There’s always something to howl about.

Month: December 2008 (page 3 of 6)

Joe Strummer: My thoughts on the looming crisis

“Joe Strummer” is the pseudonym of a frequent commenter on BloodhoundBlog. He runs a weblog of his own — under a different pseudonym — and leads a life of joy, contemplation and undisturbed privacy under his real name. But no matter how he is denominated, Strummer is an expert in the Austrian School of Economics, a colloquium of great minds who are, alas, the eternally unheeded Cassandras of the decline of Western Capitalism. In this essay, penned yesterday, Strummer shares with us his reflections upon the burgeoning economic crisis:

 
My thoughts on the looming crisis

by Joe Strummer

This is a graph of the nominal value of the assets that the Fed has “owned” over time. Notice the fairly flat, slightly rising line until September/October of 2008.

Two points about this graph. First, the Fed did not get value for the $1.2 trillion it has purchased in “assets” since October. The $1.2 trillion in nominal value is actually nearly worthless. That’s because these “assets” are the mortgage backed securities backed by now- or soon-to-be-broken promises to pay by individual homeowners.

Second, the Fed has merely pumped about 1.2 trillion of dollars into the market place free. In other words, it has taken nothing out of the economy of value. When the government adds currency – what Jim Cramer calls, dropping wads of cash from helicopters – without getting anything in return, it’s called inflation.

Now, $1.2 trillion in new currency is bad, but not nearly as bad as when the Fed loans money to banks at a .5 interest rate. The Fed simply is printing money for any bank that wants to borrow it at .5 percent. Consequently, banks are now borrowing to 1) cover the losses they incurred to make themselves solvent, and 2) to have cash reserves that they can then use when the economy picks up to lend at future, higher interest rates.

All of this inflation hasn’t hit the real economy because banks are hoarding that money to wait for better borrowers or because borrowers simply are hunkered down right now trying to wait out the storm.

When the economy starts Read more

Mariana Wagner’s custom real estate signs are slicker than a Colorado Springs sidewalk in December

Look at these custom yard signs from Mariana Wagner’s iTeam real estate brokerage in Colorado Springs, Colorado:

Mariana reflects: “Not exactly how yours is set up, as our wind and freezing temps make the hanging sign a disaster, but these rock. (We have installed a 1-800# on the bottom of each sign, as well.)”

I like the white space, especially, a vital design element I too often leave out. And I really like the way that Mariana and her team play with the Keller Williams color scheme without being imprisoned by it.

I’m dying to hear how they sell — the houses and the brokerage.

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Pictures Still Sell

From Constant Contact:

ConnectUp!SM Poll

Do you have an online profile that you keep current on networking sites?
I have one that I don’t actively use 6.54%
I primarily use Facebook 38.69%
I primarily use LinkedIn 38.32%
I primarily use something other than LinkedIn or Facebook 3.74%
I don’t have any 12.71%

Less than 4% of the Constant Contact community polled (a tech-savvy group of entrepreneurs), claimed to use anything other than Facebook or LinkedIn (not limited to but including Twitter).  Twitter’s been around for over three years and while it’s an awesome service, the hoi polloi just ain’t using it.  This means that potential homebuyers aren’t using, what Greg Swann once called “modern-day CB radio”.

I caught hell from my buddy Todd Carpenter for my defection from Twitter to the glamorous world of Facebook.

Nota Bene:  Neither Todd nor I sell houses to the public.

I recognized that while 140 characters is beautiful in its simplicity, all the world loves a winner.  In my opinion, Facebook is, without a doubt, the best social network to brand yourself today.  That’s where alll the customers are….and that’s where soccer moms are headed en masse.

Why is Facebook growing in popularity? I call it Twitter with pictures.  Take note of that last word; pictures.

From my question on LinkedIn:

Which is the most useful tool, on social media, to engage your audience and create offline conversations?  I’m most interested in how you engage the community with an intent to start an offline conversation. (ie- Answers on LinkedIN, Twitter, Status bar on Facebook).   Have conversations, started online, resulted in offline sales/deals.contracts, etc. ? I would consider a weblog a social medium

When asked how many transactions were generated, directly from Twitter or from relationships forged on Twitter, there was silence.  There was talk about the POTENTIAL of Twitter conversations and the wonderful relationships from Tweet-Ups but no transactions (from REALTORs).  Okayfine.

