BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: May 2009 (page 3 of 6)

May 18, 2009

Taking A Page Out of Realtor.Com’s Absurd Playbook, Craig’s List Offers FREE Showcase Listing Package!

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I generally don’t get involved in causes. I don’t vote. I try not to step on toes. I truly think doing something trippy drippy nuts absurd is a more productive use of time then taking a real side or a position on anything.

But this MIBOR/NAR deal really has me going. I can no longer summon up that blissful apathy. And I’ve been scheming ways to get involved, to somehow help this situation along, basically getting senselessly fired up over something I can’t control…then came Greg’s last post.

From Greg’s last post

 

If you despise the NAR because it is technologically inept, you’re hating it for the wrong reasons. The right reason to detest the NAR, and to seek its extinction, is because it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers.

Yeah, I’ve been feeling superficially pissed that the retechulously inept are making decisions that require some bit of tech-tidude. But really, this is about my right to innovate; to hack up what the competition is doing; to market freely in any ways I see fit just so long as nobody gets hurt in the process. After all, what’s going on with situations like Paula Henry’s is that they’re messing with what many of us (arguably the best of us) consider to be the best part about being a real estate agent—The fact that we’re truly independent business people with the right to roll as we see fit just so long as we abide by the code of ethics, some local regulations, and general golden rule style decency.

 

So how the frak does displaying property listing data, no matter what the source, become an issue for anyone other than the owner of the gosh darn property and the person they hire to complete the task? Answer: It doesn’t. It shouldn’t. Way to waste those NAR dues on something productive…  This whole thing really is totally and completely absurd!

 

So, what’s a guy to do?

Well, if as Greg says, “we can obviate the NAR by supplanting it…”

Then…

I hereby pledge to replace Read more

May 17, 2009

Earth to NAR: Drop dead — and try not to stink up the place while you’re doing it

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I haven’t paid any attention to this MIBOR business, and I’m grateful to John Rowles for keeping us up to date. Anyone who is dismayed at the way things worked out should be sure to sit at my table when we have a BloodhoundBlog poker tournament: You’re my kind of sucker.

The fact that the NAR is composed of clueless morons should come as a surprise to no one. The fact that they think they can buy off their intellectual superiors by kissing their asses should astonish no one who reads here: I’ve been telling you for years that the dinosaurs pretend to take you seriously in the hopes of compromising you in their corruption. Of course, no one will learn a thing from this experience, which suggests that the dinosaur strategy might well be sound, even though it is absurd on its face. They reason that a grand pageant of being lied to and pandered to makes people feel important, and the evidence suggests they’ve got a good bead on their designated spokesmannequins.

But none of this has anything to do with anything. Whatever combination of cluelessness and collusion motivated this MIBOR clusterfrolick, it’s just a side effect. The NAR is a criminal cartel. Its purpose is to deploy legislation at the federal, state and local levels in behalf of real estate brokers and to the detriment of consumers (and, secondarily, real estate sales people). If you despise the NAR because it is technologically inept, you’re hating it for the wrong reasons. The right reason to detest the NAR, and to seek its extinction, is because it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers.

Who pays for the tax deductibility of mortgages? The 70% or more of us who don’t qualify for the deduction. Who will pay for the $8,000 first-time home buyer’s tax credit? Your grandchildren — and it will cost them quite a bit more than $8,000 in interest costs. Thus do the vampires in the NAR make make vampires of us all.

If you want to grouse or joke about how stupid the NAR Read more

May 17, 2009

NAR Board Sends IDX Policy Back to Committee

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

http://speakingofrealestate.blogs.realtor.org/2009/05/16/nars-idx-rule-changes-need-more-study/

For a few hours there, it looked like the NAR BOD was actually going to do the right thing.

Then, the guy from Indianapolis stands up and says, in effect, “Instead of doing the right thing, lets send this back to the rules committee so NAR members can enjoy another 6 months of uncertainty.”

It was apparently a close vote, but in the end, the decision was not to decide.

As the band Rush put it in “Free Will” (not “Tom Sawyer” — thanks, Tony) — If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.

Its interesting that the motion to send a rule that would have protected a broker’s right to use IDX data for SEO purposes back to committee was made by a director of the board that tried to label Google a “scraper” in the first place.

Why would he do that and why would the board go along with it?

It comes down to the question I’ve already asked: It’s either a stunning degree of cluelessness, or it is a deliberate attempt to find a way to hobble IDX to the benefit of NAR (Realtor.com) and to the benefit of the local boards who see being a consumer Web destination for local listings as a rasion d’etre.

