There’s always something to howl about.

Month: June 2009 (page 2 of 4)

Is It Time For You To Put Up Or Shut Up?

Though there are a buncha things I read on this blog with which I disagree, there’s one thing for sure — there’s no shortage of reliable information. Also, expertise is freely shared by most of the contributors on what seems an almost infinite array of subjects. What this blog does best, from where I stand, is show the way to fellow pros to a more effective business.

Brian Brady, Sean Purcell, Chris Johnson and I seem to be the ones who at times address the other side of that coin — taking the ‘How To’ to the ‘Wow! This Stuff Really Does Work’ stage. Possibly the best nugget I’ve taken from BHB is Greg’s 20-something bullet point list for selling his listings. Talk about goin’ from the ‘How To’ to ‘Wow’ stage.

Brian’s a practitioner of what I call ‘Old Skool’ marketing. He’ll toss his latest marketing salad ’till it either produces or bombs. But even his bombs usually end up pointing him in the direction of enhanced success. He keeps doin’ what works, while never resting on his laurels.

Sean shows us where we may have unknowingly run outa bounds. He gently guides us back to the field of play, which is, after all, the only place any of us can ever score. He seems to have that sixth sense. You know the one — the ability to see what and why something will be effective. Or, better yet, how it can be made more so — like he did a few days ago.

Chris? Chris reminds me of Dad so much it’s freakin’ scary. If I believed in channeling I’d swear that’s what he’s been doing lately. If you read anything he writes and come away unsure about what he really thinks, you’re probably beyond hope. 🙂 He says things other people are thinkin’, but don’t dare openly express. Chris is like the guy in the locker room listening to all the guys brag about their romantic conquests. Know why he’s quiet? Those that do more than talk are rarely loud about it. They just, well, do. Chris understands Read more

Just because the real estate market is being trumpeted by bull horns, that doesn’t mean it’s time to retract your bear claws

I’m the leading bear in an article in Saturday’s Toronto Globe and Mail. I wasn’t as dour as the overall slant of the article, but it remains that the Phoenix real estate market is overbuilt. We have more kitchens than cooks, and, as long as that is so, a robust and enduring recovery is not possible.

One thing I didn’t say, but I wish were true: “Mr. Swann said he has clients from Canada, California, Oregon and elsewhere snapping up dozens of houses at a time.” I have dozens of investor clients, most of whom are buying nothing right now, since it’s stupid to compete for the privilege of over-paying for a rental home. I have one client who plans to buy dozens of homes, but who has not started yet.

The interesting thing is, it really is a great time to buy a house in Phoenix — except at the very low end. Sellers with equity are finally waking up and smelling the coffee, so the move-up market — at least below $500,000 or so, jumboland — is really starting to move. First-time home-buyers, enriched by the $8,000 tax credit, are butting heads with out-of-state investors for all the homes priced $100,000 and under. But for people with buying power, things are looking very rosy right now.

Even so, the Globe and Mail article is good reading. The authors explore a lot of systemic factors that could make our current mini-boom a fondly-remembered oasis in a desert of on-going bad news.

The Problem With Agents: They’re Not Selfish Enough

I talk to a lot of real estate agents and if there is one universal problem I see, it’s this: you are not selfish enough – not nearly selfish enough.  I’ll explain that in a minute.  First, let me ask:  how many reading this took auto-shop in high school?  I’m guessing maybe half.  Of those that took auto-shop, how many actually work on their own cars?  Right.  You don’t take it so you can grow up and work on your car.  You take it so when your car breaks down you have a clue what might be wrong with it.  You want to know if the repair shop is taking care of you or just taking you for a ride.  The importance of wide-ranging knowledge is even greater for agents.  The real estate business is a difficult one in the best of times and it’s always time consuming.  It encompasses so many different areas, you may not need auto-shop (although I recommend it),  but you do need Mortgage-shop, Title-shop, Escrow-shop, Sign-shop, Web Site-shop, Appraisal-shop, Home Inspection-shop, Staging-shop and on and on.  Obviously you can’t be an expert in all these areas, but just like auto class, you should know enough to make sure you – and your clients – are being taken care of rather than just taken for a ride.  Beyond that the most important thing you can do is surround yourself with a team that excels in these areas.  Herein lies the problem for which I titled this post:  real estate agents are not nearly selfish enough… with their time.

