There’s always something to howl about.

Month: February 2009 (page 1 of 5)

The federal government’s housing casino will never play fair as long as there are votes to be bought by cheating

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). Since I wrote this on Tuesday, events have overtaken some details, but it remains that few if any borrowers in the Phoenix area will be able to renegotiate or modify their loans under the Obama plan. Everyone who used to have home equity will still get to bear their losses unassisted, however.

 
The federal government’s housing casino will never play fair as long as there are votes to be bought by cheating

To qualify for a renegotiated mortgage under the plan President Obama announced last week, your new loan can be as much as 105% of your old loan — which sounds to me like curing alcoholism with a good stiff drink.

But the people who are in the worst trouble on their loans bought with 100% financing. Even if there had been no decline in values, they probably could not refinance at 105%, not without bringing cash to cover the closing costs.

But, of course, the typical home in the West Valley is down 50% from its peak value in December of 2005.

Suppose you bought a new home for Christmas 2005, paying $275,000. If you get everything just right, you might be able to sell it today for $135,000. You still owe $275,000, but you can refinance your note at only $141,750 under the Obama plan.

Something’s going to have to give.

But what about the people who were move-up buyers in 2005? They may have put 50% down, which means they’ve lost all their equity, but they probably can’t lay claim on a hardship refinancing. What about the people who paid all-cash? Now we’re talking about people who have actually lost real money — their own money.

Meanwhile, many of the people who end up qualifying for restructuring could easily continue to pay on their notes. We all of us pay on our car loans, even though a car loses half its value when you drive it off the lot.

But we don’t think of our cars, clothing, furniture or appliances as investments. By mucking around in the real estate market, the federal government Read more

Dual Agency Debated Outside of the Echo Chamber

Google News plopped a link to a Blog post on SFGate.com (The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site) about dual agency in front of me today.

It’s always interesting to see a discussion about what Greg calls “…the insane way we compensate buyer’s agents in the residential real estate market” in the MSM, even if the arc of the dialog is predictable (“Agents are whores and criminals!”, “No we’re not”, “The traditional Real Estate model is dead!”, “No it isn’t!”, ad nauseum)

Discussions in the Real Estate blogosphere on this topic have a certain navel-gazing quality to them. That is not the case when regular people, many of whom have been involved in a recent transaction have their say. My favorite comment from the thread:

No conflict here. Just get the highest price for a seller and the lowest for the buyer at the same time. This is great!

The way the Realtors, some of whom identify themselves and some of whom just embarrass themselves by shilling for the status quo in such an obvious manner that their identity is transparent, jump all over these discussions just adds fuel to the fire.

The Realtors doth protest too much, methinks.

How does a success like REBarCamp avoid the shoe pinch of growing pains?

Rob Hahn is at it again. He likes to instigate, but since he’s so charming, I fall for it. However, unlike our Fred v Gene cage fight, this time I’m serious.

Rob thinks a clearinghouse for national sponsorships for Real Estate Bar Camps is a fine idea, and suggests BHG, or Trulia could step up to the plate.

I don’t think it should become the organizer, or start putting rules and such into place (except the obvious unavoidable ones, like “don’t run off with the money”). But it would be helpful for those of us interested in sponsoring REBC’s.

I vote eek.

I like the idea of BarCamp- loose, free, perfect fit for my brain. And I like that it’s organized by passionate people. I have years of volunteer experience under my belt- big, national organizations, and little local organizations. I can appreciate and respect the time and talent that goes into creating a successful event. My concern with Rob’s suggestion is the fact that sponsors do get preferential treatment. Often this type of arrangement is benign, as in local businesses contribute $20.00 worth of coupons to help fill out a PTO raffle, but we are not talking about that. Although, as an aside, if REBC organizers are not looking at the local businesses- local inspectors, local lenders, local photographers as participants (and maybe they do?) then they might be missing some extraordinary partnering possibilities. Looking at the REBarCamp/Seattle site, it’s all national sponsors. Getting local companies involved would truly be in the BarCamp philosophy, wouldn’t it?

Back to the point. Here’s the thing: Corporations don’t give to organizations, or un-organizations, out of the kindness of their hearts. They just don’t. They give because they expect something in return. Always. Their name here or there, their “presentation”, their branded junk, their “let us help you use our product” panel. BarCamps are free flowing and loose, the sponsor is twittering away with us, and golly darn-it, they are super nice! They bought us drinks at that other wingding- don’t you remember? What can it hurt if they become the go-to guys?

It hurts because you can’t speak out Read more

Do Loan Originators “See” The Opportunity?