If its the latter (and I suspect that it is), it shows that NAR and some MLS boards see themselves as being in competition with their own membership, who, by the way, provide the frolicking listing content in question in the first place!

The MLS ostensibly exists to organize the market. Brokers who are stuck in MLSs that have decided to become competitors under the guise of a “member service”  need  re-assert themselves and remind their boards who works for who.

Here’s a metaphor that even a NAR Director can understand: If the role of MLSs is to market its member’s listings, then why didn’t MLSs compete with brokers for column inches in newspaper real estate sections, or publish their own glossy magazine-style publications full of (outdated) MLS listings?

Here’s a modest proposal for a motion for the NAR BOD to consider: I move that all local Read more

May 16, 2009

Press Pause Before I Get Popped In The Balls

by

Retechulous...

Author website

A ton’s been going on at CentralPaLiving.Com. I’ve got like 5 great topics for blog posts shamelessly promoting the site.

But for now, I’m hoping for some feedback on the video heavy approach I’m taking on the site’s home page…

Thinking maybe it’ll be better to charm em into opting into an e-newsletter and checking out a few featured listings?

[Sorry, you’ll have to actually hit Central Pa’s most funnest Real Estate site to get the full effect 🙂 ….]

So what do you think? Will this sorta chicanery work?

Too Corny?

SEO Ignorant?

Too Much Balls?

May 16, 2009

Realtor.com : Truth in Advertising?

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I like Mark Madsen. He thinks like I do. He wants to help people and he trusts that in the end that helping people will help build his reputation online and off. Anyone who was at BHBU knows this.

He is a nice guy. I’d like to think I am a nice guy too. But even us nice guys have their tolerance levels for BS. And they ESPECIALLY have them for when people screw with their friends. (In my case friends = REALTORS). But what do I know…I am just a technologist.

Check out this weekly email update being unwittingly sent by many Louisville area REALTORS to their desperate to sell a home clients.

realtorcom

What’s wrong with this picture, you ask?

Well for starters, my mom has a word for houses that have been viewed on REALTOR.com (or any other place 4,272 times in the last 2.5 months)….SOLD. This house has not had near enough showings to come close to what that level of exposure should generate.

So while I am not technically calling BS on you REALTOR.com, the biggest part of me wants to. I am asking you for an explanation of how these supposed pageviews are calculated. You CLEARLY state at the bottom of your graphic that “views is views”. Is that similar to what the meaning of the word is is??? Hmmm???

This smells ESPECIALLY funky in light of the following:

REALTOR.com does not RANK anywhere on the first page of Google for Louisville Real Estate and for most of the higher traffic terms.

I have never seen a REALTOR.com TV ad run in our area.

I have heard a couple of the Ty Pennington radio spots on lower traffic radio stations run a few months ago. Would that gin up this kind of views on a $100k house??

From whence cometh the traffic?

HERE’S WHAT I THINK YOU ARE DOING:

I think when someone does a search for houses in the 100k to 150k range, you pull them ALL up. That may be well over 1,000 homes. (100 pages of listings) I think you are giving a “pageview” to ALL of those listings…even the ones on page Read more

May 15, 2009

Unchained Freedom “Friends Keep Friends In The Business”

by

Las Vegas Mortgage Blogger

Author website

As I was driving back to Las Vegas after a full week of hanging out with the Bloodhound crew at Unchained, my mind was racing to get a grasp on all of the new real estate marketing possibilities that I could achieve by the end of the year.

The confidence I gained through the relationships built at Unchained was all I needed to fully execute my online marketing plans.

I believe that everyone is an expert at something, and we all have a ton to learn from each other.

The Scenius sessions at Unchained were a great example of this concept:

  • After a full day of building blogs, Eric Blackwell, Ryan Hartman and I stayed up until 3 am discussing some SEO strategery for Battleback.com.
  • Greg showed me how simple it would be to syndicate my mortgage content on all of my real estate agents’ blogs with just a little bit of technical savvy.
  • Brad Coy and Brian Brady helped me figure out how to easily integrate a Twitter or Facebook presence into my weekly relationship building routines without having to spend too much time being social.
  • Al Lorenz and I talked about the benefits of owning the social media platforms that our clients and referral partners participate on.
  • Sean Purcell’s brainstorming session over a $100 casino chip got me excited about top of mind sales and branding tools.
  • Kerry Melcher’s “Small Town Phoenix Living” reminded me of how important it is to connect with the emotional needs that may impact our clients’ decisions to do business with us.
  • Scott Cowan and I compared our local markets and shared similar opinions about how much online social networking really matters in the long run.
  • Scott Schang and Mark Green opened my eyes to the power of holding online webinars for the purpose of building a loyal database.

