There’s always something to howl about.

Month: April 2008 (page 1 of 9)

Who’s the greatest real estate agent in the world? That’s a title I’m willing to compete for. But the winner of the “Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World” SEO contest is BloodhoundBlog’s Eric Blackwell

And BloodhoundBlog’s Eric Bramlett breaks the news:

Drumroll please……

Team Eric!

Eric Blackwell and his merry band of SEO’s/bloggers truly proved the spirit of SEO – it’s all about the relationships.  Jennifer Karlan, Greg Swann, Ken Smith, Wayne Long, Judy Orr, Cal Carter, Mike Damman, Charles & Jacqueline Richey, and Matt Scoggins all need to take a collective bow.  Through the use of teamwork and some very strategic use of assets they individually & collectively own, they were able to control #1 from the second month of the contest to the finish line.

There was a LOT of stiff competition here.  Ardell DellaLoggia ran it tight all the way to the finish line.  Greg Boser was in it, and then disappeared off the map w/ a few weeks to go — everyone was anxiously waiting for the SEO Dark Lord to pop his head back in at 11:59 on April 30th.  The guys at newhomessection.com finished #5, w/ Mike Damman’s site PropertyHogs.com, Ryan Ward, Justin from hismove (ranking well, though he dropped out early,) and then Jay Thompson rounding out the top 10.  Wouldn’t you know it?  My post ended up at the top of page 2 – the story of my life.

I’d like to thank everyone for participating, and especially thank Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters for sponsoring the event.  Team Eric has decided to auction off the prize & donate the money to the Eco Preservation Society of Costa Rica (a favorite of Mike Damman’s.)

Eric Blackwell told you he was going to win. I told you Eric was going to win. But the truth is, Eric won because he assembled a great team of very smart people who were shooting Google juice his way until the very last minute.

Take a moment, if you would, to leave a comment to Eric’s winning post. This is a remarkable achievement, and we all got to be a part of it.

Bravo, Eric! And remember: Nice guys link back! 😉

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It’s The End Of The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine!

Case Shiller Reort | Real Estate Radio USA

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and
snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn – world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs.
Feed it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height.
Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government
for hire and a combat site.
Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck.

Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing! Fine, then.
Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it’ll do.
Save yourself, serve yourself.
World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right.

You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

In 1987, Micheal Stipe and REM released a song that many have interpreted in many ways. When REM played the song live they were actually very surprised. In playing a song about the end of the world, the audience actually reacted with great enthusiasm. So much so that the fun vibe threw off the band. They thought the apocalyptic lyrics would create a more subdued response.

What does this have to do with real estate? Well yesterday the newest housing numbers came out and it’s sounding the end of the real estate world…yet I feel fine.

The S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index, which tracks 20 of the largest housing markets, showed prices plummeting by 12.7% in the 12 months ending February. That’s the biggest fall since the index began tracking prices in 2000.

Of those same 20 markets, 17 of them posted their largest declines ever recorded and 50% of the metro areas posted double-digit declines.

“There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers,” S&P spokesman David M. Blitzer, said in a prepared statement. “Prices of single family homes continue to drop across the nation.”

“This is huge,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Read more

HomeGain.com adds a weblogging platform for its clients

I’ve spent quite a few brain cycles tweaking HomeGain General Manager Louis Cammarosano. The head of what is very obviously a Web 1.0 chokepoint-style company, Cammarosano has himself very obviously been on an agitprop mission in the Web 2.0 world.

His goals:

  1. To minimize the Web 2.0 difference in the marketplace
  2. To claim that HomeGain has been a Web 2.0 company all along
  3. All the while, to figure out how to transform HomeGain.com to something like a Web 2.0 business model

That much was funny to me, because Cammarosano is a hale-fellow-well-met, rather more the opposite of a spy.

In any case, his efforts are bearing fruit now: A few months ago Cammarosano started a group weblog to figure out if HomeGain should have a weblog. Starting later tonight, HomeGain’s customers will be abel to start their own client-seeking weblogs on the lead-generating site.

