BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 133 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

August 25, 2007

What price friendship? “He says he spends more than $100,000 a year on cabanas, food and alcohol for him and his guests”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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In a dreadfully serious soft-core porn piece on the mission-blending of swimming pools and ultra-lounges at Las Vegas casino-resort-hotels, the New York Times coughs up this Gilded Age morality play:

Rainmaking aside, how expensive can it get for high-end customers seeking a raucous Sunday afternoon? Randy Lund, a C.P.A. who works as a branch manager for mortgage broker Meridias Capital, has been going to Rehab since Day 1. He says he spends more than $100,000 a year on cabanas, food and alcohol for him and his guests. Yet as much as Rehab is about recreation for Mr. Lund, it is also about business.

“I bring Realtors and clients and they love it at Rehab,” says Mr. Lund, trim, shirtless and wearing board shorts. “I met a guy here who was a friend of a friend, I invited him to hang out with us in my cabana, and I bought him a few drinks. He turned out to be a multimillionaire who owns shopping centers and a jet. Now he’s a mentor to me, and we’re in the process of developing our own shopping center here in Vegas.”

When you’re writing your mortgage check next week, do pause to reflect that your money is going to worthy purposes.

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August 25, 2007

The New York Times goes on a Countrywide manhunt

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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The New York Times on the Countrywide mess and how the company got there:

ON its way to becoming the nation’s largest mortgage lender, the Countrywide Financial Corporation encouraged its sales force to court customers over the telephone with a seductive pitch that seldom varied. “I want to be sure you are getting the best loan possible,” the sales representatives would say.

But providing “the best loan possible” to customers wasn’t always the bank’s main goal, say some former employees. Instead, potential borrowers were often led to high-cost and sometimes unfavorable loans that resulted in richer commissions for Countrywide’s smooth-talking sales force, outsize fees to company affiliates providing services on the loans, and a roaring stock price that made Countrywide executives among the highest paid in America.

Countrywide’s entire operation, from its computer system to its incentive pay structure and financing arrangements, is intended to wring maximum profits out of the mortgage lending boom no matter what it costs borrowers, according to interviews with former employees and brokers who worked in different units of the company and internal documents they provided. One document, for instance, shows that until last September the computer system in the company’s subprime unit excluded borrowers’ cash reserves, which had the effect of steering them away from lower-cost loans to those that were more expensive to homeowners and more profitable to Countrywide.

More:

In a mid-March interview on CNBC, Mr. Mozilo said Countrywide was poised to benefit from the spreading crisis in the mortgage lending industry. “This will be great for Countrywide,” he said, “because at the end of the day, all of the irrational competitors will be gone.”

But Countrywide documents show that it, too, was a lax lender. For example, it wasn’t until March 16 that Countrywide eliminated so-called piggyback loans from its product list, loans that permitted borrowers to buy a house without putting down any of their own money. And Countrywide waited until Feb. 23 to stop peddling another risky product, loans that were worth more than 95 percent of a home’s appraised value and required no documentation of a borrower’s income.

As recently as July 27, Countrywide’s product list Read more

August 25, 2007

Flashed cards: If you want any more salesmanship than this, you’ll have to make an appointment

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Michael Wurzer brings us this:

I just had my business cards changed a few weeks ago to highlight the FBS Blog on the back/front. This is a tame rip-off of Hugh MacLeod’s blog cards.

Publicizing the weblog is sweet, but what Michael is showing us is the businessman’s business card — just the facts ma’am. If there is a marketing appeal, it’s in the subtle factors: “Our good taste and organizational ability provide you with tacit assurance that we won’t screw up your work on deadline.” That’s a job every business card has to do before it can do any other.

The question for the house: Can a business card do any other job? We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make our cards sell for us, passively. Are we just spinning our wheels? Is Michael’s card carrying all the load a little collateral piece can bear?

Say it in pictures, if you would: Show us your business card.

