Greg and I started this site almost a year ago, I’ll admit that I feel outclassed. There’s really not much for me to deliver that teaches and informs and entertains like what our other illustrious contributors give us. But — Tom Johnson from Houston has given me an opportunity to show off my expertise…

In a comment on Teri’s post, “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,” Tom talks about his dogs, Sophie and Duke, and asks

If I could figure out how to photograph them together, we could go for the all sizes, all families type thing. Suggestions?

Oooh, oooh, I can answer that! Take lots and lots of pictures! I know what I’m talking about! For our December 2000 holiday card I wanted to include our entire family, even those with fur or feathers, in the family photo. So I recruited my sister Terry, and she managed to shoot a perfect portrait. Took her only 40 shots to get it. Here are 16 of those pictures:

Fortinbras the Cockatiel and Gwen the Gerbil, alas, met the fate of animals who decide to escape the cages that protected them from their bigger sisters and brothers. And Charley, the regal Akita mix who Greg’s sitting on, and Peritas, the black Lab puppy with the bubblegum tongue who’s sitting next to me, were the ill-fated dogs Greg talks about in his comment on Teri’s post, whose loss led us to Odysseus. My heart still aches over that loss. In fact, you’ll notice, the sadness has been so profound, that it turned me blonde!

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February 28, 2007

Delighting customers and clients: Doing the thing that no one thought to ask for

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

As real estate professionals, our clients’/customers’ satisfaction with our service and the outcome of their transactions is unquestionably key to business success. In fact, I’d bet this has been true in every career you have ever had. It sure has been for me… beginning with my first jobs as babysitter, then as counter help at The Red Barn, and then throughout my various corporate positions in management, finance and information technology. Whether my customer has been internal, external, faceless or my very best friend, I’ve always done very well by doing very well for him and her.

And so it’s always been maddening for me to see someone or some organization fail to recognize that the “customer is always right,” or if the customer isn’t right to help the customer become right… at least to try to help. We all know the adage that a happy customer will tell someone else about his satisfactory experience, but an unhappy customer will tell the unhappy story ten times more often. Well, I want to tell you about great customer service that I was just the happy recipient of.

But first some background… It begins with Greg and me wanting to attract more clients than we were getting from reputation alone. Around the end of the amazing sellers’ market of 2004/2005, around the first anniversary of BloodhoundRealty.com, we hoped to jump-start our business by giving someone who didn’t know us personally (or through referral) a reason to believe that we put our clients’ interests above our own. We wanted to offer something more tangible than a motto or a sincere-looking pose. We were doing well when we took listings, but we were turning down more listings than we were accepting, because home owners, who didn’t yet know us, didn’t yet believe us that the buyers were no longer willing to pay top dollar. So we figured we would try to attract buyers by offering to let them keep their money in their pockets — money they would be paying the seller to pay to us. We thought that once we got this word out, we would Read more

January 11, 2007

What’s better than having a Realtor’s advice? Having a Realtor’s advice for free!

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Last Friday, on January 5, our nephew Bryan celebrated his twenty-first birthday. Less than a week earlier, on New Year’s Eve, he wasn’t yet old enough to join in a New Year’s champaign toast at the club where’s he’s played gigs for the past few years. He graduated from high school three Decembers ago, last month he celebrated his second wedding anniversary, and later this month he’ll begin his fourth year in the US Navy, where he plays sax in the Navy Band Southeast’s Jazz Ensemble in Florida. And… he has already had three real estate transactions in escrow, every time without having been represented by a real estate agent. How has he fared in real estate? Not very well, despite being the favorite nephew of real estate professionals in Texas and Arizona. And why would that be? Because after having listened to the advice of his doting aunts and uncles, he followed the course that made the most sense to him and his young bride.