Both Brian Brady and Mike Farmer write on the HomeGain blog, so I hope they’ll keep us informed about how the new blogging platform is working out. Free blogging platforms are not always a slam-dunk success, but I think HomeGain’s offering makes more sense than does ActiveRain, for instance. I have felt that free weblogs would be a better solution than discussion fora on Zillow.com: Weblogging creates a middle-management structure, providing a cadre of volunteers to keep bad behavior from oscillating out of control.

In any case, since I’ve been so churlish to Cammarosano, I want to congratulate him for taking a step in the right direction. Anything that induces consumers to shop harder for better values is a net win in my ledger.

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Truliamazing tricks of the trade: don’t link to your trusted partners

Greg is impressed how Trulia so dominates the search results for “714 West Culver Street”. Heck – they got the listing from somewhere, right? Why does Trulia show up above the original sources of data? In this case, two reasons: the original source doesn’t even display the address on the page (dude – MLS rules are stupid, but they usually let you display your own property’s address at least – you gotta fix that!). But the much more common reason is that Trulia blocks Google from following their links.

How do I know? Go to any listing on Trulia. See that “See more photos and details” button? Hover over it and look at the bar at the bottom of your screen. See how it says something like http://www.trulia.com/transfer.php?s_id=10424505&feat=1&p_id=1053500646&t_id=fdpt3 ? That gobbledygook links internally to a page on Trulia that instantly passes you on to the listing broker. However it tells Google that it is a temporary redirect (a 302 redirect), which Google has explicitly stated does not pass any PageRank. That means while you move on to the listing broker, Google goes no further than that internal page.

Why would Trulia withold PageRank from their trusted partners? They might argue that they need to track the number of people they are referring to brokers. However, Trulia appears to be very technically savvy and there are a number of other search-engine friendly ways to accomplish that including javascript onunloads or 301 redirects (which do pass PageRank). Why else would anyone withhold a link from the original source? Because in doing so, Trulia becomes the original source for properties in the eyes of Google. If Trulia were to link back to trusted broker partners, particularly if they were to use relevant text like the address (instead of an image link), they risk telling Google that they are borrowing that information from somewhere else – an original source – and Google might rank the original source higher in the search results.

Why would brokers who share their listings allow this? My best guess is they aren’t tech savvy enough to identify that this could be a problem. Read more

Have You Seen Some Of The Answers On Trulia Voices?

Trulia Voices | Real Estate Radio USA

As I am constantly in search of constant promotion and link love, I recently ventured over to Trulia Voices.

I love the format. Consumers post questions about real estate and anyone who subscribes to a certain criteria that you choose, will receive the questions via email and then you have the opportunity to post your answer to the consumer…to the consumer!!

Great idea, great concept, and in its simplicity, a great way to interact with the consumer in a honest and open fashion. You are allowed to suggest an answer according to how you would handle a certain situation or dilemma that the consumer may have or be facing in the near future.

Of course, it is to be expected, that with a gazillion Realtors on the planet, that one answer may differ from another’s answer. We all have different life and vocational experiences that we can look to for our answers.

That’s what makes blogging so special. I may have one belief, you may have another and we can truly voice (no pun intended) our opinion as to what we feel is a suitable response to the consumer’s inquiry.

How wrong I was. Why did I ever go over to Trulia Voices? Yes, I probably received some of my sought after link love (no I didn’t check the “no-follow” tag), but I was not prepared for my other bonus.

Vilification as if one was an interloper! I began answering the questions that were being asked directly. I was giving the answers that I felt best solved the consumers problem or inquiry. I did not know that isn’t the way to respond.

Excuse me for speaking my mind and responding openly and honestly to an inquiry from the public. I didn’t see the response guidelines that said there was a specific manner in which to communicate with the consumer according to the amended Code of Realtor Mandated Responses on Trulia Voices. I now realize what I was supposed to do. Now I need a shower.