If you thought REALTORs were behind the learning curve in Web 2.0, you should see the lenders

If you’re a loan originator, reading this article, congratulations.  There are some 300,000 working loan originators today and I’m guessing that about 1% of us are actively using social media.  Certainly, the REALTORs are way ahead of us but even they have room for growth.  If the participatory web is the future of commercial communication, this gives loan originators a tremendous opportunity to “stop buying donuts” and start teaching the close to 900,000 real estate agents, who don’t get it, how to succeed.

Remember when you started in the business?  The most successful loan originator told you to “beat the streets and talk to agents”.  Today, beating the streets requires nimble fingers rather than worn-out shoe leather because…

YOU CAN BRING VALUE TO THE AGENTS FROM YOUR COMPUTER

Here’s the idea; teach the unwired agents how to get connected.  They’ll love you for it.  In the past four months, I’ve:

If I market to 100 real estate agents, consistently, I close 100 purchase loans annually.  In California, that’s a pretty good living (even after I pay out my team members).  See where I’m going with this?

TEACH THE UNWIRED AGENTS HOW TO GET CONNECTED– They’ll love you for it.

What’s the matter?  You don’t feel confident enough to instruct the unwired agents about how to use social media?  Forget the folks here; they get it.  Certainly you’ll want to establish and nourish relationships here but the REAL opportunity lies in the other 90%- the unwired agents.  You already know more than they do…BUT…

I’ll tell you how to learn even MORE so that you’re potent; an expert of sorts.

Come to the BloodhoundBlog Unchained University of Online Marketing, in Phoenix, at the end of April:

Who should come to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix? If it’s part of your job Read more

The Twitter Experiment: SWRake Seeks Companion for Possible LTR

Alright.  I talked about posting my results on this post.

Today’s pay pal of $575.00 allowed me to cross the finish line, early.   I have blogs to build, SEO to SEO, copy to write, PHP to PHP and more work than I can possibly do.  And way more than that, to channel Yogi.   Lawyers, a local News Station…Realtors®…and others have contracted with me to do everything from setting up social networking profiles (boring), to trying to aggregate information on their competitors (fun).  I have a pile of work to do.  From Twitter.  It’s an efficient clearing house when you’re ready to pick up the phone and be a catalyst and when you see phrases and words you dig at http://search.twitter.com.

I’m not highly skilled as a cold caller compared to many.   But I make the calls.  That’s most of it.  And, I had one shitty response.  Only one.  But I pick up the phone, I say I’m enjoying your tweets.  And, I now have money to pay 2008’s extortion taxes.   I’ll probably have $14,000 after I pay my subs out. There’s money in twitter.  Just lying around.   If  I’m a mortgage lender, EVERY Realtor® would get a phone call in EVERY state I could lend in.  Why?  Because being ON twitter is instant credibility & rapport.

I didn’t spend hours doing this, really.   I spent probably about 70-75 minutes a day initially calling, and then I did follow up, scheduled through ACT 6.0 now that I have my PC working on my MAC.   (Act 6.0 was the pinnacle of single user CRMs) .  I also asked the Twitterers for referrals that WEREN’T on Twitter.  That was $8,000 of my $25,150.    I have probably another $4,000-8,000 in business I could extract if I’d follow up with zeal and vigor.

And there’s the rub.   See, I need someone to manage and do the work.  I’ve sold it, gotten project requirements, I’ve found people with real needs to be helped.   And I’m looking for someone to help grind out the work so I can honor my clients, and keep the pace up.  I want someone that Read more

We know sheep will follow a Judas goat to their slaughter, as will cattle. Now the NAR is testing the idea on lemmings…

Todd Carpenter becomes one with the Borg and the charming little lemmings elbow each other out of the way to dive off the cliff head first.

One of two things will happen: Todd will discover he’s made a terrible mistake and will quit this job with dispatch — I hope very loudly. Or: Todd will deliver us to our slaughter.

Anyone who expects anything other than evil from the National Association of Realtors has either not been paying attention, or, much worse, embraces that evil.

In any case, this is not something to be celebrated, not even to affect to be “nice” in chorus with the rest of the lemmings.

The NAR may want to infest our world in order to destroy it. More likely, they want to take it over.

What they certainly do not want is to approach the public as we do — openly, authentically, concealing nothing. The entire edifice of residential real estate is founded on secrets and lies, and, as long as it is, the NAR will be nothing but a cesspit of tyrannical motives and vendorslut con games.

And — more is the pity — Todd Carpenter cannot take their money without being their shill and their Judas goat — or worse.

