BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 101 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

May 9, 2008

Brian Brady at today’s Unchained preview show: “If your clients are already on LinkedIn, someone else will introduce me to them”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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As I had mentioned, we did a couple of BloodhoundBlog Unchained preview shows today in Phoenix, one for Realtors and one for lenders.

Tempe Realtor and real estate weblogger Nick Bastian wins the endurance award for attending both sessions. Nick surprised Brian Brady by Twittering about Brian’s discussion of LinkedIn, a piece of which is shown below, while Brian was delivering it.

The events were a big kick for me. I sold a house yesterday, and the buyers (whom we have discussed as the Halversons) dropped by to sign some paperwork. And Cathleen and I listed 14237 North 11th Street in Phoenix early today. The seller is fellow Realtor David Pinelli, who is now working in the equestrian suburbs of Boston, but who until lately was working with Allan Pinel in Palo Alto. David was able to come to the Realtor portion of the presentation this morning, a nice reinforcement of the ideas Cathleen and I have been talking about with him for the past two weeks.

As Brian discusses below, we met a lot of really interesting people who are excited about the potential of blending Social Media Marketing into their buinesses. The whole day was a blast, which makes me think that Unchained is going to be even more fun that I’ve been expecting.

Here’s where I end up: Our belief from the beginning was that the Seven Nights in Ireland style of conference — a vast excuse to behave badly far from home — was not for us. We bet on a real curriculum, a hefty regimen of demanding content, and our experience today shows that that bet will pay off.

I keep getting notes from very smart people whose identies I will keep concealed. The gist of their emails: “Kick Inman’s ass.” It seems like a worthy goal to me. BloodhoundBlog is the home of serious ideas on the RE.net, and BloodhoundBlog Unchained promises to be the locus of serious minds in wired real estate education. I don’t ever want for us to be anywhere but at the head of the pack.

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May 8, 2008

Two BloodhoundBlog Unchained warm-up events Friday in Phoenix

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Flat out and miles to go before I sleep. I’ve told Cathy to make my excuses this way: Greg is wearing three hats, and none of them is a nightcap. This is a reminder to you from me from last week:

If you’re in Phoenix on Friday, May 9th, Brian and I will be doing two 2.5 hour Unchained previews at the Mesquite Branch of the Phoenix Public Library (4525 Paradise Village Parkway North, Phoenix, AZ 85032). We’ll be talking to Realtors from 9:30 am to 12 Noon, and to Lenders from 1 pm to 3:30 pm. These two events are free — provided you pay attention — sponsored by Chicago Title and Mortgage Solutions of Arizona. RSVP with Lisa Capes at Chicago Title — 480-695-3136 — if you want to come.

Brian Brady is here in Phoenix, which is a real treat for me. I will tell you that he is itching to raise the price on Unchained tickets, so tonight may be your last chance to lock down the $199 price for all three days of the conference.

We may shoot some just-for-fun videos tomorrow. If we do, I’ll post them tomorrow night.

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May 7, 2008

What would it look like if home buyers actually shopped for value? An illustration of my kind of internet lead

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This came in over the transom, and I think it is a thing of beauty. The ludicrous notion that buyers don’t pay for real estate representation induces too many buyers to be lax in choosing their Realtor. Everything we do is based on delivering value, so we do best with people who are sharp enough to shop for value. When I read this in my email inbox, I sat and marveled at all that it portends.

Like this: Most internet leads stink. Suzy with no last name (aka SuZQ1983@hotmail.com) might be cute and spunky, but she’s probably not motivated, and it’s good odds she’s not financially qualified.

But: The internet enables serious people to shop until they find exactly what they want, even as it teaches them how to want wisely and in exacting detail.

And: People who shop that way will not care that a Realtor was a high school tennis star or the immediate past president of the Junior League. Everything that chummy, clubby Realtors have used forever to get by has gone by the wayside. When people finally learn to shop for value, they shop for nothing but value.

With that, permit me to introduce you to my kind of clients. The specifics have been fictionalized, but the underlying email is real:

Currently we are email interviewing several Realtors in our area of interest in Arizona. We would like your response as to whether you would be interested in having us as your clients. We have created this document introducing ourselves.

