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Month: November 2010 (page 3 of 3)

November 6, 2010

It’s 4:15 pm. Do you know where your Realtor is? A consumer’s guide to using social media to supervise your goof-off employee.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Your mortgage lender just called. The appraiser is standing outside the home you’re hoping to buy, but there is no key in the lockbox. The lender called you so that you could call your Realtor. Your Realtor in turn can call the listing agent, and then someone can get over to the house — pronto! — to let the appraiser in.

There’s just one problem: You can’t seem to get your Realtor on the phone.

Stuff happens. Your Realtor could be tied up with another client or stuck in traffic in a cell-phone dead zone. Heaven forbid, he might have been in a car accident.

But… There is another possibility…

Do you remember when you first made contact with your Realtor? Do you recall him telling you all about how hi-tech his business is, detailing his presence on all the biggest social media sites?

So: If you’re not getting your calls to your Realtor returned, where might be a good place to look for him?

How about Twitter, for a start? How about Facebook? Foursquare? Tumblr? Posterous? You might have to look in a few places, but there are only two kinds of hi-tech Realtors: The kind who work a lot and the kind who play a lot.

How can you tell if your Realtor is the kind who plays a lot? It’s easy. He’ll be leaving tracks all over the place, Retweeting jokes and commenting on Facebook photos and writing detailed reviews of burger joints and doing — and documenting — just about any activity on the face of the earth — except attending to your real estate transaction.

Here’s the sad part: Even if you’re seeing dozens of Tweets and Facebook comments from your Realtor, you’re probably just seeing the tip of the iceberg. You’re not seeing the direct Twitter posts or the private conversations being carried out on Facebook or in email.

But: If your Realtor seems to be wasting his entire day on social media sites, there’s a reason for that:

It’s because he’s wasting his entire day on social media sites.

I’ve tried pointing out to Realtors that schmoozing on Twitter or Facebook is bad marketing, so Read more

November 6, 2010

Let’s Be Clear About Social Media

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I keep thinking I’m going to stop posting here.  I keep thinking that I’m going to get sucked into the vortex of rancor that BHB can be.   And then we get these gems of conversation from Brian, Jeff, Al & Greg.  And I’m drawn right back in.   Nothing’s perfect, everybody’s crazy, right?  Life goes on, and the closest I will get to a rebuttal of Greg’s impractical rancor is that it’s wallet-foolish to criticize someone that competes for some of the same business you do. Saving my rancor for when it matters has doubled my income. Your milage may vary.

I digress. Circling back to my take on Facebook.   I post there often, it’s in my opening tabs as I start my computer.  I look around and peruse.  I make some money from it, mostly in the form of the zombies.

Zombies?  These are the strangers that add me randomly on Facebook.  I consider that an “opt in”, so I add them back and put them on a “social media” list in Heap.

And then I send my new pseudo-friends a torrent of spam and calls.  They cry uncle with an Amex.   They are mostly realtors.

I process my queue about once a month and I wind up with 75-80 “leads”.  This generates about $3500 in new business.  $50 bucks a friend, y’all can add me all day long.

This is what most Realtors that are hustling do on Facebook. At least there’s effort here, which is more than I can say for those that strive to monetize whatever should flit across their subconscious.

 

Anyhow, enjoy.

November 5, 2010

Swallow Hard — Make It Happen — Or Get Out

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

For the most part, it’s human nature to have a love/hate relationship with the results that have our name attached to them. I’ve failed far more often than I’ve succeeded. It’s not even close. Name a category in which I’ve endured the ignominy of defeat, and my hand is more likely than not be in the air.

Baseball is useful here, as it’s a game based on failure. Hall of Famers are players who failed somewhat less than their peers. Major leaguer hitters as a group, fail at a rate of roughly 75%. Those who fail a ‘mere’ 65-70% of the time often end up earning $1 Mil a month or so. Think that’s a thin margin separating average from excellent? Try this — The difference between a .250 and a .300 hitter? One measly hit a week. Really.

Ponder this.