I’m saddened by this, because of all the gutless big-name real estate webloggers, Todd has more guts than most. But nothing good for us will come of this, and the only good that can come of it for Todd is for him to escape with his scruples intact as quickly as he can.

engenu Epiphany #1: Folders become pages

When I saw this a few days ago on BHB, I was not sure I could come up with anything “helpful”.

Like most folks, when I first looked at engenu last year, I just didn’t “get” it.  In fact, I didn’t “get”  it until just yesterday when I decided to take on this little challenge.

Understanding the power of engenu requires one fundamental paradigm shift.  And that shift is this:  Folders become pages.

When you build a standard-issue web site, you think in terms of pages. If you are creating a web site for, say,  a listed property, you most likely have a page for the property description, another page talking about the neighborhood, another page for your bio and contact information, etc.

In engenu, folders become pages.

In engenu, you add a folder for a particular topic, instead of creating a page for that topic. And when you process that folder through engenu, that folder becomes a page.  For example, to create a page for your bio information, you start with an empty folder named “about me.”

If the very first page you created in engenu was a slideshow from a folder full of images, that’s great, and engenu does that extremely well, but if that is all you did, you may have missed the necessary paradigm shift.

To experience the paradigm shift, try this instead:

The prerequisites are a). Have engenu installed and working on one of your sites, and b). Have an FTP program and an basic idea of how to use the FTP program.

Start your FTP program, and in the panel for your local computer create a new folder.  Name the folder “About Me”.  That’s it.  Leave it as an empty folder.

Still in the FTP program, connect to your server/host.

Upload the empty folder to your server/host.

Exit the FTP program and go to yoursite.com/engenu.  Click on the name of the folder (About Me) and engenu’s editor will open.  Paste a short bio into the “Body copy” text box.  Click “Save and Continue”  then click “Preview Saved Changes” Read more

“Appliance” is not a verb!

As a purveyor of Real Estate Search Engines that function best when they have text to work with, and as a guy who holds both a journalism degree and the English language in high regard, I often find myself wincing in pain when I read the descriptions that end up on Property Detail pages.

Lately, I have noticed two new “words” creeping into the bastard child of English that is the Real Estate lexicon: “applianced” and “fireplaced”.

Both of these nouns that have been horribly mutated into past-tense verbs are often accompanied by that harbinger of terrible writing, the adverb, as in “fully applianced” and “newly fireplaced”.

What the Hell does “fully applianced”” mean? If the dishwasher has been stolen out of a REO, does that make it “partly applianced”? If a foreclosure still has the pipes in the walls, is it “fully coppered”?

Not to get all Andy Rooney on you, but at a time when people are questioning both the need for and general quality of Real Estate professionals, you aren’t helping yourselves when your most potent marketing tool — the description of a listing you publish on the Web — sounds like it was written as a late homework assignment in the back seat of the short bus on the way to reform school.

Now I know that many people regard grammar books with the same level of enthusiasm normally reserved for a root canal, but there is one grammar book out there that makes the subject as painless as a nitrous-induced laughing fit. It is called The Elements of Style, also known as “Strunk and White” for the two men responsible for the original version.

William Strunk, who was EB White’s English professor at Cornell, wrote the original “little book” in the 1940’s. It was called the “little book” because the grammar part is just 14 pages, and it is written as a series of easy-to-remember commands, like “Omit Needless Words”.

(To which, if I were writing the Real Estate Description Edition, I would add “Don’t make shit up.”)

EB White was asked to update his old professor’s grammar book, and he added a section Read more

Getting Paid to be Motivated

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I love marketing.  I love figuring out a theme and creating the copy and running a campaign.  What I have a lot more difficulty with is prospecting.  The daily grind of converting people who haven’t met me into people who want to elect me mayor.  I read posts by Jeff Brown and Chris Johnson and I get all fired up like when I was a stock broker: 200 calls a day and all the throat lozengers you can swallow.  Then I’ll read something by Greg Swann or Brian Brady and I’m speeding down the 2.0 path toward Social Media Marketing Mecca.  But at the end of the day (actually the beginning of the day for me), I still need to do the basics: phone calls, emails, letters and so on.  I’ve got HEAP running some of that for me and I use Facebook and I’m usually bleeding somewhere from all my efforts to skin cats!  It’s a whole lot to digest on the salary we’re paid… Oh yeah, we’re not paid a salary.  We’ve got to keep all those balls in the air AND wait for the big pay days when an escrow finally does close.  Come on… admit it: sometimes a little daily motivation would help.

