BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 131 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

September 10, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Superior taste, no overdone sugar coating which only masks the real product, and no nuts”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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It is my honor and privilege to work with some of the best writers in the RE.net. There are other folks I deeply admire but whom it would be unseemly for one reason or another to recruit. But the people who write for BloodhoundBlog are first among the first rank, whether they are writing here or at their home weblogs. The Odysseus Medal competition gives me a chance to savor great writing from other great writers, so I am not twice-blessed but dozens-blessed every week — as are you.

Here are the winners of this week’s Odysseus Medal competition:

This week’s Odysseus Medal goes to Kris Berg for News You Can Use – Real Estate is a Business:

Any new agent who steps foot in the Broker’s door without basic technology skills or a strong desire to learn and embrace technology, should ahead of anything else be given a 2.0 crash course. A canned, unmanned page on your Broker’s site is not good enough; yourname@aol.com is not good enough. What they need to teach and you need to possess is a commitment to continuing education and an aching hunger to understand as much as you possibly can about the countless technological tools at your disposal in the big, wide world out there. Your business depends on it. Eighty-six your planned recipe card mailer, and reallocate that money and time to establishing and growing an online, relevant presence.

This post is a string of stunning Black Pearls all on its own.

But: This week’s Black Pearl Award belongs to Jonathan Dalton for Sell Your Phoenix Real Estate in Two Weeks. Not as local as the title makes it sound:

Take your home’s value back in November 2004 before the run began. Compute what your home’s value would be based on 5% annual appreciation. Then take the last sales price (or prices for currently active homes) and find the midpoint between that price and your adjusted home value.

For example: your home was worth $200,000 in 2004. Assuming 5% annual appreciation, your home would be worth roughly $231,000 now. If currently active homes are selling at $270,000, split the difference – $250,000.

Congratulations. You Read more

September 9, 2007

Voting for this week’s People’s Choice Award is open

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Vote here.

The short list just keeps getting longer. I’d apologize, but I’m cutting ruthlessly. We’re just getting a lot of truly excellent entrants.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon PDT/MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short list of nominees.

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September 9, 2007

Last call for Odysseus Medal nominees

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I changed the graphic at the top of the page for the better part of last week, an homage to Kris Berg’s excellent post, but I don’t think anyone noticed.

We have a bunch of great entries for The Odysseus Medal, but only you know what we’re missing out on. Deadline is 12 Noon PDT/MST, so make your nominations now.

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September 8, 2007

Church of Darth Vader opens: Shuttles to the Death Star III departing daily

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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No, wait. Appearances to the contrary, that is not the Church of Darth Vader. It’s the brand new Tempe Center for the Arts — a concert venue, because Phoenix can never have enough empty concert venues.

It’s built near a working freight railroad line.

It’s built in the glide path of Skyharbor Airport.

It’s built in the flood plain of the Salt River.

Who says taxpayers are dupes?

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September 7, 2007

You can use the No-Hassle iPhone to hang up on the NAR, but first attend to those Odysseus Medal nominations

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Wanna hear something amazing? Twenty-one months into the downturn, and the NAR is still adding new members. Not much growth, mind you — not cancerous growth — but growth is growth.

I want to get back to the idea of alternatives to the NAR, but I’ve been busy — that’s because the real estate market is bad.

Dan Green and Tom Royce are all over the idea, but, among other things, I’ve been busy selling a Russell Shaw listing. Definitely no-hassle on my end. His team members are as sweet and thoroughgoing as the man himself.

Meanwhile, Apple’s stock price is down for three days running, so Robert X. Cringely hints that it’s time to buy. What did he miss? The show-stopper at the end of the Leopard product release is going to be a 16GB iPhone for $499. You heard it here first.

Why would you need that much memory in a mobile phone? So you can watch the Compleat Russell Shaw on the flight home from Christmas at Grandma’s, of course.

But: Until then, there is an Odysseus Medal competition to consider. Deadline for nominations is Sunday at 12 Noon PDT/MST, but if you know of something insanely great, your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now while it’s on your mind.

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September 7, 2007

Appraisal, inspection could swing the balance toward sellers

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is me in the Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Appraisal, inspection could swing the balance toward sellers

It’s not fun to be a home seller right now. We’ve talked about why your home must be priced right, prepared right and presented right in order to sell. But — guess what? — even that might not be enough.