I’m going to share one perspective on how big an impact this can have on your bottom line.  Last Wednesday I was involved with three different events affecting over $1.7 million of real estate transactions.  For the math challenged, that’s $51,000 in real estate commissions.  I’m writing this from a lender perspective because that’s what I am, but it’s all about the agents.

  • Early on Wednesday we funded a VA purchase loan for a little over $700,000.   Not remarkable in and of itself;  Read more

To celebrate BloodhoundBlog’s third birthday, let’s celebrate all of the insanely great ideas we have come up with…

Last week I was working, late at night, plugging street addresses into encartus, in preparation for building a bunch of new engenu pages for a new web site we’re building, an exposition of truly-distinguished homes in Paradise Valley, Arizona. While I was working, I got pinged by an incoming email, a moderated comment to Brian Brady’s first post on the idea of disclosing all real estate purchase offers.

While I was reading all the other great comments to that post, I got pinged again, this time a private email asking me what I thought about the nominees for Inman’s most-innovative blog award.

To misquote a line many Bloodhounds love: I don’t think about them. I will stop in at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy once or twice a month, and I know I’ve been to MyTechOpinon and the Clean Slate Blog. But I don’t associate any of those sites with innovation. They’re just weblogs, that’s all.

This is not sour grapes. I don’t give a rat’s ass about beauty contests, and I’ve deliberately painted Inman “News” into a corner: By consistently ignoring what is obviously the most innovative weblog in the RE.net, they come off looking like petulant crybabies even as they despoil their reputation as a “news” source. And does this malign neglect hurt us? Uniquely among RE.net weblogs, we’re a PR6, as is the Inman “News” web site. With no capital investment and nothing but part-time, amateur writers, we’ve pulled even with the life’s work of a big-baby billionaire. One would think the idea of gamesmanship was invented yesterday.

And please don’t post treacly little comments about how you get good ideas everywhere. I have no objection whatever to the Special Olympics, so long as you don’t insist on calling the contestants Olympians. The three innovations cited in the first paragraph of this post, three among hundreds, are more than enough to split BloodhoundBlog away from the herd.

But that’s the point. BloodhoundBlog is ten days away from being three years old. In those three years, we’ve pioneered a vast host of jaw-dropping ideas. If we stopped writing on June 29th, our anniversary, we Read more

Freeing The Real Estate Market From The Real Estate Industry

AREBOT.com, which stands for the American Real Estate Board of Trade,  is the name of the company that intends to open up the demand-side statistics, by voluntary submission of properties, to an online NASDAQ-like market.

DISCLOSURE:  From this point forward, my opinion may be considered biased.  I have a verbal agreement to receive site advertising in exchange for publicity.

The intention of my post about the “big idea” was to “smoke AREBOT out”.  I knew they were getting ready for a site launch and wanted to have it revealed to the Bloodhound Blog community first.  C. Aaron Bruce, the founder, was happy to explain the site and encouraged me to explain it to you ahead of the official press releases.  This “exclusive”, if you will, is available to all, Wednesday June 24, 2009 at 1PM (PDT), on a conference call.  If you’re interested in the call, raise your hand below and I’ll email you the details.

AREBOT.com is not intended to be an “auction”.  It is an open, transparent, real-time market.  Each zip code will have a live “ticker” moving across the screen, displaying actual offers on homes.  Each listed property will display a time-dated offer history.  Entries are voluntary and cost nothing to the sellers of the home.  The “price”, if you will, is that they offer the property on this  transparent market.

Buyers offer on the properties by entering the terms .  The bid is then considered to be “unverified”, signified by it’s yellow color, until verified and submitted by a licensed real estate agent.  Licensed real estate agents may offer their buyer brokerage services, at no cost, on the site.  Listing agents are protected by their listing agreements and may voluntarily display listings on the site, at no cost to them or the seller.  Verified offers turn green and stay that way for 24 hours (or longer if both agents are negotiating); offers are still accepted until the property is withdrawn from the system.  Rejected offers turn red and are displayed with the property, in perpetuity.  Final terms are not disclosed as most states publicly disclose sales information.  I have no idea Read more

Hectoring Rian from the iPhone 3G 3.0

Yesterday I upgraded my iPhone to version 3.0 of the operating system software. So far, a pretty big yawn. Typing is plausibly easier, though still not easy. Cut and paste were not on my list of must-haves. Zillow upgraded its app to allow push notification, so your phone can tell you if one of your saved searches has popped up a new candidate. Okay…

I wasn’t unhappy with the iPhone before — quite the contrary! — but I don’t think I have any new reasons to be happier from this upgrade. Safari 4, by contrast, is totally killer, and I could not be more pleased with suddenly-faster-everything on my iMac.

