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Month: October 2010 (page 1 of 2)

October 31, 2010

Core Beliefs and The Middle of the Road

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

When it comes to core beliefs, it’s difficult to take someone seriously, who claims to hold a ‘middle of the road’ position. This isn’t about where you or I stand politically, spiritually, or any other way. Furthermore, I don’t much care where you are on those subjects. I hope you and I would stand together, if necessary, to defend each other’s right to our own beliefs. We’ll both be voting Tuesday, and the belief system garnering the most votes will win any given election — as it should be.

Let’s limit ourselves here to core beliefs and the concept of those who insist on the middle of the road.

For instance, I believe in the death penalty. You may not. We can cuss and discuss it over a friendly beer. But please tell me — what’s the moderate position? Where’s the middle of the road?

What about rape? All you moderates out there, enlighten me. What’s your ‘middle of the road’ take on that one? I’ll wager it’s not anywhere near the middle of the road. Wonder if that makes you that dreaded of all creatures, an ideologue?

Lately it seems an ideologue is defined as one who believes in gravity, and stubbornly refuses to be talked out of it. The evil bastard. But I digress.

Of course, the death penalty and rape are extreme core belief examples. That said, the essence of any core belief you hold, is that it’s deeply rooted, and will brook no violation on your part. Virtually all sane people we know are either for or against the death penalty, and unambiguously against rape in any form. But what about other core beliefs?

What about the Rule of Law?

What’s the moderate, middle of the road position on that one? Surely you had the same upbringing as I, in that you were taught, in no uncertain terms, that breaking the law has consequences. Do we, as fellow Americans, believe in the rule of law, or don’t we? Are we also not in agreement that our nation was founded upon the rule of law? Do we also not believe Read more

October 31, 2010

Urf. NOTS again…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Just as a matter of disclosure, our mortgage lender has filed another Notice of Trustee’s Sale against us. As I have discussed here before, we’ve been surfing all our our payables for quite a while. I don’t love doing this — but I don’t hate it either — but it’s what we can do to keep the doors open when there is not enough money coming through those doors. We’re lucky to be in business at all, considering how many other Realtors in Phoenix have been wiped out. This is not a tragedy on our end; we’ll buy our way out of hock before the Trustee’s Sale. And, of course, this is actually not any of your business at all. But I never want to be in a position that some noxious busybody can make a truthful statement about me that I have not first made myself.

October 30, 2010

THE Epiphany – Solomon Was Right

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I’ve had times in my career, the first one at 19, a whopping year of part time experience under my belt, when I was given a slightly unfocused glimpse at what was possible, in terms of that elusive concept, success. In a company filthy with studs and studdettes, (a word I just now made up) I somehow Gumped my way into finishing in second place in a 90 day in-house listing contest. I won an 11″ black ‘n white portable TV — a prize I’ve always been convinced my sainted step-mom was behind. The distance between me and the winner could only be measured in terms of light years. When basking in the shocked applause at the awards meeting, I thought I was a budding gift to real estate brokerage.

NASA still hasn’t developed the instrument capable of measuring how completely fulla crap I was back then. Lookin’ back, (I blush with shame whenever I do this) I would’ve had to climb up three rungs on the ‘Have a Clue’ ladder to have been Mr. Clueless.

Goals, plans, hard work, even talent, aren’t the most powerful weapon we have in life. Ask yourself, what precedes all of that? When we lump 1,000 highly successful real estate agents together, what’s the common denominator? Some had goals, some didn’t. There are massively successful people, for whom the next goal they set will be the first. The same goes for all the factors mentioned above. So, what’s the common denominator shared by virtually all of ’em?

They made a decision.

If ya see yourself here, raise your hand, but I’ll only speak for myself. Success in anything just ain’t that complicated, nor is the road leading to it labyrinthian. There are those who do, and those who can tell ya every way known to Man how something can’t be done — at least not by them.

We all realize the truth of profound principles of life at different speeds. I was a slow learner. You’d think as a PK I’d of understood the pure gold flowing from Solomon’s wisdom (paraphrased) — As a man thinks in Read more

October 29, 2010

Two more pix from my planet…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s my PhoenixBargains Twitter account as of last night. That account is nothing but auto-Tweeted real estate spam, six weblogs (five automated, one normal) running Twitter Tools plus FreePhoenixMLSSearch.com promoting its activity via Posterous (for now; I have plans to make this more robust and more interesting).

The first time I mentioned the PhoenixBargains asccount here, it had 54 followers. It’s now up over 300, the lord alone knows why.