There are subdivisions where twenty or more essentially identical houses are for sale. There may be at most one buyer for all of those homes in any given month. Still worse, that buyer’s loan might not hold up all the way through the closing process.

The good news is that the belt-tightening the mortgage industry has been going through may be loosening up by a notch or two. There will be no more reckless loans to unqualified borrowers, but buyers with good income, good credit and good debt ratios are qualifying for very aggressive interest rates. And jumbo loan borrowers are being welcomed more warmly than they were a week or two ago.

But the problem remains: There can be so much inventory that buyers are literally paralyzed. On the one hand, they want to see everything before making a choice. On the other, they rightly fear that prices might be even lower a few months from now.

What should you do as a seller? Whatever it takes.

Here are a couple of ideas:

First, have the house appraised, price the home below that appraisal and leave the appraisal report out where buyers can see it.

Second, have the home professionally inspected. Do all of the repairs in the inspection report, then have the inspector back to confirm your work. When everything is ship-shape, leave that report out where buyers can see it.

You can’t control lenders or interest rates. You can’t control the price of homes into the future. What you can do is take away every buyer objection over which you have control.

Nothing matters more than price, so if you won’t price your home to the current market, you needn’t bother with anything else. Your house will not sell. But if you’re committed to doing whatever it takes, these ideas could swing Read more

September 6, 2007

Unlike venture-capital vampire Redfin.com, Iggy’s House seeks suckers on Wall Street

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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John Cook’s Venture Blog:

Despite challenges in the national real estate market, Chicago discount real estate service Iggy’s House plans to try its luck with an initial public offering that could raise up to $15 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

If successful, that would be just $3 million more than what Seattle-based Redfin, one of Iggy’s primary competitors, raised in its venture round in July.

In addition to traditional real estate firms such as Prudential Financial, RE/MAX and Realogy, Iggy’s House also faces direct competition from upstarts such as Redfin, ZipRealty and iNest. It also may face competition in the future from Zillow.com, HouseValues and others, according to the filing.

Iggy’s House, you’ll recall, is the ultimate discount lister.

How ultimate? All the way. Allowing for the buyer’s agent’s commission, Iggy will give you a limited service MLS listing for free. A sister company, BuySideRealty.com, will rebate 75% of the buyer’s agent’s commission when they (don’t actually) represent you as the buyer.

How can they do it? They’re lenders. Both real estate businesses exist to drive loss-leader business to their loan brokerage business. Pondering the spreads on the loans they underwrite will probably repay your effort.

And: Even though the company is appealing directly to share-holding suckers, rather than the venture capital suckers favored by parasite sites like Redfin.com, Iggy is so far living up to what you might anticipate for its financial performance: “Iggy’s House posted revenue of $425,000 and a net loss of $5.1 million last year.”

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September 6, 2007

What could be worse than our current capricious zoning laws? New even-more-capricious zoning laws — imposed by zealots

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Tipped again by Poor and Stupid, novelist Orson Scott Card discovers everything that’s wrong with one-size-fits-all municipal zoning laws:

I’m not urging that the government mandate any more absurd mileage requirements for cars, or ration gasoline, or any other absurd proposals. Hybrids are great, for the things they’re great for. But even hybrids still burn gas, and if we could drive less, then hybrids would save even more gasoline.

In fact, all that I want government to do, locally and at higher levels, is to stop with the regulations that force us to use cars for everything, and replace them with regulations that permit us to walk or bike.

Right now, in most locations zoning laws force developers to create neighborhoods with houses of about the same size and cost, on roughly the same size lot, while forbidding any retail within walking distance.

Meanwhile, those same laws generally forbid the construction of new neighborhoods that mix income levels, house sizes, and densities.

(In Greensboro, we do have mixed-use zones that permit some aspects of a walking neighborhood, but it is only used in specific new developments, not for regions of the city large enough to make a difference. Most of the city is still zoned in the old way.)

It’s as if government looked at the beloved old neighborhoods that people drive through with yearning and nostalgia, and banned them.

The result is that the poor are shunted off into isolated islands, where crime thrives, employment is remote, and the poor have to own cars just to get a job. Meanwhile, most people can’t walk or bike to any useful destination, because the law has forbidden retail or office buildings anywhere near where people live.

