BloodhoundBlog

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Author: Greg Swann (page 152 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

April 13, 2007

Customizing your weblog with CSS and PHP: Navigating from post to post

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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If you click on an individual post in BloodhoundBlog, you’ll see something like this above the headline:

The code for doing this is built into some themes, but not in the theme we’re using. The PHP code for making it happen is actually pretty simple, you just have to plug it in in the right place. And all of this presumes you are working on a WordPress.org weblog on a host you can access by FTP. I know nothing about WordPress.com-hosted weblogs or other weblogging systems.

Where is the right place to insert the code? In the folder for the theme you are using (inside the wp-content/themes folder), you may find a file named “single.php”. If so, that’s the file you want to edit. If “single.php” is not there, you want to edit “index.php”.

Before you change anything, save a back-up copy of the file you are going to edit. That way, you can back out and try again if things don’t work out.

You are looking for this line of code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Immediately after that line, paste in this code:

<div class="navigation">
<div align="center"><?php previous_post_link('&laquo; %link') ?></div>
<div align="center"><?php next_post_link('%link &raquo;') ?></div><br>
</div>

Once you have edited the file, FTP it back up to the host and see what happens. If it worked, you should be able to navigate your weblog post-by-post. If it didn’t, go back and try to figure out what went wrong.

I’m going to do some more of this stuff over the weekend, but not too much. The truth is, if your mind runs this way, you’re probably better at it than I am. And if not, your eyes are already glazed over. If you’re somewhere in the middle, a little bit of simple PHP can give you a whole lot of custom control over your weblog’s behavior. To that extent, it’s worth talking about.

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April 13, 2007

Prioritize home-buying negotiation

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link) — kindasorta, anyway. The space I get in the paper is around 350 words, which was really not enough for this topic. What you’re seeing here is my original text, about 200 words longer than the version that ran in the paper.

Prioritize home-buying negotiation

Real estate transactions are all about negotiation. Long before a house goes on the market, the seller and the listing agent will negotiate fees and terms. My take is that buyers should effect the same type of negotiation with their agents before looking at houses, but this rarely happens.

Once the buyer finds the ideal home, the Realtors negotiate price, closing dates and costs, repairs, etc. The Purchase Contract can be looked at as an agreement to agree — subject to further negotiations.

So how should you negotiate? Your Realtor is going to effect the direct negotiations with the other Realtor, but both of them are agents of their principals. They are bound by the law to obey your lawful instructions to the letter. The style of the dickering may be your Realtor’s, but the substance will be all yours.

Some people have the idea that negotiation is about hurting or taking advantage of the other party. They will ruthlessly go for the jugular at every opportunity, regarding a parley as a failure if they don’t see the other party as the clear loser in the deal. This seems to me to invite future rancor and recalcitrance, should we need a favor at the last minute in order to close the deal.

At the other extreme are those pushovers who are so afraid to stand up for themselves that they give away the store — and throw in the parking lot, too. In our current buyer’s market, sellers can be very reluctant to brook confrontation, and this may not be a bad idea. Too often, buyers are so in love with a house that they are afraid that they’ll lose it if they issue the smallest peep in protest.

So how should you negotiate? Gently but firmly, calmly and rationally, naming your reasons Read more

April 13, 2007

Real Estate Weblogging 101: Our story so far

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Here’s a true fact of weblogging: Sometimes you decide you want to do something that requires you to go back and edit 30 or 40 posts. As an example, imagine that you decided you wanted to add a new category. You would have to go back and re-categorize all the posts that should be shoved into that mental drawer.

I did something like this when I created the Weblogging 101 category. I went back and added that category designation where it was appropriate.

Tonight I decided to go that one better, by highlighting the more important posts in that category in such a way that I could reference them repeatedly from other posts. You’ll see me do this from time to time, where we have multiple posts on one important topic. I’ll link back to all the others from each post so that no one misses anything.

