BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 151 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

April 21, 2007

Arizona Republic: Realtors side with Zillow.com

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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The Phoenix RE.net is heard from in a big way in an article that will appear in Sunday’s Arizona Republic about the State of Arizona’s attempts to stifle Zillow.com. Writes reporter Peter Corbett:

A state agency’s efforts to stop Zillow.com from offering property-value estimates in Arizona are drawing criticism from some Realtors who think regulators are overstepping their authority.

The critics also are targeting an Arizona Board of Appraisal reform bill they fear will muzzle anyone from offering an opinion about property values unless he or she is a licensed appraiser, Realtor or attorney.

Phoenix real estate broker Greg Swann said that the legislation, Senate Bill 1291, is narrowly written to block Zillow from offering its estimates.

It also could affect other online services from offering property-value estimates using what are called automated valuation models, he said.

“This is legislation to stop progress,” said Swann, adding that state regulators are being Luddites in trying to halt the advance of Internet commerce.

The Arizona House is expected to consider the bill on Monday, said Deborah Pearson, director of Arizona Board of Appraisal.

The legislation is not aimed at Zillow but rather is intended to update statutes that have not changed since 1991, Pearson said.

Realtor Swann of www.BloodhoundRealty.com, said that the bill is so tightly written that two neighbors talking to each other about a neighbor’s property technically would be in violation of the law.

Pearson said exemptions in the law would permit neighbors to talk about property values.

It may be that she thinks this to be the case, but the language of the legislation is very precise:

“Appraisal” or “real estate appraisal” means any of the following: (A) The act or process of developing an opinion of value. (B) An opinion of value. (C) Pertaining to appraising and related functions such as appraisal practice or appraisal services.

This is very clear. Any opinion of value brought forth by anyone not explicitly exempted by the law would be a violation of that law. To capture Zillow.com and other Automated Valuation Models, they had to write the law so broadly that it effectively outlaws all “unofficial” opinions of value.

Corbett continues:

The controversy about appraisals erupted Read more

April 21, 2007

BloodhoundBlog round-up: Kenneling the last of the dogs, a new way to follow the trail and podcasting our way to fame and fortune

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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All the dogs are in the kennel at last. When I built BloodhoundBlog last Summer, I set it up as a subdirectory of BloodhoundRealty.com. Had I known where we were headed, I would have bought a separate domain for the weblog. And had I thought that far ahead, BloodhoundBlog would have been called something else.

Why? Because BloodhoundBlog.com was already owned by a software company in Texas. I discovered this when I finally thought to tie down the domains last Fall. I was able to buy BloodhoundBlog.net and BloodhoundBlog.org, but all I could do was back-order BloodhoundBlog.com.

It’s a problem I’ve been nursing on and off ever since. But as of today, BloodhoundBlog.com is finally ours. Like the two other domains, it is redirecting to the subdirectory I set up in the first place. A small enough thing, I suppose, but most big things are made up of little things.

And here’s another little thing: As of this week, it’s possible to subscribe to BloodhoundBlog by email. It’s not something I’m apt to think of. RSS is too easy, too fast, too wonderful. But if people don’t have access to feed readers, or if they don’t want to use them, they can get email updates when new posts hit the weblog. As it happens, Seth Godin added email subscription the same day we did. Great minds think alike? Can’t be. Great minds Think Different.

But here’s a big thing: Starting Monday, we’ll be rolling out audio and video podcasts from the Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminars. I have five audio and two video podcasts set up for this week, and we’ll do another five of each next week. This is all about building a curriculum for a real estate sales training course in podcast form, so, if you have questions for Russell, don’t be shy.

Linked below is a short video segment of me extolling the benefits of real estate weblogging with the help of Jay Thompson and Tony Marriott.

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April 20, 2007

What’s the hottest game in Vegas? Strip Monopoly!

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Oh, keep your shirt on… Strip Monopoly refers to that famed Parker Brothers board game (now owned by the soulless Hasbro, alas) as played with the real-life real estate on Las Vegas Boulevard — a/k/a “The Strip.”

Earlier this week, Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM Mirage acquired 33.4 acres of Strip-front real estate surrounding the company’s Circus-Circus property. This brings the Circus-Circus site, already 68-acres huge, to over 100 acres of land fronting on one of the priciest streets in the history of pricey streets.