Most of those who choose to answer over at TV seem to be following some golden oldie real estate agent playbook. Most of the Read more

A disturbing Reality – desperate builders doing immoral things

I was having a chat with Mike Taylor, a real estate broker and friend from Indianapolis the other day. He was unusually incensed about a builder allegedly doing something I find unconscionable. Selling homes as free and clear that are actually in the process of or about to get hit with Mechanic’s liens. Nice. “Aren’t you glad we bought this new home, honey?”–followed quickly by– “Hey what’s this mechanic’s lien on our new house?”.

How? Well, most of the details are here on Mike’s blog. He is a sensible guy and not prone to overstatement and from what he has documented with courthouse records, he certainly has a reason to be miffed about this kind of treatment of people.

FORGET THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GOLDEN RULE?

I am not talking about the “He who has the gold, makes the rules” one. I am referring to the original one of do unto others. These morons KNOW that these bills are going to come due and they KNOW that they cannot pay them and they KNOW that the buyer is going to wake up with in some cases, up to $10,000 of encumbrance on their home and a royal pain in the rear to clear.

Would they want this on a home THEY bought? Would they want to have to explain this to THEIR wife?

Yes, this market has been tough and YES it will grind some people out of the business. However, tough times only reveal the true character of the person below and if what Mike alleges is true (and I have ZERO reason to doubt it), the true character of these folks is morally bankrupt.

And financially broke you can recover from FAR more easily (in my opinion) than being morally bankrupt.

Kudos to Mike for having the courage to stand up and say a) this is immoral and b) I am not going to sit quietly by and watch it happen. (NOTE: He didn’t just post it on his blog. He is taking it to the local press as well.)

Save a House, Ride a REALTOR®

(If you are not a country music fan, you may have a serious character flaw, but that is the subject of another post on another Blog.  For now, here is a video that will help you “get” the title of this post.)

Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy

Across the nation, in most markets, we not only have too many listings, we also have too many overpriced listings.  It is true in Charlottesville; it’s true in Atlanta, Austin, and Atlantic City.  I know it is true even without looking at the local statistics for all these markets because “too many listings” and “too many overpriced listings” goes hand in hand.  The basic law of economics – supply and demand – dictates that prices will adjust downward when supply is too high. 

Following that logic, what we need is a good old fashion INVENTORY REDUCTION SALE!  Can you picture this ad as part of the NAR public awareness campaign?

reduction“Hi, I’m Charles McMillan, President-elect of the National Association of REALTORS® and I’m here to announce an across the board 30% reduction in home prices.  That’s right, this is the REALTOR® Spring Spectacular event of a lifetime.  Buy before July 1st and save BIG on any home in any market.”

Okay, that’s not going to happen, nor could it.  The real estate market is not like the market for toilet paper at Wal-Mart.  In real estate, we have something like five million owners (sellers) of the “company” that would have to approve an across the board price reduction.  That’s a lot of decision makers even by Wal-Marts standards.

Some sellers have figured out the economics of the current market and agreed to price their home correctly.  Guess what?  Those are the homes that are selling.  In the CAAR MLS, homes that sold in March sold after and average of 130 days on the market (DOM).  That’s not a particularly good number, but it beats the 149 days (and counting) that the current active inventory is averaging for DOM.  In addition, a closer look at the numbers will show that many of the homes that sold in March, sold quickly; Read more

Inside the Liar’s Loan – How the Mortgage Industry Nutured Deceit

Well-written piece by Mark Gimein in Slate this morning asks an interesting and important question:

In ordinary circumstances, the people and institutions you deal with reinforce social norms. They say it’s not OK to lie. But what happens when the structures and institutions break down and start telling you the opposite?

The answers it portends are unsettling.

The Real Definition of Insanity In This Market

Remember when Enron was still everyone’s darling?  Remember when they were a high flying company that could do no wrong?

Remember when AOL was high flying and had the audacity to buy Time Warner?

