BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 45 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

October 5, 2011

Greg Swann’s second request: I need a partner.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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What? No one is going to send me to the NAR convention? Their loss — and the losses are but beginning.

Meanwhile, I need a partner. I’ve been thinking about this for months, but I don’t know that it’s something I can actually do anything about.

Here’s where I am, at this stage of my life:

I am swarming with ideas that can make boatloads of money.

And:

I am broke — not all the time, but frequently.

Being broke is temporary. The cure for that is just hard work and a little luck.

But the ideas are driving me insane, because I can see how much better things can be done, but I’m not able to accomplish even ten percent of what I can envision.

I need people behind me. And for that I need money behind me. And for that I need a partner, someone who can bring or attract investment capital — and manage it.

This is some of what I have going:

Ascende.me is as sexy as four-day weekend in Vegas, and there’s a lot more real-estate-porn power still to come. I’m building versions of Ascende for Realtors around the country, but I can see ways to turn it into a cash-and-carry money machine.

As Sean Purcell pointed out yesterday, the BloodhoundRealty.com real estate listing praxis is a fearsome competitor. Phoenix is not a great listing market right now — but Phoenix is not the only city on earth.

We’re also building a property management business, which is poised to explode. My rental homes lease fast and stay leased, yielding maximum profits for our landlords. I personally sell a lot of rental properties, which we then manage, and I am ready to start recruiting landlords who already own their rentals. As icing on that cake, I have killer ideas for taking a VOW feed and using it to build a virtual Point-of-Purchase for out-of-state investors.

Away from real estate, SplendorQuest.com is a forest in its seed stage. There is a big marketing business in there — conferences, books, magazines, web sites, etc. It’s a content play, so there is no limit to the profit centers it can throw off.

My Get Read more

October 4, 2011

I want someone to give me a conference room in rounds so I can launch a Scenius in Sacramento Anaheim.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I want someone to send me to NAR in Sacramento Anaheim next month. I don’t want to do anything even remotely NARish, I just want to commune with the grunts on the ground. I have lots of interesting ideas about innovation in real estate, and I am lucky enough to know a lot of very clever people. Put us all in a room together, and we can make magic. We’ve done it before.

This would be cool: A double- or triple-sized break-out room in rounds of eight, each table its own little Scenius. Some formal presentations from the front of the room, with web and slide support, all that stuff. But also a lot of time for real work at the table level. I plan on throwing off a lot of product ideas, and I would love to have a leavening of people from the development side of the on-line real estate table. I want to sell some very serious ideas, but I want people to go home with new product plans, new marketing plans, too.

Here’s a true fact: This is the most propitious time for revolutionary change in the residential real estate business. Why? Because things could not possibly be any more screwed up than they are now. There is no sane argument to be made against any attempt to right this flailing beached whale we scheme to call a profession. I have ideas. You do, too. I want to talk about how we can be the drivers of real change in our business.

Am I too vain to think that someone would put together a show for me? I know how to do all this myself, after all. But: I don’t have the time or the money to put anything together. I loved doing the BloodhoundBlog Unchained events with Brian Brady, and with all the hard-working dogs who graced us with their presence. But all that is way more than I can do now. It comes down to this: I’ll do this if someone will take on the logistics and costs, and not if not.

But what I’m promising is a Scenius, Read more

September 23, 2011

South Park on Sixty Minutes: Is CBS chasing relevance, or are we about to find out how to monetize new-media content?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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When I saw the bags of Cheesy Poofs at WalMart, I knew everything was about to change for South Park. After all, the boys told us that they were looking for ways to make new-media content pay. First the movies, then the South Park Studios web site, then the Broadway musical lampooning Mormons, known the world over for smiling benignly through the rudest of derision.

