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Looks like DSIdxpress,a wordpress idx plugin that allows indexaspiderability of mls listings, is in beta.

Neat stuff. I really like DS. Enjoyed tapping their feeds to autofeed content and game search engine results in my own practice late last year. Enjoy integrating their solution in client sites today. They’ll probably make a bunch of sales based on this innovation, which is cool. “You’ll have thousands of listings indexed on google” is a great pitch…

Or at least it used to be?

What I think this really means is that the days when IDX works as an effective lead capture tool are actually coming to a close. Spiderability doesn’t seem like it’ll be such a big deal anymore when everybody’s hip and got it implemented.

Retechudamus says: As older school brokers scurry to grab the next “get rich quick” property search tool thats better than the guy’s down the street, the steady and sure content creators will continue to build a loyal fan base, poaching said brokers’ referral bases along the way.

Either way, good shit DS, this is still a nice move and I look forward to playing once it’s ready!

(Shit bomb inspired by Ken Brand, who’s dropping some eloquent “douchebags” and “bullshits” over at AG..)

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I’m now writing on a few blogs. BloodHoundBlog, of course. But also my own firm blogs for criminal law and bankruptcy law.

All this blogging can get a guy down, especially when you have to use WordPress’s web interface. I like the act of writing. I hate the act of logging into WordPress and blogging.

So I’ve been looking for webblogging clients – tools you can use to interface with the blog, draft posts from your desktop, and post them without having to log into the actual WordPress site.

I’ve been using ScribeFire for a few months, and it’s ok. It is a plugin that works with Firefox, whether on a Mac or a PC. The problem is that, so far as I know, the plugin hasn’t been re-written for Google Chrome. And I like Google Chrome because it is so fast.

I recently did a little googling, and found some other clients. The best of the batch, which I’ve been using today, is called Ecto. Ecto is only available on a Mac. It’s light-weight, easy to use, has the ability to “cross-post” to different blogs, and also interacts well with WordPress’s various features, like scheduled posts, tags, and categories.

It’s a little buggy. It’s crashed once on me today. I’m hoping that is fixed, because otherwise I like it.

This post was written with Ecto, in fact.

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I don’t know if the local board in Phoenix allows agents to display recent sales transactions via idx feed, but it seems to me from talking to others around the land that most boards don’t.

Doesn’t it kinda sting that Trulia can display this info, but Realtor folk can’t?

Or can they?

How To Display Real Estate Transactions On Your Wordpress Site Via Trulia’s Pretty Up To Date RSS Feed

1. Install and activate the “EXEC PHP” plugin
2. Do A General Property Search For Any Area On Trulia.
3. Click the “Recently Sold” Tab
4. Once the results are up, click on the link for more details on the first property.
5. When the info shows up, click “back.” – [This is key! ]
6. Now there will be an RSS feed link at the very top right of the page.
7. Click On It, Then Grap The RSS Link That Pops Up Slightly Lower To The Left
7. Insert the RSS feed into the code below within a blog post, where indicated by “PUT YOUR JUICY SALES TRANSACTION FEED URL HERE”

< ?php // Get RSS Feed(s)
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$rss = fetch_rss('PUTYOURJUICYSALESTRANSACTIONFEEDURLHERE');
$maxitems = 30;
$items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>

< ?php foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>

• < ?php echo $item['title']; ?>

< ?php endforeach; ?>

Phoenix Real Estate Sales Transactions

What you’re seeing below is actually a screen capture of the transactions on my own site… didn’t want to mess with plugins/php over here at bhb (or cause other trouble for ma and pop.)

Which leads to the point of all this. Can you see adding pages upon pages of dynamic content to your site using this little trick? Or is this content theft? Does Trulia own the data? Does your local board?

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When I was a mortgage guy, when I doubled my volume and income in 2007, I did it because I created systems and loops.

Systems: do the same thing every time.

Loops: have an end point that, on every job, fixes the system.

At the end of every transaction, no matter how routine, I would write down the points of friction, error and mistake. I’d write down EVERYTHING, try to get the # of phone calls down, focusing on delays and customer impacting changes.

I learned to have “Accurate Hud-1, Day 1″ as a standard that I forced title companies to adhere to.
I sent DAILY updates to every party to the transaction: buyer, seller, listing agent, selling agent, title company. I stopped doing business with buyers that didn’t like this. That practice preserved good will on one transaction that had been put in a flood zone that requires flood insurance, to the benefit of all parties.
This was stuff that I learned because of operational flexibility. I had a survey for my customers, and myself. The one for myself I was more concerned with. “How many touches/phonecalls/passes…did this need,” and most importantly, “what can I do better next time.”

I Ignored My Own Advice When I Learned a New Business.

What Can I do better? That question, on every deal, no matter how routine, makes us better practitioners. When I went into the Web marketing thing, I avoided it for a while as I learned the topography and what I was good at. I was too focused on making ends meet. The teeth of the hydra–the nonsense that is the IRS–was upon me, so I was focused on right now selling.
When you’re burdened by time debt, you don’t have the operational flexibility to be proactive. When scarcity creeps in, you can’t be as proactive as you want. You feel scared. And your flailing and not doing the work that makes the most difference.
I had a mediocre business, that is now enjoying rapid improvement by having a self correcting loop.

What Is A Self Correcting Loop?

Has four steps:
1.) Have a process, send people through the process.
2.) Solicit feedback from everyone in the transaction at various points, especially from the end. Collect data.
3.) Figure out what things are likely to recur at some point, and were not unique to this transaction (hint: what’s important in one phase may be unimportant later).
4.) Add new steps to the process that prevent or mitigate bad factors…so you run people through the process again.
For the real estate business, it’s knowing what’s next. People wanna know what’s next at all times. For the web business they want similar situations, but the bottom line is this: every deal makes you smarter, better, more & more fun.

Why Don’t People Do This?