One thing I played with right away on the iPhone was the new voice recording app. Not that impressive. It records losslessly at 44khz, which means the saved files are huge. They can be transferred only by email or hard-wired sync — no BlueTooth, no WiFi — and almost everything is too big to move by email. This is the kind of dumb, useless software I expect from Microsoft, not Apple, so one may hope it will get better in future versions.

Anyway, as a test, this morning I made a short little audio greeting card for Rian Lussier, who is about to undergo surgery. The file is a monstrous 25 megabytes, and it took over an hour to sync to my iMac (no hope of emailing a file that large).

Even so, the recording quality is not awful (there’s a buzz in places from me speaking too loudly), and the sentiments are what they are.

Godspeed you well, Rian.

Data Discrimination, A Class Action Lawsuit in the Making

Anyone a member of the Texas Bar Association looking for Pro Bono work?  I think you may be able to rassle up a class action lawsuit in big “D”, little “a”, double “L” a, s (Dallas folks 😉 )

Texas is one of five states that do not require disclosure of sale prices, however, I believe the local MLS board in Dallas may be violating their fiduciary responsibility to their buyers and sellers.  I strongly suggest you read the following article.

Actual home sale prices are not being entered into the MLS.

Does this not blatantly fly in the face of transparency.  Moreover, how can the local board stand for this?  Without accurate data shared at least to local members, the guidance and counsel for properly pricing a property places sellers, but more clearly buyers, in a very bad position.  The article suggests that lower priced properties which have sold may be intentional left out in order to provide a perception that property values are higher.

Not only is this a direct violation of an agent’s fiduciary responsibility to his/her client, it is borderline fraud.

Real estate is local, consult a local REALTOR and find out how much your home is worth – or NOT.

Is it any reason why data aggregators are winning?

To Catch a Theme: The NAR can’t evolve, but that shouldn’t stop you

I’ve had reason to be contemplative for the past few weeks and it’s given some small inklings an opportunity to germinate and link together into bigger ideas. Given the nature of BloodhoundBlog, I’m hoping a couple of bigger brains who read and write here, will help me get a better grasp on what is still a bit foggy in my mind- help me fill in the gaps.

My brain has made a leap of sorts, into the future of the business, and I think we are getting it wrong. That is, what we think about, if we think about the future of the real estate business at all, may not be quite right.

First, the real estate industry is a bit behind, no offense, but I’m thinking that we bluster and bellow about stuff that really isn’t relevant, or, by the time we grasp the idea, another idea has pushed that idea into the past. What am I talking about? I’m talking about information and how it’s driving us to change the way we do business. Here’s what I’m thinking: We are not in control of information, I believe information is in control of us. That is, we are becoming conduits for information- I don’t know how else to describe what I see happening, but maybe a few examples.

Remember transparency? Transparency has nothing to do with pulling down your boxers. It’s simply about information. But not information about you. See, it’s not about you. And it’s not personal, so don’t panic, and it doesn’t matter if you like it, don’t like it, wanna share, don’t wanna share. Nope, none of that matters, because what is happening is that with or without you, information about how we do business, everything about how we do business, is about to be shared. Again- it’s not about you, it’s just information, but it’s all about information, and we are not in control of information. We are conduits, pathways, carriers of informational memes. That’s all, and it’s not about you personally.

Except. It is about how valuable you are at sharing information. How expert you are at giving away Read more

Darwin and the Notorious NAR

One of the most powerful outcomes of attending an REBarcamp isn’t necessarily attending the many great discussions during the day, but the great conversations and discussions which take place over a beer after the meeting is over.  I also believe that REBC – now after experiencing yesterday’s REBCCHI – is the real personification of a virtual tool – a living and breathing example of how Twitter converts 140 characters into 140+ face to face meetings and discussions.  Followers carry more weight when they transform from the virtual world to the real world.

For me, the most meaningful discussion took place at the end of the day.  Todd Carpenter, NAR’s Social Media Guru, invited the CEO of NAR, Dale Stinton, to share his thoughts and address questions posed by the group.  His initial stance was somewhat defensive, however, during his discussion I gained a somewhat different perspective regarding the challenges that NAR is seeking to address and overcome.