Or even Bear Stearns?  Kmart, Qwest, MCI/Worldcom,  Lucent Technology, Arthur Andersen, all were at one time ‘highly regarded’ companies that lost a huge percent of their value.   That’s a ‘top of head,’ list without considering the Airlines.

There are countless more examples of big companies getting wiped out in a day.  People’s pensions are inevitably the big story.  Middle class families get wiped out because they had all of their ducks in one basket.   Employees sue the company because senior executives didn’t tell them that there were risks inherent in the stock.   The media has their normal pity party.  But the real shame?  Nobody stops to think for a second: no matter how good the company, is it sane to put all of your money in one place?

When I get on someone about blogging (un artfully), the real message was meant to be this: if you only have one widget for getting money, you’re nuts, and you’ll be destroyed someday.   Maybe not soon, but someday.  It might, temporarily, be a most efficient to do what works, and chase a single source of leads.  How was business done 15 years ago?   We didn’t predict the nature of today’s changes.  Blogging is great, and it might last a long time.  But you cant operate with the assumption that it’s going to be here.  That leads to complacency and obsolescence.

To have a healthy business, you have to have many sources of income and leads, so if one of ’em dries up, you’re not on the streets.  Because…no matter how good the widget, no matter how efficient the model, you MUST have several great sources for your business.  It’s a baseline survival requirement for this new market. 

What would happen to you if the top 2 sources of leads dried up in a short time.  Even if ROI Read more

The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). The lender in the story? Brian Brady, America’s #1 Mortgage Broker.

 
The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

We represented a cute couple in the purchase of their first home late last year. That much is not news: First time home-buyers are the bread and butter of the real estate business. What was interesting to me was how internet-focused they were.

The husband, Michael, is an internet adept, but his wife, Danielle, is a true wizard. Her primary interface to the commercial world is the world wide web.

They found me on the internet, of course, and I referred them to a lender that I know through the nets.

Consider this: There are 30,000 Realtors in Phoenix, and at least that many lenders. All of them are advertising at a furious pace — newspapers, real estate magazines, supermarket shopping carts, bus benches, billboards, radio, TV — plus balloons, free pens and scratch pads and coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, flower seeds, recipe cards and Halloween pumpkins.

Real estate professionals spent millions of dollars trying to get Michael and Danielle’s attention, and all of that money was wasted. They are not paying attention to advertising.

To the contrary, if Danielle cannot completely research a product or service on-line, she won’t have anything to do with it. They never once went into the home they were buying without a digital camera. I watched Danielle crane around in impossible contortions so she could read and write down the model and serial numbers from the washer and dryer so she could research them on-line.

Looking forward, nothing changes as fast as we expect it to. But looking backward, the world seems always to be changing like dreams. Danielle is immune to advertising. She recycles her junk mail unread. She doesn’t want to be pitched, she doesn’t want to be sold, she doesn’t want to be wheedled or needled or cajoled. She doesn’t want to be closed on.

All those old school gimmicks still work — on some Read more

Update On New Data Standards for Listing Displays

On April 12th, I posted some “news” from NAR regarding the unanimous approval by RESO (Real Estate Standards Organization) of the draft data standards for listing display.

On Friday, April 11th, NAR announced that the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) had unanimously approved a “draft standardized data format for distributing real estate listing information.”  

A few of you wanted more information, so I contacted NAR’s Technology Center and got the full scoop.

First, the draft is NOT available on-line, at least in a format that non-techies can read.  Here is a link to some really technical stuff for those of you who know what an “enum” is all about (I do not have a clue).

Second, I found out that these standards are a subset of the RETS data.  The RETS Syndication Standards (the official name) includes less than 2 dozen fields (I’ve heard 14) from RETS.  That sounds like a lot of field at first, but once you count up the obvious ones (e.g., agent name, contact, beds, baths, etc.) that is not very many.  Not that I’m second guessing the wizards who came up with this stuff.

Finally, the near riff I reported in the original post was reasonably accurate.  The big aggregators were tired of the slowness and bureaucracy of the process, but after they threatened to create their own standards, the process moved very quickly.  Essentially, they are beta testing now and will make the final decision in August.

