BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: March 2007 (page 3 of 9)

March 24, 2007

We’re on the move: If you add a comment tonight, it will probably be lost

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have what I need to start moving BloodhoundBlog. Once I’ve posted this message, I will be backing up our MySQL database to get it ready to move. The weblog may continue to seem to work for the next few hours, but any changes made to the database — any new comments — will not be carried over to the new server. I expect to have everything back up by around 4am MST. I will post an amendment to this post when we are back to normal.

For now: Go to bed. In six hours or so, I’ll to the same.

 
We’re back! I thought I had everything about two hours ago, but I found a problem with some high-order characters that I had to fix by hand. “Ask the Broker” is acting flaky, but I’m hoping that’s DNS related. Let me know if you see anything broken.

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March 24, 2007

ASK THE BROKER: How does a Lender AE get business from a Mortgage Broker?

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

We received an inquiry today :

I am a Wholesale Lending Account Executive and work for a bank. After the subprime market plummeted, it has been hard for me to get loans from mortgage brokers. What do you think is the best route to re-pump loans back in the pipeline, not necessary the same volume as before, but at least a reliable broker source that keeps funding mortgage loans through me?

I don’t need to tell you that loan originators are a suspicious breed. Now, more than ever, we are hesitant about trying new capital sources.

Here are five tips I have for a Wholesale Lending Account Executive:

1- You MUST have a unique selling proposition. Price, service, or product niche. Define that USP in your first ten seconds very specifically.

EG: “I am Brian Brady with Gateway Bank and I offer the perfect 100% loan solution for teachers, police officers, or firefighters. You’ve heard about the collapse of 100% loans but this loan program has been around for 9 years and I know exactly how to get these loans approved with my bank.”

Don’t worry about limiting yourself. Start with the niche and let the conversation develop.

2- Don’t focus your efforts on a few brokers; market to many originators. If an originator is worth one $200,000 loan a month and you want to fund $10 million a month, you’ll need 50 good originators considering you. You should have four times that amount in your “prospect file”. Spread it out over at least twenty accounts.

3- Write a web log. You can get a free web log at Active Rain Real Estate Network (click the link). There are 2000 loan originators registered there. Point a domain name at the web log and make it catchy (www.placeyourloan.com is available). That will cost ten bucks a year. You can start by posting programs that go out on your e-mail. Try to accompany the loan program with a story about how you funded the loans. Instruct your originators to read it.

4- Visit the originators at least Read more

March 24, 2007

Ideas For Niche Marketing

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Are you trying to be all things to all people?

I think a great career can be built on serving underserved but profitable niches. Russell Shaw’s post made me think of Allen Domb. I was a young securities broker, fresh out of college, when I met Allen Domb. He was serving as a “condo specialist” in downtown Philadelphia in 1990. Needless to say, here was a man with a plan (and vision). Nobody was buying condos in downtown Philly at the time and agents eschewed the property class.
He did four simple things:

1- He was a big fish in a small pond. He set himself up as the expert in a market.

2- He limited his expertise to one geographical market area and a specific property type.

3- He lived his mantra. There was no bigger cheerleader at that time for the downtown Philly condo than Allen Domb.

4- His staff was dedicated to his cause. Agents who worked for him or support staff all felt that they would be changing the Philadelphia skyline; they did.

Here are some underserved markets for Realtors or loan originators:

1- Manufactured Homes. Perhaps the fastest-growing property type in real estate.

2- Vacation properties as an investment Investors with an eye for a retirement home make great clients. You’d probably have to have the property management piece figured out but you’ll have some 20-30 potential buyers coming through each property each year.

3- Golf properties. You better know the lingo and live the life.

4- Historic Homes. You should have excellent resources for rehabs.

How about underserved markets by buyer-types?

1- Non-resident aliens. I know a Realtor who sells lots of property to Mexican Nationals in the US because she understands their needs.

2- Refugees. An agent in Phoenix I know specialized in Bosnian refugees in the late 90s. He has a steady stream of business from this dynamic group now.

3- Firefighters or Police Officers– some cities require that they live in the city limits and some offer tremendous financing programs. (Cop-Next-Door Program).

4- Teachers– same as firefighters or cops but an even more referral crazy group.

