There’s always something to howl about.

Month: November 2007 (page 1 of 9)

A Seesmic disturbance: Twitter goes video

By way of Teri Lussier, Brad Coy hooked me up with an invitation to Seesmic, a video-based social-media start-up.

I’m interested for all of the foregoing reasons. I want something that can do to TV news what weblogging has done to print journalism.

This is my first Seesmic disturbance:


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Unchained melodies: Born to run

Here is a selection from Brian Brady for the theme for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, Bruce Springsteen doing Born to run.

Opening line in the video:

“Remember, in the end, nobody wins, ‘less everybody wins”

and the last stanza of the song:

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight, but there’s no place left to hide
Together, Wendy, we’ll live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday, girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go, and we’ll walk in the sun
But ’til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run

I grew up in Jersey so it biases my selection. If you’re 17, driving down Route 9 to Avalon, and Born to Run comes on the FM, you feel completely Unchained.

Got a different take? Assert yourself by email.

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Looks like we are at the bottom of the Prestige List. Damn!

The latest Harris Poll has Firefighters, Scientists & Teachers at the top and Bankers, Actors & Real Estate Agents at the bottom of their “Most Prestigious Occupations” list. This poll has been referenced in many articles on the internet. Here you can see the actual results from Harris.

It is not surprising that teaching is such a coveted job. Just look at the picture and see if you can spot the teacher’s pet?

Little Johnny

Confessions of a RE Twitterhead

There have been several interesting conversations going on in my small corner of the blogiverse lately. One was a comment to a Bloodhound post I wrote eons ago. Someone wanted to know if blogging really works for lead generation. Well sure it…Wait. What?

I forget how small the RE.net world is. It’s tiny. I thought everyone knew that blogging works, when in reality only bloggers know that blogging works and probably most people still don’t know what a blog is. It’s hard for me to keep that in mind, and frankly I find myself living in two seperate worlds- the Web 2.0 world and the other world. My conversations and connections in the 2.0 world move quickly, almost instantly. It’s as if, Shazam! You now have made a connection to someone you didn’t know ten minutes ago. Now that person is going to connect you to this person and Shazam! Another person and fifteen minutes have passed.

When was the last Inman Connect? Late July? Much of the discussion was how amazing it was that people could connect quickly through blogging. You all know this is true because you are here on the Bloodhound Blog, in the RE.net world. The truth is that in my nonRE.net world, people don’t know this and I can’t explain it to them, and I’m not sure they care, and that’s the tricky part for me. How do I gracefully move between the two worlds?

Another interesting conversation took place on Daniel Rothamel’s Agent Genius post about Social Media. The comment stream is from bloggers who are wondering if Twitter works in terms of usefulness. It’s so interesting to me because I’m having that same conversation here about blogging and my reaction is the same: Well, of course Twitter can…Wait. What? The fact is that no RE Twitterhead has yet to get a lead from Twitter, but why couldn’t it happen?

If like-minded people move toward each other, and find each other, which I know to be true- after all, we are all busy, we have to pick and choose who we spend time with, how much time do you make for people you don’t like? Wouldn’t it be nice to find like-minded people quickly? To Read more

Sex and Real Estate Brokerage

Shaun Mc Lane sells real estate in Orlando. No, strike that. Today, Shaun does not sell real estate in Orlando; he will be opening his own real estate brokerage in December.

Tuesday, Shaun experimented with a racy Web 2.0 offering. He posted a video asking if sex sells. The video was a short slide show of bikini-clad women, in various poses. Should you click through, you’ll see that it isn’t “Betty Grable in a cheesecake” pose. It is a more prurient collection of photographs typically seen on MySpace.

Wednesday, Shaun’s broker laughed about it and asked him to remove the post from his website. Shaun called her bluff and was handed a pink slip. Shaun is claiming independent contractor status, because he pays his own marketing costs, and is visibly irritated with the decision. He’ll be “going it alone” which may have been his intention all along.

Similar controversy gained national attention when Wendy Heath posed with her bulldog, in a bikini, on a billboard in Long Beach, CA. Wendy’s strategy:

“I wanted to set myself apart and kind of shock the shore, and, you know, drive people to my website and increase my business,” Heath told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. “There’s many, many real-estate agents in our area, and it’s hard to break through and set yourself apart. … I am absolutely amazed that one billboard could cause so much attention, but I am absolutely elated.”

Competing female REALTORs dissented:

Well, as a fellow realtor, but also someone with the body to do exactly what she did, I think she took the blonde-bimbo way out. If we, as professional real-estate agents, have to result to using our scantily clad bodies to gain clients, maybe we need to look inside ourselves at what we are lacking professionally. There are many tough real-estate markets nationwide, but when we tear down the image we are struggling so hard to display (which is that every real-estate transaction benefits from the experience and knowledge that only a professional realtor can provide), we essentially lose all that we have worked to achieve. Read more

ARRGGHHH! I would love it if the PAR/AAR/NAR would stop taking my money, but, if they won’t do that, could they at least manage to get the hell out of my way?

