There’s always something to howl about.

Month: June 2009 (page 1 of 4)

Face Down in Iceplant

To pluck a petal from the bloom of  friend and  recondite commenter, Don Reedy, I’ve been ‘face down in a slope of iceplant’  for 30 days. Yes, iceplant.  (I’ll let the man himself expound a little later but allow me to tempt you with the essence of his yarn—- it involves a houseboat in San Diego, a Belushi Halloween costume (including handcuffed briefcase), and a lost weekend somewhere in the bowels of the 1980s. Un huh.)

You see, I too have been on a pastoral  quest  of sorts this month and  presently find myself scurrying through the  Bloodhound shadows to slip this flimsy piece under the Big Dog’s door before the triple witching hour tonight—June’s last breath.  I take a peek around the literary pound and am relieved to  find that my WordPress password is still active and that my name and mugshot are still posted on the BHB sidebar.  Only a handful of  hours remains between me and blanking an entire month on the hallowed front post page. Hopefully I’ll push Publish before the final strike of Midnight and keep the holy streak alive.  Admittedly, I’ve been remiss in my self-imposed dogmatic duties.

So this is what has gone down since I last posted Mother Nature is not a MILF on May 30th (an essay written mostly on my iPhone that netted a total of 6 unique comments including a few of my own trite responses). I pooled my talents, sunk my literary savings into a mental Ponzie marketing scheme, and found myself  nearly wiped clean from the blogarian grid as I danced 30 days straight ‘with the one who brung me’ to this economic station in life to begin with—real estate sales.  Eleven of them to be exact.  I’ve never done eleven of anything in a single month much less an activity involving commission checks with accompanying deposit slips.  And now, after eleven hard money contracts written and/or Closed in June, I come crawling back to my digital workspace on knees and elbows on this last day of the month, famished and thirsty for Google juice; mind, gut, and Adword Read more

Real estate duets: Looking for some advice from seasoned partnerships

I am able to generate business- both real and potential business, but I find myself in a situation where I want to team up with another Realtor. I’d like to partner with someone to share the work load, and keep transactions running smoothly.

To that end, I’m asking the Bloodhound family: What advice can you give me? How do you create a partnership? Formally or informally? Do you have a clear distribution of tasks and jobs each person performs? Is everything delegated ahead of time? And even as I write this, I’m answering my own questions, so perhaps better questions are these: What do you know now that you wish you knew then? What were the best mistakes you learned along the way? What one thing do I most need to prepare for?

I want the real dirt about partnering in real estate. If you want to email me privately, I’d welcome that. I can keep a secret. 🙂

Do It Yourself and More Nonsense From Otherwise Intelligent Folk

At 57 I still can’t decide if those insisting on always doing things themselves are deluded, arrogant beyond understanding, or so much brighter than I am, I’m doomed to forever be in the dark. The unrelenting confidence oozing from the pores of do-it-yourselfers piss me off if only on principle. 🙂 How many times do they hafta reinvent the damn wheel — reborn as a richly elegant octagon — before they discover the problem is them? Of course there are usually so many questions they don’t even know to ask — their ignorance basks in the glow of never ending faux bliss.

Wanna know the problem with ignorance? Ya never know how much you don’t know. Why? Often cuz you’re a do-it-yourselfer. Today I’m speaking mostly to real estate agents, but the principles apply to any job. As an agent your bottom line job description ain’t rocket science. You’re either finding a home for someone or selling a home for someone — both in a timely and professional manner. As simple as that is to state, we all know from experience that’s a bunch of overflowing plates on our daily table. All the skill sets required to become expert in those two jobs can be daunting when one wishes to actually, you know, be an expert.

Those skill sets are learned. Mentors, company training programs, blogs, seminars/conferences, webinars, and even books are some of the vehicles carrying agents to the legitimate status of expert — combined of course with endless hours of repetitive study and practice. Yet how many times do we see a so-called expert, often self-proclaimed, wanting us to believe they did it all themselves? They all have brown eyes eventually, cuz spewing that BS long enough tends to turn ’em that way.

You’re not an expert in online technology. You’re not an SEO expert. (Though you and I may be the only ones online who don’t claim that these days.) Let’s look at an incomplete list of related areas of expertise for which do-it-yourselfers fail miserably while belligerently maintaining they’ve mastered them. What a crock.

Using Read more

Hoarding Listings?

Has anyone noticed listing agents hoarding REO inventory for their own clients? In California, where we now have only 4.2 months of inventory, we have begun to see bank-owned listings marked as contingent within only a minute of being listed, only to return to the market a month later and immediately be bought by a buyer represented by the listing agent. More than a dozen clients, in multiple threads, have submitted examples of these listings on our message boards. We’re trying to figure out what’s really going on and what to do about it. We thought the Bloodhound community might be able to help.