5- Professional Athletes– you’ll need to develop national contacts with sports agents but Read more

March 23, 2007

Silly Stuff I Wanted to Share

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Just ran across this and saw at once it needed to be shared. It is called Scottsdale Sucks. Albert Einstein smallerThis one is called World’s Worst Websites. I’ve spent hours having fun looking at all the various links from this site. To me, some of the sites were laugh out loud funny. This one is called, The Best Page In The Universe. He says, “This page is about me and why everything I like is great. If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.”

So when you want to spend a little time on something that has the charm of deliberate nonsense, try one of these.

I am hoping to win both the Cheez- Whiz AND the Weenie award.

March 23, 2007

Building a better dog house for BloodhoundBlog: One down, dozens to go

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have successfully migrated a hosted domain with a working WordPress weblog to our new host. I’ll do two or three more for practice. If all goes well, tomorrow late we’ll move BloodhoundRealty.com and BloodhoundBlog with it.

For what it’s worth, the preliminaries were all kind of tricky and exacting, but the denouement was almost an anti-climax. Wicked simple, and everything just worked. Could be beginner’s luck, but I have plenty of opportunities to gain experience.

More news when I have a more elaborate plan.

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March 23, 2007

Is Trulia.com in the MLS business? Is REBNY in the dumbed-down listings business? Or will they meet in the middle?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Trulia Blog:

Trulia was selected by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), New York City’s largest and most prestigious real estate group, to power the first real estate search engine dedicated exclusively to New York City-based listings.

More:

What does this mean?

For consumers, the new search engine will bring together residential property listings from REBNY-member real estate brokerage firms onto a single public Web site for the first time. For the non-New York readers out there…it’s worth noting that Manhattan’s hugely important real estate market does not have a widely used MLS that would allow access to all listings through any single Web site today.

A few dozen ambiguous fields is not an MLS system, but it’s better than what New Yorkers have now. And, who knows, maybe the horse will learn to sing…

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March 23, 2007

Realty.bots will make sellers happy

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Realty.bots will make sellers happy

We talked last week about the move by Realogy Inc. to supply millions of real estate listings from its national brokerage chains to upstart Realty.bots Google Base and Trulia.com. This puts the Realty.bots on the map. Who else is affected?

Sellers should be happy. Realty.bots are really not effective real estate search tools, but they are excellent home shopping sites. Listed homes will be exposed to thousands of users who might not have seen them on Realtor.com or local brokers’ Web sites.

Buyers could be happy. Trulia.com can seem like the Disneyland of real estate: Bright colors, interactive maps, even a Google Earth interface.

But buyers might stop to reflect that a Realty.bot listing is not very different from an exclusive listing. My wife and business partner, Cathleen Collins, was out with a buyer who saw an “exclusive” sign and asked what it meant. Her answer was concise and stingingly accurate: “It means they don’t want you to have representation.”

In fact, Realty.bot listings normally are not exclusive listings. They just look like it. When you click through for information, you are contacting the listing agent directly — or the listing brokerage or brokerage chain. If you proceed with the purchase of that home, you will either be unrepresented or you will be represented by the listing broker. You will not have your own buyer’s agent.

Realtors probably should be unhappy with Realogy’s move. Realty.bots tend to cut buyer’s agents out of the transaction altogether. This won’t save the buyer any money. The listing broker will just get paid double.

But listers also have cause to be unhappy, because the listings Realogy is providing to the Realty.bots will click back to Realogy, not to the listing agent or brokerage. My thinking is that their plan is to sell listers the leads their own listings generate.

It’s a brave new world in real estate. It will be fun to see how this plays out.

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March 23, 2007

Going one-up on the drive-by appraisal, Zaio brings forth a driven-by appraisal database

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s half-way between a Zestimate and a real appraisal? Lenders and borrowers are eager to get the benefit of the doubt of a full appraisal without the full-blown doubts incurred with an Automated Valuation Method.

Enter Zaio.com, which is building a nationwide database of drive-by appraisals — really driven-by appraisals. From the San Jose Mercury News:

Zaio started off as a little-known Canadian company founded by Brad Stinson, an appraiser who tinkered with software. Stinson, now vice president of business development for the company, still has an office in Calgary.