Fear and Ego. No, not in the good, Greg Swann way, but in the way that is destructive. I’m not always perfect. I have given people crappy service (and refunds, when called on). I have underdelivered and overpromised. (And I am working on it.) There is resistance to admitting limitation and imperfection. There is resistance to admitting that you’re not perfect because you haven’t made the leap that allows you to overcome the Implied Accusation.
You need to know that you probably have vast blind spots. Things that you do that piss people off, that slow down deals. You need to know, no matter your profession, how to fix it, how to be a better people helper. Why? Because that’s your calling card. A standard of excellence, a good example. Getting these out is quick and simple.
Make a survey, put it in Cforms, act on the results, add questions and remove questions as your competencies shift. Get better ON PURPOSE.

I’m doing it over the weekend, figuring out times and places to intentionally solicit feedback that improves my system. I’m doing it within the context of some WICKEDLY cool software called Digital Access Pass, which will also get some ink spilled here.
This may wind up being Chris Johnson weekend here at BHB, as I share the cool stuff I’m building.

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Using the Tubepress plugin’s shortcode paremeters it’s easy to create a bunch of different video galleries within one wordpress install. I’ve been calling these different pages “galleries” because it sounds fancy, but maybe for BloodhoundBlog.TV we can call them Channels?

In order to have any of your videos show up on a channel, all you’ll need to do is use a “secret tag” when you upload the video to youtube.

I’ve tweaked up a special sidebar so that all channels will flow into the sidebar as links when created using some wordpress list_pages fun. I’ll spare everyone the nitty gritty technical details here and maybe save some of the code snippets for a later post, but I want to mention that this is all being set up within one wordpress install for a reason — Because I think following a similar configuration could be useful to any broker who’d like to create a TV station within his/her blog.

For example, a Mega Monster Multi Contributor Broker Blog could included the following channels, all with videos created and emailed from phones by agents.

• Weekly Market Updates
• New Listings
• Neighborhood Driving Tours
• Area Restaurants
• Area Parks
• Agent Interviews
• Scenes From Settlement

You get the idea? Consider how sticky your broker site be if all visitors were confronted with a series of 2-5 minute videos created by your team of agents. How likely would these visitors be to “subscribe to receive all new videos? Combine this with open registration on a solid idx integration, and I think any broker with the stones to encourage (pay for) agent generated video content could quickly increase market share in any market.

But oops… sorry for the digress into how this stuff might actually be applied to make some coin.

Back To BloodhoundBlog.Tv

Obviously even though the technology behind the thing is the same, we’re going to need a different set of channels for BloodhoundBlog.TV.

So, I’ve gone ahead and created a “CRM” channel which I’m hoping will soon include various under the hood peeks at CRM systems geared toward Realtors. CRM’s a dirty little geeky obsession that I think I share with a lot of folks around here, so maybe it’s a good place to start?

Can you think of some others? I’m hoping y’all won’t mind using the comment section here to make your own areas of interest known by suggesting some channels for BloodhoundBlog.TV. And if you’ve got any current Youtube videos that you’d like to see included on the channels you suggest, feel free to include links. I’ll respond asap with the “secret tags” as the channels are created…

Meanwhile, here’s the TV page again with the new custom “Channel’s” sidebar….

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After reading through John Rowles’ post about Glenn turning things profitable. (Hope that sticks for you Glenn, way to go.) And reading Michelle’s comment, where she rightly noted that Glenn has made changes to his model to get profitable, I thought some further comment is in order.

When I raise my glass to toast Glenn’s accomplishment, I am toasting HIM, and not his business model. Of course he has made changes (in my opinion–they were needed). Yes, he made a hugely difficult decision to cut staff in order to GET profitable. He made many other changes as well that were equally crucial.

It was countless moves that many others in his shoes might not have done and it was agonizing (I am sure) for him at times.

There have been numerous firms that have gone under trying to see “how low they can go”…commission limbo is VERY hard on the dancers as opposed to selling value. Looks easy, but it ain’t. How many caracasses of those companies have we seen strewn along the way.

After reading Rowles’ post I then flipped over to Joost De Valk’s post on his blog about the business model for WordPress and how theme developers vs plugin developers are being treated.

He argues that there should be commercially supported plugins (read: not free) as well as free plugins (GPL- or gnu public license) on the WordPress plugins site.

I agree.

Plugin developers (if they are good enough to develop commercially viable plugins SHOULD be able to charge and charge what the market will bear.) Those who want to work for FREE are able to do so. (They will starve.)

In my own business at EricOnSearch, I have used several models (started with full service SEO, then went to Coaching, and now emphasize joint ventures with select partners).

There are lead generators out there who are profitable and there are many who never will be and will die or sell out due to lack of cash. (How’s the burn rate, fellas?)

I guess the bottom line is this. I like freedom. I like people who succeed. I celebrate profitability. (and there are some profitable lead generators out there) And I toast the winners and console the losers in a Vince Lombardi sort of sadistic way. (grin)

Here’s to Joost trying to get the WordPress folks to quit insisting on giving away the plugin store and putting the tin cup away in favor of the cash register. Here’s to Glenn for making the tough decisions (including sending leads outside, right?).

And here’s to me making the 18 hour days turn into peltless kitties and giving Mrs Eric and the rest of Team Eric the lifestyle that I would wish for them. (grin)

Best to all.

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When I was looking into whether or not Realtor.com was publishing scrapable rss feeds based on searches a few weeks ago, I also took a look to see if Trulia was doing the same thing.

Sure enough, they are, but of course the quality and the diversity of the types of feeds they’re offering are way juicier than Realtor.Com’s. Not surprising.. absent a Move/NAR type hook up, these guys actually have to innovate, right…

So, with all this fuss over local boards and NAR trying to control the “misappropriation” of property data by regulating idx feeds, I’ve been wondering if one couldn’t just turn Trulia into a personal, free idx solution using the same method I used to tap R.com…

The ingredients?

• Self Hosted Wordpress
• Exec-PHP Plugin
• Simple Pie Wordpress Plugin
• Simple Pie Core
• WP-Omatic Plugin (Optional)
• A few code snippets and some basic html knowledge for use with really getting freaky.

