There’s always something to howl about.
Elizabeth Duke is on the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve and I think she hit the nail on the head……
Fed’s Duke Outlines New Mortgage Market : HousingWire || financial news for the mortgage market
“Some would argue that most of the really risky behavior is now out of the market,” Duke said. “But, unfortunately, the backlash has restricted a lot of perfectly responsible lending as well. Banks are reluctant to put any but the lowest possible risk loans in their portfolios.”
The Verizon versus AT&T debate has come up lately particularly with the introduction of the Droid. I don’t even use a smart-phone yet, but I am married to someone who has been an expert in the network side since before the first portable phones were brief case phones converted from car-phones.
So, I came across this article that has further thoughts on the AT&T / I-Phone versus Verizon / Droid for network performance and coverage. I think he may be on to something in that he supposes the I-Phone has created a higher expectation for AT&T. It sounds plausible to me.
I’m imagining U-Stream on 4G already…
I stumbled across an article today from Inman News about the NAR allowing the use of the Realtor Logo on headstones. Turns out the news was shared on Twitter!
If you would like to read the article you can find the story here.
If this was not so crazy I would not believe it. I know that many of you will be rushing out to take advantage of this change of policy =)
Okay, this is actually kind of funny.
Paul Volcker, the former Fed Chairman, the guy who maneuvered us through the inflation mess in the early ’80’s, made a speech on Tuesday to a group of higher level financial executives. These are the “power” people in the industry, the “who’s who” of the top financial firms.
What does he tell them? The best thing that they have done in the last 25 years was to invent the ATM machine.
That box where you put your debit card in and it spits cash back to you? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
What’s his point? That all of the “exotic” financial tools that have been developed, derivatives, CDO’s, CDS’s, MBS’s, TIPS, and a whole variety of other acronyms really haven’t done anything useful for the world’s economy.
Ouch, that’s a stinging rebuke…..
Tom Vanderwell
Ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker’s ‘telling’ words on derivatives industry – Telegraph
The former US Federal Reserve chairman told an audience that included some of the world’s most senior financiers that their industry’s “single most important” contribution in the last 25 years has been automatic telling machines, which he said had at least proved “useful”.
Technorati Tags: Paul Volcker, ATM Machine
Don’t let anyone tell you that I never say anything good about ActiveRain. I saw a passing note yesterday about Ustream.com’s new iPhone app, but I ignored it in the crush of business. But this morning there was a post about the Ustream client in ActiveRain’s daily spamletter, and that led me to download the app.
What does it do?
Live video streaming from any iPhone 3G or 3GS. No kidding. Ustream quality, of course, compounded by the cheesy little lens on the iPhone, all compounded by WiFi or 3G transmission speeds. But still…
Live video streaming from your phone…
Practical applications?
Well, for one thing, Rodney King now has nothing to fear. Abusive cops are a thing of the past, and I would love to see a Ustream/YouTube channel devoted to abusive government functionaries everywhere. Especially in Iran, by the way, and I can’t think of a better antidote to bad behavior everywhere than instantaneous, live, streaming video for all the world to see.
But what about real estate applications?
Don’t throw away that video camera. It’s still Ustream, after all. But when you’re doing a home inspection for an out-of-state buyer, a live video conference with the inspector may be just the ticket. With a second phone, the client and the inspector can talk as you are shooting live video of the repair issues. Is that more sizzle than steak? I say it’s good salesmanship.
Are there other uses you can think of in your day-to-day real estate work? I’m never a big booster of new-for-the-sake-of-being-new. Mission-critical is all that ever matters to me in judging a new tool or idea. But I’m thinking that live or easily-recorded lo-rez video might serve a host of mission-critical functions.
Two (bad) videos as examples, as I learn to play with this new tool:
First, a bad demo recorded to the phone, then uploaded to Ustream.
Second, a live stream saved directly from Ustream.
In both cases, the iPhone shut off on me. To make this software work, you will have to change your auto shut-off setting in the main iPhone preference app. Then you have to remember to switch it back — or Read more
I don’t really do anything with my Facebook fan page other than to have my blog content automatically streamed to it, but a little Brady-esque follow up every time a new “friend” touches my “Fan Box Badge” is proving to have quite a nice effect on my sales effort, so I figured I’d share.