In San Diego’s market, one extra skinned cat monthly at the median price, about $375,000 or so, would create additional GCI of — wait for it — $135,000. Median price in your market is $150,000? That’s an additional $54,000 or so. One more deal a month. Would that make the difference for your family? Would those results keep you in the business? Would you then stop making pathetic excuses for your failure to do what produces spendable results?

If you can honestly say that’s within your reach by quietly tweakin’ your effort a bit, super. Do it now. I’ll expect a Christmas card next year.

However, if you’re already killin’ yourself 25 hours a day, eight days a week, you may wanna consider doin’ something different so as to generate better results. How’s that for an original thought? Explaining an anemic bank account to those counting on you at home is not a Kodak moment, a truth to which I can effectively testify.

It was one of those moments when the phrase, ‘Winners don’t make excuses, they make it happen’ became real to me.

Adapting is really code tellin’ us to stop doin’ what ain’t workin’ and start doin’ things that do. Again — there are those who tell us Read more

November 5, 2010

I don’t play Farmville and I don’t disagree with Brian Brady!

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

But I do question whether prospecting using facebook is the most efficient way to prospect.  I’m sure everything Brian Brady said is correct, he’s just that kind of a guy!  I’m also a one person office and time spent trolling facebook for leads isn’t as quick as calling up expired listings in my area, or working the internet where buyers are looking for homes!

For me, there are just quicker ways of getting calls from interested buyers than slogging through my facebook friends’ friends, tracking down phone numbers and calling them.  If there was some clever tool to just get those folks names and numbers (Greg has probably written one), with some sort of a relationship graphic so I have something to chat with them about, count me in on the calling.  I don’t mind cold calling.  Expired listings are quick to get and easy for me to call.  They can be pretty productive too.

I spent some time playing on Ebay’s classifieds today.  I’ll tell you how that works out when I know, but being where buyers are looking usually works pretty well for me.

So, I’m not disagreeing with Brian, I’m just wondering, like apparently the Zillow CEO is, if facebook is worth the time.  I haven’t found it to be the most productive way to do business prospecting.

“We’ve taken a number of swings at social (networking) that have not paid off. We might have invested less,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief executive of Zillow.com.

His site has some social networking features and some integration with Facebook and Twitter – mostly as a result of following the conventional wisdom that any vertical could benefit from a social emphasis.

What Rascoff discovered, however, was that real estate is one area that truly doesn’t lend itself to social.

“In our category, we have not found it to be a social experience,” he said. “When you’re looking to buy a home, your network is small – it’s you, your spouse, and your real estate agent. You don’t tell your 300 friends, ‘I’m looking at this house.’ And especially in this market, Read more

November 5, 2010

Facebook Works If You Work It. If You Won’t Work It, Just Play Farmville

by

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

Author website

Let me restate my case about Facebook; if you’re not using Facebook as a prospecting tool, you are most likely wasting your time and engaging in the ultimate procrastination scheme.  I don’t begrudge folks fun and Facebook can provide much joy.  You can reconnect with old friends and make interesting new friends there but if you plan to use it for business, you’ll most likely end up wasting hours that could have been better spent standing in front of a supermarket, handing out your business card.

Like this, from Agent Genius:

You don’t need a business page.  In fact, a business page is just one more time suck.  People rarely go to a business page to learn about real estate on Facebook; look at the metrics offered to prove that.   The author’s offered advice is just plain wrong:

You shouldn’t be using your personal profile page to promote business. It is against the guidelines on Facebook and just rude, regardless. I will share with you how you CAN use your profile effectively, but blasting out your market reports and new listings is a big NO-NO on your personal profile.

Huh?  I have no idea where the author found the “rule” about doing business on personal pages but can tell you, from a few years experience on Facebook, that telling your audience about your business is not only desirable but effective.   Posting listings isn’t rude, it’s your stock-in-trade.  If you’re only posting listings on your Facebook page, you’re likely to be branded as boring but listings are real estate porn, designed to slow down the gawkers and encourage a reaction from them.  Your “friends” will most likely be gawking at your listings if you’re interesting enough to be in their Facebook stream.