Meanwhile, our partner agents in the Inland Empire of Southern California are also seeing banks take offers on REO properties that are $20,000 or $30,000 lower than the highest bid, on the grounds that the house won’t appraise for the higher offer amount. It seems like the market is trying to set the price, and nobody is willing to believe it (perhaps for good reason).

Building the perfect Bloodhound, three years into the job

Cathleen took most of my client contact off my hands Sunday so that I could have time free to play with a new API the FlexMLS folks are getting ready to release to their client MLS systems. I love FlexMLS, and I haven’t said nearly enough good things about it here, but let this stand as endorsement enough: If your MLS is on the cusp of its vendor contract, get FlexMLS. It’s plausible to me that other companies might have cool stuff, but other companies don’t listen to geeks like me. FBS is wicked smart to begin with, but they’re smart enough to know that nobody knows everything. By listening to the user base, they’re able to grow their product in ways that will matter a great deal to all of us going forward.

So for Act one, I worked out how to build radius searches from any valid street address. By software, I mean. I want to be able to work from street addresses to build searches on the fly.

Act two was just brute force API programming, building semi-custom searches into 11,000 or so unique pages. (I’ve mentioned that Realtors have a publishing problem, but I’ll bet you weren’t thinking in the thousands of pages.)

Act three was a quick-search form. A lot of folks already have stuff like this from their IDX vendors. The difference is that I can build as many as I want, as elaborately as I want, using the most common or the most arcane fields in the MLS system. As an example, imagine a weblog post about central vacuum systems coupled with a quick search form featuring homes with central vac. Can your IDX system do that?

That’s innovation, y’all, and there is a point at which it is nothing more for me than ars gratia artis — art for art’s sake. I play with new ideas not to make money or to skin elephants, but because I love new things, and I love to wring every last drop of implication out of anything I lay my hands on. I can find the marketing — and, one hopes, Read more

“Repeal Proposition 13 Or File Chapter 13 !” To Be California Leftist Politicians’ Cry

I’ve been critical of California’s Proposition 13 because of its progressive nature. It penalizes immigrants and younger families to favor older, wealthier nativists.  Howard Jarvis’ intent was to stop the California’s Legislature from its runaway spending; the Legislature did no such thing. In fact, the California Legislature has increased spending, over the past 31 years,  in spite of the intended purpose of Proposition 13.

As much as I think Proposition 13 is bad public policy, I’m glad it’s on the books. The inevitable bankruptcy of California will cause its citizenry to take a hard look at the cost of the Great Social Experiment its Legislature pursued. Jeff Brown and Sean Purcell are subject to my cautionary warnings that the wealth-eating zombies in Sacramento won’t stand for their citizens’ impudence; I believed that one of those ghouls would try to repeal Proposition 13, citing its’ progressive nature.  I was wrong; they hired a henchman.

Meet San Francisco Recorder-Assessor Phil Ting; he wants to change Proposition 13. Phil Ting is spinning his attack on Proposition 13 as corporate welfare. Ting claims that Proposition 13 unfairly benefits commercial property owners at the expense of residential property owners:

Paradoxical to the law’s initial intent, the commercial property loopholes in Proposition 13 have actually shifted the tax burden away from corporations and onto the backs of residential property owners.

For example, look at San Francisco, where I currently serve as assessor- recorder. Thirty years ago, commercial property owners contributed 59 percent of property tax revenues and residential property owners contributed 41 percent. Today, we see a virtual flip: commercial property owners contributed just 43 percent of property taxes in 2008, while residential property owners contributed 57 percent.

Sounds reasonable,  right?  Bear in mind that Ting called the Catholic Church a tax deadbeat for reapportioning its parish properties to local control, a measure all California Catholic Dioceses are enacting.  This politically-motivated measure was payback for the Church’s involvement in a ballot initiative this past November.  Ting’s the perfect hired gunslinger for the California Left.

Liberal, spend and try-to-tax legislators are trying desperately to figure out how to circumvent Read more

The “cap and trade” bill is full of outrageous proscriptions on private property rights — so the NAR is campaigning against honest appraisals instead of fighting the growth of the nanny state

If you had your blast email spam from NAR President Charles McMillan, you know what’s important to the Grand Poobahs: Appraisers are all of a sudden just too dang honest, and that’s bad for business. Meanwhile, the so-called “cap and trade” bill that narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last night is full of nightmare provisions impinging on the rights of private property owners to do what they want with their land and structures. Where was the NAR? Elsewhere, of course. Where else?

From JammieWearingFool:

Beyond what it will do to our economy, at the end of the debate House GOP Leader John Boehner took to the floor and started reading from the 300 page amendment that the Democrats drafted and dropped on the legislatures at 3 AM, there was literally hundred of items to impose federal control over your life. Here are some highlights.