The protocol:
Then the fun starts…
You visit your own site and see a new face in your sidebar. It’s go time! Send your new fan a personal fb message, or even better, google them up for a phone number and do a little follow up. Maybe something like:
“Hi. Just noticed your face on my website in my Facebook page widget. Thanks for becoming a fan. Just curious, how’d you find me? …. ”
I originally tried to embed the actual Fan page box here, but didn’t seem to want to take the script… so, the sneaky image link… 🙂
Yesterday in a marketing Mastermind Group with a half dozen agents, a bit of confusion arose over two of the primary principles I use when developing their marketing campaigns. The question was new to me and that means it might be new to some of the readers here at BHB.
Earlier, we had discussed the parameters of an effective drip campaign on those we already know: friends, family, past clients, past prospects, and so on. I call this group your S.O.I.L (Source of Income List) because we want to grow a very robust referral business from it. Gary Keller, in his outstanding book Millionaire Real Estate Agent, refers to this group as METs and suggests you touch them or drip on them 33x per year. I have “adopted” this philosophy wholesale and – as with most of the concepts in that book – find it applicable to agents no matter where they work.
A little later, I mentioned that statistically speaking, 80% of all business happens after the fifth contact. This is not real estate specific. It’s more of a universal rule borrowed from the direct marketing world. (You may notice I do a lot of “borrowing” and “adopting”… most great marketing is based on ideas stolen from another industry or product. Take a look around outside the world of real estate. You’ll be amazed how many great ideas you find.) While discussing this idea, one of the agents asked why we need to touch our sphere 33x when most of the business is going to happen after the fifth contact. Great question because it illuminates one of the basic misunderstandings in marketing.
When you drip on your sphere – touch them regularly – you are practicing Epiphany Marketing. This is very similar to branding but, in my opinion, more effective. It’s designed to generate referrals and is on the very edge of what we can accurately call “marketing”. On the other hand a true, honest-to-God marketing campaign revolves around a specific concept (hopefully a USP) and is designed to carry people along a well-lit path until they inevitably reach the decision to Read more
There’s a couple of interesting and yet disturbing points to this report from CNBC:
The entire way that the banking industry is handling foreclosures, short sales and loan modifications isn’t designed to encourage participation (or perhaps mandate participation?) Until we get an organized and systematic way to deal with the facts that:
All three of these require different responses and a different way to effectively resolve the challenges that we’re facing.
If you ask me, the government and the banking industry haven’t figured out the way to deal with them that really works yet.
Tom Vanderwell
P.S. You’re probably Read more
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
Through The Looking Glass – Chapter VI
Lewis Carroll
Small business accounts for over 65% of all new jobs. If you wanted to create new jobs (I mean, if that was your actual goal and not just a cover story) you might decide to sit down with people who represent small business interests. The guest list for an actual, according to Hoyle, “Job Summit” then, might look like this:
If, on the other hand, your actual goal was to consolidate power and become the de facto benefactor of jobs, you might want to sit down with the people who kill small business on a regular basis. To keep things simple, you should probably limit yourself to those with whom you are already sleeping. The guest list might look like this:
Which list do you think showed up for the White House “Job” Summit?
To paraphrase Lewis Carroll (and, quite possibly, President Obama?):
“It is a job summit damn it! It is because I say it is. The question is, which is to be master: you… or me. That is all.”
Just a real quick look at the Panasonic Lumix ZR1, in use with the dogs this week as a real estate camera. When I get time, I’ll do some side-by-side comparisons. This is just a quick look at some photos and a demo movie.
First some pix:
These are good, nice and wide, nice and bright. No distortion on the straight lines. A little bit of lens flare, but this ain’t Life magazine.
Here’s a huge benefit: Even with the flash on, the ZR1 is fast. Refresh time is maybe two seconds, essentially no delay at all. The auto-focus/auto-exposure systems need a little time to do their calculations, so it’s possible to rush the camera. But a wide lens has a huge depth of focus, so it’s hard to get into real trouble.
The movie is not so pleasing. The wide lens is great, but the AF/AE issue is much more serious on-the-fly. I don’t like house videos, anyway, but, if you plan to do them with the ZR1, you need to make sure you have a lot of light.