I have what I think is a low key way of occasionally including real estate into my status without it being obvious. I share parts of my day that include real estate in a personal light. For example: last winter I was showing REO property and put as my status update: “Showing Read more

November 4, 2010

If you can’t sell, teach. And if you can’t teach? Teach e-Pro!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t pay close attention to this crap, because — well — it’s crap. But you may have heard that the NAR’s most-idiotic designation, e-Pro, has been taken over by a confederacy of dunces super-nice people from Agent Shortbus (where they “pour” over everything, especially maple syrup over waffles) called SMMI.

You have to read between the lines in this press release, but my take is that the swamis from SMMI are going to teach you how to waste your days on TwitBook just like the cool kids. You might think that this is a suicidal strategy for working Realtors to pursue, but as has been discussed here lately, apparently the notion of working is one the cool kids are trying to get away from altogether.

Like this: I am told that the e-Pro trainer-training event held by the smarmies at NARdigras drew a thick slice of the most-prominent twitwits. I don’t know if they’re going to stop officially selling real estate — how would one know the difference? — in order to become full-time carriers of the TwitBook virus. The one thing we can hope is that the long-standing stench of e-Pro will arouse working agents from their TwitBook-induced stupor before they go completely broke.

And if they don’t? Crush them like bugs. This business isn’t for everyone. TwitBook is just the new bullpen, the new water-cooler around which losers can gather as they gripe themselves out of the real estate business.

Looked at that way, the e-Pro trainers in training could be doing all of us a favor: Isolating the people who won’t make it and teaching them How To Succeed At Failure.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

First, if you are deeply offended at seeing pompous, blustering, sputtering, know-nothing jackasses being skewered in public, please just go away. I don’t care, and I cannot imagine how anyone over the mental age of nine even could care.

Second, if you don’t want to go down the toilet in a very amusing public display of TwitBooked indolence, get your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel and stop pretending that schmoozing with losers and Read more

November 2, 2010

Yelp-ing Real Estate Agents: The Online Bus Bench Advertisement?

by

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

Author website

Todd Carpenter introduced me to Foursquare, last year in San Diego, and I immediately saw how geolocation could change the game for the neighborhood real estate agent. I envisioned agents promoting their listings and open houses on Foursquare.  I’m a natural “spammer” so I started using it to “check-in” to my place of business.  I figured it was a natural way to promote myself in front of a crowd.  The problem with Foursquare is that the crowd was measured in the dozens and most of them were bar-hoppers as opposed to “citizens”.

Geolocation was quickly adapted by Yelp, then Facebook.  My rule of social media marketing is to go where the people are.  What I like about Facebook (it’s a BIG platform) didn’t quite work for geolocation marketing.  Check-ins get lost in a sea of status updates and it’s tough to “piggy-back” on the social proof offered by Yelp.

Yelp is a really good platform if you’re trying to find the “bus bench advertising” approach to neighborhood brand building.   It’s pretty simple idea (you write reviews on local businesses) and the geolocation service allows you to ‘check-in” when you’re at a business.  There is a little point game associated with check-ins but the hidden gem is, if you have the most check-ins at a business, your picture, and link to your Yelp profile, is prominently displayed (at least on the mobile version).  This is the modern day bench bus advertisement (and it costs nothing).   Combine your check-ins with reviews and you’re building an online brand as a neighborhood expert.

What Is A “Neighborhood Expert”?

We would like to think that the big hair and Cadillac agent model is dead.  It’s not ! How often do you meet recent buyers, who tell you that they used the agent, who advertises in the Pleasantville Courier-Post ?    They often describe that agent as “a big shot” or “successful”.  They may not comment about that agent’s ethics or service but people like to think they are dealing with the “biggest”  (which they sometimes confuse with well-known).  This is why so many agents spend money on “brand building”.  I prefer Read more

November 1, 2010

Developing The Perfect Content Map For Your Real Estate Blog

by

Las Vegas Mortgage Blogger

Author website

Regardless of the recent debates about whether or not a real estate blog should be considered a solid foundation for a single agent to develop a realistic business model on, there are still many benefits of publishing content on a site you own… provided everything is organized properly.

I follow the CopyBlogger school of thought for designing strategic landing pages to ensure my target audience gets the exact information they’re looking for when they hit my sites for the first time.