Summary:

We are a couple in our forties who are moving from the state of Washington to the state of Arizona. We have specific requirements for a house, and we have a short period to purchase it. Our current house should close at the end of June. In the event we can not purchase a house in with a close date near then, we will either rent or lease a home.

We are looking in the Glendale to Scottsdale area, and we are looking at the $360K to $460K price range.

  1. Who we are…

    Carl Halverson, government statistician working in the US treasury department. Carl’s hobby is Read more

May 7, 2008

A celebration of Western Civilization and the Scientific Revolution

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is quoted from a John Derbyshire dismissal of a creationist documentary film. That much is good. This much is great:

Western civilization has many glories. There are the legacies of the ancients, in literature and thought. There are the late-medieval cathedrals, those huge miracles of stone, statuary, and spiritual devotion. There is painting, music, the orderly cityscapes of Renaissance Italy, the peaceful, self-governed townships of old New England and the Frontier, the steel marvels of the early industrial revolution, our parliaments and courts of law, our great universities with their spirit of restless inquiry.

And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear. China, India, the Muslim world, all had fine cities and systems of law, architecture and painting, poetry and prose, religion and philosophy. None of them ever accomplished what began in northwest Europe in the later 17th century, though: a scientific revolution. Thoughtful men and women came together in learned societies to compare notes on their observations of the natural world, to test their ideas in experiments, and in reasoned argument against the ideas of others, and to publish their results in learned journals. A body of common knowledge gradually accumulated. Patterns were observed, laws discerned and stated.

If I write with more feeling than usual here it is because I have just shipped off a review to an editor (for another magazine) of Gino Segrè’s new book about the history of quantum mechanics. It’s a good, if not very remarkable, book giving pen-portraits of the great players in physics during the 1920s and 1930s, and of their meetings and disagreements. Segrè, a particle physicist himself, who has been around for a while, knew some of these people personally, and of course heard many anecdotes from their intellectual descendants. It’s a “warm” book, full of feeling for the scientists and their magnificent enterprise, struggling with some of the most difficult problems the human intellect has ever confronted, striving with all their powers to understand what can barely be understood.

Gino Segrè’s book — and, of course, hundreds like it (I have, ahem, Read more

May 6, 2008

Bidding farewell to Russell Shaw

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is a sad day for BloodhoundBlog. Russell Shaw, who was our first contributor after Cathleen and me, has elected to stop writing with us.

Of possibly more immediate import to people reading this, Russell has decided not to participate in BloodhoundBlog Unchained. If you feel his absence will significantly impact the value you expect to receive from Unchained, let me know by email and I will arrange to have your money refunded to you.

Russell has been a consistent boon to BloodhoundBlog and to the RE.net in general. We will joyously celebrate any future contributions he makes to the wired world of real estate. We have never killed an account, so we will be twice delighted if Russ should choose at some time to return to the pack.

May 5, 2008

The Realty.bot shuffle: Trulia.com’s response to complaints about nofollow tags on partner-supplied content seems truly atrocious

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Galen Ward’s post on Trulia.com’s policy of adding “nofollow” tags to links back to its own listings partners has elicited quite a bit of controversy.

The original post itself excited a great deal of commentary, and this is explored in encyclopedic detail in a fascinating post by Union Street Media’s Gahlord Dewald.

Trulia.com’s Rudy Bachraty participated for a while in that comment thread, then elected to take the respondent’s side of the debate back to Trulia’s home weblog, where head honcho Pete Flint made an effort to put out the fire. Comments there have been noticeably light, which made me wonder if Trulia has learned ahead of the curve why video commenting is a stoopid idea.

The story was picked up by Inman News today.

I am in the perhaps unique position of being just barely smart enough to explain what’s going on within what might well seem to others to be a blizzard of jargon.

Start here: I observed that Trulia is achieving truly amazing long-tail search results.

Galen pointed out that an ancillary reason for this is that Trulia is not allowing search engines to “follow” its links to its listing partners.

In other words, you — or your broker or your brokerage chain — feed Trulia.com a real estate listing, the primary content it uses to sell advertising. That listing will link back to its source (in hierarchical order: brokerage chain, broker, then lowly you if neither of the others is coming between you and your listing). But that link will include a “nofollow” tag, which means that when search engines see that listing page on Trulia, they will not queue your own page for spidering, nor will they in any other way regard that link as lending any strength to your page.