Here’s a treat from last night:

Phil Gordon is the Mayor of Phoenix. He lives in my neighborhood, North Central Phoenix, but I doubt he’s looking for homes. Probably some minion on his staff was looking for local TweetFeeds and found me. I think we’re up to 500-ish new Tweets a day, every one of them software-generated, so they should have plenty to read…

October 22, 2010

Talking Dogs and Skinning Cats: An Anti-Sales Message

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

So I’m about to reopen my doors.  I’m up and delivering now, but I have some anti marketing to kill, and I’ll get to it over the weekend.  I had to learn a I recently attended a real-estate trade conference in the Pacific Northwest.  I won’t say which one.  I went to blogworld. sat in the back and mingled little.  What follows is overheard snipets from attendees, booth speakers and vendors.

“You,  can–and you should–finally…graduate from selling.  That’s the goal of every agent, right?  You deserve to rise above the crowd and become an online marketer, an avatar…an icon.  Let me help you do that.  Selling?  That’s for the lesser lights amonst us.  Let them handle it.  And, since it’s for lesser lights, then you needn’t learn to do it at a high level. All you need to do is turn some of your worthless GCI into digital credits.  We’ll bring pre-sold, can’t miss buyers to your door.

“And if our widgets fail…at least you  have provided them with their new entitlement: automated regurgitation of data without context.  Because that’s what buyers and sellers want, right?  They want to be in charge of their own experience and decide what’s right for them.

”Well,  sure I respect him.  Why wouldn’t I?  What happens in Vegas is between adults.  Of course he’s honest, sure.  Just because he lies to his wife, betrays his children in plain site doesn’t mean anything bad will happen business wise.  I think he’s as honest as the day is long.  I trust him implicitly. I mean, you gotta do what you feel is right, right?  He’s kept secrets for me, and you know, at the end of the day, marriage is long.

“Look, I want to provide value.  I don’t want just another pitchfest.  But, you know, if it feels a little festive, great.  If there are pitches going on, hey, what can you do?

“ROI?  Why would you ask about that? Puh-leaze. Hello, Old fashioned.  You need to become a personal brand. You need to become a recognized authority amongst all the agents.  Don’t you know?  Nobody’s ever really figured out the ROI Read more

October 20, 2010

Waiting for Higgs Boson

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

Dark matter can be a bitch.  And I mean this in the politest of ways; a mere postmodern posing of the generational Petro/Girard  family tenet, ‘in a hundred years it will all be over.’  Anything after that, please, draw your own conclusions.

I’m speaking as a  self-actualized moving part of an economic algorithm (and every time I use this word I must ask, ‘is this particular rithm an Al Gore  invention?’) that I was born into—with about the same amount of choice I had in the decision whether or not to crawl from my mother’s womb (yes, I was a breech birth baby) several decades earlier—the end result of a totally nother flawed rhythm method.  I have become cyber-morphed with the last four digits of my social security number, a randomly assigned superfecta I’ve lately grown to loathe…

“Excuse me. What was your name again?” I ask the voice who finally takes my call.

This was my second twenty-two minutes on HOLD in the Michael Bolton Greatest Hits audio loop queue of the American Express Blue Card Department. By this point I was looking around my office for a blunt object to off myself with. (Excuse the non-participial modifiers and occasional tense shifts as I’m a bit rusty at posting any thought that requires more than 140 characters these days.)

“It is Jess-ie, Mister Petro,”  the voice answers.

I instantly think of my deceased father, a passing memory still fresh in my mind; the other Mister Petro, forever with a faint whiff of expensive cologne and a seemingly wise and vast financial demeanor. (And that Mister Petro survived a real economic Depression.)

“Thanks you very much today,”  the odd voice, not from this hemisphere, adds on cue.  “How  may I assist you?”

“Hmmm. You don’t sound like a Jessie,” I say, looking to cyber-bully an over-matched, out-sourced CSR.

“Thanks you very much, Mister Petro.”

I swim back in space and think of my father and me playing  golf under the lights back in old Charlotte, many years earlier; that little Par 3 course on a swampy lake  just off Independence Boulevard. At once I  smell the honeysuckle fragrance and imagine the chatter of  the late night crickets…I recall the real Mister Petro as a much nobler man than I find myself Read more

October 19, 2010

Investors to put toxic loans back on B of A

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

No wonder B of A is accelerating foreclosures. They will need the cash from the sale of REO’s to repurchase about $47 Billion of bad mortgage bonds that were sold with, shall we say, less than pristine origination paperwork. This is where the robo signing mess matters. If the chain of title can be challenged and your friendly union pension fund can recover part of the loss on the investment, some one will be making up the loss. Any guesses who? Rest assured it will not damage the administration’s bankster contributors’  bonus pool.

Dig deep, taxpaying America.

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October 17, 2010

Rule of Law and All That: The Foreclosure Mess

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

Suffice to say, I take a different view of the current foreclosure – robo-signer – problem now confronting the mortgage industry. Where Greg calls the banks’ fraud upon the court “procedural laxities,” I say the banks are committing, wait for it, “frauds upon the court.”