Lately, I’ve been monetizing my efforts.  Nothing ground breaking here; just some good old fashioned methods for spicing up the day.  If you’re looking for a little more excitement, give this a try.  (Warning: involves a little bit of math.  If you don’t DO math, or you’re already sufficiently motivated by the repo guy outside the door… skip this post now and save yourself the headache.)

One for the Money
Know your dollar figures.  There are two dollar figures I care about: What is my average Gross Commission Income (GCI) per transaction? and What monthly  income do I expect? (This can be found in the business plan you create and update each year… right?)  I live in San Diego and work with lots of investors, so my expected GCI is $7500 per transaction.  I live in San Diego Read more

Number1Expert – Again? R U Serious?

In May of last year, Eric Bramlett shined the light on an apparent link building scheme that Trulia and Number1Expert had **apparently** **allegedly** been doing, having 3 links to Trulia via a little map widget installed on thousands of unsuspecting REALTORS’ sites created by N1E… Here’s the post that started the fun.

I got the honor of creating the graphic for that post. (read: enjoyed it and would do it again) Despite our efforts to educate REALTORS, many / most of the links remained. Most REALTORS were too busy with their own lives to realize that N1E was using them to help the competition after charging the REALTOR to build their web presence.

Fast forward to this morning. Now it’s my buddy Jon Karlen’s (insert hat tip) turn with the flashlight. He sends me an email, noting that a Florida REALTOR’s site now has a Homes.com map widget instead of Trulia. I do a little digging using the same technique that Eric Bramlett used… and VIOLA!, it appears to me that they have done this to many of the same Number1Expertsites…again. Yes it (Homes.com) is a sister company of N1E. (Dominion…appropriate parent company name, methinks) Yes, they only have 1 link. The rest is the same,no?. Am I missing something here? If you are a N1E customer, you are **likely** **apparently** feeding your competitors…yet again.

(Inlookers: Yes, this is the same Trulia who insisted that they made no changes after dropping in the search engines…and they magically reappeared) TO BE CLEAR: I am NOT saying that this is cause and effect, but the timing? Interesting coincidence. My target here is Number1Expert, but no matter. I could have sworn that Trulia widgets were on those sites up until recently…(I will check).

Note to Number1Expert customers:
Yet again, link love from your site is apparently being used to feed your competitors. The first time “could” have been an accident….now? Ummm…OK…maybe it is an accident too.Your call. I am just here to point out where the links are going…not to draw conclusions as to WHY.

Owning your own web presence also means defending your self against Read more

You get it, right? I mean people are looking for experts. Well for a few dollars more…

Surely this landed in your inbox this morning as well.  Maybe there was something just like it.   But I’m seeing a bright future for the site that aims to “revamp the way we define words in United States.”

Experts in United States offers a “lifetime purchase” with “no hidden fees.” So get in while you still can.

Their mission is hidden in plain sight:

Invitation to People and Businesses in United States

Subject: ExpertsInUnitedStates.com Launch

Good Morning, this is an invitation to share with you an interesting, fun, and modern new site, where you can promote your areas of Expertise in United States.

We believe that we are all experts in something, and now we want to give you the opportunity to purchase the word that defines your expertise.

What we want to do is revamp the way we define words in United States.

So how does Experts in United States work?

Well, ExpertsInUnitedStates lists thousand different words and for the price of one dollar per letter you can associate that specific word with your website or blog.

ExpertsInUnitedStates is interested in different interpretations of words by different individuals, and so the website was created in part to explore and play with the definitions of words.

So to give you an idea, if you are a “Gas Company”, you could be interested in purchasing the word – Diesel – 6 letters – total cost $6.

If you are a Hotel in Chicago, you could be interested in purchasing the word – Hotel – 5 letters – total cost $5.

Once a word has been sold, the word is not available any more, and it is linked forever to your site.

All the purchases are lifetime. No hidden fees.

Confused? Well, the easiest way to understand this unique marketing concept is to visit the site and give it a go… We believe that this fun and practical way to promote your business not only generates extra traffic to your website, but it can also recession-proof your business by promoting it as an expert in your field.

Still confused??  Well, being of altruistic nature, I’ve left the term RealEstate and other related terms up for grabs.  So Read more

The three little pigs and the housing rescue plan, a modern fable

Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and, although they were brothers and looked a lot a like, they could not have been more different.

The first little pig was hard-working and thrifty. He spent very little of his income, saving and investing as much money as he could. He lived with his mother well into adulthood, helping her with her expenses. He finally bought a home of his own when he could afford to pay for it all in cash. As you might expect, the thrifty little pig’s home wasn’t flashy, but it was all his, free and clear.