In still other words, Trulia is happy to feast on your crackers, but it’s not about to share any of its Google juice with you.

Trulia’s claims about why it is not doing this are specious and bogus, in my opinion, but you can read their side of the story at their weblog.

Does this actually matter? I think so, for two reasons. First, the Read more

May 5, 2008

Tom Waits dates for everyman: Glitter and Doom Summer tour will start at the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix on June 17-18

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I’ve been sitting on Tim Waits tour dates for about a week. I’m glad I did, because the itinerary has been substantially revised from the original announcement. In the new line-up, Phoenix will come first, with two dates at the historic Orpheum Theatre.

Here are all the dates announced so far:

  • Orpheum, Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 9:00 PM, Phoenix
  • Orpheum, Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 9:00 PM, Phoenix
  • Plaza Theatre, Friday, June 20, 2008, 9:00 PM, El Paso
  • Jones Hall, Sunday, June 22, 2008, 9:00 PM, Houston
  • Palladium, Monday, June 23, 2008, 9:00 PM, Dallas
  • Brady Theatre, Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 9:00 PM, Tulsa
  • Fox Theatre, Thursday, June 26, 2008, 9:00 PM, St Louis
  • Ohio Theatre, Saturday, June 28, 2008, 9:00 PM, Columbus
  • Civic Theatre, Sunday, June 29, 2008, 9:00 PM, Knoxville
  • Moran Theatre, Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 9:00 PM, Jacksonville
  • Saenger Theatre, Wednesday, July 2, 2008, 9:00 PM, Mobile
  • Alabama Theatre, Thursday, July 3, 2008, 9:00 PM, Birmingham
  • Fox Theatre, Saturday, July 5, 2008, 9:00 PM, Atlanta

There will be a European leg to the tour, as well, but I haven’t seen any dates for that yet.

And: What does Tom Waits have to do with real estate? If for nothing else, he commands our attention with this perfectly apposite observation: “The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

May 4, 2008

Do you want to make sure your home will sell? Little things matter

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). (Incidentally, this kind of previewing is one of the reasons I developed the ideas that led to engenu. You can organize photos and details for a lot of houses into one web site, then you can easily reorganize them by conceptual categories (A-list, possibilities, rejects) as you go along.)

 
Do you want to make sure your home will sell? Little things matter

I tend to do a lot of previewing. I will go into houses alone to take photographs. My buyers and I then use those photos to draft a short-list of homes to view when they’re ready to see for themselves.

Because of this, I get to spend a lot of time alone in homes, looking at absolutely everything, with no distractions.

Here’s what I’ve learned from looking at thousands of homes for sale: Little things matter.

Is the home picked up, or are there clothes, toys and magazines scattered everywhere? Are there dirty breakfast dishes on the kitchen table? Dried up orange juice splotches? Toast crumbs? Are last night’s dirty dishes piled up in the sink?

Is the house clean? Does it look and smell like the cleaning crew just left? If I look for dirt, I can find it. But can I find it easily without having to look?

Is every room of the house packed to the walls with furniture? Are there pictures of every member of the family for three generations tacked all over the walls? Do the kids like dark blue, dark purple, dark black paint?

I can probably guess your religion by the stuff you own and the other stuff you don’t own, but my buyers should never, ever see symbols of your religion in the house. Why? Because it can be subtly off-putting to them without their even knowing why at a conscious level.

Likewise, if they can smell your cat — or the fish you fried for dinner last week — you’ve probably already alienated potential buyers before they have even given your house half a chance. Odors kill sales, so kill those odors now.

Fix any obvious defects. Read more

May 2, 2008

Unchained, unplugged and off the clock…

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I can’t think of any better way to make the real estate business rebound than having way too much other work to do. I’ve been writing Unchained content, juggling Unchained details, responding to a bunch of Unchained mail — all while negotiating and planning listings and working with buyers. Next week promises to be enriched with about three weeks’ worth of work, and we top it off with two Unchained preview shows on Friday.

Thus: If you’re in Phoenix on Friday, May 9th, Brian and I will be doing two 2.5 hour Unchained previews at the Mesquite Branch of the Phoenix Public Library (4525 Paradise Village Parkway North, Phoenix, AZ 85032). We’ll be talking to Realtors from 9:30 am to 12 Noon, and to Lenders from 1 pm to 3:30 pm. These two events are free — provided you pay attention — sponsored by Chicago Title and Mortgage Solutions of Arizona. RSVP with Lisa Capes at Chicago Title — 480-695-3136 — if you want to come.

