There’s always something to howl about.

Month: February 2009 (page 2 of 5)

LeadStreet Beeflaboration…

In my post yesterday I mentioned

“how badly the super well intentioned but grossly unusable “Lead Street” back-end has been ignored over the past few years…”

RE/MAX hasn’t responded to the post  but a few guys from Eneighborhoods took the time to ask me for some elaboration on my beefs with LeadStreet. It was really cool of them to reach out, and I was going to email them back privately, but  figured it’d be nice to post a response here since some other RE/MAX folks might like to include items I’m missing from the list below. (Plus, I think this may help continue the intention Greg’s recent CRM posts.)

A Starter LeadStreet Wish List:

  • Gimme Firefox! Come on guys, really? Internet Exploder only?
  • The Activity Plan and Drip Email Campaign features are actually pretty solid functionally, but if they’re hard for me to access and figure out, you’ll likely never get most agents to adopt. And it seems that creating campaigns and activity series still need to be controlled from the broker level?  Why not give agents the power to customize these features so they can stop paying vendors like Top Producer and Rainmaker for their services?  Plus it’d be great if Drip Email and Activity Plans could all be created under one template like in Heap.
  • Where’s the pop/imap email? Yep I said it. GTD Gimme one container for everything!  I wanna be able to check my pop/imap gmail from directly within an email client provided by my IDXCRM suite.  And when I open my email, I want to be able to turn the sender into a contact and/or log the interaction in the sender’s contact record. (Oprius and a host of others (even TP) do this well if you’d like inspiration..)
  • Need Web Forms:  A lot of us are nichy bloggers who like to generate targeted lead capture articles and pages on the fly. Why not allow us create customizable web forms that feed our LeadStreet database. And while you’re at it, please make sure that when the database is fed, we can set the forms to trigger activity plan or drip email Read more

The Butcher, The Banker, The Candlestickmaker

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but to think that it’s deja vu all over again.  Is it really 1980 again?   Congress appears to have stolen a page from the Conservative’s play book – but with a twist.

It seems trickle-down economics applies as much to government spending as do tax cuts to the rich, yet with the latest infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the most powerful corporations – America’s largest banks and insurance companies, we have yet to see much of a trickle – less a drop.

TARP did in fact keep the economy dry.

Perhaps the irony of it all – to me at least –  is that the so-called “Socialists” also see virtue in starting at the top – fork over billions to the most powerful to get the engine running again – the proof is not quite in the pudding pie, Georgie.

From my perspective, the deluge is starting at the bottom.  My email has been flooded with comments from my condo association regarding the complications my neighbors are facing in the sale of their condo.  Economic circumstances are hitting very close to home – my neighbors, one of whom is a fellow Realtor – directly below me in my building – is in dire need of selling their home.  Our association has a first right of refusal clause which deems FHA financing impossible.  My neighbor has been soliciting the board and fellow owners that an amendment in our bylaws is required to make the sale of their home possible to more buyers.

I was amazed at some of the comments from fellow neighbors concerned about the “quality” of potential buyers who only qualify for 3.5% down – I could only chuckle thinking that some existing owners were able to buy with 0% down 3 years ago.  Where’s there equity now?

One neighbor argued that we want to prevent a short sale – moreover a foreclosure – from impacting the values of existing homeowners.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t read The Chicago Tribune on Sunday – there was an article about the substantial increase of foreclosures Read more

The participatory internet is a singularity, not a trend

Referring back to the Boojum under the bed, this is me in email to a Realtor Association executive:

Not to be flip, but I don’t want any group of any sort to do anything at all with social media. The first totally disintermediated business in the history of business is communication. Social media will not work for groups because there are no groups — only individuals. If you approach Web 2.0 as a new way of doing the same old things, you will miss out on everything that is amazing and wonderful and liberating about our world.

This is not a trend. This is a singularity. The old models no longer apply.

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Podcast: Wrapping your mind around dynamic web pages

This is the third and final installment from my conversation Saturday night with Scott Cowan.

In the podcast linked here, Scott and I talk about using PHP to create dynamic web pages.

Why would you want to do this? Mainly you wouldn’t. But working with PHP and a data set, you can manage you ignorance in such a way that you make some pretty smart web pages.

For reference, you might work with the BloodhoundBlog posts headed “Speaking in tongues.”