At the end of the day one would have:

• Lotsa fresh goog juicy dynamic content.
• Not all, but enough mls info to make your visitors at least hang around for a little while.
• Sales Transaction, REO, Pre-foreclosure data and any other information not available in local idx data either because of local
  board regulations or limitations in the fields available in the mls software.
• And more…

In short, you could probably “scrape” your way to a more informative site then your competitors have without the need to wrestle with the threat of an absurd Mibor type situation.

[An Example Start Here For The Curious]

But It’s A Half Measure…

Sure…that could work, sorta. But Trulia’s info isn’t all that comprehensive to begin with and you’d be offering your visitors a half-assed hacked up version of true idx. So we’re back pretty much to square one, with some extra dynamic content but no free idx via Trulia.

[Aside: Shouldn't these guys do the right thing and disclose to their visitors that their's isn't a comprehensive "search engine?" I'd buy ads on trulia in a minute if they could say something like: "Yo, we don't have all the listings, but we're real good at roping you in, so why don't you click this guy's freaky face for the real deal"]

Another Way…

But why give up so fast?

What if all agents, NAR and Non NAR members alike agreed to provide Trulia with listing info, but not give it to the local MLS?
Even where providing listing data to the board is a membership requirement, we could still only give the local MLS 1 photo and limited descriptive info, while giving Trulia like 20 photos plus a big ole juicy remarks write up?

Hmm…

I know. This would require participation on a large scale from a whole lotta realtor folks. Could never happen right? Well…

Hey Trulia! Why not make something like this happen? Why not innovate a product that’s so incredibly valuable to real estate agents that they’d pretty much all gladly line up to provide you comprehensive listing data while even paying you a monthly fee?

What am I talking about?

What about an idx solution that every agent in the country could use free of charge? You know…something that
would “brand” to each individual agent, meaning the leads generating from that agents pages would route automatically to the agent. And why not make it both:

• Framable on our own websites…

and/or

• Part of individual agent web/blog pages, something like ryanhartman.trulia.com maybe.

And you could offer 2 pricing options.

• $2/month for ad free (ok, I’ll give you $5 or even $10 if you do it right)

or

• Free with ads?

I’d gladly pay for a product like that, complete with all those juicy graphs, foreclosure data, sales transactions, heat maps,
lead capture stuff, etc. And…Trulia’s pre-packaged google clout to boot! Yeah, I’d take it in a heartbeat. I wonder if there aren’t a million or more like me out there who wouldn’t also hop on this one?

A fully functional idx + website for $24 year and we could all just forgo the $500 or so in local board + NAR dues? I mean idx is the only rational reason for paying those dues any more, isn’t it?

So Trulia, are you ready to make an insanely profitable switch over to idx vendor? Or maybe Zillow, will you help bring us all closer to “N/A R?”

Or more obviously… Move/NAR!

Couldn’t you guys have something like this delivered pretty quickly and have a product on your hand that’ll sell itself and be much more profitable than your current offerings will ever be? (Without completely ripping off your membership with ads that never provide valuable ROI..)

Yeah, IDXRealtor.Com. — I’m thinking this last option is probably the closest to what’ll actually end up coming of all this abzurdity?

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I think about this every now and then. Under all is the land- real estate not as business, but as a sort of philosophy, a big idea. Greg wrote an incredible piece about this in his usual big thinker style. I can’t take this on from the place Greg’s at, but I can see this from the street level- from where I’m working.

My transactions with first time buyers and with HUD owned homes are teaching me a few things. You may not deal in that market. It’s very gritty. Not everyone wants to get their hands that dirty, or do that much work for a couple hundred dollars, and believe me when I tell you that there are times I understand that completely. But le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas, so against the best advice of some of the best brains in the business, I’m working with the people who do not take home ownership for granted, they didn’t grow up assuming they will ever own a home. And in spite of all this collective intelligence pointing me elsewhere, I love working with people who are excited about owning property. Do you know what I mean when I say that?

Think about how incredible that statement is: Owning property. Land. Something that can’t get moved, can’t be taken away. I know eminent domain exists. Forget that for just a moment and think about the history of man. Property ownership equals freedom. The right to own property? That’s extraordinary! So while I understand I could make more money with less work if I worked at real estate differently, I get a huge kick out of helping people who see what I see when they buy a home.

These are people who may have grown up under circumstances that would not have precluded home ownership. They may have grown up in parts of the country that have become too exclusive for the average person and they have been shut out of a life they literally helped build. Perhaps they are not children of privilege but children of other circumstances. They might be newly minted citizens, thrilled with the possibilities the future holds. Maybe they are just people who spent their youth making stoopid decisions and have finally pulled their head out of their ass and want to move forward with their lives. Whatever their reasons, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that these are people for whom owning a home means more than an investment and getting their kids into the right schools. Home ownership means freedom to these people. Think about that.

I would guess that most of us don’t understand the mental and emotional changes that take place under these circumstances. If your parents, your aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors and hardly anyone you knew owned property, the thought of owning property? This is huge! This is everything. This is moving forward. This is life itself- it’s freedom.

We don’t have it all right, this property ownership freedom idea. Our laws still mean that we are constricted about usage, and we can have that property taken away to suit someone else, but we have what we have and it’s a damn good start for many people.

Saturday night I couldn’t sleep. I poked about online and found the TED lectures. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but I this particular lecture from Robert Neuwirth about Squatter Cities stuck with me. It’s about 20 minutes long, so you might not want to take the time, although you should. I’ll pull a few points for you: These squatter cities in India or Africa or South America- where millions (billions?) of people live, have become not about living in poverty, but about thriving- flourishing even- freely in a society that is of your own making. Carving out a life, owning property?, starting a business. Can you see it? We have squatter communities in Dayton, I’m sure your big city has them as well. These are communities that will, to some extent, be shaping the future of our world. Consider what property ownership means to these people.

I showed homes last night. My buyer has always assumed he would buy a home, so this was a fairly typical buyer in that respect, but the neighborhood we were in? Something has changed in this neighborhood. On this Memorial Day weekend, from what once was a battle ground with abandoned playgrounds, there was block after block filled with the lovely sound of laughter as families and young children and neighbors celebrated Memorial Day in a very American way by opening up their homes, firing up their grills, pulling their resources- probably meager to most of us- and having a barbecue. Happy to be owning property, even if it is property no one else really wanted. But most of all this neighborhood was going about the very serious business of celebrating their freedom, and yours too, and grateful for all those sacrifices that made this possible.