I could go on and on about all of the great conversations that I had at Unchained.

My main objective for that week was to fill in a few technical gaps with my blogging skills.  As Greg has mentioned many times, real estate professionals have a publishing problem.

There are so many ideas that I haven’t been able to Read more

May 15, 2009

Skinning elephants: The lifelong salutary benefits of negotiating your compensation with your buyers

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s how Mike Elsberry, my home inspector, charges for an inspection for one of my clients:

  • A sliding-scale price based on square footage
  • A sliding scale price based on the age of the home

Bigger homes take somewhat longer and entail somewhat more work to inspect than smaller homes. Older homes may have more wear and tear, also resulting in a longer, more arduous inspection. Mike has a little pricing grid, and taking those two numbers, square footage and age of the home, he can plot the precise price point on his matrix.

You could argue that he could come up with a more predictive pricing scheme, but the genius of his system is obvious: It’s reasonably objective, making it hard to argue with, and Mike can price a job from his cell phone, while driving, with his mouth half full of burrito. Lo-tech don’t mean no-tech.

Okayfine. Now let’s sell a couple of houses.

I’m about to do a Facebook deal with an old friend from high school. I will be representing her son in the purchase of the condominium he will live in while attending graduate school. Approximate purchase price: $80,000. Gross commission to me: $2,400.

I’m also about to help a very nice couple buy a small hacienda in Paradise Valley, one of the wealthiest towns, per head, in the United States. Approximate purchase price: $800,000. Gross commission to me: $24,000.

Obviously the differences between the two transactions are myriad, but here’s the one that matters most: The $80,000 condo will almost certainly take a lot more of my time than the $800,000 hacienda. I’ll get paid maybe $50 an hour for the condo, and possibly as much as $1,500 an hour for the hacienda.

How does that make sense?

Home inspector Mike Elsberry’s pricing scale makes sense, even if you could argue that something more complicated might make even more sense. The compensation buyer’s agents receive bears no relation to the time and effort expended. As the Freakonomics boys point out, the incentives are misaligned, as well: I get paid more if my buyers pay more, even though their best interest is to pay less. But even Read more

May 15, 2009

The $1392.50 Appraisal Fee or How the Home Valuation Code of Conduct Rewards Inefficiency At the Expense of the Consumer

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Have you heard of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct?  New York Attorney General Cuomo forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to adopt the measure, in what can only be described as a Machiavellian scheme.  Essentially, mortgage brokers are forbidden from direct contact with residential appraisers; all appraisals for agency loans (not FHA or VA) must be ordered by a lender-approved appraisal management company.

What’s an appraisal management company? Exactly.

The intended result is to keep all loan production personnel (broker or banker) from undue influence on the independent appraisers hired to perform the valuation report.  You see, rather than to cease doing business with rogue mortgage brokers or unscrupulous lenders, a minority of appraisers felt it necessary to encourage Attorney General Cuomo to “put the arm” on the lending industry to protect their past ethical trangressions.

Wholesale lenders, realizing that the appraisal would now be THEIR property, clamored to the idea.  This was just another chance to restrict the value proposition of mortgage brokers (portability) and lock up some business.

Big Banks 1 Consumers 0

Wait!  That’s not all!  If the assigned appraiser is backed up, tough crap!

You see where I’m going with this?  The lender pipelines are ALREADY clogged up because the volume has spiked and the employee count is down.  Soon, we’ll be adding loan applications from the Obama refinance/loan modification plan and a further drain will be put on the overloaded appraisers.  Can I choose to deal with appraisers who won’t do refinance transactions?  Nuthin’ doin.  Ya takes what ya gets under HVCC.

Big Banks 2 Consumers 0

Still, I persist like Mr. Magoo negotiates a maze.  I took a loan application last week, checked Zillow for the Zestimate, closed my eyes and ordered the appraisal from the selected lender.  I locked the rate for thirty days and uploaded the loan submission.  I expected 10 business days in underwriting; surely, the appraisal would be uploaded within a week.