MGM Mirage is already building the $7 billion Project City Center on and around the old Boardwalk property — apposite appellation strictly coincidental. The company plans a similar city-within-a-giant-casino development on the Circus-Circus site.

Vegas Today and Tomorrow has a nice Monopoly map to show you who is winning the game. Here’s a way of thinking of things: The green spots on the board are split between Wynn Las Vegas and The Venetian. Harrah’s owns the orange and the yellow properties. The railroads and utilities are divided among Boyd Gaming, Station Casinos and various minor players. Everything else belongs to MGM Mirage.

Harrah’s is technically the largest gaming company on earth, but MGM Mirage owns more undeveloped Strip-fronting real estate than Harrah’s owns in developed land on the Strip. All three of the companies that merged to form MGM Mirage — MGM Grand, Mirage Resorts and Mandalay Resort Group — have been persistently greedy in acquiring land on Las Vegas Boulevard over the years.

Circus-Circus was built by the man who may have understood Las Vegas best, Jay Sarno. He also built Caesar’s Palace, thereby inventing the idea of the themed casino-resort-hotel. Caesar’s, of course, has become almost a city unto itself, and it was the success of the Forum Shops that led other Strip casino operators to explore the convergence of gaming and shopping. MGM Mirage pledges to refurbish Circus-Circus as part of its development of the newly-assembled 100 acre parcel, so both of Sarno’s creations will live on in the city he influenced so decisively.

But what’s next for Strip Monopoly?

Other than Caesar’s Palace and The Paris, most of the Harrah’s Strip-front Read more

April 20, 2007

Zillow.com notes: Fear and Ludditism, advertising, a better farming strategy and more

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Zillow notes: Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy asks “Why do so many agents fear Zillow?” He makes the same point in a BusinessWeek article on the Seattle-based Realty.bot.

Brian Brady, America’s Most Opinionated Mortgage Broker and a BloodhoundBlog contributor, covers some of the same ground: “Is your Realtor threatened?”

Both gentlemen are objecting to what we might characterize as the opportunistic bandwagoneering going on with respect to the Arizona Board of Appraisal’s attempts to outlaw consumer-oriented Automated Valuation Models. I can’t speak for them, but for me this is a matter of vitally-important principles, liberty the first among them.

I may write more about this over the weekend, because the issues involved are vast and very interesting — at least to me. Earlier this week, in email, I wrote, “When the sabot is a Ferragamo, Ned Ludd has a whole new style.” I have no doubt that this regulatory and legislative initiative is Ludditism in a Brooks Brothers suit. It’s bad enough that Zillow is afflicted, but I expect this is but the first salvo in a long war.

Witness: This came in as a comment last night, but I wanted to highlight it:

MLSPIN of Massachusetts just sent out this notice:

“RULES AND REGULATIONS REMINDERS:

I. Recently, the On-Line Valuation site, Zillow announced a new function being made available to advertise listings for sale on that site, whether or not you are the listing broker/agent. The MLS Rules and Regulations, STRICTLY PROHIBIT the advertising of another broker’s listings without their prior WRITTEN consent. The REALTOR&174; Code of Ethics, Standard of Practice 12-4 also prohibits the advertising of a listing without proper authority. Better safe than sorry; do not advertise another office’s listing anywhere without prior written approval.”

“Better safe than sorry” is an interesting choice of words.

Even more interesting is the fact that MLSPIN is arguing that MLS members have fewer rights to act than ordinary people. As things stand now, any non-MLS member can advertise another party’s home for sale, but, of course, no one does. Why? Advertising costs money. But anyone except MLSPIN members can announce that another party’s home is for sale Read more

April 19, 2007

Protecting whom? There are no complaining parties in Arizona’s quest to outlaw free consumer-oriented home evaluations

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I hear a lot of rumors, as you might guess. They’re usually way less than half the truth, but they can be useful for shaking the real truth loose, so they’re not entirely a bad thing. In any case, I’ve been hearing ugly rumors about Zillow.com in Arizona. Zillow Public Relations Specialist Amanda Hoffman has been working night and day to help me pin them down.

Like this:

  • Q: Is Zillow being sued by Arizona homeowners who regret having used Zestimates as opinions of value? Anywhere else?
    A: “Nope. Not true.”
  • Q: Are there any extant complaints about Zillow before the Arizona Board of Appraisal? In other words, have any real persons claiming standing as victims come forward?
    A: “Not that we know of.”
  • Q: Do you have any comment about Arizona Senate Bill 1291? Has Zillow had any involvement with the debates on this legislation so far?
    A: “We recently learned about the Arizona bill and we’re looking into what it may mean for Zillow users. We believe it’s important for home buyers and sellers to have easy access to real estate data and home valuation tools.”