Brian has been flat-out, too, which means he’s been too busy to raise the price for Unchained tickets. We’re still at $199 for all three days, so if you’re coming, you probably ought to commit yourself. Cathy has all the food taken care of, so your lunch and coffee and cookie breaks are on us. She and Brian have a Happy Hour event planned for Monday night, so everyone will have a chance to pick everyone else’s brains. The Radisson Phoenix City Center has a $69/night rack rate for Unchained students, although The Fairfield Inn is the hotel closest to The Heard Museum. Do you crave more details of a practical nature? Click and ye shall find.

Galen Ward owned our minds this week, for good reason, but, if I can, I’d like to turn your attention back to the idea of the unchained epiphany. This has nothing to do with the conference and everything to do with why we’re doing it. Chris Johnson and his wife had a little baby girl named Ruby. I’m sure he’s not busy enough, so I would point him back more than Read more

May 2, 2008

Want to be the greatest real estate agent in the world? You’ll need a solid plan, a lot of hard work, a little luck — and a web site. For the latter, you can compete for the site Eric Blackwell won in the “Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World” SEO contest.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Eric Blackwell is holding a raffle for the Real Estate Webmasters we site he won in the “Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World” SEO contest.

Tickets are $35 each, four for $100. Proceeds go to the Eco Preservation Society in Costa Rica.

Click over to Eric’s site for all the details.

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May 1, 2008

Oh, Canada! Your Zestimates are baking: Zillow.ca is in the oven

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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So: My belief would be that, regardless of Trulia.com’s nofollow policy on the listings it solicits from Realtors, brokers and brokerage chains, if you’re building things right at home, you should be able to beat any out-of-town infiltrators on your own listings.

So I looked up “718 West Moreland Street”, which isn’t even my listing, but which I wrote about in my own Trulia post a couple of weeks ago. My links are coming in in positions 1, 2, 3 and 4 and Trulia is at number 6. Your mileage may vary.

Next up, “12214 West Madison Street”, which we listed 13 days ago. The home’s single-property web site comes in first and second. Trulia isn’t there at all yet, but guess who comes in third? Yes, its underdog victorious Zillow.com. I tweaked David Gibbons a couple of days ago about his uncharacteristic silence, but I knew this meant that Zillow had to be working on SEO. With Zillow, you can learn a lot from the questions they won’t answer.

Here’s a third one: “1322 East Vermont Avenue”, which we’ve had listed for about a month. We definitely believe in networked cross-linking on our own sites, so as I look at my results for that search today (all of which might change at any instant), we’re coming in first, second, third, fifth and sixth out of seven hits on google, with the single-property web site again in the dominant position. Trulia.com is in fourth place, behind a weblog post I wrote about the Vermont house on DistinctivePhoenix.com — a PR4 weblog.

Can I call this established? If you’re building your own web sites properly, Trulia.com should not be able to beat you. Any disputes, disclaimers or caveats?

But here’s what’s really interesting: Position number seven is occupied by Zillow.ca. I don’t know how many houses there are in Canada, but it looks like they’re about to get Zestimated.

If a sphinx-like creature, his gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, should like to offer up some details, I’m all ears.

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April 30, 2008

Who’s the greatest real estate agent in the world? That’s a title I’m willing to compete for. But the winner of the “Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World” SEO contest is BloodhoundBlog’s Eric Blackwell

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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And BloodhoundBlog’s Eric Bramlett breaks the news:

Drumroll please……

Team Eric!

Eric Blackwell and his merry band of SEO’s/bloggers truly proved the spirit of SEO – it’s all about the relationships.  Jennifer Karlan, Greg Swann, Ken Smith, Wayne Long, Judy Orr, Cal Carter, Mike Damman, Charles & Jacqueline Richey, and Matt Scoggins all need to take a collective bow.  Through the use of teamwork and some very strategic use of assets they individually & collectively own, they were able to control #1 from the second month of the contest to the finish line.