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August 24, 2007

Flashed cards: “Hello, my name is Ken Brand”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Ken Brand:

I’m a big fan of Scott Ginsberg the “Name Tag Guy”, I thought the name tag idea would make my card seem casual and approachable…wanted a short little resume so I put it on the back of the card. No sense wasting the space.

I’m looking forward to seeing what others are up too…thanks.

It’s time for you to show us what you’ve got.

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August 24, 2007

A buyer’s market? You bet, but even more than that, it’s a listing agent’s market

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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

 
A buyer’s market? You bet, but even more than that, it’s a listing agent’s market

As I write this, there are 55,706 homes listed for sale in the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service. Some are anomalous listings, but those would account for far fewer than one percent of the total. Allowing for every possible quibble, there are a lot of homes for sale — double what there should be.

In July, 4,730 ARMLS-listed homes were sold. Funds changed hands, escrow closed, sellers moved out, buyers moved in — sold.

That’s not a very healthy number of buyers. Five years ago, in July of 2002, 6,113 homes were sold. This is before the market went crazy, so it’s a reasonable number for comparison.

So we have about 75% as many buyers as we should have pursuing 200% of the normal quantity of inventory. That’s an 11.78 month supply of homes. Another way of saying the same thing: Every buyer in the market right now could have twelve or more candidate homes to choose from.

Not all locations are the same. Some buyers might have two or fewer homes to work with. For example, historic or architect-built homes are always in short supply. If you want to live in a high-demand area, you may have no homes to choose from. On the other hand, in very low-demand subdivisions, buyers may have 30 or more appropriate houses available to them.

Is this a buyer’s market? Oh, you bet! But even more than that, I see it as a listing agent’s market.

Why? Because for every home listed in the next 30 days, only a very few are going to sell within 30 days of being listed. For every home that comes off the market, at least one will replace it in the MLS. The ones that don’t sell immediately could be out there for a long while.

Which homes will sell? Those that are perfectly marketed in every possible respect: Priced right, prepared right, presented right. During the boom, anyone could sell a house. Now — and for the foreseeable future — only the Read more

August 24, 2007

Oh, good grief, not another one! “Stealth” real estate start-up is long on promises, short on details

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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If Groucho Marx were to come back to us as a hen, aghast but still sardonic, what would he (she?) do? Peck around in the dirt, no doubt.

Comes next a “stealth” start-up called roost.com, which promises “to fundamentally change how customers find & move into their next home.”

When words mean almost anything they mean almost nothing, but “fundamentally” ought to mean a lot. For this promise to come true, I’m thinking people will need to find their homes by divination and move into them by teleportation. Realty may yet disappoint.

But: Mortgage woes be damned, the world does seem to be crawling with doofuses with dough. If you’re facing foreclosure, come up with a scam by which millions of insomniacs will search for homes they can’t afford in towns they don’t live in while exposing themselves — no, not to children — nor even to aghast, sardonic hens — but to thousands of pay-per-impression ads. Where before you were a deadbeat, 90+ days late, now you can be a Web 2.0 real estate entrepreneur, a stylish flash in an already over-crowded pan.

Goofy logo? Check. Jaw-dropping offices? Check. Radical chic media cachet? Check. The only thing missing from the “real estate space” is practical experience selling houses…

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August 23, 2007

Flashed Cards: Transparency begins with the business card

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Rudy Mayer:

It’s translucent plastic. It’s clean. No photo. It’s different than any other card. People always comment on it and remember it.

You’ll just have to pretend you can see through Rudy’s card. I think this is a fun idea. Might be cool to try on a very heavy vellum, also. As with size, texture calls attention to itself. We print our cards on a very heavy stock, just because so many Realtor cards are printed on the cheapest lightly-coated card stock. We UV coat front and back. It’s necessary in the Phoenix sun, but it also just feels lush. I’ve watched people rub my cards between their fingers. We are monkeys with minds. The quickest path to the mind can be through the monkey.

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August 23, 2007

Closing Escrow, The Movie: At last some competition for American Beauty

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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“Closing Escrow, The Movie”, a mockumentary mocking Realtors, opens tomorrow, apparently in a very limited distribution. Presumably this won’t stop your most pomo clients from asking you if you’ve seen it.