Under all is the land; but understanding that keeps us free. Happy Memorial Day!

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My screencast on installing plugins (“Plugin: ‘That’s What She Said’”) is up at HouseYourMom.Com. [I'm particularly proud of the intro this time.]

Here are the plugins that I’ve loaded up on the HeyCentralPa wordpress install so far:

Advanced Category Excluder
Cforms
Exec-PHP
Foreclosure.Com
Headspace2
NextGen Gallery
Similar Posts
SimplePie & SimplePie Core
TubePress
WP-O-Matic
Kimili Flash Embed

I plan to go a lot more into these as I implement each one, but for now I’m wrestling with getting Tubepress to work correctly with the P2 page template. It works fine with posts, just not pages. (Anyone wanna take a crack at helping me find the problem? I’ll happily hook up some ftp access..)

On the “how’s this gonna go down” front, I’m still looking for that big (open minded) Central Pa Broker to sweep me off my feet. Despite my tough talk the other night, I’m chickenpoop to try to establish a whole new practice in a totally new market and am more interested in other endeavors, so how’s this for an offer?

If you’re a broker in CentralPa and you want to give all of your agents free hyper local niche pages on HeyCentralPa.Com, I’ll set it all up, manage the technical details, and do free “how-to-blog” workshops in your office for free!

Why? What’s the catch? Need more details? Use my spiffy Google voice button to get in touch!

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Yep, I’m head over heals for Auttomatic’s P2 Wordpress Theme.

HeyCentralPa.Com is now up and running and awaiting your participation!

Here’s what’s gone on today:

• Customized the CSS with the help of this great free palette generating tool.
• Generated A Horizontal Menu (P2 Doesn’t Come With One).
• Uploaded and Activated A Great Custom Registration Plugin and included the appropriate login/register links on the site.
• Tweaked The Main Index Template File So That The Part Showing Up Below The Pictures Would Be SEO Cool and hopefully Properly Draw In Visitors.
• Integrated The Slideoo Horizontal Flickr Sharing Script so my header would be dynamic, colorful, and engaging. (I know, probably not the best for SEO? Eric?)

Which brings me to my final feat of the day. I used the flickr integration explained in this screencast to make it dead simple for me, or any of the site’s contributors to post to the site.

So please…go ahead and give it a try by forwarding any old pic as an attachment to an email to “mores26into2blog(at)photos.flickr.com” ! [Please feel free to have fun and send some crazy stuff -- I'll remove the test posts after we all have a good laugh...]

I’m really trying to create an environment that will make it dead simple for agents-partners and other contributors to help enhance the site with their content. So if I may ask one more favor…If you have a minute, head on over to http://heycentralpa.com then register yourself and post a comment on the home page letting me know what you think of how it’s coming so far.

Thanks much!

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A Screencast on HeyCentralPa.Com’s theme choice and a bonus cast on ditching BHB style ugly permalinks are up over at HouseYourMom….

I’m going to go ahead and give the very young and probably buggy P2 Wordpress theme a shot I think. It touts a twitter like interface that will allow visitors to interact with eachother, or hopefully the agent contributors on the site. In the coming days I’ll tweak it up so that the “Hey Watcha Up To” reads something more target keyword and audience appropriate, but otherwise, I think this might have been a great find.

Why? Well I mentioned in the comments of my post yesterday that I plan to do a lot of belly to belly promotion of this thing all around the Central Pa area. So my conversation with local business owners might go something like this:

“Hi I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind me taking a quick video of your establishment and posting it on HeyCentralPa.Com, the new web magazine I’ve created. I’ll also be happy to post a link back to your website alongside the video. Oh yeah…and if you’d like to freely plug yourself or your business on the site, I’ll be happy to email you login info so that you can freely self plug on our home page.”

What’s everyone think?

Blammo Right! Will I need to cold call expireds or sit open houses with a networking hook like that?

And going back again to yesterday’s post….

Teri helped me realize in the comments of that post that the ad revenue generating, get-agents-to-blog-for-greed’s-sake approach could be flawed. This thing is pretty much meant to be a “take the juicy agent content back from localism” play, so I’ve happily begun to rethink agent involvement piece of the puzzle. But I’m still Redfinning my gameplan to a certain extent…

Any suggestions out there other than:

“Ryan…Suck it up! Ditch the mom jokes and the freelancing real estate tech guy charade and build this MMBB thing for YoSelf!” Stop trying to find an enlightened broker so far from a major metro! Quit dreaming about building an selling a web “entity.” Just get the heck out there and do your best to grab a huge chunk of market share with your nutty big city ways…

After all, local success shouldn’t be too hard to find if York Pa’s Active Rain points leader is busy reacting to the Casual Friday appropriate video below?

[One other difference between HeyCentralPa.Com & Localism? No religion...no politics. This thing's only gonna be for serious,high brow, open minded salespeople who know better then to risk alienating the nice gay couple down on Queen Street. If you're reading this from Central Pa and want to join the party, please, by all means, reach out!]

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I’ve been a freelancer, mostly, since November of 2007.  (I closed about 4mm in loans in 2008, mostly 1st quarter).  I’ve built websites, blogs, I’ve set up CRMS, and I’ve created landing pages, and sold a variety of e-books.   I created an ill fated subscription service, (got it up to 30 members, then remembered the things I hate about loan officers) and I’ve built a ton of websites, done a ton of writing, and had an utter blast.  I’ve delivered sometimes, f’d it up sometimes, and learned more faster than I ever have at any period of my life.

One of the things I learned…and that Dan Kennedy would freak out about is that lowering your prices means more profit, more relaxation, and better, happier clients with a chance to succeed.   I used to charge people about $2,000 per blog.   And I’d do a reasonable job with the blogs. I’d spend time training people in what WordPress does, I’d train them in how to post, I’d share my analytics with them, and I’d go through it.  But for $2,000, you gotta have value.  So people would continue to call.  The service I offered wasn’t worth $2,000 to them, they felt like something MORE was needed.  And honestly, they were right.