Here’s the video as recompressed by YouTube:
Not great. The original is better. You can see it by clicking “Play in Popup” in the links at the bottom of the post.
My one complaint with the camera, so far, is that it’s so tiny. I have big hands, so it’s taking some getting used to. But it’s wicked easy to get a lot of very good photos very quickly. And the 25mm lens is very, very wide for a point-and-shoot camera.
Further thoughts when I’ve had more time to play.
Two quick confessions:
I can’t throw a baseball.
I’m pretty sure I just scared a potential client away.
I used to be able to throw a baseball. I played little league and pony league with some success. There weren’t any pro scouts putting radar guns on me or anything, but I played right up until high school and I was regularly elected to the all-star team. (Although looking back, it probably helped that I was much bigger than all the other kids and threatened to show them my Bruce-Lee-super-fist-of-temporary-death if they didn’t vote for me… Nah, I’m sure it was my prowess inside the foul lines.)
Anyway, in high school I discovered my true calling: shot-put. After that, I didn’t have occasion to pick up another baseball until my boys started playing just a year or two ago. That’s when I discovered that I now had all the throwing grace and accuracy of a little girl. You see, by my estimate I probably threw the shot – over the course of my competitive career – 15-20,000 times. That pretty much wiped out any skill I ever had for throwing a baseball. On the other hand, it created a near perfect shot-put technique that I can still demonstrate even now… as I enter my peak “mid 40s” athletic years. (These are a lot like my peak “mid 20s” athletic years, only everything is now done while carrying around the extra weight of a small child. It’s actually quite impressive if you think about it…) Think about it or not, I can still summon dynamic and purposeful form because of a powerful adaptation called muscle memory.
Earlier this week, as I was parking my truck, I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the street. The driver was craning her neck to jot down information from an agent’s For Sale sign. She then pulled up two houses and stopped again to take down information from another agent’s For Sale sign. By this time I was walking down the sidewalk; I veered in toward the middle of the street and approached her on the drivers’ side. “Hi,” I Read more
This is just ugly…..
Let me attempt to explain. Goldman Sachs came out with their economic forecast. Here’s a brief summary of it:
So, what does this mean for the housing and mortgage markets? The following list of predictions are made under the assumption that Goldman is right. If they are, I think the housing market is going to see:
In addition to that, a couple of other things we could see:
It’s going to be bumpy and it’s going to be wild, but it’s definitely going to be a ride to remember……
Tom Vanderwell
The key features of our 2011 outlook: (1) a strengthening in growth from 2.1% on average in 2010 to 2.4% in 2011, with real GDP rising at an above-potential 3½% pace in late 2011; (2) a peaking in unemployment in mid-2011 at about 10¾%; (3) extremely low inflation – close to zero on a core basis during Read more
Here below is my take on a possible action plan for any mid to large sized real estate brokerage that would like to increase local market share by drastically enhancing its brand visibility and recruiting more agents to its team.
At the core of this plan is the creation of a company standard “Agent Lead Generation Package.”
The thinking here is that as the brokerage works to serve (and mandate) the lead generation efforts of its agents, it’ll concurrently establish it’s standing as the most omnipresent, technically progressive, office in its market area.
Okay, this Mr. Sack guy is the guy who manages the Fed’s day to day dealing with the financial markets. Here’s what he had to say about rates yesterday:
The only questions that I see coming from this are:
Stay Tuned……
Tom Vanderwell
The Fed’s Market’s Guy Eyes Asset Sales and Rate Increases – Real Time Economics – WSJ
Mr. Sack is a key voice on the Fed’s expanding balance sheet, because he manages most of the central bank’s interactions with financial markets and thus many of its asset purchase and money lending programs……
Mr. Sack’s group estimates that the Fed’s purchases of $300 billion in long-term Treasury securities earlier this year helped to push yields on 10-year Treasury notes down by about half a percentage point……
Some critics have argued that the Treasury purchases didn’t have the intended impact of pushing rates down.
But Mr. Sack – a long-time proponent of such purchases – said his estimate is supported by regression analyses by the Fed.Purchases of mortgage backed securities, he says, pushed those rates down by a full percentage point.
Technorati Tags: Mortgage Rates, The Federal Reserve