I don’t blame youth for real estate decisions that Bryan has made contrary to loving expert advice. I blame “human nature.” There is a reason that everyone who speaks English knows the old saw, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” I began this post with Bryan’s bio to demonstrate that despite his tender years, he has made several life altering decisions. And I should also point out that Bryan actually solicited our opinions, rather than having them forced upon him, which is so often the lot of young people. So you would assume that he asked our advice so he could mull it over, weigh it and then make a better decision having had the benefit of expertise. There’s even a good probability that Brian no longer remembers that Aunt Denise suggested he not walk away from his first purchase contract and his $5,000 earnest deposit, nor Aunt Cathy’s caution against buying a much lesser property, a condo, six months later, during Florida’s bloated seller’s market, for the same price he would have payed for the first house. Read more

December 11, 2006

Punch and Pie At This Week’s Carnival of Real Estate

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

In my world, I need order, rules. This may be hard to believe when you consider I manage a household that includes thirteen rescue animals and a colony of about a dozen feral cats in our side yard. Ever hear of “herding cats”? This is something I try to effect every single day. I was the one, for example, who asked Greg to modify his open-forum policy on BHB comments, by removing extreme profanity. I understand that trash talk needs to be trashy or it loses its flavor, but sometimes comments on this site go beyond the pale. For a standard of what’s acceptable I like to use South Park. I realize this is a pretty low standard, but IMHO Matt Stone and Trey Parker are so spot on philosophically that I’ve learned to accept the verisimilitude of the vernacular of their eight-year old characters. If Comedy Central is up to it, then I suppose BloodhoundBlog can be, too.

All of this to get to why I would even care to paraphrase a quote from South Park – Bigger, Longer & Uncut. This is a very clever parody on, among other things, Les Miserables. Greg’s teenaged children have demonstrated to us that we’ve garbled the Eric Cartman quote, “people like pie,” but we remembered this quote by implication. There’s a scene in which the boys are trying to figure out how to get people to care about a meeting they’ve called to save the world, and Cartman suggests “more people will come if they think we have punch and pie!” Actually having punch and pie isn’t important… it’s only important that the people think there will be punch and pie, and people like pie (I still believe this must be an actual quote in one of the ten-seasons-worth of episodes), so give them what they want.

And it’s with this in mind, that I commend you to this week’s Carnival of Real Estate, which is up at ActiveRain, for some punch and pie.

More on me and rules… When BloodhoundBlog hosted CoRE this past October, we set up a system for ourselves to judge Read more

December 8, 2006

In the trenches with Zillow.com: A working Realtor’s first-hand experience listing a home . . .

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Zillow has had Greg’s attention for a long time, going back to an Odysseus post from last February, when we were blogging for our own entertainment. Greg has debunked Zillow, he’s defended Zillow, but till this week I’ve been indifferent. Zillow has held as much relevance for me as Ragnarok Online. Both have inspired a lot of buzz among their audiences, but neither made my life better, easier, happier, so I’ve not wasted time on them.

But this past Monday, when David Gibbons told us about Zillow’s plans to add the For Sale and Make Me Move tools to their comprehensive database, he gave me a reason to care. When someone hires me to sell her house, one of my jobs is to let as many prospective buyers as possible know that this house is for sale. Zillow will help me find an audience that I might not already be getting through buyers’ brokers, drive-bys, Realtor.com, open houses… So now Zillow has made my life better, easier, happier, by giving me a tool to bring my client’s house to more potential buyers.

To get to know this new tool, I claimed our own house on My Zillow. Here I got to experience first hand the problem with using Zillow for an accurate estimation of a house’s value. We live on a wonderfully eclectic street of ranch, bi-level and split-level 1960’s houses in the North Central Phoenix subdivision, Terry Terrace. Lots are all around 8000 square feet, but the houses range between 1400 to 2850 square feet. At 1993 square feet, ours is about average. The people who remodeled the house before we bought it did some wonderful things — enclosing the carport to make a 2-car garage and landscaping were minor compared to the the major improvement of raising the ceiling and removing the labyrinth of walls common in 1962, to open up the living area side of the house into two huge, very livable and very workable rooms. Then they added requisite granite, 18″ tile, designer cabinets and upgraded appliances. And, since we’ve moved in we’ve upgraded the bathrooms and all the Read more

November 28, 2006

More on Jay Reifert’s crusade to give buyers control over procuring cause

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

In his comments on Russell Shaw’s article, Jay Reifert Is Tired of NAR Hiding the Truth, Jay Reifert warns us early on that he is

spoiling to get this fight into the public eye

I suspect this may be driving his over-the-top diatribe. Too bad, because I think he makes a valid point that the practice of acknowledging procurring cause is not (always) in the client’s best interest. And in states like Arizona, agency is all about the client’s interest, which comes first, even ahead of the agent’s self interest.