I had more time sunk into support and followup than the stuff that I was charging for.   So, I thought some more about it.

And decided to lower all of my prices on everything I do.  Because if you’re only charging $700 or $800 it’s a far different situation than $2,000.   People can afford it, and it’s easier to meet that expectation.  They have a level of indifference about the outcome because, honestly, $700 bucks isn’t going to make or break most months for most people.  You can increase value by adding more information (videos etc) and it’s a BONUS and not an ENTITLEMENT.

To do that, though, ya need a defined process.   The blue ocean thing: everyone was using the Thesis framework for blogs, why not make ‘em look cool?  I mean really cool? Take away the option from the customer, sell a product, not a service, and streamline EVERYTHING to the essence.   The plugins I use (thanks to Eric, Keith & Alec), the way a blog will be, and the theme.   It’s better than undefined hourly work, it’s better than having people feel like they are entitled to their pound of flesh.

And–it’s easier to sell when you know what you’re offering and what you’re not.

Making things into ‘products’  makes the “Help-u-Fail” model seem more appealing.  You have a defined set of services, offered cheerfully on a “Take it or leave it” basis, and nobody is anxious when things aren’t perfect.  The services aren’t for everyone, but they are nothing to be contemptuous of as long as they are honestly marketed, honestly delivered, and honestly sold.  I can afford to refund the money and get people out of my hair, and they can afford to say no.  Nothing is unclear, and nothing is left undefined.  You still have to be competent and excellent. You still have to make sure that you do what you say.  I treat everything I do as a product now, a set of defined things that don’t leave room for ambiguity.  My customers are getting happier and happier about things.

Mortgage brokers can charge a set fee regardless of loan amount.

Realtors can likewise charge a-la-carte (and upfront) for their services…if that is the direction they wanna go in.

But–by not pushing people to the wall–prrice wise…by deliberately leaving money on the table, you have less tension than you would otherwise.  You have less potential for sour grapes. You are leaving money on the table, selfishly so as not to create problems later. You don’t want to sell beer at champagne prices–people will buy beer, know they’re buying beer and be happy to drink beer if that’s what they expected.

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I’ve copied the announcement from the Treasury that sent the markets on a moonrocket today and thought that I would “walk you through it” so that we can get a better feel for whether this is a relief rally or something sustainable (and therefore what it means for mortgage rates).   So, here goes.  As usual, my comments are in bold and italics…..

The Financial Stability Plan – Progress So Far:

Over the past six weeks, the Treasury Department has implemented a series of initiatives as part of its Financial Stability Plan that – alongside the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – lay the foundations for economic recovery: and spend about how many trillions?  I’ve lost count.

* Efforts to Improve Affordability for Responsible Homeowners: Treasury has implemented programs to allow families to save on their mortgage payments by refinancing I’m glad that they didn’t characterize Fannie and Freddie’s 105% plan as a foreclosure prevention step because only one of the borrowers I’m doing that type of a refi for is anywhere near close to “at risk”, assist responsible homeowners in avoiding foreclosure through a loan modification plan, and, alongside the Federal Reserve, help bring mortgage interest rates down to near historic lows. This past month, the 30% increase in mortgage refinancing demonstrated that working families are benefiting from the savings due to these lower rates.

* Consumer and Business Lending Initiative to Unlock Frozen Credit Markets: Treasury and the Federal Reserve are expanding the TALF in conjunction with the Federal Reserve to jumpstart the secondary markets that support consumer and business lending. Last week, Treasury announced its plans to purchase up to $15 billion in securities backed by Small Business Administration loans.  The fact that the Fed and the Treasury are buying these “packages” of consumer and business loans doesn’t mean that 1) Consumers and businesses are going to start, en masse, living on borrowed money again and 2) That the banks are going to find consumers and businesses who are credit worthy enough to write loans to.

* Capital Assistance Program: Treasury has also launched a new capital program, including a forward-looking capital assessment undertaken by bank supervisors to ensure that banks have the capital they need in the event of a worse-than-expected recession. We want to make sure that Goldman and JP Morgan and Bank of America and Citibank don’t run out of money if things get really really bad.  If banks are confident that they will have sufficient capital to weather a severe economic storm, they are more likely to lend now – making it less likely that a more serious downturn will occur.  We believe that JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank and the rest will be more likely to start lending more money if they know that they can come to Uncle Sam for more cash if they run out.   Uh, hang on a minute.   Isn’t that what the first TARP was supposed to do?   We’d give the banks billions and then they’d turn around and lend it again?   How’d that work out again?   Oh, but this time it’s different, right?

The Challenge of Legacy Assets: Despite these efforts, the financial system is still working against economic recovery.  A true statement.  Fed Chairman Bernanke said we “could” see a turn around in the economy later this year IF the financial system gets cleaned up.  One major reason is the problem of “legacy assets” – both real estate loans held directly on the books of banks (“legacy loans”) and securities backed by loan portfolios (“legacy securities”). How’s a good way to describe this?  The banks made a lot of stupid loans and a lot of ill advised transactions that shouldn’t have been done or were done under faulty assumptions.   Check this out, it describes it pretty well…..

These assets create uncertainty around the balance sheets of these financial institutions, compromising their ability to raise capital and their willingness to increase lending.  Yep, until we know how much these assets are worth, we don’t know how healthy or sick these (all) banks are.

* Origins of the Problem:  The challenge posed by these legacy assets began with an initial shock due to the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007 I think it’s being a little, shall we say, presumptious to infer that the problem began in 2007, the problem began much earlier than that, but everyone woke up in 2007 and said, “Houston, we have a problem.”, which generated losses for investors and banks. Losses were compounded by the lax underwriting standards wasn’t it the lax underwriting standards that caused a large portion of the unsustainable rise in housing prices? that had been used by some lenders and by the proliferation of complex securitization products, some of whose risks were not fully understood agreed that the risk wasn’t completely understood, but if you followed the “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” that would have helped.. The resulting need by investors and banks to reduce risk triggered a wide-scale deleveraging in these markets and led to fire sales. As prices declined, many traditional investors exited these markets, causing declines in market liquidity.