NAR’s largest challenges is to address the needs and the ranks of the young professional.   Attempts by NAR to try to level the playing field may be difficult because of entitlement issues with older members.  Of the 1,500 boards throughout the country, 200 or so wield the most power.  Many of the larger, more influential boards may not embrace attempts to level the playing field for younger, more independent brokers.  Hence, Dale encouraged everyone to get involved in the boards to influence change.

I think NAR is evolving.

Come the end of 2009, NAR is rolling out two intiatives that have been more than a few years in development:

  1. RPR – Real Property Repository – to all NAR members, a database consisting of the property attributes including tax records etc. for 70 million properties in the US, allowing members to provide comments and additional information to the unique property description.
  2. A consumer focused website, equivalent to Realtor.org.  It is NAR’s response to providing everything a consumer needs to know about real estate.  Again, consumer focused versus member focused.

Timeline again for both is slated for fourth quarter, 2009.

Okay – so now RPR appears to be an almost national MLS, provides data Read more

The Case For Twitter, Really Fast

House Hunting? in Ohio?

or maybe

LandLord Problems In Pittsburgh?

What if your:

“Rate Went Up”

maybe you want to

“Look At Another House

Whatever you do, don’t be a “Stupid Realtor

These people are BEGGING for some help.  They are SCREAMING for it. And you can fish though and find some phrases in your area that will get you houses this week.  And you gotta fish a little bit, but seriously?   What the hell else are you doing?

Search.Twitter.com and a little elbow grease and a friggin’ phone call is the way to go.  Betcha you can get tweetdeck loaded on a computer, run about 10 searches near your area and throw 65,000 in GCI.  And I’ll betcha you can do this without having to talk to any idiots.

These are people with their hands up.  And the first person that clicks through and responds on their website or not JUST on twitter…they are the differentiators.  They are the ones that get to date the prom queen.

So…loads of people are needing a deal.  A connection.

Make that, and get real paid.

Getting a $15,000 tax credit when you purchase your next home could be as easy as stealing candy from a baby…

This from my Arizona Republic real estate column (permanent link):

So we started with a $7,500 tax deduction for first-time home-buyers.

But that didn’t juice the real estate market enough, so we bumped the number up to $8,000 and made it a full-blown tax credit. If you owe $8,000 in taxes next April, your slate is wiped clean.

But even that didn’t juice the the real estate market enough, so this week Republicans — the alleged party of fiscal responsibility — proposed bumping the tax credit up to $15,000 and making it available to everyone — including billionaires.

How cool is that? You buy a $150,000 house, you get 10% back when you file your taxes. And you can file an early return to get the money now. And you can even finance the tax credit now and pay it back when you file your return.

You can’t — quite — use the tax credit as your down payment, but that “reform” can’t be more than inches and hours away. And a $15,000 down payment on an FHA loan buys you a $428,500 house.

Unfortunately, that’s more than the FHA limit for metropolitan Phoenix, so that limit will need to be “reformed” as well.

Paying people to buy houses would be insane if we actually had the money to back up our promises. But, since we don’t, these “reforms” are the mark of true statesmanship.

I’m helping an ambitious young couple buy their first home right now. We’re late to close, a common enough situation.

They just had their second child, an event mere bureaucracy cannot delay. Their baby boy — his name is James — is sweet and beautiful, healthy and smart, a perfect specimen of incipient humanity.

They’re taking the $8,000 tax credit, of course, as they should. The government doesn’t become less insane if you shoot yourself in the foot.

But it is sweet little Baby James who will pay for that tax credit, and for millions of others, and possibly for millions more at $15,000 a pop. Our economy runs on theft — and we’re running out of people to steal from.

This Post Has Nothing To Do With Real Estate

Not long ago I listened to an inspirational speaker discuss ways to make our lives less stressful and more enjoyable.  At one point he told this story:

In the wild, a big lion sprints toward an antelope who’s quietly feeding.  After a short chase – if the antelope hasn’t been caught – the lion slows down and eventually stops to rest.  Interestingly enough, the antelope often stops only a short distance away and begins to feed again.  The lion doesn’t bore his friends with excuses or puff his chest out and tell the antelope to “wait till next time;”  nor does the antelope, flush with righteous indignation, cry out: “What’s your problem, you (censored)!”  They both live in the present and by doing so find great peace.