There was a LOT of stiff competition here.  Ardell DellaLoggia ran it tight all the way to the finish line.  Greg Boser was in it, and then disappeared off the map w/ a few weeks to go — everyone was anxiously waiting for the SEO Dark Lord to pop his head back in at 11:59 on April 30th.  The guys at newhomessection.com finished #5, w/ Mike Damman’s site PropertyHogs.com, Ryan Ward, Justin from hismove (ranking well, though he dropped out early,) and then Jay Thompson rounding out the top 10.  Wouldn’t you know it?  My post ended up at the top of page 2 – the story of my life.

I’d like to thank everyone for participating, and especially thank Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters for sponsoring the event.  Team Eric has decided to auction off the prize & donate the money to the Eco Preservation Society of Costa Rica (a favorite of Mike Damman’s.)

Eric Blackwell told you he was going to win. I told you Eric was going to win. But the truth is, Eric won because he assembled a great team of very smart people who were shooting Google juice his way until the very last minute.

Take a moment, if you would, to leave a comment to Eric’s winning post. This is a remarkable achievement, and we all got to be a part of it.

Bravo, Eric! And remember: Nice guys link back! 😉

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April 29, 2008

HomeGain.com adds a weblogging platform for its clients

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I’ve spent quite a few brain cycles tweaking HomeGain General Manager Louis Cammarosano. The head of what is very obviously a Web 1.0 chokepoint-style company, Cammarosano has himself very obviously been on an agitprop mission in the Web 2.0 world.

His goals:

  1. To minimize the Web 2.0 difference in the marketplace
  2. To claim that HomeGain has been a Web 2.0 company all along
  3. All the while, to figure out how to transform HomeGain.com to something like a Web 2.0 business model

That much was funny to me, because Cammarosano is a hale-fellow-well-met, rather more the opposite of a spy.

In any case, his efforts are bearing fruit now: A few months ago Cammarosano started a group weblog to figure out if HomeGain should have a weblog. Starting later tonight, HomeGain’s customers will be abel to start their own client-seeking weblogs on the lead-generating site.

Both Brian Brady and Mike Farmer write on the HomeGain blog, so I hope they’ll keep us informed about how the new blogging platform is working out. Free blogging platforms are not always a slam-dunk success, but I think HomeGain’s offering makes more sense than does ActiveRain, for instance. I have felt that free weblogs would be a better solution than discussion fora on Zillow.com: Weblogging creates a middle-management structure, providing a cadre of volunteers to keep bad behavior from oscillating out of control.

In any case, since I’ve been so churlish to Cammarosano, I want to congratulate him for taking a step in the right direction. Anything that induces consumers to shop harder for better values is a net win in my ledger.

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April 27, 2008

The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). The lender in the story? Brian Brady, America’s #1 Mortgage Broker.

 
The challenge for Realtors and lenders in the future: How do you sell to consumers who don’t want to be sold?

We represented a cute couple in the purchase of their first home late last year. That much is not news: First time home-buyers are the bread and butter of the real estate business. What was interesting to me was how internet-focused they were.

The husband, Michael, is an internet adept, but his wife, Danielle, is a true wizard. Her primary interface to the commercial world is the world wide web.

They found me on the internet, of course, and I referred them to a lender that I know through the nets.

Consider this: There are 30,000 Realtors in Phoenix, and at least that many lenders. All of them are advertising at a furious pace — newspapers, real estate magazines, supermarket shopping carts, bus benches, billboards, radio, TV — plus balloons, free pens and scratch pads and coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, flower seeds, recipe cards and Halloween pumpkins.

Real estate professionals spent millions of dollars trying to get Michael and Danielle’s attention, and all of that money was wasted. They are not paying attention to advertising.

To the contrary, if Danielle cannot completely research a product or service on-line, she won’t have anything to do with it. They never once went into the home they were buying without a digital camera. I watched Danielle crane around in impossible contortions so she could read and write down the model and serial numbers from the washer and dryer so she could research them on-line.

Looking forward, nothing changes as fast as we expect it to. But looking backward, the world seems always to be changing like dreams. Danielle is immune to advertising. She recycles her junk mail unread. She doesn’t want to be pitched, she doesn’t want to be sold, she doesn’t want to be wheedled or needled or cajoled. She doesn’t want to be closed on.

All those old school gimmicks still work — on some Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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