* Creation of a Negative Economic Cycle: As a result, a negative cycle has developed where declining asset prices have triggered further deleveraging, which has in turn led to further price declines. Uh, yeah, that’s what’s called, “Being in over your head and having to cut back.” The excessive discounts not to sound Clintonian, but it seems that the word excessive is debatable, isn’t the market value what they could be sold for?  embedded in some legacy asset prices are now straining the capital of U.S. financial institutions there are a lot of banks who are troubled because they are running out of money,

limiting their ability to lend and increasing the cost of credit throughout the financial system. The lack of clarity about the value of these legacy assets has also made it difficult for some financial institutions to raise new private capital on their own.  I’m not sure that it’s so much the lack of clarity as it is the astounding amount of losses that the banks have undergone that has made private capital

The Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets

To address the challenge of legacy assets, Treasury – in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve – is announcing the Public-Private Investment Program as part of its efforts to repair balance sheets (another term for bailout – repair balance sheets) throughout our financial system and ensure that credit is available to the households and businesses, large and small, that will help drive us toward recovery.  Am I the only one who doesn’t necessarily see that infusing the banks with lots of cash will get them to go back to lending?  

Three Basic Principles: Using $75 to $100 billion in TARP capital and capital from private investors, the Public-Private Investment Program will generate $500 billion in purchasing power to buy legacy assets – with the potential to expand to $1 trillion over time.  The math confuses me a bit here.  $100 Billion becomes $500 Billion becomes $1 Trillion?  Isn’t that the kind of leverage that got us in trouble originally?

 The Public-Private Investment Program will be designed around three basic principles:

* Maximizing the Impact of Each Taxpayer Dollar: First, by using government financing let’s call it what it is, subsidized financing aka – We’re going to encourage people to buy these assets by offering them 0% (or close) financing in partnership with the FDIC and Federal Reserve and co-investment with private sector investors, substantial purchasing power will be created, making the most of taxpayer resources.

* Shared Risk and Profits With Private Sector Participants: Second, the Public-Private Investment Program ensures that private sector participants invest alongside the taxpayer, with the private sector investors standing to lose their entire investment in a downside scenario and the taxpayer sharing in profitable returns.   If you read what Yves Smith has to say over at Naked Capitalism, I think it’s safe to say that the ratio of profits/losses aren’t going to be divided equally between private sector and tax payers.

* Private Sector Price Discovery: Third, to reduce the likelihood that the government will overpay for these assets, private sector investors competing with one another will establish the price of the loans and securities purchased under the program. This is intriguing.  So they actually think that there is going to be an auction and they can get a price that will allow the banks to remain financially stable while at the same time generating a profit for the investors?   Then why don’t the banks just keep the assets and be profitable at them?

The Merits of This Approach: This approach is superior to the alternatives of either hoping for banks to gradually work these assets off their books or of the government purchasing the assets directly. Simply hoping for banks to work legacy assets off over time risks prolonging a financial crisis, as in the case of the Japanese experience.  This is very true.   We don’t want to relive the Japanese experience.  But if the government acts alone in directly purchasing legacy assets, taxpayers will take on all the risk of such purchases as opposed to this plan where the government takes on say, 90% of the losses and 10% of the profits? – along with the additional risk that taxpayers will overpay if government employees are setting the price for those assets.  I find it kind of humorous that a government employee acknowledges in writing that if government employees did the job, they would screw it up……

Two Components for Two Types of Assets: The Public-Private Investment Program has two parts, addressing both the legacy loans and legacy securities clogging the balance sheets of financial firms:

* Legacy Loans:The overhang of troubled legacy loans stuck on bank balance sheets has made it difficult for banks to access private markets for new capital and limited their ability to lend.

* Legacy Securities: Secondary markets have become highly illiquid, and are trading at prices below where they would be in normally functioning markets. Are these normally functioning markets according to the way that things were from 2004 to 2007 or from the rest of the relatively normal markets?  These securities are held by banks as well as insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, and funds held in individual retirement accounts. So we’re going to bailout anyone we want to.

The Legacy Loans Program: To cleanse bank balance sheets of troubled legacy loans and reduce the overhang of uncertainty associated with these assets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Treasury are launching a program to attract private capital and how do you attract private capital in today’s market?  Either by means of lowering prices on the assets or by means of financing incentives (non-recourse loans or subsidizing the interest rates and lowering the equity requirements) to purchase eligible legacy loans from participating banks does anyone know whether participation is mandatory or voluntary? through the provision of FDIC debt guarantees and Treasury equity co-investment. Treasury currently anticipates that approximately half of the TARP resources for legacy assets will be devoted to the Legacy Loans Program, but our approach will allow for flexibility to allocate resources where we see the greatest impact.