As Meatloaf might say “Stop Right There!  Before we go any further…”

I received an e-mail from the lender instructing me to immediately extend the rate lock for another 15 days…at a .25% fee.  For this $417,000 Read more

May 14, 2009

What’s in a BBB Rating…

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Earlier today, Louis from HomeGain posted about them having an A-plus BBB rating. I will buy that. I think HomeGain has come a long way on his watch and think they have earned it. But since I had not looked at BBB ratings in a LONG time, I was intrigued enough to check out some others in the Real Estate Sector:

The Brokerage where I work: A plus (woot! see you and raise you Louis! 😉 )
Most of our local competitors: A to A plus (well done!)
RE/MAX Intl: A
RedFin: A minus (kudos, Mr. Kelmann…an accomplishment in a tough industry.
Zillow: Z for yourself. Yikes. But Zestimates can be a tough thing to keep people happy with, no? And that can affect your Zcore.
HouseValues: C

BBB ratings are supposed to be about a business keeping it’s commitments to its customers and living up to its agreements. I would also go so far as to say that it involves customer service. Going the extra mile to take care of people is an important piece of that.

In the end it is not about a rating but rather a commitment to do the right thing…thoughts?

I’d invite you to drop by the BBB.org and see how you or your brokerage or business rate! Ratings are not everything, but the idea that the better we serve our customers and their needs, the better we will be is a solid principle in my opinion.

May 14, 2009

NAR Backs Off Labeling Google a “Scraper”

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

I’m basing this on a flurry of tweets out of NAR Mid Year, but it looks like the NAR rules committee came to its senses.

I await the actual verbiage. It will be interesting to see what twisted hedge they come up with to distinguish an “indexer” from a “scraper”.

Still, the question remains: Was the original decision to back MIBOR a deliberate attempt to see if they could rally the Luddites to hobble IDX?

Or was it just plain vanilla cluelessness?

Either way, it begs the even bigger question that was asked hundreds of times on blog posts over the last week: What are NAR members paying for?

UPDATE: Not so fast. See Malok’s comment below. It’s not a done deal, apparently, and the twits are silent.

May 14, 2009

More Stuff On CRM: Know In Advance What You Want to Do.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

You can use Google Docs as a more effective CRM than most people do.  I know, for a while, I did. It’s better than what most CRMs do which is to hide you from your people.

Complexity is not your friend.  Also, having permanent storage is not that useful either, unless you’re in the business of collecting names.   FACEBOOK can more or less be permanent storage for your longterm loosely tied contacts.  Anyway.

Every time I add someone in, one of a few things needs to happen:

  1. I need to get more data on the guy TO call him.
  2. I need to call him/her.
  3. I need to assign an activity series to him.

These are separate events.  I can’t be doing all of them at once, so I seperate out the #1 part of the activity series.  I do my ‘who the hell am I gonna call’ research basically a couple of times a week.  I start with:

  1. People that Add me on twitter (I’m about 400 behind right now)
  2. People that I find in a couple of LinkedIn Groups that add me.
  3. People with truly shitty websites with no title tags, and a flash intro.

Because I practice a half assed version of GTD, I’ve got the ubiquitous capture habit down.  (Mac users: K-notes plus Dashboard is a winning combo for ubiquitous capture.  PC users:  My friend Amy from Twitter wrote a script called CunningNote)  So these people all get brought into something.  For me, it’s a sheet in a spreadsheet.  I put name, email, where I found ’em, twitter handle, phone number, industry and website.    Alt-Tab and I’m in, Alt-Tab and I’m out.  Takes 10 seconds and it’s good mental exercise to try and get it right without going back to look. I do this when my mental energy is sapped.  This is something that I intend to eventually have someone else do, but I need my revenue to triple before that can happen.

So, the next thing I do is make sure I have an inventory of about 150 people to call at the moment.  That way I never procrastinate calling and start doing ‘research.’  I batch ’em into Read more

May 14, 2009

How we say_What we say_Is important

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

This is actually a post about transparency, but as you’ll see, I am not a big fan of the ‘word’ itself. The idea of belaboring a word all of you seem to take for granted came about as I was talking with Scott Schang a few days ago. We were just enjoying each other’s company, doing real work, a lender and real estate guy talking about the industry, our own ideas, sharing and laughing, scribbling notes and taking stock of the ideas that just never seemed to quit coming.

For me transparency is about saying what you want to say, showing what you want to show, sharing what you want to share, and doing it in a manner and method that is most likely to allow the reader or listener to understand. In order for that to happen the writer or creater of thoughts and ideas, facts or fictions, must decide up front HOW they will present the information.

Let me give you some examples.