Now CBS is hopping on the South Park bandwagon, with a segment on this season’s premier of Sixty Minutes:

Frankly, I like the idea of a South Park that Sunday-school teachers and TV reporters deplore. There is nothing courageous about mocking Mormons, and if CBS thinks it’s cool, you know for sure it isn’t. I like to see the boys getting a day in the sun, but, as we are seeing with Glee, popularity and raucously rude jokes are rarely found together.

Just to keep the right balance, in discussions of South Park, here’s an NSFW clip that CBS won’t be running:

September 19, 2011

Connecticut State Supreme Court Justice: “I would have decided the Kelo case differently, but I had my head up my ass.”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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Alas, the judge wasn’t that honest. But he actually apologized for being instrumental in stealing the homestead of an innocent family under the color of law. The next time you look at your paycheck stub, just think: Sooner or later, some well-heeled gonoph in a Brooks Brothers just might apologize to you for ripping you off week after week. Won’t that be nice?

September 15, 2011

SEVRAR puts the brakes on ARMLS über alles, at least for now: Arizona-wide MLS hits a roadblock.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I wrote about this in July: The Arizona Association of Realtors wants to buy ARMLS, the Phoenix-area MLS system, in order to create a statewide MLS. This looked like the kind of sleazy insider self-dealing we have come to expect from Associations of Realtors, so I had assumed it was a done deal, all over but the staged performance of voting.

Not so. For some reason, the Southeast Valley Association of Realtors (SEVRAR) voted to decline AAR’s offer — which was at least five cents on the dollar what ARMLS is actually worth, given the notion that Zillow.com is worth a billion dollars.

But: I assume nothing. I have no idea why SEVRAR voted against what was obviously the party line. The cynic in me suspects a shake-down, but I really, really want to believe that some of that Mesa Tea Party spirit has found its way into the NAR.

I left a comment on AAR’s weblog, but so far it has not been moderated. Those folks aren’t interested in hearing from me, anyway. Realtors and brokers from all over the country talk to me about real estate marketing, technology and law, but the local practitioners, to all appearances, have nothing to learn from me. Their loss. Here’s my comment, in any case:

If you were at the SEVRAR meeting on September 9th, I’d love to hear why the sweetheart deal of the century was voted down.

September 12, 2011

Introducing Ascende.me, an eye-candy-view of some of the most breathtaking homes for sale in Metropolitan Phoenix.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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I am introducing Ascende.me today at BloodhoundRealty.com. I’ve been working on this, in my spare time, since Steve Jobs announced tabbed browsing in the iPad version of Safari, and it’s time to draw further inspiration from Mr. Jobs: “Real artists ship.”

There is added functionality still to come in this software — and for something that looks like a web site, there is a ton of software under the hood.

Even so, the essential algorithm comes down to software-encoded art. That is a hint to Realtors in Phoenix: Your dipshit vendors can’t copy this. They’ll tell you they can, but they can’t.

If you are a Realtor in any other town, we can talk about licensing the underlying technology.

Meanwhile, here is my release announcement:

 
Here’s a screen shot from Ascende.me, a new web site we are launching today:

Ascende is a wish book, not a full-blown search tool. We already run the best real estate search site in Greater Phoenix. Instead of bombarding you with everything, Ascende gives you a small subset of available homes, an artistically-chosen selection of the best homes, the most stunning homes, the most impressively-marketed homes.

The purpose? To dream, to plan, to hope — and to capture. The homes featured in Ascende may not be for you, but they sure will give you ideas…

Got an iPad? Ascende will work on any normal browser, but it’s orientation-sensitive on the iPad. There will be more iPad integration to come.

Play with it and let me know what you think. I like looking at big pictures of gorgeous homes. I think you will, too.

September 5, 2011

Splendor on — and in spite of — Labor Day.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is me looking back on looking back on a Labor Day a long time ago. The first extract was written on Labor Day, 2005, as the City of New Orleans was demonstrating for all of us that dependence on government is a fatal error. The second extract was written a year or two before that. And the Labor Day I am talking about there must have been eleven or twelve years ago. Even so, every bit of this is perfectly apposite to the world we live in now — more is the pity.