There are two ways of doing this. One is manual coding, pasted in to the affected posts again and again. The other is to use PHP, the web-based programming language WordPress itself is written in. I can write my links into a separate file, then include that file when I want to reference the links. The advantage is that I have one canonical version of the links. Moreover, the list of links is dynamic; every time I edit the list, all the posts referencing that file of links are changed accordingly.

WordPress will run PHP unaided in many places on a weblog, and BloodhoundBlog runs on a lot of PHP. But within what WordPress calls “The Loop,” the software that displays weblog entries, running PHP requires a plug-in. I use the runPHP WordPress plug-in by James Van Lommel.

So, what happens? At the end of a post like this one, I append this code inside angle brackets:

?php include ("REWL101.php"); ?

The file named REWL101.php, my file full of links, is opened and inserted at that point. When I make a change in that file, the change is instantly reflected in every post that “includes” it. I can add my set of links to dozens of posts — even making them Read more

April 12, 2007

Want to see Seth Godin in Phoenix? Assert yourself . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Tom Royce of The Real Estate Bloggers pointed me to The Dip, Seth Godin’s forthcoming book about the barriers that arise between the euphoria of a great idea and its realization — and why it’s sometimes wise to quit when you’re behind.

Here’s the part that is of immediate, local interest. Matt LaPrairie came up with the novel idea of mounting a pledge campaign to get Seth to speak about the book in Phoenix. The commitment:

“I will pay $50 to hear Seth Godin speak in Phoenix and receive 5 copies of his new book, The Dip, but only if 499 other people in the Phoenix area will do the same.”

So far, only 68 people have made the pledge. Unless they are joined by 431 more, Seth will go elsewhere.

This is a remarkable opportunity (and a true Purple Cow book marketing strategy for Seth), so, if you’re in the Phoenix area, sign up. And if you’re blogging in Phoenix, speak up.

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April 12, 2007

An insanely great hyper-local real estate weblogging strategy: Be the community

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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In January, I told y’all that I have an insanely great idea for making a local real estate weblog successful. I actually had the idea last Summer, and I worked out all the details and software then. But we have been busy with other things, so I’ve just been sitting on this tactic for nine months.

Just lately I promised to reveal three ideas, one good, one great, one insanely great. If I were more of a showman — or an extractor of torment — I would disclose my stratagems in that order. But: I’m not going to do that. I want to talk about the big idea today, not alone because it’s time for us to implement this on Teri’s weblog.

But I do want for you to take a moment to reflect upon what a natural Teri Lussier is as a real estate weblogger. I think the post I linked to betrays a pitch-perfect understanding of the kind of writing I was talking about the other night: Here is something we share, and here is how I am involved with this shared value. Here are some of our neighbors, and here is why I feel honored to know them. The post isn’t about real estate or radio, it’s about “us.” Us? What us? Teri’s writing creates an us, creates a tiny community of two who each see themselves in the context of the larger community.

People do business with people they like. Experience? Great. Expertise? Bring it on. Integrity? I believe it. Obnoxious? Abrasive? Condescending? Overbearing? Get the hell out of my house! By design or by accident, I think Teri has landed on the intersection between cat blogs and viral blogs, and I think this is the perfect place for a hyper-local real estate weblogger to be: Personable but professional, eliciting affection while earning trust.

She delivers one hell of an introduction to everyone she meets through her weblog. The big job is to attract more people for her to meet. We’ll be talking about simpler, more mechanical means of achieving that goal as we go along. For now we’re going to Read more

April 11, 2007

Birth of a Zillow.bot: A faster way to pee on the tree

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a little prototype of a Zillow.bot. Here is all it does for now:

  • It takes as input a download of listings from the ARMLS system
  • It isolates the street address, the price, and the listing brokerage, throwing away all the other fields
  • It sorts these newly concatenated fields by street name and house number, pumping the results to the screen for printing or post-processing in an Excel spreadsheet

The gross idea is that a human input operator can work street by street in Zillow, which is more convenient and less error-prone than working in price order, which is how the MLS system sorts listings. (Plus which, there is no Excel-sortable ARMLS report that includes the name of the listing brokerage.)

