All the news that fits...

I have been a busy boy.

I've been taking the classes necessary to qualify for my Real Estate Broker's License, and that's been chewing up two days a week. Because interest rates have been coruscating gently upward, it has been very much a seller's market. This makes for frantic work on the buyer's side, as we chase after evaporating values. As is obvious, I've been less than frequent in the production of this newsletter, and this edition promises to be more letter than news. The business of the business goes on, finding the ideal solutions for our clients, but the meta-activity is all built around the Bloodhound business model we put together last Summer. The pieces are all coming together at last, and, in another month's time, we should be just about finished getting started. But in the interim, my time is very short, so this will be all the news that fits into my frantic schedule for now. I'll strive to do better in the future. —Greg Swann

If all goes as planned, Greg will be a Real Estate Broker by the end of June. To the general public, Real Estate Agent, Realtor and Real Estate Broker are seemingly interchangeable classifications. In fact, an Agent is usually just a licensee, a Real Estate Salesperson. When he joins the National Association of Realtors and his state and local Boards of Realtors, he can call himself a Realtor and get access to the MLS system and saunter around with a lock-box key on his hip. If a Real Estate Salesperson accumulates a minimum of three years active experience, takes a lot of classes and passes the Broker's test, he becomes a Real Estate Broker. You must have a Broker's license to own and run a Real Estate Brokerage. All Real Estate Salespeople are employed by Brokers, but a Broker need not own or run a Brokerage. It's very common for top-producing Realtors to get the license but to work as Associate Brokers under another Designated Broker, the guy with the corner office.

The point of all this is that we want to fly our own flag. We built the Bloodhound business model with the idea that it would be its own Brokerage. We're a Team within Prestige Realty right now, another license classification completely opaque to the general public, but shortly we will organize as a Limited Liability Corporation with Greg as our Designated Broker. When that happens, we will have the ability to add other Realtors to our Brokerage, but we don't intend to do this right away. We want to build a brand that will glow in the light of the Phoenix sun, so we will always be very careful to work only with people who match us in effort, integrity and follow-through.

We have been very active with investors lately. And because we never do anything without thinking it all the way through, we have been busily building – in all our spare time! – a viable business model for the ownership and management of rental homes by out-of-state investors. You can see a part of this explicated on our investments page. But the other part of our thinking is even more exciting: We are devising a Lease Addendum that promises to make investment in rental housing virtually management-free. Instead of devoting some huge chunk of your proceeds every month to a management company, possibly suffering a net loss against the rent, we're building tools that will get the tenant to manage the home, with the help of a home warranty company. Investors stay home, with an extra $100 or $150 a month to put in their pockets. Leveraged appreciation, tax depreciation, monthly cash-flow, and, at the end of the rainbow, a tax-free exchange into another investment. And all of it running on "autopilot" most of the time. This is the logical next step for homeowners, in or out of Arizona.

Because we're selling rental homes, and because we think that rental homes are pretty badly marketed, and most especially because we want for our rental home buyers to be delighted with how quickly their new investments begin to pay off, we are adding tenant acquisition to our range of services. And because we are, we had to become members of the local Credit Bureau. How much further uptown can we get? In fact, running credit and checking criminal background is only a small part of the tenant acquisition process. The real job begins long before we meet the first tenant, in the selection of just the right home in just the right location, with the right features and amenities to become the first choice of everyone who sees it. But payment history, particularly real estate payment history, are key indicators of future performance. So now we have the means to discover as much as can be known about prospective tenants.

We call our son Cameron and our dog Odysseus members of our Team, but in fact only adult humans with real estate licenses can be members of a Team like BloodhoudRealty.com. Cathleen Collins has been working for the Group part-time, working full-time for Catholic Healthcare West as a database magician. The fact is that no one can survive the early years in real estate – the starving years – without a long-suffering spouse with a steady income. But we're turning the corner, the point where Cathy could produce more working for the Group, soon to be the Brokerage, than she can at a salaried job. We built this to be a listing practice, and that's just one part of the business she'll be handling. As with everything, we plan and plan until we're sure we're right, but Cathleen joining the ranks of the self-employed ("Free to starve!") is forthcoming if not absolutely imminent.

And because of that, and because we're cutting edge on everything, and just because we're complete techno-weenies, Cathy and Greg both have very robust Wi-Fi-enabled HP laptops and astoundingly over-functioned Treo 600 Phone/PDAs. Wi-Fi is wireless internet access. From any Starbucks, any Kinkos, any Borders Bookstore, plus hundreds of other locations, we have full access to the internet, including MLS listings and tax records. And even without the internet, we can use Zipforms to produce any contract anywhere, using our battery-powered printers. The Treos are equally cool: SprintPCS cell phones married to a PalmOS PDA, along with SMS (BlackBerry-style) messaging and full access to the internet, including an internet-based email client. The Palm Address Book serves as the phone's speed dial directory, so we have an infinite number of speed dial numbers. The SMS messaging is great for short text (you may have had mail from 'Greg's phone'), and the internet access is adequate if not overwhelming. But because the device under everything is a full Palm computer, we have vast quantities of software at our fingertips, including mission-critical tools like Mapopolis and the powerOne calculator, the equivalent of an HP-19B Financial/Scientific calculator with a vast suite of pre-programmed functions. The entire time we've been with Prestige Realty we have worked from our home: We've always had better technology at home than the whole Brokerage. Now we've taken it one step further: The technology we carry out of the house every day is so robust that any flat surface anywhere becomes a full-service real estate office.

And that brings us to this: Greg will be in Las Vegas early this week for Council of Residential Specialist classes. Cameron says, "Yeah, sure for 'classes,'" but it's really true. He's taking a big pile of real estate books to read while he's there, just to maximize the investment in time. More importantly, he'll have his laptop and printer and cell phone with him. All client email is forwarded to Greg's phone, so he can respond to emergency situations just as if he were in Phoenix. He'll be in Sin City Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but the only discernible evidence of his absence should be that the freeways in Maricopa County will be marginally safer.

However...

Don't get the idea that we don't know how to have fun. Our Wedding Anniversary is Independence Day, which is serendipitously an amazingly slow weekend for real estate. We'll be in Las Vegas together then – to drink, to gamble, and to frolic like mad minks. But we never forget that we hold your financial life in our hands, so even then we will be fully-equipped to deal with emergencies. Just be sure to wish us a Happy Anniversary when you call...

Selling | Buying | Investing | Relocation | Current listings | About us
Find your ideal new home | Get a Market Analysis of your home
Search MLS listings | Make an appointment | Our offices
Tell your friends about us | Email Bloodhound | Home

        

Voted Real Estate Excellence Award

BloodhoundRealty.com, LLC | Designated Broker: Greg Swann
Webmaster: Greg Swann |  © 2005 BloodhoundRealty.com