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Taking little teeny steps toward single-property web sites on little teeny mobile web browsers on little teeny mobile phones

Little Teeny Eyes by Tom Digby

Oh we got a new computer but it’s quite a disappointment
‘Cause it always gave this same insane advice:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So we re-read the instruction book that came with the computer
But it kept on printing crazy stuff that reads
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY SHOES FOR CENTIPEDES.”

So we got an expert genius and he rewrote all the programs
But we always got results that looked like these:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY LICENSE PLATES FOR BEES.”

Then we tested each resistor, every diode and transistor,
But our electronic brain just raves and rants:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE BRANDING IRONS FOR BRANDING ANTS.”

Now we’re looking for a buyer for a crazy mad computer
That will only give out crazy mad advice
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So I got spammed yesterday for yet another piece of vendorslut crap. TextMyMLS.com will send a SMS text message containing details about your listing to a mobile phone-using prospect who requests information from you. The text message can also include photos if the prospect’s phone supports them.

What do the text messages look like. Look up and you will see a demo screen, as seen on my iPhone. That’s 100% to scale, y’all, and, no, you’re not getting old. These message might look good on other devices, but on the iPhone they’re useless.

There’s more, of course. TextMyMLS.com is a stealth lead-capture system. When the prospect “texts” for more information, the TextMyMLS system pages the Realtor with the prospects phone number — which is transmitted without the prospect’s knowledge or consent. In addition to the text about the home, possibly unreadable, the prospect also gets spammed with information about the Realtor. And then, of course, the poor punter is stuck having to fend off sales calls for the next 90 days — Read more

Tweet Us Better Mr. Liniger! — When In The World Is RE/MAX International?

Woe is me. I’m feeling rejected, ignored, and well, sorta “LOST.” Where and “When” the heck In the World  is RE/MAX International?….

Denver?

1977?

Here’s the thing. I’ve controlled “Twitter.Com/remax” for over a year now and I still haven’t received one email from somebody at International asking me to forfeit the identity. I expected they’d shut me down due to a corporate policy that stipulates I’m not allowed to use the RE/MAX name online.

I remember that when I grabbed the handle on a lark I was thinking, “well with the popularity of this Twitter thing (whatever it is) I’m sure mother RE/MAX will be in touch soon to snag or perhaps even buy it away by grandfathering me in as a 100 percenter or something”.  Wishful thinking. Nothing happened and I forgot I even owned the identity.

So when I recently noticed I’d been picking up “followers” out of the blue, I decided to lob a few tweets as an experiment of sorts to see what the reaction might be.  I posted mostly recruiting and company website plugs for the RE/MAX I’m currently at, and picked up 70 or so more followers over the span of a few weeks.  But still, no response from the Big Balloon.

The only thanks I got for my effort was my new broker calling a few weeks ago to ask why I had porn on the site.  I guess I’d accidentally followed or reciprocated on a follow request from a Philly area escort service, and a colleague of ours pointed it out to him. I apologized and zapped the pretty lady off of the profile, and that was that.  (At least I think…)

Anyway, I don’t know why, but this Twitter.com/remax thing has really been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. Isn’t Twitter a big enough deal that someone at RE/MAX, maybe even one of my recent RE/MAX colleague followers would have dimed me out to the appropriate department in Denver?  I mean, I think I sorta deserve something for my efforts. Maybe at least rebuke from International for using the corporate name in vain?

You see, I  want Read more

Adding a new hound to the pound: Introducing Ryan Hartman

Ryan Hartman has been a fun and fascinating voice in our comments for a long time. My error was that I was too stupid to invite him to join us as a contributor. I corrected this defect yesterday, and Ryan joins us today.

His biographical sketch is simply incomparable, so I will quote it in its entirety:

Ryan dropped out of a Philly college and started selling real estate at age 19 in 1998.  He invested pretty much all of the GCI he earned in his early 20’s on beer, mushrooms, and florida. Then a wife and some kids showed up, so he figured out a way to “settle down” by replacing  7 day Realtor work weeks with lead-generation/blogging/tech-type gigs at a few local RE/MAX offices.

The man is wicked smart and a very fun read. We’re lucky to have him among us.

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Podcast: Building your own custom engenu skins

This is the second installment from my conversation Saturday night with Scott Cowan.

In the podcast linked below, we discuss the procedure to be followed in order to build your own custom engenu skin.

What’s a “skin”? It’s simply the visual theme for a particular engenu installation. If you work with the default engenu skin, your sites will look like this one. But here is that same site on our weblog devoted to historic and architecturally distinctive Phoenix homes. And here it is on our main Phoenix real estate web site. The same HTML code is used at each site. The difference in the way the pages appear is inherited from the skin.