Let’s see what IS working, from the pros who answered the question.  Here’s Teresa Boardman, who says she loves Twitter… BUT… watch what results in money for her:

However I’ll mention Flickr because it isn’t on your list and it has been a great tool for meeting people off line. Conversations start online Read more

Workable real estate deals may require even more creativity

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Workable real estate deals may require even more creativity

I do a lot of work with buy-and-hold rental home investors, more and more of whom are able to come into Phoenix with all-cash offers. Poor me, I know.

But: I’ve been spending a lot of my time, lately, thinking about “triangle-trade” strategies — old-style funding mechanisms that we were happy to forget all about when money was easy.

So picture a buy-and-hold investor with 100% equity who wants the best deal he can get when he sells his former rental home. Why not do a lease-purchase instead of a straight sale? The investor can help his buyers accumulate a down-payment, perhaps working with them to improve their credit score at the same time. The investor gets a higher purchase price, the buyers get a lower monthly payment, everybody wins.

Or how about selling with a contract-for-deed? There are a lot of people out there with great incomes but lousy credit — more every day. If an investor — or ordinary homeowner — is willing to take on the risk of a carrying back a note, the home can sell now, rather than languishing on the market.

Or if the seller isn’t able to carry the whole mortgage, how about carrying back a second loan? If the seller has the equity, and if that will swing the balance with the buyer’s lender, it can make sense.

San Diego Realtor Don Reedy has come up with his own blast from the past: Parents help their kids get into homes by co-signing on the loan and helping with the payments, then share in the equity on resale.

Single people or single parents or childless couples could do the same sort of thing with a larger home: Go in on the home together as tenants-in-common, using their combined income to qualify for the loan, then paying the mortgage and sharing in the equity on a pro-rated basis.

Buyers are not in short supply, nor are homes available for sale. Creativity could make all the difference, going forward, in putting workable deals Read more

Blogger? Hell, No! I’m a Cyber Pro…Just Like You

I’m glad that Greg Swann addressed the whole blogging question.  Today, I’m going to share with you,  the members of the CyberProfessionals group, the genesis of the Bloodhound Blog Unchained University of Online Marketing Event, in Phoenix, on April 28-May 1, 2009.    I also want to tell you about the Bloodhounds and how this rag-tag group of agents and originators transmogrified from a pack of swaggering bloggers into some of the most nimble marketers on the web.

I think it’s important for you to know who we are …

…and why you should listen to what we have to say.

My online marketing game started on LinkedIn, in 2003. I had just moved from Phoenix to San Diego as a National Sales Manager of a start-up mortgage bank.  As start-up was the key word, I had to retain some personal production to pay for the higher cost of living, associated with the SoCal Lifetsyle.  I was invited to LinkedIn by a buddy in the tech field.  With the soon to be enacted “Do-Not-Call Legislation” on the horizon, a platform filled with high earning geeks was a phone-dialing, mortgage originator’s dream.  Rates were under 5.25% and LinkedIn was the “Online Chamber of Commerce” meeting…and I was the only mortgage guy in the room.

I didn’t call it social networking then, I called it prospecting.  You see, I’m a lot like you.  I started my sales life dialing the phone 300 times a day, selling municipal bonds and mortgage-backed securities to widows and dentists.  I moved over to mortgage origination in 1995 and dialed homeowners with FHA loans, selling them savings of “over one hundred dollars a month”.  LinkedIn wasn’t about the conversation to me, it was about the contact. Online media wasn’t some “experience”, it was a chance to get in front of someone and sell them…and it worked…and I was hooked.

Do you remember how you felt when you tried something new and it worked?  It felt amazing, didn’t it?  That was me when I closed my first loan from LinkedIn.  Only two things felt better than that first closing:  the first time I kissed my Read more

Random Thoughts For The New Year

Thought:

The only folks I know who can multitask without dumbing down the results are stay at home moms, God bless ’em. They’re seemingly capable of doing a dozen tasks simultaneously while being asked to kiss the booboo on Suzie’s knee, or laugh at the faces being made by Suzie’s big brother. The rest of the population? Multitasking for them is an ongoing disaster generating mediocre results at best, and shamefully embarrassing results at worst.

Go ahead, tell me you haven’t victimized yourself via multitasking, I dare ya. ‘Course I’m uh, challenged when it comes to doing too many things at once. It’s only been a recent victory — talking on the cell while pacing. Little steps I guess.