While I do feature categories and tags in non-prominent areas of the footer or custom sidebars, I try to keep my main informational points of interest flowing from the top down in order to respect the time my readers have to spend online.

Homeowners and new buyers can easily get overwhelmed with the hundreds of details they may need to be aware of when it comes to the mortgage or real estate process.

One simple answer can easily lead them to five other questions that they didn’t know they needed to be asking.

Designed with the big picture in mind, your blog can effectively lead someone through their fact-finding mission in a painless and strategic manner.

Obviously, articulating this complex home buying thing in a manner that non-industry people can understand is great way to build trust with your potential clients.

Agents are obsessively consumed with “Personal Branding” to the point where buyers have to invest valuable seconds of their life on a site sifting through awards, testimonials, twitter feeds and media interviews before they can find a page that actually addresses their real needs and concerns.

However, I feel industry blogs have come a long way in the past five years.

But, we need to get better at focusing on homeownership education if we’re truly going to impact a positive change in our local real estate markets.

Here’s an example of my Mortgage 101 section, which has significantly increased in stickiness since I took out the sidebars and customized the page layout to serve as more of a site index with a purpose.

My ultimate goal is to be able to send borrowers and agents to my mortgage blog without Read more

November 1, 2010

The Hunt for Greg’s October: What I found by quarrying my goals.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

To be honest, I would like to hear from other folks on what they’re doing about their goals. I will tell you from my own experience that perfect performance is elusive, but if you make the effort to track your efforts, it’s a lot easier to stay on track — and to get back on track if you stray. I may write a MySQL app with a PHP front-end, just to make record-keeping that much easier.

In October, I tracked a lot of stuff, so much that I ended up not tracking some things, so much was there to keep track of. In the photo, my goals are documented at the top:

S – Write software or work on web-based marketing for the business.

G – Play the guitar for at least half an hour.

W – Walk with Cathleen and the dogs for half an hour.

X – Work out for half and hour.

A – Attend an appointment with a real estate buyer or seller.

C – Write a real estate contract.

O – Open an escrow.

$ – Close an escrow.

It’s at the end of that list that I fell apart. I had a ton of appointments, and I wrote a lot of contracts. These are not hugely meaningful: It takes me a lot of contracts, right now, to get to one closed escrow. I actually closed two deals — only two — but one of them was a short sale that I held together against all odds for nine months. That’s not a proud accomplishment, financially, but it speaks volumes about improvements I’ve been trying to make in my sales skills. I opened four escrows, which is the threshold of a pace I’d like to improve upon. Altogether, it was a pretty good month for real estate work.

Software was no problem at all — most days quite a bit more than 30 minutes. Much of this was the server swaps we went through, but I wrote a ton of new software, some of which I’ve discussed in recent posts. I have quite a few more tricks up my sleeve, plus a lot of my recent work Read more

November 1, 2010

What A Good Year (Still Broke).

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

This year has been a good year.  I’ve come tantalizingly close to a neutral net worth.

I’m not there yet, but the breakdown is something like this:  Payroll & Business Debt: $8,000, Consumer Debt: $0.  Education Debt $24,00 Tax (mostly Ohio) Debt: $30,000.

Based on the rate I’ve been paying debt down, I’ll probably be healthy in April.  Maybe sooner if I catch some of the breaks I expect.

All of these numbers were higher at the beginning of the year.  And, they are listed in the rough order I’ll be paying them off.   When I started writing on BHB, I was more than a quarter million dollars in non-real estate debt. Staggering now that you think about it.  That’s a whole house, nice in most areas and really nice in the Midwest.  We sold our home, walked away from our lease-option (leaving thousands with the owner who was still underwater).   We went into bunker mode, where we lived (all 4 of us) in a two bedroom apartment.

That helped cut expenses which helped create a business–and helped me be able to fail with less risk.  Because getting caught up on basic needs was just a table waiting job away.  Living cheap reduces pressure and increases options.  I recommend it to all parties.  If you have a wife that lets you do that NEVER LEAVE HER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Anyway, it’s time to up the ante, and we’re gonna be “behavior based” in lieu of outcome based.  It’s well and good to have goals with outcomes.  But behaviors lead to outcomes.  And good definitions of “done” is what’s done.