Jay describes a situation that really does happen, way too often:

Buyers, though, are screwed over by Procuring Cause, PC, all the time. Here’s how it works: They go out looking at homes,willy nilly, not having any idea that they are creating bligations to any licensees. (The Secret Contract.) They find a house. Then, they begin researching their next steps.As part of their research, they discover buyer agency. Then,they start interviewing buyer agents. Then, they discover that the buyer agents are afraid to touch them, because they have already seen the home they think they want to pursue and the buyer agent doesn’t want to risk losing his/her fee to another licensee who may file a Procuring Cause claim.Hence, the buyer-due to no fault on their own part, as PC has NEVER been disclosed to them-loses their right to representation. It happens all the time. Theft of buyer rights. It’s heinous.

I would absolutely love it if home buyers always came armed with the type of agreement that Jay suggests, putting listing agents on notice that the buyer is represented. Lord knows I try to educate my own buying clients — I explain the benefit of always having me escort them even to new home builds and open houses, I explain the disadvantages to the client that can be created if they don’t have me escort them, I give them a supply of my business cards, I even give them the American Dream Home Buyer’s Passport. Still, I find myself running interference because my buyer client just happened to stop at an Open House she had Read more

November 27, 2006

The historical preservation movement deploys a veiled theivery to create compulsory museums

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Richard Riccelli asks

Historic districts: Good for buyers? Sellers? Realtors? This guy??

I say: depends on what the buyer wants; maybe but maybe not; neutral; that guy was robbed!

Buyers of any property, real or personal, get to celebrate their own personal tastes by buying what they like and can afford. So are historic districts good for buyers? It depends on whether that’s important to the buyer. Some of my buying clients like HOAs, others loathe them. Some like brand-new builds, others want rambling ranches circa 1970. That’s their business. My business is to help them find whatever they want.

I happen to prefer older homes to newer ones. But I don’t believe older homes are physically better than newer ones. Better architecture and craftsmanship come at a price… then and now. A house built for the middle class buyer of 1935 is probably of similar quality to a house built for today’s middle class buyer. Similar quality but less appropriate for today’s lifestyle. Yet the historic middle class home, particularly in an historic district, is more expensive for today’s buyer than the middle class home in the suburbs. Why? Because the historic home is more rare, and in a free market that makes it more precious.

Right now there is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house listed on 124 W Coronado Rd in Phoenix’s Willo district. It’s a plain 2,277 square foot brick ranch with stained concrete floors and a single car garage that’s been converted to a storage facility. Because of the age, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of closets or kitchen storage. When the house was new, it would have been smaller — the second bath and master bedroom walk-in closet described in the listing would have been added later — and built for the working class. The asking price on this listing is $675,000.

In Peoria, that $675,000 will buy you a 3 bedroom, 3.25 bath 3,045 square foot house with casita (separate guest quarters) and 3-car garage on a golf course lot. This house has a highly upgraded gourmet kitchen — stainless, granite, maple — with a wine room, among Read more

November 22, 2006

Will real estate sell for higher prices in the company of a stunningly beautiful super model? And: What should you do about the drool . . . ?

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Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Our dear friend and marketing guru, Richard Riccelli, shared this marketing idea. Brilliant.

The brokerage knows its target market, and my mom wouldn’t be in it. But Paramount Group wouldn’t want to sell her a home… and she couldn’t afford the houses they represent anyway.

I don’t think we have enough super models in Phoenix for anyone here to steal the idea. Wonder if Phoenix prospects would settle for our own stunningly beautiful supermodel, Odysseus…

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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