* Involving Private Investors to Set Prices: A broad array of investors are expected to participate in the Legacy Loans Program. The participation of individual investors, pension plans, insurance companies and other long-term investors is particularly encouraged. PLEASE, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE COME BUY OUR JUNK!  The Legacy Loans Program will facilitate the creation of individual Public-Private Investment Funds which will purchase asset pools on a discrete basis. The program will boost private demand it says it will boost demand but it doesn’t say how? for distressed assets that are currently held by banks and facilitate market-priced sales of troubled assets.  I find it interesting that at the same time that the Treasury is talking about market prices sales, they are also talking about repealing mark to market accounting so that banks can say the assets are worth more.   Anyone bothered by that?
* Using FDIC Expertise to Provide Oversight: The FDIC will provide oversight for the formation, funding, and operation of these new funds that will purchase assets from banks.
* Joint Financing from Treasury, Private Capital and FDIC: Treasury and private capital will provide equity financing and the FDIC will provide a guarantee that means that you and I are on the hook for the financing that these funds get from the government. for debt financing issued by the Public-Private Investment Funds to fund asset purchases. The Treasury will manage its investment on behalf of taxpayers to ensure the public interest is protected. The Treasury intends to provide 50 percent of the equity capital for each fund, but private managers will retain control of asset management subject to rigorous oversight from the FDIC.  So let me throw some numbers to that.   If I were to form the Straight Talk Investment Fund and come up with $5 Million, the government would come up with another $5 million, loan me another $100 million and then guarantee the loan?  That’s pretty sweet terms…..
* The Process for Purchasing Assets Through The Legacy Loans Program: Purchasing assets in the Legacy Loans Program will occur through the following process:
o Banks Identify the Assets They Wish to Sell: To start the process, banks will decide which assets is this going to be sort of like the stress tests?  If a bank wants to dump loans, are they going to be “blacklisted?”– usually a pool of loans – they would like to sell. The FDIC will conduct an analysis to determine the amount of funding it is willing to guarantee. Leverage will not exceed a 6-to-1 debt-to-equity ratio.If they are saying they won’t exceed a 6 to 1 debt to equity ratio, then how do they turn $100 Billion into $1 Trillion?  Assets eligible for purchase will be determined by the participating banks, their primary regulators, the FDIC and Treasury. Financial institutions of all sizes will be eligible to sell assets.
o Pools Are Auctioned Off to the Highest Bidder: The FDIC will conduct an auction for these pools of loans. The highest bidder will have access to the Public-Private Investment Program to fund 50 percent of the equity requirement of their purchase. Read that carefully, 50% of the equity requirement, not 50% of the cost.   That is sort of like putting 10% down on a house and the government comes up with the other 10% to get you to 20%.
o Financing Is Provided Through FDIC Guarantee: If the seller accepts the purchase price, the buyer would receive financing by issuing debt guaranteed by the FDIC. The FDIC-guaranteed debt would be collateralized by the purchased assets and the FDIC would receive a fee in return for its guarantee.
o Private Sector Partners Manage the Assets:Once the assets have been sold, private fund managers will control and manage the assets until final liquidation, subject to strict FDIC oversight.

Sample Investment Under the Legacy Loans Program

Step 1: If a bank has a pool of residential mortgages with $100 face value that it is seeking to divest, the bank would approach the FDIC.
Step 2: The FDIC would determine, according to the above process, that they would be willing to leverage the pool at a 6-to-1 debt-to-equity ratio.
Step 3: The pool would then be auctioned by the FDIC, with several private sector bidders several – optimistic? submitting bids. The highest bid from the private sector – in this example, $84 are they just pulling a number out of a hat or are they trying to suggest that these assets would sell for 84 cents on a dollar?  From what I’ve heard of mortgage portfolios, 84 cents on a dollar would be a wonderful result. – would be the winner and would form a Public-Private Investment Fund to purchase the pool of mortgages.
Step 4: Of this $84 purchase price, the FDIC would provide guarantees for $72 of financing, leaving $12 of equity.
Step 5: The Treasury would then provide 50% of the equity funding required on a side-by-side basis with the investor. In this example, Treasury would invest approximately $6, with the private investor contributing $6.
Step 6: The private investor would then manage the servicing of the asset pool and the timing of its disposition on an ongoing basis – using asset managers approved and subject to oversight by the FDIC.

The Legacy Securities Program: The goal of this program is to restart the market for legacy securities, allowing banks and other financial institutions to free up capital and stimulate the extension of new credit. The resulting process of price discovery will also reduce the uncertainty surrounding the financial institutions reduce the uncertainty surrounding the financial institutions?  Isn’t that going to put the banks into this kind of situation?

 holding these securities, potentially enabling them to raise new private capital.

Potentially is the operative word here……

The Legacy Securities Program consists of two related parts designed to draw private capital into these markets by providing debt financing from the Federal Reserve under the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and through matching private capital raised for dedicated funds targeting legacy securities.

1. Expanding TALF to Legacy Securities to Bring Private Investors Back into the Market: The Treasury and the Federal Reserve are today announcing their plans to create a lending program that will address the broken markets for securities tied to residential and commercial real estate and consumer credit. The intention is to incorporate this program into the previously announced Term Asset-Backed Securities Facility (TALF).

o Providing Investors Greater Confidence to Purchase Legacy Assets:As with securitizations backed by new originations of consumer and business credit already included in the TALF, we expect that the provision of leverage through this program If we make it easy to borrow, then they’ll buy it?  Isn’t that sort of like, “Buy this house with no money down and a 620 credit score” and don’t worry about the price…..  will give investors greater confidence to purchase these assets, thus increasing market liquidity.
o Funding Purchase of Legacy Securities: Through this new program, non-recourse loans non-recourse loans are loans that, if defaulted on, don’t require the borrower to pay it back, they can just walk from the loan.  will be made available to investors to fund purchases of legacy securitization assets. Eligible assets are expected to include certain non-agency residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) that were originally rated AAA and outstanding commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and asset-backed securities (ABS) that are rated AAA.
o Working with Market Participants: Borrowers will need to meet eligibility criteria.  But they don’t way what those criteria are yet.  Haircuts will be determined at a later date is this sort of like a plan to have a plan? and will reflect the riskiness of the assets provided as collateral. Lending rates, minimum loan sizes, and loan durations have not been determined. These and other terms of the programs will be informed by discussions with market participants. However, the Federal Reserve is working to ensure that the duration of these loans takes into account the duration of the underlying assets The Fed is working to make sure that the loans take into account the life span of the assets?  Is it that difficult to determine?  Sorry, getting a little cynical here…...

2. Partnering Side-by-Side with Private Investors in Legacy Securities Investment Funds: Treasury will make co-investment/leverage available to partner with private capital providers to immediately support the market for legacy mortgage- and asset-backed securities originated prior to 2009 with a rating of AAA at origination.

o Side-by-Side Investment with Qualified Fund Managers: Treasury will approve up to five asset managers with a demonstrated track record of purchasing legacy assets though we may consider adding more depending on the quality of applications received. Managers whose proposals have been approved will have a period of time to raise private capital to target the designated asset classes and will receive matching Treasury funds under the Public-Private Investment Program. Treasury funds will be invested one-for-one on a fully side-by-side basis with these investors.

o Offer of Senior Debt to Leverage More Financing: Asset managers will have the ability, if their investment fund structures meet certain guidelines, to subscribe for senior debt for the Public-Private Investment Fund from the Treasury Department in the amount of 50% of total equity capital of the fund. The Treasury Department will consider requests for senior debt for the fund in the amount of 100% of its total equity capital subject to further restrictions.