So someone, somewhere in the alphabet soup of Realtor associations is selling my email address — or perhaps just giving it away. Realtors all over Phoenix are watching an idiot’s spam-fest, as one clueless victim after another tries to escape the spam spiral started by an agent who seems not to know that we discover properties for sale in the MLS system — that this is what the MLS system is for.

This by itself is nothing. I get at least a thousand spam emails every day. Moreover, I know that a lot of people in my profession get painfully flustered when they sit down at a computer — so worried they’ll make a mistake that they cause a disaster instead.

But I am sick to death of being “led” by morons.

Witness:

  • ZipForms does not work. It is crap software written by crap minds, with its bugs exceeded only by its omission of rational options. It was rammed down our throats by idiots at the AAR who obviously do not themselves use it. And yet, come the start of the year, we will have no choice but to use this piece of garbage — a fate which includes the vast legions of the flustered and the flummoxed.
  • And because ZipForms has not been a big enough disaster, the AAR is now preparing to ram a piece of transaction-processing software down our throats — which will almost certainly also be a piece of buggy Windows-centric crap.
  • The idiotic gateway software in our idiotic MLS system has never worked in Safari for the Macintosh. We’re getting rid of that crap vendor, thank god, but it is of a piece with the way the chefs of the alphabet soup have operated, that nothing they have promoted, until now, worked properly on the Macintosh.
  • They spam me, and they sell or give my email address to spammers — and they charge me hundreds of dollars a year to deliver my inbox up to this rape.

I don’t care that other people don’t thrive at my wavelength. That’s understood. But I do care that they use power I never ceded to them to Read more

Weblogging without chains: A BloodhoundBlog Unchained introductory podcast to viral, hyper-specific real estate weblogging

The podcast linked below is a piece of a conversation Brian Brady and I had today about styles of real estate weblogging that make sense in the onrushing world of social media marketing.

Brian cites a post of mine from the first of this year, Think globally, blog locally: If you want local leads from your real estate weblog, pursue local interests. I wrote about this because I had mentioned it in the first-ever Phoenix-area weblogging salon that Brian had organized the day before. The ideas discussed in that post formed the skeleton for Real Estate Weblogging 101.

What you’re getting here is just a small taste of the material we will cover at BloodhoundBlog Unchained. I think people have pretty low expectations for trade shows and business conferences. I know I do. What we want for you to understand is that we intend to deliver a rich curriculum, rooted in a deep conceptual framework, that will help you break free of the chains of competitive pressure. But just for now, if you’ll give us 38 minutes of your time, we’ll show you snapshots of a whole new world of marketing.

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What If We All Just Gave It Away For Free

Now I Know Why Nice Guys Finish Last

This isn’t the first time this has happened…

A potential listing client called me up several months ago to come out and talk to her about her property. She grilled me about what I would do to sell her property and how much I would charge her.

To be perfectly honest – I left there hoping I wouldn’t get the listing.

And I didn’t. Well, for the most part I didn’t.

For the last several months, I have received a call at least once a month from her – asking for my take on a variety of issues regarding the sale of her home. I finally had to ask her, “If you value my opinion so much – why didn’t you list with me?”

“Because [insert agent’s name here] is only charging me $500,” she blurted out.

And then it dawned on me. While I was thinking that maybe this potential client might have thought she made a mistake… and that she might become a real client… I was wrong. She was getting her home listed for practically nothing – and getting the advice of myself (and probably others) FOR FREE.

I could kick myself. Count another lesson learned.

The following video of writer Harlan Ellison pretty much sums up my rant. There is a great deal of similarity if you think about it. (Warning – Some Strong Language)

Please, please, please do something different!

This dawned on me the other day as I was filling out my Inman Connect Speaker Information email that they’ve sent me 4 times now but I hadn’t properly synthesized it until now and while it is an axiom as old as time it is something worth remembering every day: Be remarkable.  Why remarkable?  Because remarkability wins.  Because remarkability is what makes you stand out from the white noise that impinges on success in every competitive ocean out there.  Because with out remarkability you are just a part of the landscape; and no one that I’ve yet to meet likes the prospects associated with that business proposition.

It’s said a million different ways, but it all amounts to the same thing: a purple cow, a free prize inside, an unique selling proposition, are all imploring us to do one thing – something remarkable.  It’s as simple and as complicated as that all at once.  See different and remarkable are interchangeable in language but not in action.  Being different is easy, being remarkable is hard.  Being different doesn’t win and doesn’t necessarily have any attached benefits to the customer; in fact being different can have adverse affects on them – but being remarkable is a different story.