Want to replace a window? Not so fast. First you must pay for an appraisal of your house to measure its energy efficiency and receive calculations of both before and after the proposed change. Hey, it may be a great excuse for those guys trying to avoid putting in that big bay style window that the missus has been bugging you about.

Are you having a new house built? Back up, Skippy. This bill includes language that tells you exactly where you can put your electrical outlets.

Did you know that for one sort of appraisal service related to determining energy efficiency there is only one company you can use? Yup, it is right in there along with the name of the company. How is it that this one company managed to land the only contract to service 300 million Americans? Who is this company?

I wish I could answer those questions, but all of those provisions and more, Rep. Boehner went on for almost an hour citing them and still didn’t get through the whole 300 pages, is not available. You see because of when the Democrats dropped this amendment at 3 AM the text of it is not available. So much for that transparency. The total bill runs on Read more

How Bloodhoundblog’s Innovators Have Inspired My Business

In response to Greg’s request for innovative ideas from BHB, I thought that would list a few real life examples of how the contributors here have impacted my personal evolution in mortgage marketing and Web 2.0 world domination.

While I believe success is merely a component of innovation, I also agree with the people who need to see proof of results in order to determine a true measure of value.

Since it is too difficult for me to pick one or two innovative or game changing ideas for Greg’s contest, I’ve embedded links to some of the BHB articles that have inspired me over the past few years.

Where did BHB begin for me?

I have been an avid reader of BHB for a couple of years.  This place use to scare me (still does), but I eventually gained the confidence in expanding my own online presence as a result of the education that I gained from reading and participating in the conversations on this blog.

As a loan officer back in the boom days, I only cared about the web because one of my Las Vegas real estate agents was feeding me with leads that he generated from his site.

I basically just helped contribute content and pay some of the expenses in our joint marketing venture.

When I did find time to pay attention to what others were saying online, I’d read about bubbleheads and doom pundits, real estate agents blogging about blogging, how the housing slowdown was only going to last for another 6 months, and how Zillow didn’t have accurate estimates.

However, when the market really did shift as Brian predicted, I was faced with the options of either becoming more involved in our online marketing agenda or walking away and getting a new job.

I kind of did a little bit of all three by developing a game plan for the industry that focused on a more sustainable purpose and different priorities.

The early innovation:

One of my first successful web projects was a FSBO campaign that combined single property web sites, highly visible yard signs, Craigslist, Call Capture, and a solid listing presentation.

My pricing Read more

Vultures to the Rescue – HOORAY!!!

Here's the email - I added the red boxes

What the hell is a Forensic Loan Audit you ask?

According to the SPAM email (above – I drew the boxes for emphasis) that landed in my inbox last night, a company called National Loan Auditors provides a service that:

1)  Markets to loan originators with the purpose of providing loan file audits that

“expose federal, state, county and statute violations, along with any unethical predatory lending practices.”

2)  So mortgage professionals can

“leverage [their] company or firms ability to assist [their] past and present customers, helping them negotiate better mortgage rates and terms with their existing lender…”

3)  Oh, and by the way the mortgage professional can also

“earn up to $1,700 on each case file”

Um, so what you’re saying is that I can market to my past clients, identify errors, omissions and fraudulent activity that occurred when I originated their loan AND pocket $1,700 in the process?  Seriously.  Am I reading this incorrectly?

Our company used to provide loan file audits to our clients too.  [If we could have made money doing it, we still would be.]  The purpose of our audits was to help identify these same types of errors and omissions.  The difference was in our motivation:  our clients used our feedback to improve their compliance scores on future originations.  From experience, I can tell you that even the cleanest and most ethical shops had compliance errors in their files – most of which were innocent, victimless mistakes.  For example, in the State of Georgia, an originator is considered to have taken a Loan Application when collecting any financial information from the borrower – and of course a Good Faith Estimate is required to be sent within 72 hours of the loan application.  This is a common mistake originators make (both banker and broker by the way) – one of many easy to make errors.  There are 20 other similar examples I could point out here but let me get back to the point…

Now you have these vultures performing similar audits with the malicious intent of leveraging even the most benign of errors into strong-arming banks into loan modifications.

Does this type of value proposition help illuminate why the large Read more

How Do You Measure The True Success Of Innovation?

Greg’s recent post about Bloodhoundblog’s innovation contribution to the real estate industry created the typical debate over dinosaurs vs. Web 2.0.

However, there were several good points about the difference between innovation and success.

I’d like to argue that innovation is a component of success, as is failure.

Whether you’re skinning cats the 1.0 way, exploring the potential of a complete virtual realty solution, mixing a creative listing landing page with a direct mail campaign, or putting your referral relationships to full use, the simple fact that most of us are still left in the game to have these discussions is a small sign that we’re all successful in one manner or another.