Ahem #1: I can convert the output to an XML file in four minutes, tops.

Ahem #2: If I get bored enough with doing this work manually, I’ll figure out a way to do it in JavaScript.

Actually, the real grief is going to be hot-sheeting every search.bot I build for my little Zillow.bot. If I pee on the tree when the house is listed for sale, I have an obligation to hose it off when it sells. This is a challenge for automation…

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April 11, 2007

A year at the beach: It’s The San Diego Home Blog’s birthday

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Time flies when you don’t get any sleep. The San Diego Home Blog, brainchild of Kris and Steve Berg, turns one year old today.

If you’re reading Kris here, you are seeing some of the best writing in the RE.net. If you’re not reading the Bergs at their home weblog, you’re missing out on a lot of fun and serious and seriously funny writing.

But wait. There’s more. Steve Berg weighs in with his own anniversary post.

As it happens, all three of our San Diego webloggers — Kris Berg, Brian Brady and Jeff Brown — were completely neglected in a San Diego Business Journal feature on real estate weblogging. An egregious omission, I know, but at least we know better.

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April 10, 2007

Russell Shaw at the StarPower Summit: “What the hell are you thinking?”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As promised, appended below is an audio podcast of Russell Shaw’s performance two weeks ago at the StarPower Summit in Phoenix.

Russell is talking about pricing homes in a buyer’s market, and it might be worthwhile to share this podcast with your listing clients to help them understand the marketplace.

He gives a strong endorsement to this summer’s StarPower Annual Conference, to be held July 25-28 here in Phoenix. Russell will be speaking, and Cathy and I will be there, along with who knows who else from the Phoenix-area RE.net.

Russell insists that you can “catch success” by making contact with the StarPower stars. I understand what he’s talking about, but I’m a hard-headed guy. I see tremendous value in the marriage of like minds, spending your time with people who share your values and help you to uphold them. And I can see the benefit of modeling admirable behavior, a strong chord in Cathy’s response to the StarPower Summit. My own take: Mu&233;streme el dinero. Show me the money. I want practical ideas that I can adapt, implement and profit from.

I think you’ll find all three of these at the StarPower Conference, but there is one thing you can learn for sure: Russell Shaw is a rare treasure, but he is not unprecedented. There are dozens of Realtors in the U.S. working at his level, and hundreds more approaching his stratospheric level of production. If you come to Phoenix, you can meet them, model them and, one hopes, learn how to duplicate their systems.

As a reminder, the second Russell Shaw Sale Success Seminar is a week form today, Tuesday, April 17th. Chances are, Russell will talk about the StarPower experience there, as well.

To the podcast. We’re clipped at little tighter at the leading and trailing ends than I might have done, and we lose a lot by not seeing what Russell is doing. But this is a very powerful presentation on how to list wisely and what to expect if you don’t. Does that sound dull? You’re in for a treat…

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April 10, 2007

Profitable real estate weblogging: Burning the midnight oil to make family out of your farm

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Project Blogger is officially under weigh, so I thought now would be a good time to go read the rules. I had read an earlier version and hated them, but, at a certain point, I decided it wasn’t worthwhile to stand on principle. There is an extent to which this is what I would characterize as a Goofy Drive-Time Radio Stunt, and we have to assume that that extent extends at least as far as $5,000 worth of value to Our Sponsors.

If the new rules are actually less nebulous than the old rules, they are still nebulous enough that I cannot for the life of me determine what would qualify as a laudable achievement, much less the stroke of genius that denotes a decisive win. Fully fifteen percent of perfection consists courting good opinions at Active Rain, which will probably work out well for competitors who are actually active on Active Rain.

But: I don’t care. I decided to do this not because I expect Our Team to win, but because I wanted to talk about real estate weblogging. I have a lot of ideas, as we’ve seen so far, and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.