Although the company has a low profile, recent hires such as Douglas Vincent, former chief collateral officer with Countrywide Bank, and John Ross, former CEO of the Appraisal Institute, a national organization in Chicago, are making people take notice.

“Our goal is to have information on every home in America,” said Tom Inserra, president and chief executive officer of Zaio from his Scottsdale home. “We already have hundreds of photographers and appraiser trainees and are deploying them around the country quite rapidly.”

The photographers have been sent to 170 cities in the past two months, covering the territory and sending it back to Zaio’s servers. Although the cities of Mesa, Ariz., and Spokane, Wash., are completed, part of the first wave is the Bay Area, and Brentwood seems to be the start of an estimated 80 million homes that will eventually make up Zaio’s database by 2010.

Inserra said that many Web sites have taken aerial photographs of homes, but the system was lacking real-life photos. The information isn’t available to the public but to banks, insurance companies and lenders who will use the service to help determine appraisals objectively, he said.

Zaio’s workers are required to go through a background check, wear company ID and clothing and hand out pamphlets written in both English and Spanish to anxious homeowners. The company also alerts the police department they will be in the area.

“We don’t invade someone’s property or try to sell them anything,” he said. “We’re also the only company we know who will let the homeowners opt out. … If you call Google, they won’t take your Read more

March 23, 2007

Are You Hungry?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Lisa Nolan writes:

I have acquired a RE license, and am contemplating entering the industry as an agent, and wondering if there is published data
anywhere on what production levels/market shares each Real Estate company holds…. I know there are many, many other factors more
important than this to take into consideration, but am curious.Thanks for any help,Lisa

There are many local companies around the country (you don’t indicate what part of the country you live in) that enjoy a huge market share – but just in that area their office is located. There are also some regional companies that are quite dominant in their part of the United States. For example, Weichert and Crye-Leike are not well known across the country, but are very well known in the areas they
do business.

HungryA relatively small company in Ft. Collins, Colorado, The Group, has the highest average sales per agent, year after year, of any company in the industry. Last I knew, their average number of sales PER AGENT was about 55 deals per year. They have a waiting list to get in and charge a $10,000 (non-refundable) deposit just to join. Their 55 sales per year, per agent, is very high. Coldwell Banker, for example has about 11.5 average sales per year, per agent.

Some companies, Help-U-Sell, for example, don’t promote their individual agent’s stats, working to create a uniform experience for the consumer, regardless of which agent or which office they select.

The number one national company for sales per agent is Re/Max. I remember when they were proud of that number being 23 transactions per year. It got as high as 32 sales per year per agent. I don’t know what it is just now – but would guess it is in the high 20’s. Re/Max has the very best agent to agent referral network in the industry. At one time agents were joining Re/Max by the tens of thousands thinking that being with that company would guarantee them success. When Keller-Williams really started to take off in the agent growth department – they managed to recruit thousands and thousands of agents away from Re/Max – Read more

March 22, 2007

Zip gets 20 Million LESS than “zip” and they are happy about it

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

I swear I am not trying to pick on Zip Realty but I just couldn’t pass this one up. I saw this on Inman News. From a press release – and I quote:Money Gun

Real estate brokerage company ZipRealty Inc. today announced a net loss of $20.2 million in fourth-quarter 2006, or 96 cents per share, compared with net income of $17.9 million, or 73 cents per diluted share, in fourth-quarter 2005.

For the year ended Dec. 31, 2006, ZipRealty reported a net loss of $20.6 million, compared with net income of $20.5 million for the full year in 2005.

“We are pleased with our fourth-quarter results, which exceeded expectations in terms of revenue and profitability,” ZipRealty CEO Richard Sommer said in a statement.

They LOST 20 MILLION DOLLARS in last three months of the year and they are pleased with the results. Well, if they’re happy about it, then I’m happy for them.

March 22, 2007

How are you gonna bind ’em down to a listing contract when Iggy’s doing your deal for free?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Should we say goodbye to the half-assed listing? Mike Price:

Today Buyside has announced an ABA, (affiliated business arrangement) whereby any homeowner can list a home in the MLS free of charge. It’s called IggysHouse.Com. Interesting branding, I couldn’t find anything on their site that explained the moniker. Could be they just got tired of searching for decent real estate domains, there aren’t too many left out there.