The second little pig didn’t save very much of his income, but he earned a lot of money as a rising executive, and he had an uncanny luck in the housing market. He bought a condominium on his 18th birthday, then traded up to his first single-family home before he was 21. By the time he was 30, the lucky little pig owned a very stately executive home — and he had been able to make a whopping 50% down-payment.

The third little pig wasn’t very good at working hard, and he had never kept a job long enough to get a raise. He wasn’t at all good at saving money, but he could borrow and spend it better than any little pig anywhere. Like the lucky little pig, he moved away from home early, but he just kept moving — from apartments to friends’ couches to rental homes and then to one girlfriend’s house after another.

If you are a liberal, you may be thinking of the third brother as the unfortunate little pig. If you are a conservative, you will want to call him the lazy little pig — or worse. To keep the peace, let’s just call him the puerile little pig — the little brother who never quite grew up.

The original version of this story was about construction quality as a metaphor for planning ahead, anticipating disasters so they don’t take you by surprise. But the world of real estate has changed a lot since then. The most important Read more

Sorry Europe. Our President Might Just “Cowboy Up”

Bank of America is getting slaughtered by short sellers.  The stock has plummeted to under 10% of its March, 2008 value.  Of course, a few things happened on the way to the slaughterhouse:

  • The bought Countrywide, America’s largest mortgage originator.
  • They bought Merrill Lynch, America’s largest retail securities firm.

Ken Lewis took on a lot of crap on the road to ubiquity.  2009 promises to be more bad news for the financial supermarket as  Countrywide option ARMs and  subprime loans, originated in 2007 by Merrill Lynch unit First Franklin, become wallpaper.

Comrades Obama and Geithner will surely nationalize the Company, to better reflect its name, right?

“Not so fast” says Jason Schwartz of Seeking Alpha.  Just because Obama admitted to sharing his toys in Kindergarten, that doesn’t necessarily make him a died-in-the-wool Marxist.  Schwartz chalks the whole thing up to wishful thinking by our European cousins:

The market is running wild on some hyped up article written in the Financial Times that claims Obama is considering nationalizing the banks. If you actually read the article you’ll notice the anti-American sentiment at the very beginning when they say that ‘nationalization has long been regarded in the U.S. as a folly of Europeans…’ Ok, I get it, Europe has been right all along. Whatever. Obama’s true feelings on nationalization came out in his ABC interview after Geither’s banking speech when he laughed out loud and said, “Sweden had like five banks. We’ve got thousands of banks…managing and overseeing anything of that scale…wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.”

Source documents suggest that Schwartz might be as credible as our resident “tin foil hat” theorist:

Long regarded in the US as a folly of Europeans, nationalisation is gaining rapid acceptance among Washington opinion-formers – and not just with Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman. Perhaps stranger still, many of those talking about nationalising banks are Republicans.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, says that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agree with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.

“Nationalisation” sounds a whole lot more “civilized” than Read more

Quietly going about our business

We go about our business, most of us, very quietly, with an attempt at dignity. One foot in front of the other, moving forward, striving, reaching, yearning to be the best we can be. We want to provide for our families, do right and do well for our clients. We want to put our heads down on our pillows at night, satisfied with the day’s work, and wake up the following morning excited to do it all again.

We don’t, most of us, want to be rock stars in the blogiverse. We want, most of us, to be appreciated for what we can offer, allowed to give freely without grief, and left to go quietly about our business.

I don’t agree with everything written on real estate blogs, and I don’t much like some of it, but the people who read these national blogs, the people I meet at Unchained, and the real estate professionals who email me to share their own triumphs- these people are inspiring. They are just like me, quietly going about our business, picking up information like sponges, moving forward, learning, striving, laughing, loving- just people, just real estate agents (without big hair).

I’m disturbed by the idea of a NAR Social Media Director, when I think about it. But the thing is, I don’t think about it. I don’t care. I don’t wish the new SMD any ill will, I don’t wish them anything at all because it really doesn’t matter to me. By the way, I’m going to call this position The SMeD, just because it makes me giggle.

So The SMeD will have a job to do, but none of it matters to me because I have my job to do, and as Greg points out, “All we have to do is keep doing what we’ve been doing — and keep getting better at it — and the Boojum under the bed will be gone forever.”

I’ve always believed this, and it’s always proved true. Anything that we have given power to, in our own minds, can easily be dethroned, defrocked, destroyed, by doing exactly what we do so Read more