I’m reading that last response to suggest that they might only have heard about the bill today.

The first two responses are significant because they argue that there are no self-identified injured parties appealing for relief from Zillow.com in Arizona. I don’t think offering an unwelcome opinion of value can be conceived of as a tort, but no one is complaining of an injury in the first place.

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April 19, 2007

Seth Godin’s promotional tour for The Dip to include Phoenix

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Seth Godin definitely is coming to Phoenix. I had email about it yesterday:

Thanks for signing the pledge and telling your friends. Seth Godin saw how quickly this grew and called me to confirm he’s coming to Phoenix.

[….]

More details to come in the next few days regarding the date, time and location.

If you haven’t already done so, go sign the pledge so that you will get all the where and when details as they become available.

Your commitment: $50 a head. Your benefit: Hearing Seth Godin speak plus five copies of his new book, The Dip.

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April 18, 2007

Idle chatter of idle neighbors to be outlawed in Arizona: Appraiser’s job protection act passes Arizona State Senate

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Little Pink Houses dug up the smoking gun: The State of Arizona is trying to make it illegal for anyone without a state-issued license to express opinions of value about real property. Oh, there is an exception: You will be able to express an opinion about the value of your own property.

This law, if ratified, is only one court case away from being quashed.

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April 18, 2007

Casting a wider net: Hungry iPods crave content

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Russell Shaw held his second Sales Success Seminar last night. For the moment we don’t know if there will be a third. So far, we’re sitting on about seven hours of new audio and perhaps four hours of new video. All of this will be released in bulk, but its primary purpose will be to spark Russell’s creativity in making a series of Q&A podcasts, a sort of Russell Shaw Sales Success FAQ.

This will be organized in FAQ-like form, with an index page of questions, each one linking to the podcast of the answer. You’ll be able to read the index to look for specific questions. Or, if you like, you could just start with the first question and work your way through the training course, one podcast at a time. And, catching the tiger by the long tail, organic searches will lead people who hadn’t even known about the course to particular podcasts.

As Russell mentioned last night, you should email him with any questions you might have. In very short order, he’ll start answering them one by one and we’ll start building the FAQ.

In the mean time: I had email about where to go for more information- and inspiration-rich real estate podcasting content. I confess to ignorance on the subject. Cathy has an iPod, and now Russell has one, but I don’t. I have about 12 days of unique content in iTunes, but it’s all music. I’ve listened to a few real estate podcasts in the iTunes store, but they’ve seemed pretty spammy to me.

So: Tell us where to go for good real estate podcasts, video or audio. If we can unearth some treasures, I’ll build a link page so that others can find them more easily.

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April 16, 2007

Zillow.com at the Dawn of the Age of Abundance: Working for free is not a crime, trying to forbid it is . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid (more INTx evidence). One of my favorite books was Voyage From Yesteryear by James Hogan.The plot turned on the conflict between an economy like ours, based on scarcity and hoarding, and a radically different economy based on abundance and sharing. At the time the book was published, the latter economy would have seemed wildly utopian to a lot of people. But there were others who saw the Singularity on the horizon and understood that Hogan’s vision was one way it might play out, in the near term.

By now, of course, Hogan’s ideas don’t seem very radical at all. There are still a great many economic goods stored behind lock and key. But we are seeing more and more goods, especially intellectual values, delivered at no cost, often with no form of “monetization” at all. I wrote about this in my first BloodhoundBlog post and later in a post about disintermediation in the for-pay information business.

The interesting question I asked then is even more interesting now:

How much future is there in a job that millions of very smart people are willing to do for free?

This is a question that Zillow.com’s new Q&A feature asks, and it’s a question that seems to be uppermost in the minds of members of The Arizona Board of Appraisal.

But here’s an angle that may not have occurred to you: When Zillow.com introduces a potential buyer to a Make Me Move seller, it is engaging in the essential act of real estate brokerage. Why isn’t this “illegal,” much as the Board of Appraisal is attempting to claim that Zillow’s Zestimates are “illegal” appraisals?