For 30 days, consciously eschew multitasking when it comes to your professional life. Focus like a laser beam on the task at hand. Produce the best of which you’re capable. Just 30 days. Try it and you should find out what I did. Everything I did improved in an easily measurable way.

Thought:

My favorite Two and a Half Men episode is ‘Call the Guy’. Because one brother refuses to get a pro to fix the satellite dish, he ends up with several painful injuries. He abhors calling the guy. Of Course, the running joke then becomes, ‘Hey, why didn’t you just call the guy?’

I bring this up because I’ve come close to tossing my cookies more than once after reading or hearing someone talk about their website woes. Seems they do everything themselves, but I’m thinkin’ they didn’t get the memo — they’re not web guys.

Yeah, I know, the proprietor of this site does everything himself. Well duh. If I had his ‘puter programming background I’d consider doing mine myself too. Probably not, but I’d consider it. But since most folks adopting the do-it-yourself approach could study what Greg knows on the subject for a year, and still not know what he’s forgotten, why bother?

Not convinced? Look, I get it if it’s because of the additional cost a pro brings to the party. If that’s the case, it is what Read more

Inman “news” has always been a FUD-driven vendorslut cesspool — that’s not new — but what is it doing to the Web 2.0 ideal?

Can you read this?

It came this morning in a piece of spam from Inman “news.”

Spam — unsolicited commercial email from vendorslut central.

And: Spam with FUD, InmanStyle: “If you can afford to ignore breaking real estate news and emerging technology trends, then Unsubscribe.”

That’s creepy, sleazy, slimy and repugnant — which is to say it’s marketing as someone from Brad Inman’s epoch understands it. Like all the relics Inman “news” tries to shove down our throats, Bran Inman is a dinosaur — a giant, thrashing reptile incapable of discovering his own irrelevance. Holding someone like him to Web 2.0 standards of behavior is like expecting an actual dinosaur to regulate its own body temperature — it’s more than he can ever do.

But remember that Inman “news” is now allegedly run by people from “our” world.

Do you wish to claim that they don’t know what spam is?

Is it your contention that they don’t know what FUD is?

Evil is doing something you know in advance is wrong. Is there anyone who believes they didn’t know that issuing this treacly piece of spam was morally wrong by standards they understood perfectly well, in advance of their acting?

I’ve been telling you this for a long time, but, sadly, we could not have asked for a more telling example:

When exponents of the vendorslut cesspool — Inman, vendors, the NAR — tell us they want to be a part of our world — what they always mean is that they want to suck us into their sewer of lies.

The things we call surprises almost always result from our failure to pay attention to stone obvious manifestations of reality occurring right before our eyes.

My advice, always: Mind what goes into your mind…

A Poke (in the eye) from Facebook

You know, they say it isn’t wise – when you visit the Wizard of Oz – to look too closely behind the curtain.  Might not like what you see.  In Australia we were recently treated to a quick look behind Facebook’s curtain and I have to tell you: the king ain’t wearing any clothes!

Seems a nice young couple had bought a house, got upside down, stopped paying their mortgage and were doing everything they could to avoid the process servers and foreclosure coming their way.  Not altogether different from the unfortunate antics of a great many folks over in our neck of the woods.  I doubt many of us condone their behavior, but I find it difficult to root for the mortgage company either.  Sort of like watching a tether ball game between your ex-wife and her attorney: I don’t really care who wins just so long as both sides take one or two in the kisser.  Aaaaanyway, the mortgage company finally won the game.  Want to know how?  They looked this couple up and served them legal documents on Facebook!  (Read the full story here.)

Better yet, the local Supreme Court in Australia ruled that this was an acceptable use of the social networking platform.  Are you surprised?  Shocked?  Maybe even a little outraged?  I should say so.  I’ll bet Facebook was none too happy either.  Imagine the chilling affect this development may have on their social network site.  Let’s listen in:

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt praised the ruling.

“We’re pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication,” he said.

“The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people’s lives,” Schnitt added.  The company said it believed this was the first time it has been used to serve a foreclosure notice.

I can only guess at the pride they’ll feel when the first paternity suit is served.  Are you kidding me?  I read this and the first thing I did was look up hubris in the dictionary, just to make sure I was using that word correctly in Read more

Making a Scenius scene to make an impact on your target market

Lender Bob says, “Hey, I’m a lender. I want to get Realtors to notice me. Hell, I want to get in front of them so often they can’t forget me. What can I do?”