Being remarkable is about being different to a point where that person you are trying to impact takes notice and is so moved that they make an effort to tell someone else.  Seth Godin illustrates and “riffs” on this beautifully in the above mentioned titles but allow me to indulge just a bit further.  There are examples of remarkable things across the real estate and mortgage space and they range from the mundane to the spectacular.  A mortgage broker that discloses YSP on a GFE and explains it (sadly, not as mundane as you would like to believe) is remarkable.  A Kris Berg post is remarkable.  A Zillow Zestimate is remarkable.  The NAR home sale forecasts are remarkable.  (You can see that being remarkable is a powerful force for both good and bad).  Remarkability is what gets noticed, what rises above the rest, it is the short Read more

Unchained melodies: I won’t back down

This is my choice for the theme for BloodhoundBlog Unchained. Teri Lussier has a different idea, which I’ll share with you tomorrow. If you think both of us are all wet, say so by email, telling me what you think our theme should be. Be assured that there will be music. It it’s too loud, you’re too old.

This is Tom Petty again, covered by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The song is I won’t back down — in many respects the theme song of my own life. Petty has hundreds of letters from people who turned to this simple little shit-kicker song for strength when they were confronted, by threats or temptations, with the prospect of betraying their own souls. I can’t think of a more important job for art to do than to lend people the courage to be who they are, damn the consequences.


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BOHICA…and this time it is Trulia

BOHICA

I received an email from a friend this morning…the essence of it was that Trulia is now “offering” us REALTORS the opportunity to enhance our listings for a modest fee…and I started preparing to post almost immediately. Then I noticed Bramlett had beaten me to the punch.
As Bramlett correctly pointed out, we saw it coming. (That’s nothing to brag on…Heck, Ray Charles could have seen it coming.) They (Trulia) are a business after all and sooner or later, we REALTORS who have given Trulia those listings were destined to become Russell’s pencil sharpener. I even commented on his post about it. I am actually sad to be right.

Mind you, I am not mad at Trulia. They are in business to make money and God bless them for it. I DO have an issue with a real estate community that turns a blind eye or simply doesn’t see the same pitch coming that it got hit with a few years back. What’s the saying about fool me once?
Same stuff different day.

Bend over. Here it comes again. BOHICA.
Another way to lighten your wallet as REALTORS. Another interloper doing what we can and should do for ourselves. In my opinion, people in the end do not care whether the real estate site they are searching on is national or local. They want it complete. As many local listings as possible and as much information and photos as possible are the ticket. We are providing that as REALTORS in spades in most locations. IDX does provide that, especially in the hands of skilled webmasters who do not require registration to view listings. We can do everything that they can do and do it with local relevance and intimate knowledge of our markets…When combined with microfocused niche blogs (or hyperlocals…) we can provide AMAZING amounts of information to potential clients. With an ever expanding internet mindshare, that’s more important than ever.
Can we at least on a local level (and it CAN IMO vary from location to location) agree to only provide listings where it is well and truly warranted by true market presence.

Everytime we provide our Read more

Countrywide Bankruptcy Likely? Not While the Feds Are Bailing Them Out

I’m a Countrywide watcher. It’s size and reach in mortgage loan origination is worthy of any mortgage originator’s respect and admiration. I had a lot of confidence in Countrywide as it marched to becoming America’s largest originator of home loans. I liked ’em so much that I had a piece of the joint, in my IRA, until April 1, 2007.

It was no April Fool’s Day joke when I announced that they were in trouble because of the Pay Option ARM product. For the Series 7 types, I went from long to cash within 24 hours of writing that post, then short ( not in my IRA) 24 hours later. I was nervously wondering when Wall Street would catch on to the problems and decimate the stock; I felt it would be worth less than ten bucks a share. Alas, I chickened out and closed the short position to raise cash during the liquidity crunch of 2007; I figured that profit would pay my daughter’s tuition when the market slowed.

Wall Street still thinks Countrywide is a twenty dollar stock, even as it trades below nine bucks a share. Are they being fooled, like the Enron debacle, or do they know something that we don’t? While Wall Street fiddles the Mozilo tune, pundits think CFC could file any day now. I don’t think a Countrywide bankruptcy is likely. I thought it made sense for the Feds to bail out Countrywide; two days later they opened the discount window.

How are the Feds bailing out Countrywide today?

1- Certainly, as Countrywide has moved it’s fundings to its federally-chartered bank, any Fed market activity benefits them.

2- I said that they way out of the mess was for Countrywide to originate new loans in less risky programs. CFC has rolled out a major reverse mortgage program and is compensating brokers to refer those loans to them. While some people believe its actions violate the spirit of HUD laws, there are no HUD guidelines specifically forbidding this practice. Reverse mortgages are three times Read more