I have no problem with allowing people to continue to live in pedestrian-hostile neighborhoods, if they want to. I just want the law to allow the construction and adaptation of low-car-use neighborhoods.

That means allowing low-parking retail to be built close to new and existing residential neighborhoods, like the old-fashioned “Main Street” town, where a commercial strip leads immediately to residential side streets.

In a town the size of Greensboro, this doesn’t mean one downtown that Read more

September 5, 2007

Why do traditional Realtors despise discounters like Redfin.com?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is me, guest-posting at Blown Mortgage while Morgan Brown is on vacation:

So why is a limited-service listing unlikely to succeed? If you’re in a high-demand market like Seattle, it just might. But in most of America, right now, a home must be marketed perfectly from the first day or it will sell slowly and at a deep discount — if at all.

The one difference between a true FSBO and a limited-service listing is the searchable record in the MLS database. The home will be offered by-owner in all other respects: Priced wrong, prepared wrong and inaccessible to buyers and their agents. This is not a necessary consequence, but it is very, very common. In the case of our newly-listed competition, the home is offered at $200,000 over its market value. Presumably because of the recent re-financing craze, it is encumbered at about $75,000 over market. This home will not be a threat to our listing.

But it wouldn’t be a threat even if it were priced right. There are too many weapons that a professional home marketer will bring into battle for an amateur, no matter how dedicated, to compete. A limited-service listing comes with none of the professionals’ arsenal. So much the worse, it shouts out a warning to skilled buyer’s agents to stay away.

Why would that be so? Because even if it’s competitively priced, even if the buyers love that particular home, it is being marketed by an amateur who will, in all innocence, make egregious errors again and again. Worse, the seller will have no one to turn to for advice, exposing the buyer’s agent to double the legal liability in the transaction, potentially even creating what a judge might regard as an undisclosed dual agency.

The same situation obtains in reverse with discount buyer’s agents like Redfin.com or Buyside.com. Their vaunted cost savings come not from their technology, nor even from picking the low-hanging fruit of well-prepared buyers. The savings they pass on to the buyer come from pushing the costs of buyer representation onto the listing agent.

I wrote this essay a couple of months ago, when Redfin.com Read more

September 5, 2007

This is what it smells like when Zunes die…

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Going to the Social? Not anymore.

News abounds. There will be better coverage in an hour or two. For now:

  • New red iPod Shuffle
  • New iPod Nanos with iPhone-like video
  • New iPod Classics with iPhone-like video — up to 160GB
  • New iPod Touch — a phoneless iPhone with WiFi, iTunes by WiFi and Starbucks music previewing (hold your nose for that last bit of flatulent decay from the Zune)
  • New iPhone price, 8GB version only going forward for $399

And remember that Leopard is still out there this year…

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September 5, 2007

Instead of a bailout of troubled borrowers, why not implement an equity-sharing plan?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Via Poor and Stupid, TCS Daily has a free (or at least free-er) market solution to bailouts for struggling mortgage borrowers.

The idea? “[A] debt-for-equity swap with sub-prime borrowers.” Borrowers would give up 20% of their downstream equity in their homes in exchange for 20% debt and therefore payment relief:

To implement the swap plan, government would create an agency to buy equity from troubled borrowers. Call this new agency Bailie Mae.

When a borrower swaps with Bailie Mae, the borrower’s monthly payment of principal and interest immediately falls by 20 percent. Instead, Bailie Mae provides the other 20 percent of the monthly payment. The borrower still has to pay the full cost of other components of the mortgage payment, such as taxes and insurance.

As long as the borrower makes the new monthly payment, he stays in the home. When the home is sold, 20 percent of the gross proceeds go to Bailie Mae. At that time, Bailie Mae will be responsible for repaying 20 percent of the outstanding balance on the mortgage loan.

For example, suppose that the outstanding balance at the time of the swap is $100,000, and the borrower’s monthly principal and interest is $800. With the swap, the borrower’s monthly principal and interest payment would drop to $640, and Bailie Mae would pay $160 per month.

Several years later, the borrower gets a job in a new city and sells his home. By this time, the outstanding loan balance is, say, $90,000. Bailie Mae is responsible for 20 percent of that, or $18,000, with the borrower responsible for the remaining $72,000. If the home sells for $110,000, then 20 percent of that goes to Bailie Mae, which means $22,000. Another $72,000 is used by the borrower to pay off the loan, leaving $16,000 to go to the borrower.