Greg Swann

“I write well. I’m a tough read here, but I can be much, much more difficult to read. I understand grammar the way other people understand cars or football or cooking, and I can build perfectly valid sentences in English that almost no one can understand, much less diagram. The English language is like Jazz to me, and it ripples and rolls through my head all the time, making connections like lightning strikes that take many paragraphs to explain to other people.

Brian Brady

“I posed this question at Unchained Phoenix ‘09 and you would have thought I asked the REALTORs to walk on coals…at first. A few bright agents listened to my reasoning:”

Geno Petro

“When I awoke from my dehydrated coma and rack focused my blurry vision toward the general direction of the deactivated alarm clock on my night stand, the numbers 7:07 burned my retinas digital red. I jumped up in a virtual panic, threw on a suit and Hermes noose, splashed on a handful of Bulgari, gargled a Red Bull and Diet Coke highball and flew out the door in search of my car. Alas, God was looking Read more

May 13, 2009

FHA and the $8000 Tax Credit – what I know and what I don’t….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

It has amazed me how many people (mainly Realtors and lenders) are already out there proclaiming that you can now go back to the days of the “No money down” loans with FHA and you can do it right now.   Well, that’s not quite the whole story.    Let me explain:

What I know:

  • I know that FHA is now allowing a borrower who qualifies for the $8000 tax credit to use that tax credit as the downpayment for purchasing the house.
  • I know that they can’t get any cash back – if they need $7000, they can only get $7000.
  • Government agencies and non-profits can do second liens against the house for the downpayment.
  • The payments on that second lien need to be counted into qualifying rations.   In other words, if you are going to borrow the $8000 so you can use it for your down payment, you need to be able to pay that amount back.  Gee, there’s a novel concept.
  • FHA approved mortgagees can do a “bridge loan” against the tax credit.

What I don’t know:

  • I don’t know whether any FHA approved non-profits are going to be willing to do second liens in situations like that.
  • I don’t know whether any FHA mortgagees (such as my bank) are going to be willing to do a bridge loan against a tax credit.   Typically banks don’t like to do unsecured loans and I’m not sure how you can secure a loan against a tax credit.
  • I don’t know what fees and rates will be charged for such a bridge loan.

Personal feelings:

  • In today’s volatile market, if you aren’t able to come up with 3.5% for a downpayment on a house, maybe you should continue to rent for a while.
  • The “tightest” 12 to 18 months that a home buyer typically has is their first 12 to 18 months when they are getting used to the house payment.   Do we really want to add the cost of having to pay back a bridge loan on top of that? 

So I guess my recommendation is essentially this:

  • Take a deep breath.
  • Wait to give the financial institutions the time to sort this all out.
  • Once we Read more
May 13, 2009

Prospecting Numbers, Real And Acutal (In Case You Wanna Skin Some Cats).

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Skinning cats requires that I’m on the phone.  A lot.  I’m all 2.0, that works, but it’s a tool.

Anyway, the numbers from a week of prospecting where I actually hit the phones each day.

I’m targeted here, calling folks from twitter and linkedin and others.  (People always ask how I get the numbers.  Even when the number is prominent on the website).  I’m pulling folks into a spreadsheet, and sorting it by called/uncalled.  I’m using Google Docs for much of this.  I do it at a stand-up-desk on my old PC.  Anyway, if I could bring myself to do it more–and I think I will–then its scalable.

What I’m doing is feeding people into a database and then I’ll work them from there.  My goals are to:  1.) Make Direct Sales, 2.) Get people in my database.

Total Time Calling: 7 hours, 30 minutes.  (50 minute hour–25 minutes with 5 minute break, 25 minutes with 5 minute break).

Total dials:  641.  (I use Skype to measure this, and I simple went in my call history and sorted by times).

Total Contacts (where I get a live person and not a voice mail):  168

Leads Generated (people that want an email that’s not just a blowoff):  51

Blogs Sold:  9  (12 total sold).

Sales on First Pitch:  1 (was a linkedin Acquaintance that had intended to do a blog for a long time).

Sales off of email/video:  5

Sales on 2nd-3rd pitch: 2

Per sale, my revenue is $750ish.  My take after fees and stuff is $500ish.  This is one of my sources of income, and it’s the most significant one at the moment.

So…I attempted to call and sell 641 times.  That’s a dial every minute and change.  I failed all but nine times.   .014 batting average.    There is always a serious suck factor when I’m making calls.  I don’t always enjoy it.  I do procrastinate and try to find something more interesting to do.  It is tedious at times.  It is hard to stay up and active for an hour and 20 minutes a day.  Not impossible.

I’m telling you all this because it works.  Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.  Failure Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

Media Contacts