The trailer:

As a rule, the funniest 90 seconds of a comedy will be in the trailer. If the trailer isn’t hysterical, enduring the movie will be agony. Press play to judge for yourself. Much more at YouTube.com.

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August 23, 2007

Flashed cards: “Think of me as a warm and fuzzy blanket — for your money”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Thomas Johnson at ERA Houston has a unique take on making his business card memorable:

This two sided card is printed on a Tyvek envelope like you used to get from the bank to protect the magnetic stripe on your debit card. My thinking is that it could have a shelf life much longer than a normal business card. If the recipient uses my card and puts it in their wallet, I have their money covered.

I’m thinking the card is printed at credit card size, which makes it an odd fit with other cards. This is not a bad thing. The human mind craves order. Give people a bunch of business cards, and they will stack them into a neat little pile. The ones that don’t fit will call attention to themselves — repeatedly, like a popcorn hull trapped between molars. Cards that are slightly too small or have rounded corners will be stacked to the top. Cards that are too large will go to the bottom of the stack. Either way, people will look at the odd men out again and again, trying to make their little stack of cards neater. I don’t know that insinuating yourself into a prospect’s brain as an irritation is the nicest thing to do, but getting in there at all is the first challenge. This is a Black Pearl in the most literally figurative sense…

Your turn: What makes your business card tick?

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August 22, 2007

Flashed cards: How direct marketer Richard Riccelli turned his business card into a demo direct marketing piece

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Richard Riccelli is a direct marketing creative genius. Where better to express that genius than on his business card?

Says Richard:

A website preview and a free offer all on a business card…

Each card features a common contact front with a different info back that makes a free offer — while visually previewing my website.


Common front of the cards.


One back.


And another.

What better way to sell the product than with small, unobtrusive but very potent demonstrations?

What about you? Show us your business card and the thinking behind it.

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August 22, 2007

Flash your business card and show us your marketing philosophy

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is a Richard Riccelli idea: Let’s talk business cards in depth.

I have built a form that you can use to upload an image of your business card. The form also asks you for your thoughts on your card. Use that space to explain your objectives for your card and how you went about achieving them.

I’ll make posts out of the responses so we can see what people are thinking and how those thoughts are expressed visually.

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August 22, 2007

Dibs on their lockboxes! NAR finally forecasts a drop in the number of suckers donors victims members

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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The Associated Press:

Damage from the nation’s slumping housing market is evident throughout the economy and permeates financial markets. Add real estate agents to the growing list of victims, although they know few tears will be shed for them.

The National Association of Realtors expects membership rolls to decline this year for the first time in a decade. The group ended 2006 with nearly 1.4 million members — almost double the roughly 716,000 it had in 1997 — but expects 2007 to close with 1.3 million, a drop of more than 4 percent.

Agents’ ranks continued to rise even after the market began to cool about two years ago because of the 18-month lag between the downturn in sales and membership, says NAR spokesman Walter Molony.

Trade groups in two of the hardest-hit states — California and Florida — also forecast membership drops. The California Association of Realtors is expecting its first decline since 1997, forecasting a year-end tally of 185,000 members compared with more than 199,000 last year. The Florida Association of Realtors currently has about 154,000 members compared with more than 161,000 last year at this time, but expects flat membership by year-end.

Not to rob graves, but people working — successfully — in bigger brokerages should be attentive to the folks who are leaving the business. Not only will they have stuff to sell, like half-price lockboxes, but they are possessed of warm networks that will need to be serviced in the coming years. Not everyone can make a living selling real estate, but just about everybody likes to live indoors. If you can be the Realtor-of-choice for your former colleagues, you can work with a lot of people who will come to you pre-sold. And while I would never, ever suggest that anyone violate state laws by paying referral fees to formerly-licensed former-Realtors, it remains that gratitude is simply a matter of graciousness — and gift cards come in many denominations.

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