I went and looked for myself. Here is the Iggy coverage area:

Dark green states: Now. Light green states: Soon.

The site sells yard signs, lock boxes and forms, but not at huge premiums. I’m not going to fill out a listing to find out what happens, but my guess is that the end-user is doing every bit of the work for the MLS entry and the supplemental Do-It-Yourself web page with additional photos.

The Iggy people are promising listings on Realtor.com as well. As we have learned, Realtor.com listings do a lot better when they have virtual tours, so Mike might offer to make a video podcast at an extra cost, using PBS-style pan and scan video from the user-supplied photos.

Does this matter? In the age of the $99 listing, probably not so much. I truly don’t understand why there are any FSBOs left in the marketplace. If this doesn’t eat up the few holdouts, I’ll be amazed.

Interestingly, IggysHouse is evidently owned by BuySideRealty.com, which, apparently, hopes that, by giving away 100% of the listing commission it can cling to a whopping 25% of the buyer’s agent’s commission.

Are they daft?! No — they’re lenders. BuySideRealty is a lead-generation scheme that uses the real estate side of the transaction to rope in mortgage borrowers. And how much do lenders make? Just as much as they want to…

This is really quite a bit smarter than Redfin.com. They exploit the de facto “commons” in the traditional commission split, taking the buyer’s agent’s fee without doing the buyer’s agent’s job. BuySide is operating real estate brokerages as a loss-leader, to generate mortgage business.

Of the two, BuySide’s is the business model more likely to make a profit, if only because it has Read more

March 22, 2007

Avoid Being the Greatest Fool

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

The greater fool theory is simply this: Even if doing X doesn’t make sense, there is always someone dumber than me I can sell X to. Replace X with inflated real estate, sub-prime mortgages, stocks, garage sell junk, etc. This is the crux of bubble thinking. The major problem with this theory is that someone is always the greatest fool. It may not be you this time, but keep playing Russian roulette with deals that don’t make sense and it will be.

I learned of the greater fool theory first hand as an undergraduate in college. In the bubble year of 2000, I started my first online stock trading account with a hard earned $2,000 from my summer internship. I had a run of success you would not believe with a very simple (and very stupid) strategy. The strategy: watch what Internet firms report positive earnings, and then buy. Obviously I didn’t have a good concept of a DCF model or really understand what a P/E ratio was, but I did know that I was making a killing. In a matter of weeks I was almost up to $20,000.

Little did I know that I was simply profiting off the greater fool theory. Every stock I was investing in was insanely overvalued. With no real fundamental values to hang their hat on, the stocks in my portfolio fell as quickly as they rose. When all was said and done I had less than $500. I went from hero to goat in a matter weeks, wondering where I went wrong.

I am sure most seasoned investors have a similar war story. However, most new investors feel invincible. The problem with most new investors is that they have not gotten caught up in the frenzy of investing. It’s something akin to lemmings, when investors continuing buying even though they know there is no justification for their high valuations. Eventually, the first lemming falls off a cliff (sub-prime lending perhaps?) with the others soon to follow.

The question is why so many investors lose their grasp on the fundamentals? The irony is that it is usually fear of Read more

March 22, 2007

Peering into the future of The Future of Real Estate Marketing

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s the future of The Future of Real Estate Marketing? Last Friday, Joel Burslem announced that he is taking a job as a marketing wizard for Inman News:

I’m happy to announce I will be joining the nice folks over at Inman News, as of March 26. I will be joining them to help steer some of their social media projects as well as drive marketing to their popular semiannual Connect Conferences.

So will The Future of Real Estate Marketing be a thing of the past? Not so, says Burslem:

I prefer to keep it simple. I’m just going to keep checking out new real estate web sites and technologies and writing about them. That’s what’s fun for me.

FoREM was never really built as a business in mind. It was always just my corner of the web where I could post my thoughts on technology and real estate. It’s fun for me, it’s my hobby, a passion I guess – I’d rather spend my evening checking out some new web site than watching TV, that’s for sure. And, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon!

Honestly, I can’t say where it’ll be in a year, two years etc. but then again who can? I plan on more of the same for the foreseeable future.

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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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