In the course of the discussion, I reference a BloodhoundBlog post on page geometry. It might be worth you while revisiting that page during the podcast.

If we get very lucky, Cheryl Johnson will listen to this podcast and translate it into more-helpful instructions.

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As the NAR makes its first forays into the participatory internet, wired Realtors must get a handle on a very difficult question: How do you get rid of the Boojum under the bed?

Okay, so the National Association of Realtors has made a big deal out of its search for a “Social Media Director.” Apparently I’m the only person who finds the terms “social media” and “director” to be inherently self-contradictory, but that doesn’t matter anyway.

Why? Because the NAR is interested in social media for two reasons only, neither of which will resonate with anyone in our world.

Their two objectives are these:

First — and primarily — they want to clamp down on and control everything associated with real estate in the participatory internet. Dinosaur organizations are censorious by their nature, but the NAR is very much like the Mafia in its need to control its message, silencing dissenters and whistle-blowers.

Second, the NAR wants to turn the Web 2.0 world into yet another distribution channel for treacly, sleazy sales propaganda.

I never thought of Pinocchio as a wise-guy before, but it comes to the same thing. You can’t get too near The Boys without becoming one of them, and if you lend any part of your credibility — your reputation for moral probity — to the NAR, it will turn you into yet another insipid, perpetually-smiling marionette. Dance, puppet, dance!

I think this might be a three princes fable. If it is, the first prince may well be Todd Carpenter, who for some insane reason actually wants this job. At least he had better want it, because he gave me as a character reference and I gave him a glowing review. If the NAR actually understands its world and ours, my recommendation should have worked the other way for Todd. But my impression was that they ate it up.

Prince number two is NAR CEO Dale Stinton, who has announced that the new Social Media Director has already been chosen, but who won’t reveal who is the poor benighted soul who will get to be torn to shreds by both the lady and the tiger, never knowing for sure which is which.

I don’t actually know who the third prince is, but for the moment I’m betting on me. I abhor the whole idea of leadership, but serving as Read more

Podcast: Installing engenu on multiple domains

Linked below is a recording of a conversation Scott Cowan and I had last night about installing engenu on multiple domains.

Cliff’s Notes: Each domain needs its own copies of the engenu folder and the engenuComponents folder, including a separate copy of engenupageDex.bin. The advantage is that each different domain can have its own unique appearance, and each domain can have a separate password, so you can limit how much of your world you share with colleagues.

We also talked last night about how to build an engenu skin from a standing CSS style. I’ll upload that podcast tomorrow.

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Changing Your Own Hi-Tech Oil — Who Cares? — Is There A Skinned Cat Or Not?

Greg’s post earlier today prompted me to respond via post rather than comment. He made some superb points, and one or two for which we’ll have to agree to disagree. He quoted me from my earlier post:

If you honestly believe your income is higher with you spending time changing your own hi-tech oil, then continue along that path — it’s obviously working for you. On the other hand, if you think putting yourself in front of 50 more serious prospects a year might be more productive for your bottom line, AND that would make you happy, you may want to modify your approach.

He said it was a false dichotomy.

It’s not a false dichotomy at all. We disagree on the basic satanic nature of vendors as a species. My car for example is easily more complex than most, and I don’t have a clue how to service it, including changing its oil. (Though I’ve changed oil on many of my previous cars.) I simply found the right guys to call. They service it while I drive one of their cars. I don’t have much down time. The same vendor has been servicing the car since summer of ’04 with spectacular results, and at a very fair price.

His second point is well taken, and we don’t disagree. As my post indicated, I’m a hi-tech marketing Kool-Aid drinker. Anything producing six figures annually has my full enthusiastic endorsement. But I compare it to the concept car. It’s cool, but it ain’t here yet, at least to the degree Greg and others predict. It’s not that I don’t think he’s correct, I do. It’s that it’s not producing the volume now that it surely will in the future.

Meanwhile, as Chris said so well in his comment, I’m using what works. And all debate aside, I’ll get belly2belly with more folks/year and do more deals 1.0 than most 2.0 practitioners do in three years. Are there some exceptions out there? Of course, there always are. Good on ’em because they’re demonstrating what’s possible. But current reality shows bottom lines aren’t being impacted in a Read more

In the world of internet marketing, Realtors and lenders have to know how to solve their own on-line marketing problems

Cathleen encouraged me to take exception to Jeff Brown’s most recent post, and, by the time I was done, I had a whole new post.