Greg does a neat rhetorical trick, by shifting the focus from property rights to some kind of tort-based argument where the homeowner has to prove harm. Don’t be fooled. Property rights are not about harm. They are about who can prove superior title. And if banks bring fraudulent documents into court to assert that they own properties, they should be punished. In North Carolina, we call this Obtaining Property by False Pretenses, a Class H felony, punishable by up to 30 months in prison.

Where Greg says your home was foreclosed because you stopped paying it, I say your home was foreclosed because someone who could not prove an ownership interest in the home came along and committed a fraud by falsely asserting they could, thereby depriving you of your superior property rights in the home.

Where’s the “rule of law” I hear so much? Where are these sacred and inviolable property rights I hear about?

There’s been a lot of handwringing about consumers who should’ve known better when they were taking equity out of homes in 2005 and 2006. And about buyers who were mortgaging too much to buy those $400,000 homes on $50,000/year incomes. And about how, even though shady originators and greedy banks were selling these pipedreams, it was the buyer/consumer who should’ve known better because, after all, the buyer/consumer signed on the dotted line.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. In other words, cubicle dwelling robosigners (who I believe are not the real criminals, but merely patsies), were… ummm… not reading what they were signing.

Caveat emptor, and all that.

Yes, the timing is suspect because we’re in election season. This problem has been around for years. I first learned about it in detail last year, which means I Read more

October 15, 2010

The $100,000 a Year Agent – How That Can Be You

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

My company’s checks have a typo on them. I’ve left it uncorrected for years, in order to remind me of my lean beginnings. The company name is on the first line, followed by what should be Jeff Brown — Broker on the second line. Instead, it says, Jeff Brown — Broke. No, really, it does. Hardly anyone notices. In fact, we’re in the year’s last quarter and nobody has said anything this year. I think a couple people told me about it last year.

Every time I write a check it’s the first thing I notice. Much like muscle memory, the first picture that pops up is me, grabbin’ a commission check, (with much blonde hair blowin’ in the wind) and runnin’ down to deposit it in the bank. Back in those days, if it wasn’t for the backbone of the real estate industry, the working wife, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Real estate is, as I was told before California informed me I’d passed my first license test, the highest paid hard work, and the lowest paid easy work around. I’ve found that to be true, but not all-inclusive. As I’ve said a few times recently, .150 hitters can work as hard as they want, but if it’s not at the right things, nothing changes.

Here’s a thought to ponder. In real estate there are no minor leagues. In baseball kids learn their craft there. In real estate? Gimme a break.

There was a seven year period in which I worked for one of the biggest real estate firms in all of CA. The office sported 150 agents. They had a mentor program that graduated newbies as experts in protecting the company’s ass. Their career life expectancy was almost measurable. The office manager aspired to have that program bat .150 someday. The worst kept secret ever was the real reason that program was not axed. The newbies weren’t allowed in the ‘main office population’ ’till they closed three transactions — and their split was 50%.

24 trainees X 3 deals a year, at $500,000 median price, X 3% Read more

October 12, 2010

Foreclosuregate? A scandal? If you want to sue for damages, it behooves you to have suffered a real, actual, material injury.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had buyers back out of a purchase contract at the last minute, earlier this year. They got cold feet, and they had no remaining contingencies, so they understood they were losing their earnest deposit. The seller’s agent wanted to fight about it, making a lot of noise about specific performance. But here is what was interesting to me, thinking about the legal issues in the abstract:

The deal was a short sale.

In other words, had the sale proceeded to closing, the seller’s actual material gain would have been zero dollars and zero cents.

Taking account that we cancelled the contract, the seller’s actual material loss was — wait for it — zero dollars and zero cents.

Arguably, the seller might have suffered financial damages as a result of losing the home to foreclosure, rather than losing it in a short sale, but these consequences could never have been subject to my buyers’ control.

In other words, though we did not go to court, I could not see a way for the seller to claim any sort of material injury by the cancellation of the contract. He had no real, actual, material consideration at stake.

Why bring this up?

Because I think this is the end of the road in the so-called “Foreclosuregate” “scandal.”

To bring us up to speed, the Wall Street Journal wonders if we’re headed for housing armageddon. Not to be outdone, CNBC insists that foreclosure fraud is worse than you think.

Here’s what I think: If there were procedural laxities in the handling of paperwork, there was no intent to defraud. And laying that aside, there are no former homeowners who can claim that they were avoidably injured by mis-handled paperwork.

Why was your mortgage foreclosed? Because you stopped paying it. Did you have any rational reason to believe that you could keep your house once you had stopped paying your mortgage? No. If the paperwork that led to your foreclosure was not prepared to perfection, does that give you the right to retain possession of a home you are not paying for? No.

Voters are fools, of course, and the Attorneys General of the many states Read more

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