So I’m going to do 5 things each day.  This will make up the majority of my day.  Other things matter, but not as much.  The definition of success matters as well.   This should take about 10 hours out of me.  Do this, and all else works.

Workout: it’s not enough to get to the gym and be listless. Intensity is key. So, the workout needs to be as follows: 90 minutes total cardio (60 minutes intense) & a weights routine as mandated by Joey Read more

November 1, 2010

Never forget: The collapse of the global economy was caused by the National Association of Realtors.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Vickie Cox Golder, current Grand Poobah of the National Association of Rotarian Socialists, sends this little note:

Tomorrow is election day. As a proud member of the REALTOR® Party, I hope that you will join me and the entire NAR leadership in casting your vote tomorrow for the candidates at the local, state and federal level who will provide needed leadership to restore a healthy housing market and who believe strongly in the value of homeownership.

Here’s a very simple fact to be mastered:

More than any other person or group, the collapse of the global economy was caused by the National Association of Realtors.

There are plenty of other grafters to be blamed, of course, but without the tireless lobbying of the NAR, property rights in the United States would not have been so grievously undermined, and none of the economic monkey-wrenching in the real estate market would have occurred.

When you’re going over your wrecked finances, the key villain, at every turn, turns out to be the NAR.

Big, history-making election tomorrow. Chances are, it will turn out to be meet-the-new-grafters-same-as-the-old-grafters. But if there is real change to be seen in American political life, it will start with the restoration of the rights of property-owners.

If the NAR had any sense, it would become a stridently pro-ownership lobby. Instead, it will continue as the blood-sucking vampire it has been since its inception. And for this reason, you should lean all over your congress-creeps to ignore the NAR’s every grasping entreaty.

Do you actually want a free economy — so your children can earn as much as their hard work can gain them? If so, you have to stand for the repeal of every law affecting real estate transactions. Their sole purpose is to enrich the members of the National Association of Rotarian Socialists at the expense of consumers — leading, ultimately, as we are seeing, to the impoverishment of all of us.

The NAR is a cancer on the body politic. If they won’t learn better, at least you can.

November 1, 2010

And not only that, when he’s wearin’ his cowboy hat, Jay Thompson is just about the tallest guy around!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Pathetic fact number one: Jay Thompson is crowing that his company is in the top 5% of Phoenix-area real estate brokerages.

Pathetic fact number two: Thompson’s Realty has 104 closed residential transactions in ARMLS, year-to-date, spread across 21 licensees. Yeah, that’s fewer than five closings per head. Still worse, Shar Rundio accounts for 24 of those closings. That gets the other 20 mirror-foggers down to four deals each, on average. Jay and Francie have six closings between them. For reference, Cathleen and I have closed 27 properties, total, so far this year — and we’re broke!

Pathetic fact number three: Jay Thompson is the poster-boy for the TwitBook model of selling real estate. Like so many other dipwads in the TwitBook world, he’s set up an on-line academy so you, too, can learn how to close a deal every other month or so.

Your clients won’t believe bullshit. Too bad so many Realtors and lenders will.

November 1, 2010

Real Estate Agent Drives around So Cal with Corpse for 10 months

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

From the Daily Beast:

For 10 months, (a real estate agent) drove around with a corpse in her car. She never contacted police or tried to find the dead person’s relatives. Instead, as the body began to decompose, she spread baking soda on the floorboards to mask the smell.

Leaving aside for a second the pain this must be causing the dead woman’s family, as well as the real estate agent’s likely clinical insanity, there is something about this that strikes me as instructive.

It’s the bit about spreading baking soda to mask the smell.

It pains me to admit it, but I can identify with that impulse and recognize it in some of the organizations I’ve worked with: When faced with a big stinky problem, we don’t necessarily ignore it, we just sprinkle baking soda on it, and that allows us to keep going at least for a little while.

So, what have you been sprinkling baking soda on?  Maybe today is a good day to do something about it before the problem gets so bad someone else has to call for backup.

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