Suppose that the house is sold for only $80,000. In that case, Bailie Mae gets only $16,000 even though it still has to pay $18,000. The borrower gets nothing, and $62,000 goes toward paying off the loan. The cost of the remaining $10,000 shortfall in paying back the loan is borne by the responsible lending Read more

September 4, 2007

What would you do with a totally free mobile phone?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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We haven’t talked about the gPhone rumors, the possibly-apocryphal mobile phone alleged to be forthcoming from Google. I read about vaporware all the time, but I tend not to remark on it. Today is different.

Consider these conjectures from Seth:

My non-inside prediction of what the third-generation phone they ship will be like:
(Relatively) free
(Relatively) open
Ad supported

So, any carrier can offer it (hence the free part), any developer can easily modify it/enhance it, and the thing is paid for by location-aware permission marketing. Anticipated, personal and relevant ads based on who you are, what you do and where you are. GPS-coded photographs from all over the world automatically appended to Google Maps. Free calls if you’re on a wifi network. And it won’t be nearly as design-wonderful as an iPhone. But it will be addictive and in many ways, better.

Emphasis: “Free calls if you’re on a wifi network.”

Stipulate all of this just for the sake of the argument. If it’s not true of the gPhone, we’re probably headed in this direction, perhaps even toward “free” ad-supported cellular service.

First: This could easily be the primary phone for many, many people. No more for-pay mobile service, and no more for-pay land lines.

Next: The gPhone could be the ideal second phone for busy people like Realtors. I’ve thought for a while that I might end up with a BlueTooth headset on each ear. Imagine making all of your showing calls from the gPhone. Now you can ignore your main phone with clients — which I think is good marketing — but you will know to take the gPhone calls, since they will have the access information you need. You could also stage intra-skullular conference calls, which probably is more amusing in concept than in reality.

Moreover: You could use the gPhone as the mobile analogue to your Yahoo mail account: A throwaway that you will throw away when the spam gets out of control.

There is an argument that people don’t respect things they get for free. That may not be true, or it may be progressively less true, but it remains that we treat free resources very differently Read more

September 3, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Government was never intended to bail out corporations”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I was at a party Saturday night, and everyone kept telling that it’s a great time to buy. I’ve been showing all weekend, so, who knows?, maybe it’s true. In any case, I’m short on minutes, so we’ll do this week’s awards on horseback.

The Minnesota Association of Realtors has a peculiar talent for inviting scorn and ridicule. This year’s fun-fest, the winner of our People’s Choice Award, was kicked off by Teresa Boardman, with Has MAR forgotten who pays the bills?

I would love it if half of the agents in the twin cities quit. That would mean more money and more business for me. It just doesn’t work that way and it never will. When it gets easy everyone wants to do it, and they do. When the going gets rough they quit.

Glen, your letter is just another example of how an industry in turmoil has started eating it’s young to protect old business models instead of innovating to better serve the consumer. Real estate is a self eliminating market driven profession. It works on the principals of supply and demand, as does the housing market.  When agents can’t make ends meet they will seek employment outside the industry and maybe they will sell a few homes too. We call our economic system capitalism and I just love the almost endless opportunities the system brings. Anyone can start their own business, how cool is that? 

You don’t get to decide who will stay and who will go based on earnings and years in the business. Each of us will make that decision on our own.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Morgan Brown’s Taking advantage of convertible home equity lines of credit, which teaches us how to encumber a Jumbo-priced property without a Jumbo loan:

Instead of taking the whole loan balance as a 1st position HELOC, take a conforming 1st mortgage up to $417,000 and then take the remaining as a convertible HELOC. Once you sign the loan documents you can convert the HELOC to a fixed rate and achieve a blended interest rate (the effective interest rate of Read more

September 2, 2007

The People’s Choice Award voting is open: Vote for your choice of the best RE.net posts this week

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The voting for this week’s People’s Choice Award is open. The short list is not short — 24 entries — but it’s rich in quality writing.

Voting will run until Monday at 12 noon PDT/MST. The ballot form will permit you to read every article, but here are the links to the nominated posts:

The Odysseus Medal competition is a weekly carnival of the very best weblog posts in the RE.net. If you would like to compete — or to nominate someone else’s excellent work — this is the nomination form.

I’ll announce this week’s winners tomorrow early afternoon.

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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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