So, what does this mean to REALTORS®?  Here’s what Chris McKeever from NAR said in an e-mail:

With the RESO and NAR backing of this Syndication Specification, this could very easily be adopted into MLS systems to allow them to be the clearinghouse for data transfer between all points.  In other words, your single point of listing data entry into the MLS could then also dynamically be sent to every site that you choose, very similiar to how REALTOR.com is fed now.  This, coupled with the growing number of consumer facing MLS search portals(link) could throw a complete paradigm shift into how listings are marketed on the web.

The smarter agent emerging: standards out of experimentation

Choice is becoming more critical as options increasingly expand. I have read about this potential problem for years and now we seem to be well along the road to increasing abundance of options. As real esate agents, we’re inundated with options regarding web sites, social networking avenues, blogs to read, models to consider, marketing techniques to employ and advertising venues to use. It’s the flip side of the blessing, the curse of too many options and the problem of choice.

One of the benefits of sites like Bloodhound is that people are giving consideration to these problems and openly writing about what has been found to be the best practices. Awhile back I talked about an article written years ago predicting how the internet would intially be chaos, then experimentation and selection and winnowing, then a standardization period. I want to give credit to the writer, but I can’t find the source. Perhaps someone will remember.

It seems we are still in the experimentation stage, but as we quickly change and learn, choices will hopefully become easier. There is still a dearth of statistics showing the effectiveness of blogging, social networking and online marketing through website providers, RE sites and social sites but anectdotal evidence and personal experience based on analysis are beginning to give us an indication that these new forms of doing business have much potential for those who are adopting the right methods and utilizing them in a committed way.

I do have evidence in my own company that online business has increased by at least 20-30% each year for the last three years, I just haven’t pinpointed which methods produce what part of that business — perhaps it’s a holistic effect of it all.

Making choices is based on knowledge gained through experimentation, our results and the results of others, developing certain guidelines I can use to measure new offerings. In other words, I’m getting to a point where I don’t have to experiment with every new online offering, wasting money on useless gimmicks — it’s easier to tell now which ones have merit and which ones are just a snazzy remake of something I’ve tried that didn’t work.

I suspect many real Read more

Gen X, Gen Y, And the End Of The Traditional Real Estate Business Model

 Real Estate Radio USA | Gen Y Homebuyers

With the median age of real estate agents being 52 years of age (source NAR), new Realtors hoping to make their mark in the real estate business are casting aside conventional wisdom.

New Real Estate Agents Seeking Gen X And Gen Y Buyers Break From The Mold

New real estate agents, cognizant of the fact that 84% of homebuyers start their home buying journey on the Internet and that the median age of first time home buyers is 32, now realize that what may have worked for the elder-statesmen of the industry is not what their clientele are looking for.

In a demographic wherein 50% of which use social networking websites,the axioms of traditional real estate sales is not viewed as being prudent.

Young agents are now finding that chaperoning prospective buyers from house to house and acting as the veritable liaison between the Buyer and Seller is not generating sales among the Gen X and Gen Y hip and technologically advanced home buyer.

“People, especially my peers, aren’t looking for a ride to the property or a go-between; they want to IM me to find out how big the basement is,” said Lisa Johnson, 33, who works for Coldwell Banker in Haverhill. “They often have more information on the properties than most realtors. They don’t want a new friend; they want answers fast and will make decisions quickly when you provide them. I know this because I’m the same way.” (As reported recently in the Boston Globe.)

It is becoming more and more apparent that a fresh, younger, breed of real estate agent is in great demand in an aging industry struggling to keep pace with a market populated with an emerging younger homebuyer. The dilemma? The real estate industry continues to get older while the industry’s consumer base begins to skew younger.

This widening gap poses a great conundrum for traditional real estate agents.Younger prospective home buyers seek to do their own research, on their own time, and in their own manner. They expect a real estate agent to “chill-out” and just be there when they are ready. They definitely do not want to be involved Read more