I get the “message” in the story and maybe it’s just me; but I’ve never felt all that comfortable with animal metaphors.  Here’s another story; this one’s about stress and enjoyment too, but without the potential of being eaten:

Last Saturday I attended two Little League play-off games on the same day: one for each of my sons.  During the first game, I watched my older son’s team from the stands.  The other team was employing a delaying tactic and one of the fathers from our side made a condescending remark.  A coach from the other team heard the remark and replied in a less than congenial way.  The dad followed that up with an unmistakable insult to the opposing coach and before long we had ‘tough guy’ looks going back and forth.  (I swear, you can’t make this stuff up!)  The dad in our stands (mis)spent the next two hours of the game talking about what he was going to say next and what he should have said already and telling anyone who would listen what he thought of this coach.  He simply could not let go.

Later that same day I’m coaching my younger son’s team.  When you’re in the dugout with the boys you get a chance to listen in on their conversations and they can be quite mean.  It’s not uncommon to hear a Read more

What If The Real Estate INDUSTRY Didn’t Control The Real Estate Market?

I have the heart of a trader.  If you read Mortgage Rates Report, you know that I’m fascinated with the forces that make markets move up, down or not at all.  One of the things I’ve noticed, since I started writing on Bloodhound Blog, is that the real estate industry is:

That lopsided opacity was the real reason for the eventual implosion of the real estate market. We hid market information from the buyers while the Baby Boomers moved through the home ownership life cycle.   A huge generation, yearning for “The American Dream of Homeownership”, assured strong demand for houses in the post-World War Two housing boom.  Banks were all too happy to hand out money, even when forced to lend by the Government.  Lew Ranieri saw a 25-year boom ahead and found a way to create a shadow banking system that could “bury bad loans”.  Any agent dealing with a short sale understands the problem of buried loans because she’s heard:

“Well, we aren’t quite sure WHO owns this loan”

Kind of sounds like the forensic audit of Bernie Madoff’s books, doesn’t it?  That’s what you hear when the jig is up on a Ponzi scheme:  confusion, wagon-circling, and practiced deflection.  It eventually catches up with the schemers.  I’m firmly in the camp that no matter how many incentives we offer to stave off the inevitable forced sales, or to provide a middle-class tax cut, or to bribe the next generation of buyers, the simple fact remains that we have more houses than we need in this country…and the people just ain’t buying like they used to.

It’s partly the National Association of REALTORs fault.  They’ve hoarded supply data and intentionally suppressed demand data since inception.  Suppressing the demand data resulted in a valuation system that relied on false positives (comparable sales) as a standard that contributed to the Ponzi-like atmosphere in the real estate market.   Think about it.  When we ask agents about rising demand, they point to dwindling supply as a measure of it.  Read more

Green or Beige?

This afternoon, the Federal Reserve released their Beige Book.  What’s a Beige Book?  It’s their report based on observations and comments from people inside the business world on the state of the economy.    I’m going to walk through some “highlights” and “lowlights” of what’s happening.   My comments are in bold and italics……

“Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve District Banks indicate that economic conditions remained weak or deteriorated further during the period from mid-April through May.”

No surprise there, at least not for me.  So, if conditions remain weak or deteriorated, then where are the gree shoots of recovery that people are talking about?

However, five of the Districts noted that the downward trend is showing signs of moderating.”

So, let’s think about that.   5 out of 12, that’s 41% show that the pace of downward trend is slowing down.  Is that a good thing?   Well, let’s look at a couple of other numbers.   According to this, 100% of the districts show that they are slowing down.  59% of them are slowing down at the same or faster paces than they were previously.

Manufacturing declined or remained weak in most Districts.”  

Given the shutdowns in the auto industry and the related industries, this certainly isn’t a surprise.    What’s going to be interesting is what that shows as Chrysler (and hopefully GM) get back to work after their “furloughs.”

“Nonfinancial Services – Districts reporting on nonfinancial services indicated that for the most part activity continued to decline………In contrast, San Francisco reported a substantial pickup in real estate services such as title insurance due to an increase in home refinancing.

Ooohhh, that illustrates the trouble that we’re in.  One of the biggest “improvements” in the non-financial services is the title insurance industry because of mortgage refinancing.   Guess what’s not going to last very long due to rising rates…..

Consumer Spending and Tourism
Consumer spending remained soft as households focused on purchasing less expensive necessities……   Several Districts reported that discounters have seen their sales increase, while purchases of luxury goods continued to weaken. Respondents from Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Dallas expect soft consumer sales to Read more