That changes now. Here is a vitally important idea about real estate weblogging that you should read, learn, mark and inwardly digest:

Real estate weblogging is very likely to be a very low-yielding prospecting activity, especially at first.

Say what? Almost any sort of real world, voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting will return more, better, faster, more-predictable and more-profitable results, at least in the short-run, than real estate weblogging.

Say what?!?

What’s the point of all this, if the fishing is better elsewhere?

There are two points that I can see. The second is that, if you’re doing it right, your yields should improve in the long-run. But the first is much more important, I think: Real estate weblogging is work you can do when you can’t do voice to voice, face to face, flesh to flesh prospecting.

What are the implications? The first is that if you let weblogging come between you and Read more

April 9, 2007

Who pays the buyer’s agent? Once we’ve divorced the commissions, we can stop worrying about it

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Joke Number one:
Q: If you came upon the Buddha in the guise of a hot dog vendor, what should you say?
A: Make me one with everything.

Joke number two:
Q: Top Drawer Listing Agent, why do you charge a 7% commission to list a home for sale?
A: Because the lenders won’t pay any more than that.

Jonathan Greene at Real Opinionated invited me to participate in a debate he is having on the question of who pays the sales commissions in the transfer of residential real estate. Todd Tarson has already weighed in with an argument I consider unassailable, so I would rather veer off in another direction: Divorcing the buyer’s agent’s compensation from the listing agent’s commission.

I have written a ton on this subject, with my views changing over time, so please forgive me for digging into the archives:

There’s a lot more, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that I agree with Todd: Except in a Short Sale, the buyer brings every dollar to the closing table, so every disbursement of dollars comes from the buyer. The seller brings the house. The idea that the seller is paying anything is an vestigial artifact of sub-agency, a reflection of the fact that the seller hires the listing agent to market the property, and, therefore, in most cases sets the amount of the buyer’s agent’s compensation.

It is plausible to argue that the seller pays the lister and the buyer pays the buyer’s agent, and, while I don’t agree with that argument, it’s not worthwhile quibbling about it.

Instead, it would be much more worthwhile to completely divorce the commissions, so that what should now be true de facto will be true de jure: The seller would Read more

April 9, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

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…is up at The Phoenix Real Estate Guy. The scheduled weblog had gone missing, so Jay Thompson jumped in to fill the void.

Brian Brady and I took top honors for our Zillow coverage. Brian wrote seven more entries on Active Rain and on his home weblog. Why so much coverage? Because, love it or hate it, Zillow’s new release has the potential to change the way real estate is promoted on-line.

Jay broke the rules to name us as this week’s winners, but I think he was right to do so. Whatever you think of Zillow.com, their announcement last week was big news.

But it wasn’t the only news, as you’ll see when you take a look at the other great entries. While you’re there, tip your hat to Jay for giving up part of his Easter weekend for the Carnival.

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April 9, 2007

More random notes on Zillow.com: Conquering fear, uncertainty and doubt to become the neighborhood superhero

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Michael Wurzer and others are tying themselves up in knots trying to prove that they understand what Zillow is doing wrong. My take is that they don’t even understand what Zillow is doing, so, necessarily, it’s going to look wrong to them from their frame of reference.

I said this the other day, and I thought I did a nice job, twenty-five words on the nose:

Web 2.0 creates an ongoing community of active users by integrating a user-modifiable database through an interactive, as opposed to static, web-based interface.

The important word is “community.” Wikipedia.org is not building a database of encyclopedia articles. Ebay.com is not building a database of merchandise.

Criticizing — or praising — Zillow about its databases is all but completely beside the point. They’re not building databases. They’re using databases — and incentives to user-initiated database maintenance — to create a self-sustaining community of users.