The answer: Because Zillow is not accepting or anticipating compensation for engaging in real estate brokerage. The Babbitts who wrote the real estate laws did so in the hope of creating a cartel, with correspondingly higher fees, by forbidding non-licensees from listing and selling real estate for compensation.

This is a criminal conspiracy against the consumer, the use of the coercive power of the state — guns and prisons — to forbid consumers and vendors Read more

April 16, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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…is at Renthusiast, in London. The affair takes on an international flair, but, for good or ill, real estate weblogging is still largely an American phenomenon.

Top prize went to China Law Blog for “Real Estate Investments in China Seminar.” BloodhoundBlog scored somewhere in the middle of the pack with Russell Shaw’s presentation at the StarPower Summit.

As a reminder, the Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar is tomorrow night. If you’re anywhere near Phoenix, this event could have a profound effect on your income.

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April 15, 2007

Better, faster and cheaper in time and effort: Software for managing the weblogging workflow

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Robbie Paplin has a new weblog and he writes there and at Rain City Guide about the Deep Geek thinking underlying his decision-making process in selecting his new blogging platform. Very interesting reading.

I spent my junk time yesterday doing fussy CSS tweaks on Teri Lussier’s weblog, TheBrickRanch.com. This is a hugely frustrating iterative process: Make one minor edit, FTP it to the file server, refresh the page, discover that the change was a mistake, undo, redo, repeat, express frustration in a way that does not exacerbate male pattern baldness.

HTML is hugely forgiving, which is not really a good thing. Web developers have worked for years with multiple computing platforms, each one home to multiple versions of multiple web browsers, all so they could see how their code would be interpreted in an array of hardware and software environments. Not cool.

But: CSS is hugely unforgiving, as crotchety and irascible as a compiled computer language — without the error messages. I was starting with a style sheet created by someone else and trying to torque it into doing what I wanted done. The worst part about making a change in CSS is not seeing that the change you made is wrong, but that the change you made changed nothing. If the original CSS was improperly formatted, the results you’re seeing on the screen are actually inherited from somewhere else. Nice.

I don’t do this for a living, not alone because there are laws against homicide. But I do have good tools, and it’s worthwhile to talk about what good tools can do to make work like this work easier if not actually easy. I live in the Mac world, so, if you’re stuck with Windows, you’ll have to translate. We’re talking about categories of tools, so this stuff exists on both platforms.

For editing, I use TextWrangler, a free programmer’s editor from BareBones Software. I use this for everything, writing, editing, coding — everything. I’ve been using BareBones editors since 1991 or so. Someday I’ll pop for the for-pay product. There is so little HTML in a weblog post, you might as well learn to Read more

April 13, 2007

Arizona Board of Appraisal to Zillow.com: In your Zestimation, does this posturing make us look stupid?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From the Arizona Republic (tipped by Adam Tarr and Sharon Kotula):

An Arizona regulatory board has ordered Zillow.com to stop offering its online estimates of home values.

The Arizona Board of Appraisal has issued two cease and desist letters to the popular real estate Web site, claiming Zillow needs an appraiser license to offer its “zestimates” in Arizona.

“It is the board’s feeling that (Zillow) is providing an appraisal,” said Deborah Pearson, Board of Appraisal executive director.

This would be in contra-distinction to all the other Automated Valuation Methods operating in the state, some of which are actually used by lenders to underwrite home loans.

All last year, I wondered when the appraisers were going to rise up and rail about consumer-level AVMs. Today was that day, it seems.

This is Rotarian Socialism in action. The so-called regulatory body serves at the beck and call of the putatively-regulated industry. They have no hope of doing anything but making themselves look ridiculous in public, but they have to answer to their allegedly regulated masters no matter what.

If this kind of corruption is just now making you sick — you haven’t been paying attention…

Further notice: Official Zillow.com response from David Gibbons:

Lloyd Frink, Zillow’s President asked me to convey this official response to you, Greg:

“We strongly believe that providing Zestimates in Arizona is completely legal (and in fact an important public service), given that Zestimates are the result of our ‘automated valuation model’ and are not a formal appraisal. The Arizona Board of Appraisals relies on USPAP, the national professional standards for appraisers, and USPAP Advisory Opinion to determine propriety of activities. Here is the relevant opinion on this matter (Advisory Opinion 18): http://commerce.appraisalfoundation.org/html/2006%20USPAP/ao18.htm As you can see, it reads: ‘The output of an AVM is not, by itself, an appraisal.'”

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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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