Realtor Beth chimes in with, “He’s got the right idea. I’m a Realtor. I’ve got a blog and all, but I don’t feel like I’m talking to the people in my farm. How can I get my name and my ideas in front of them ever day?”

Vendor Bill adds, “I’ve got things once worse. I need to sell marketing ideas to Beth and Bob, both, but how can I break through the clutter?”

These are problems that can be solved by Scenius scenes. With the right scene, you can aggregate content and share it with people you want to do business with.

Watch:

Lender Bob can link to financial news and stories on factors that influence interest rates. He can make this scene available to Realtors in his market, who will have Bob’s free content available to share with their own readers. Florida Lender Kevin Sandridge is getting ready to do just this in his market.

Realtor Beth can link to local news stories and then echo that content to other weblogs in her market area. I’m doing this with Phoenix Area Headlines, but Beth could do other things as well. For example, she could do a “best of local blogs” scene to spread the link love around. Or, like Chicago Realtor Thomas Hall, she could do a scene on green real estate.

Vendor Bill has the easiest job of all, if he learns to think Scenius: He doesn’t need to cut through the clutter, he needs to slice it and dice it and serve it up in his own scene. I’m playing with this idea with Switched-On Marketing.

There’s more. Eric Blackwell is using a scene as a way of getting his 100+ agents to get on-board the social media marketing train. Cheryl Johnson and I are both using Scenius scenes to manage our listings on-line — but that’s an advanced-class topic.

The point of this: If you’re in the business of self-promotion, we’ve Read more

“Ben Bernanke Is Now One Of Us” Booyah !

I demand that you refinance your home in three months and buy a bank stock“- Jim Cramer

Cheerleader Jim Cramer is now certifiably confident that housing will bottom in 2009 and the economy is saved because of the Fed’s recent action.

Cramer was, of course, ecstatic. This is exactly what he’s been calling for since his infamous “They know nothing!” rant on Aug. 3, 2007. The Fed’s move was so bold that he’s confident that his housing-bottom prediction for the third quarter of next year is virtually guaranteed. And the willingness with which the Bernanke seems ready to throw money at the problem – any amount of money necessary – has opened the door for the lending and borrowing that is so essential to a properly-functioning market and economy. Banks will open their coffers. Mortgage money will be available

Cramer finishes his monologue with the statement, “It’s raining Benjamins from the sky“.  That’s not inflationary, is it?

Check it out.

PS:  I”ve taken over 20 appplications, in the past three days, for refinance transactions; maybe 6-8 can fund.  If the FHFA and Bernanke abolish appraisals for rate/term refinance transactions, which seems like the next step, Bernanke will truly be “one of us”.

I”m not saying nuttin’ other than “operators are standing by

The Fed Translated…..

Release Date: December 16, 2008

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to establish a target range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent.

What’s up with the “range” of rates?   Well, they’d look pretty foolish if they said they wanted the rate to be at .25% and the market was already trading fed funds futures at .14% as of this morning.   Calling the rate at .25% would be sort of like predicting yesterday’s weather.

Since the Committee’s last meeting, labor market conditions have deteriorated, and the available data indicate that consumer spending, business investment, and industrial production have declined. No arguments there. Financial markets remain quite strained and credit conditions tight. I’m not sure that a lot of people are as aware of the strain on the financial markets as they should be. Overall, the outlook for economic activity has weakened further. Enough said there….

Meanwhile, inflationary pressures have diminished appreciably. Saying that inflationary pressures have diminished is being modest.   Inflation is dead for now. In light of the declines in the prices of energy and other commodities and the weaker prospects for economic activity, the Committee expects inflation to moderate further in coming quarters. For inflation to moderate any further, deflation will become a huge issue. Let me rephrase that, in light of the Consumer Price Index report this morning, it’s pretty apparent that deflation is an issue.

The Federal Reserve will employ all available tools (available tools oh and since we’re running out of ammo in our normal tools, we’re going to come up with some new ones.   We hope that they work and we hope that they persuade people to start spending and borrowing money again) to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability. Price stability – yeah, we are kind of concerned about that deflation thing and we’re afraid that all of the money we are printing is going to have a very negative effect on the value of the dollar and the value of our stock market investments, but we’ll worry about that some other time. In particular, the Read more

What matters more — Attitude or Aptitude? I had always put my money on Application, but I realized the best bet is all three

I edited 1,407 files in 1,407 folders on Friday. Not by hand, mind you. That would have been a tedious and error-prone path to an inevitable suicide for someone like me. No, I built a spider to do the job, and it took a surprisingly long time to run — almost four minutes.