Ebay.com is not a reproducible phenomenon. Wikipedia.org is not a reproducible phenomenon. The technology is easy. Venture capital abounds. But the niches are already occupied, and neither of those two communities can be replaced as long as they are serving the needs of their members. It does not matter how much money you throw at the problem, they cannot be supplanted.

This is what Zillow.com is aiming for, in my opinion. The listing.bot traffic is nothing. It doesn’t amount to a fart in a gale of wind. Zillow’s own very impressive traffic is nothing, as we’ll see in a moment. What they want is a community of users as loyal as the Wikipedians, and potentially as profitable to its professional users as Ebay is.

Let’s look at the numbers: Zillow is getting four million hits a month, it says — with others saying otherwise. If each of those four million users is visiting three pages on average — which seems like a lot to me — then we’re looking at twelve million pageviews a month. It’s possible they do better than this, but it doesn’t much matter, as we’ll see. Assume three EZ Ads per page — where the average for now is probably closer to one. That boils Read more

April 8, 2007

Easter reading: BloodhoundBlog’s Top 50 posts

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I have a tough time with major holidays like Easter. Say the Mass, do the eggs and candy with the kids, choke down some desiccated ham — then what? It would be a relief to run to the net to read, but, of course, everyone else is doing the same damn things — some more graciously than others. You crave new content, but there won’t be any new content until Monday.

The same goes for us, too, I expect. I have some numbers I may want to post about later, but I doubt that there will be a lot of other new stuff.

But: How about a lot of old stuff? Friday night I ran our stats, and Saturday Cathy built an Excel tool to combine them into something meaningful. Not canonically meaningful, mind you. What we can calculate are hard clicks on specific posts. Most people read BloodhoundBlog by RSS feed. Many more read from the front page, seeing some or all of the most-recent 15 posts at any given time. Hard clicks, clicks into specific posts, denote a special interest from feed readers, an off-site or on-site link, a desire to comment or to read comments, a Google search, etc.

What we end up with is a list of our 50 most popular posts as expressed by people who pulled the trigger on their mice. This is a reasonably reliable if not perfect measure of popularity. In any case, it’s what we have, so it will have to do.

Many of these posts were written by me. I write a lot, and I’ve been writing on BloodhoundBlog longer than anyone else. As you’ll see, many of these entries have enduring appeal, so our other contributors will account for more and more of our Top 50 as we go along.

Anyway, if you’re as bored as I am on Easter, divert yourself onto the paths of our past. Just remember, it’s not an escape from tedium, it’s professional development.

April 7, 2007

TheBrickRanch.com: As warm and fuzzy as an Easter Bunny

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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We finally settled on the WordPress theme and look-and-feel for TheBrickRanch.com. There’s more work to come, particularly the sidebar, but the site is ready for Monday’s official start of the Project Blogger competition.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a reasonable example of what I’ve been talking about. We’re selling real estate, yes. But we’re selling to people, and I think it is important to connect with people immediately on an emotional — even visceral — level. Not: I am a good Realtor. Rather: I am like you. I share your values. I want for you what you want. Yes, I want for your family to be safe, protected from the weather, financially secure. But much more than that, I want for all of you to live the life of quiet, undoubted serenity you see in that child’s face. I want your children to feel that safe in our chaotic and sometimes hostile world. And I want to communicate every bit of that in a glance, without saying a word. I’m not selling houses. I’m selling the idea of a better life — because that is what you’re buying.

Can we do all that with warm colors and one photograph? Probably not. But the first close is to keep them from clicking away, and I think our theme can do that job. If we can keep them for ten seconds, we can keep them for ten minutes. If we can get them to come back once, we can get them to come back twenty times. If we can get them to agree that Teri Lussier is the Realtor to help them find that better life, we’re done. The playing field is cleared of competitors.

Can we do all that? Sufficient unto the day. For now we have a visual theme. Take a look at what we’ve done so far. The weblog is as warm and inviting as a dozen pastel Easter eggs — without all the indigestible hard-boiled chicken embryos inside…
< ?php include ("REWL101.php"); ?>

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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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