Quoting from Jeff:

If you honestly believe your income is higher with you spending time changing your own hi-tech oil, then continue along that path — it’s obviously working for you. On the other hand, if you think putting yourself in front of 50 more serious prospects a year might be more productive for your bottom line, AND that would make you happy, you may want to modify your approach.

This is a false dichotomy.

First, you do not have to change your own oil, so to speak, but if you don’t know how to change your own oil, you are at the mercy of every money-hungry automobile service writer on the planet.

Second, assiduous hi-tech marketing, going forward, is the best path to belly-to-belly appointments. This could our best year ever in volume of sides (not, alas, volume of dollars), and much of it — and all of the multi-home buyers — came from our web presence. There is room to be impressed by lo-tech success stories, but the two details left out are these: Buyers and sellers are increasingly shopping on-line, and the cost-per-conversion of old-school lo-tech marketing is comparatively very high. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much makes it all the way home.

Third, as should be obvious from everything I talk about, the kinds of chores Realtors and lenders need to keep a fat thumb on are those that would be too costly, too onerous or too error-prone if done by vendors.

As an example: Cathy and I made more than 1,400 engenu pages last year. The end result is work product that was done faster and made a much better impression on our clients than trying to communicate by other means. This stuff knocks the socks off clients, which I consider to be our most important sales function in everything we do. But those pages also put 1,400 new, permanent breadcrumbs on the web, so that other clients can find us in the future. As Read more

Obama’s housing rescue plan won’t rescue housing, but it will delay the eventual recovery of the real estate market

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

 
Obama’s housing rescue plan won’t rescue housing, but it will delay the eventual recovery of the real estate market

President Barrack Obama came to Mesa Wednesday to announce his new housing initiative. The location made for good political theater, given that metropolitan Phoenix is one of the hardest-hit real estate markets.

The president promises millions of refinanced or renegotiated mortgages, at a price tag of $275 billion. The putative beneficiaries are homeowners, who may be able to negotiate their monthly payments down to less than 30% of their monthly incomes. But it is the lenders who will cash in, if the Obama plan works.

How’s that? Obama is hoping to shove a floor under still-declining home prices. Lenders will take a hit on millions of reformulated mortgages, but the hope is that this will save them even more money, in the long run, by stemming the rising tide of foreclosures.

In other words, the Obama plan is a price-support scheme. The market argues right now that homes are overpriced — which in turn suggests that the available supply of homes substantially exceeds existing demand.

That’s important. Prices for premium-quality homes are very low, and interest rates are still hovering at historic lows. Mortgage money is easily available to owner-occupants, and Fannie Mae just loosened its standards for rental-home investors. Even so, the number of homes being offered for sale at current prices still exceeds the number of buyers willing to pay those prices.

In reality, prices need to continue to drop until demand matches or eclipses supply. It wouldn’t hurt to convert some housing to other uses, or simply to tear it down altogether.

But forcing an arbitrary floor under prices is unlikely to have happy consequences. Despite his rhetoric, Obama’s plan can only reward our economy’s wasteful grasshoppers, at the expense of its thrifty ants. A price-support will serve to delay recovery, since it will do nothing to solve the supply and demand problem. And, as the worst of all foreseeable consequences, a price-support plus the $8,000 tax credit from last week’s stimulus bill could Read more

What’s the best way to deliver the Heap-specific universal contact form? With a Heap-specific form, of course.

I’m not too dumb, I’m sure. Just dumb enough. When I released the Heap-specific version of the universal contact form, for some reason it didn’t occur to me that I could build a version of the form to deliver the product.

This omission I do hereby correct:

If you want a copy of the Heap-specific universal contact form — guess what? Fill out the form:

< ?PHP $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/SendTheFormForm.php"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); ?>

It’s a pure geek thrill, but everything that happens after this is automated via Heap, untouched by human hands…

But I am always a sucker for the implications of my epiphanies, howevermuch they might be delayed.

So: This kind of thing would be ideal for that “Send for our free Relocation Guide” appeal.

Brian: Sign up for our free on-line webinar and find your way into our database funnel. And after the event, as the first of many, many touches, we’ll send you a free link to an iPod-ready version of the webinar so you can review the material while you work out.

By linking a PayPal button with a smart email client, I’m thinking you’ve got a hands-free on-line business using Heap. You can bet I’ll be playing with all of Unchained’s PayPal buttons.

I know there are walls we’re going to run into with Heap. Some we’ll surmount by being clever, but others are going to require growth in the feature set of the product. But I like the games I’m able to play so far.