It is hard to deny that the industry is rapidly changing, especially with regards to the way we leverage the web to communicate to our clients and colleagues.

By the time something has been proven, its already old news and can’t really be considered innovative.

What does innovation mean to me?

In order to have a productive conversation about the actual value of an innovative idea, I think it is important that we first agree on a common definition of innovation.

I hear words tossed around like Top Producer, high conversions, leads to loans….  which don’t mean much to me unless those are the results I’m expecting when I buy a product.

But to me, innovation is more of a way of life vs a business decision.  I’m always looking for ways to make something or someone better, without living in fear of failure.

I don’t need social proof from the masses to build my confidence.  Matter of fact, if everyone is already doing something well, then I’m even more motivated to find a different, more efficient way of accomplishing the same goal.

My loving and patient wife has to deal with these character traits every day.  And to make things worse on her, my 2 year old daughter is showing signs of following in her father’s patterns.  I couldn’t be more proud.

Either way, I just wasn’t designed to wait around on other people to prove that an innovative idea can be successful.  Maybe its because I focus Read more

Google Wave Goodbye Real Estate Brokerage As We Know It?

I found some time to check out the Google Wave Developer preview on youtube a few days ago. And darn if I haven’t thought to myself: “This’ll be way easier and more fun to do once Wave comes” at least 10 times since.

So here are some possible applications that have crept into my head. Keep in mind these are all based on the little “taste” this “junkie” got from the preview video, so I’m not even sure a few of these will be doable, but what better place to toss this stuff out than here at BHB?

What Will Change In Real Estate Brokerage Once Google Wave Takes Over The World?

Single Property Websties
I imagine a Wave template that pictures, documents, videos, maps, etc are all dragged into from the desktop or the web. I’m assuming here that we’ll then be able to purchase a domain name for each property and map it to a public url for the “public” version of the wave.

Listing and Conveyancing Folders
Save the trees baby! Can you see creating a wave for a listing or pending sales folder, then inviting other parties to the transaction to participate in the Wave? Need a copy of the Seller’s Disclosure? It’s in the Wave? How about the listing contract? In the Wave. (But only sharable to parties who should see it.)

Buyer Presentations?
Got a new buyer. Drag in the pre-approval letter. Add some links to the Wave MLS Single Property Pages for the listings you’ll be touring tomorrow. Answer the buyer’s questions about agency, marketing conditions, financing, or whatever, from right within the wave, in real time! Heck, even drag in those Google Voice Text Transcriptions! Can you imagine how comprehensive this search-able record of the whole interaction from web lead to settlement will be? Don’t do or say anything stupid! It’ll be in the Wave! (And don’t try to delete your shannanigans either, cause Wave records all edits. Freaky…)

Company Training / Office Procedures / Systems Manuals
Alive, breathing, dynamic, EASILY ENHANCED AND IMPROVED UPON …. In a Wave!

Company Intranet?
Wave. Enough said?

Niche Blogs Read more

A little bit of honey cake for Desdemona as she makes her last escape

We’re going to lose Desdemona, our English Coon Hound, tonight. She’s been with us for more than ten years, and she was an adult when we adopted her. A long life for a big dog.

Desi is by far the smartest dog we’ve ever known, the most willful, the cleverest escape artist, the most vociferous howler. She is maybe six brain cells short of writing angry poetry and howling on stage like the canine version of Tori Amos. There is nothing about this dog that is not astonishing.

This is Desdemona with my son Cameron, a long time ago:

Here’s an encomium Cathleen wrote to Desdemona’s intelligence in September of 2001:

Desdemona’s going to have a sweet year

Because our coon hound, Desdemona, runs away so easily and so tenaciously, we let her stay in the house when we aren’t home. This acknowledges that Desdemona has won the war. Well, of course she has… she won every battle. You’ll recall, she escapes over our 6′ block fence, even after we added an electric wire to the top; even when we strapped her into a full body harness and tethered her; even when we tethered her at both her collar and her harness and attached the two together; even when we put her into a kennel and tethered her at both her harness and collar and ran the two cables out of separate sides of the kennel; even when we drugged her.

The only thing she couldn’t escape from was a $200 solid plastic shell of a kennel, but after a few times in that box she learned how to splay herself so that anyone who tried to stuff her into the kennel came out of the box bloody and Desi, of course, never came close to going in. So, after spending about $600 on gadgets guaranteed to keep dogs where they’re supposed to be, Desdemona won the war and now gets to stay in the house when we’re not at home.

The spoils of war include more than the simple luxury of staying indoors. They include staying indoors unsupervised! Which means we’ve had to make changes in how Read more