But I wanted to put the Phoenix Area Headlines Scenius scene into every engenu web page we’ve built so far, and that entailed editing 1,407 files in 1,407 folders — dispersed among thousands of folders in dozens of domains all over our file server.

I didn’t really edit them, of course. Software doesn’t work that way. I sucked the files to be altered into memory, concatenated my new code on at the end, killed the original file and then wrote down my new version under the same name. I built the engenu file architecture anticipating that I might want to do things like this.

And that kind of thing makes me a hard sell on the idea of Attitude with a capital A. I definitely believe in working from a positive frame of mind toward positive goals — all based firmly in reason and logic. But it doesn’t matter how many times you say, “I can do it!” — if you don’t actually know how to edit 1,407 files in four minutes. Attitude is nothing without Aptitude.

But Aptitude is nothing without Application. We are all of us buried up to our necks in work we could be doing, and our success at digging ourselves out is entirely a function of how we apply ourselves.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” For most of my life, I’ve regarded that as being the essence of human character. But there is an interesting question about those 1,407 engenu pages: Where did they come from?

Each one of those engenu folders represents a web page, and many of them are grouped together into web sites. A single-property web site might consist of 20 or more engenu folders. An extensive home search could run to 60 or more folders — 60 or more web pages linked Read more

More on Detriot: “Change” is a four letter word, too.

Right before I read Thomas Hall’s earlier post about his experience in Detroit, a friend sent me the ad below.

(Really interesting post, btw, Thomas.)

Considering the situation they are in now, its too bad the Big Three didn’t lose the white collar dinosaurs along with blue collar dinosaur in Thomas’s post. Maybe they would have built cars other than SUVs that Americans would buy and at least have a plan in place for $4/gallon gas.

(Side note: Now that we are down to $1.70/gallon, how much do you want to bet Hummer sales rebound?)

The deathless prose of the Bloodhounds: Against advice of broker

This is a form I wrote for a house that Cathleen may or may not have in play. The details have been fictionalized, but the underlying situation — a house trashed so badly that it becomes a menace to safety — will probably only become more common.

Caveat lector: I am an Arizona real estate broker, empowered by our state’s constitution to prepare documents incident to the transfer of real property. Your local laws will be different.

BUYER IS PURCHASING REAL PROPERTY AGAINST ADVICE OF BUYER’S BROKER

Buyer’s Broker herewith explicitly advises Buyer against the purchase of 123 Mulberry Street, Hadleysburg, AZ.

1. Buyer is aware that property has been looted by a previous owner, tenant, burglar, interloper or tenant-at-sufferance.

2. Buyer is aware that all kitchen appliances, fixtures, counters, cabinets, shelving and appurtenant items have been removed from the property.

3. Buyer is aware that the truss-mounted air-handler has been removed from the property.

4. Buyer is aware that the extent of any additional looting is undetermined and is substantially indeterminable.

5. Buyer is aware that attempts to repair or refurbish this property could result in further damage to the property and/or injury or loss of life to Buyer or Buyer’s contractors or employees.

6. Buyer is aware that repairing or refurbishing a property in this condition is a task that should be undertaken only by experienced building contractors.

7. Buyer is aware that additional damages resulting from attempts to repair or refurbish this property could destroy any or all residual marketable value in the property, with such loss in value being Buyer’s sole responsibility and liability.

8. Buyer is aware that injuries or deaths resulting from attempts to repair or refurbish this property could be construed by courts or insurance companies to be Buyer’s sole responsibility and liability.

9. Buyer is aware that many other residential properties, substantially in turn-key condition, are available nearby at reasonable prices.

10. Buyer has been advised numerous times of Buyer’s Broker objections to this purchase.

ERGO, BUYER ACKNOWLEDGES BY HIS SIGNATURE HEREUNDER THAT BUYER IS PROCEEDING WITH THIS PURCHASE AGAINST THE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE AND JUDGMENT OF BUYER’S BROKER, EXPRESSED REPEATEDLY AND STRENUOUSLY.

Buyer agrees to release, indemnify and hold harmless Buyer’s Broker for any and all losses, Read more