Sample Investment Under the Legacy Securities Program

Step 1: Treasury will launch the application process for managers interested in the Legacy Securities Program.
Step 2: A fund manager submits a proposal and is pre-qualified to raise private capital to participate in joint investment programs with Treasury.
Step 3: The Government agrees to provide a one-for-one match for every dollar of private capital that the fund manager raises and to provide fund-level leverage for the proposed Public-Private Investment Fund.
Step 4: The fund manager commences the sales process for the investment fund and is able to raise $100 of private capital for the fund. Treasury provides $100 equity co-investment on a side-by-side basis with private capital and will provide a $100 loan to the Public-Private Investment Fund. Treasury will also consider requests from the fund manager for an additional loan of up to $100 to the fund.
Step 5: As a result, the fund manager has $300 (or, in some cases, up to $400) in total capital and commences a purchase program for targeted securities.
Step 6: The fund manager has full discretion in investment decisions, although it will predominately follow a long-term buy-and-hold strategy. The Public-Private Investment Fund, if the fund manager so determines, would also be eligible to take advantage of the expanded TALF program for legacy securities when it is launched.

Okay, Tom here.   If you’ve read the entire thing, thank you.   I consider it a compliment.

Oh well, there’s always…..
(hint – make sure you listen to at least the first two lines)

Bad Bank Plan, Pink Floyd

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I’m not going to buy a CSM from SSMI. I’m already a FART.

• Fracking
• Awesome
• Realtor
• Technologist

Ok, you got me. FART’s not a real designation.
You can’t go to any classes and pick up a FART- I cooked this one up in my living room a few minutes ago after overdosing on some grapes and apricots.

But if you’re hip, I’m not going to charge you for the right to add some flatulant flare to your business card.

For a limited time only, I’m willing to let you use the FART designation if you can prove any 3 of the following.

• You’ve generated more than 50 Idx signups from your web efforts in one month. (This is really an easy one , many “FARTists” consistently hit 800-2000/ month.)
• You landed you blog or website on the first goog page for your most competitive area keywords. i.e. “Bumbl&%^$ Real Estate.” Small markets count too, but if you’ve done this for a major metro area in under a year, then whoever you’re working for just isn’t paying you enough.
• You’ve helped another agent create and run a niche blog, free of charge, because you love spreading the RE Tech gospel.
• You’re “auto incubating” a large group of prospects using rss based newsletters or some geeky universal contact form you’ve hacked up to work with some obscure crm.
• You can tell me in under 30 seconds which 3 long tail search strings your most proud to be ranking organically number 1 for at the moment.
• You’re “autoblogging” your company listings out of the mls and into your site using some wp plugin that should probably be illegal.
• You’ve got Ping associated with 10 or more accounts and you update regularly via IM
• You’ve created at least 1 or 2 lead capture pages that regularly spew off registrations.
• You’ve started and run a photo or video
  niche blog from the palm of your hand. And you update it almost every day.
• You’ve written a blog post in the dark, after midnight, using the Iphone’s native notes app, from the guest bedroom, so your wife wouldn’t have to suffer your Tyrone Biggums- like twitching and turning because this RE Tech stuff is always on your mind.

If you’ve answered yes to 5 or more of the above, then you’re probably a FART, and I’ll be happy to buy or “smelt” whatever you “dealt” (if I didn’t already know I could get it for free using greader. )

But if you didn’t make the cut on at least 3 of the above, please don’t try to sell me a bunch of hot air in the form of some designation that’ll never help me earn a commission check…

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Chris Johnson reached out to me last week by sending over a custom css file he had laying around for the totally uncustomized Thesis theme I had rolling on my personal site. I thanked him for the hand and did a little tweaking. Then he busted on me again a few days later for ignoring some really basic SEO rules o’ thumb. This time figured I’d save my reaction for BHB…

Why didn’t I waste any effort makin’ pretty or SEO ing PropertunityKnocks.Com?

The answer is really pretty simple: I’d spent the previous year or so working to generate leads via the web on another site by writing like crazy, looking for links, and doing crazy stuff with rss based plugins, but now I had a few secret weapons that were making lead generation a lot simpler.

Here’s what they were.

One of these. (A Pink One..Don’t Ask)
And this.
And of course…this and this.
And most most importantly, This!. (Credit where credit is due.)

And I used them twice a week, without fail, for a month or so. Consistently. Mondays and Thursday’s @ 9am, Mr. Roboto style.

The result? Leads. Lots of em. Warm inbound phone calls with questions about the “Propertunities” I’d featured. Plenty to sustain me with a comfortable income and eventual repeat investor business for years to come. (The videos were all of REO listings.)

But as is my usual MO I eventually got distracted, took another job, and gave up the Roboto video routine. And something weird but not totally unexpected happened. Even though I’d stopped taking videos and hijacking craigs list traffic, I was still getting phone calls weeks and now months later…”

So when Chris reached out with some friendly criticism it seemed like the right time to stop ignoring PKnocks and get it going again.

But do you think I went a little overboard?

Could it be that PropertunityKnocks.Com is now a national real estate video blog?

Take a look and tell me what you think. If you wanna join the fun, let me know and I’ll set you up with a page for your area and maybe give you access to feature some of your listings on the home page.

Or, maybe you think this is a flawed idea somehow? Maybe it’s wrong to pull in all that content generated by others, even if Youtube does allow public “sharing”?

I don’t know…

Please let me know…
_________________________________________________________
By the way: I was going to call this post “Video Killed The SEO Star but figured it couldn’t be totally original. So when I g’d it, here’s what turned up on Zurbed.

…And the fun video from that post. Ironic and telling in the end that my text based search is what turned this up?

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