This is me from elsewhen. I think about this every year at Labor Day. I spent much of the weekend working on business planning issues, macro, micro and meta. I remember from the days when I had a job how much I relished long weekends, because I could build so much on vast tracts of uninterrupted time. I did a bunch of money work last week, but my weekend was virtually my own — to fill with the work that too often takes a back seat to money work. Off and on we had Fox News on in the office, and the whining, pissing and moaning was an effective counterpoint to my entire way of life. My world is where the Splendor is, no alternatives, no substitutions, no adulterations, no crybaby excuses:

The time of your life is your sole capital. If you trade that time in such a way that you get in exchange less than you really want, less than you might actually have achieved, you have deliberately cheated yourself. You have acted to your own destruction by failing to use your time to construct of your life what you want most and need most and deserve most. You have let your obsession or anger — over what amounts to a trivial evil in a world where people are shredded alive — deprive you of all of the rest of your values. This is anegoic, acting contrary to the true needs of the self.

One of my favorite memories is of a Labor Day years ago. My son Read more

September 3, 2011

Unchained melody: Robert Earl Keen, Feelin’ good again.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is my kind of country song, a celebration of what human social interaction can be and should be.

This is what Don Reedy comes to BloodhoundBlog for. Teri Lussier, too. Al Lorenz, as well, I think, all of them in their own ways, along with a few other folks.

The funny part is, I’m actually pretty poor at delivering that experience here.

That feelin’-good-again feeling comes not so much from BloodhoundBlog as it does from BloodhoundBlog Unchained, from our memories of our shared experiences in Phoenix, Orlando and Seattle.

Here’s why: BloodhoundBlog Unchained brought out the best in you, wherever we did it. We were all of us learning, all of us teaching, and all of us were appreciated for our accomplishments. Just making it through our killer workdays was an achievement all on its own, but what made those workdays feel so right was that your virtues were fully visible to everyone, and each one of us was in full agreement about the worthiness and admirability of those virtues.

I am due some credit for this, I think. You cannot both attract my attention and hide from me. I learn a lot about the people I see from every opportunity I have to observe them. I have done this for my entire adult life, and I know I am good at it. When I see you, even if you don’t know I am aware of you, I am figuring out everything I can about you, gleaning every implication I can from every action of yours I am aware of. I can do a plausible back-story on just about anyone, and if I take the time to think about you, any secrets you keep from me will be matters of meaningless detail. I will have inferred everything about you that matters to you.

That’s actually a fine reason to dismiss me: I am scary-good at “reading” people.

But that matters in this context because I think that feelin’-good-again feeling starts with me seeing, understanding, admiring and celebrating your virtues — and celebrating you for being so wonderfully virtuous — by my standards and by your own. I Read more

September 2, 2011

Some black real estate humor for Friday: We have to destroy the village to save it? No, save it first, then destroy it.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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A couple of real estate headlines from the you-have-to-laugh section of the news-nets:

From the New York Times, when a bank is too big to fail, you have to rescue it so you can sue it later. Missing, for some reason, from the list of parties to be sued: Barney Franks, Christopher Dodd, Andrew Cuomo, the NAR — and FannieMae and FreddieMac. Given that crony-“capitalist” Warren (tax-me-more-please) Buffett just dumped billions into the Bank of America, I’m thinking we can look forward to this lawsuit ending with a whimper.

Meanwhile, in bucolic New London, CT, the land that the city fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the “right” to steal in the famous Kelo case is now — wait for it — a dumping ground. Nice.

August 31, 2011

It’s hot and dry and gorgeous in the desert.

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

20110831-062937.jpg

The photo is from a house Cathy closed on today. That’s what they call a street, out in the sticks. You can measure how clean the air is by the definition of my shadow, maybe sixty feet away. On the way home, we saw a yearling coyote on Dear Valley Road.

Our annual late summer “monsoon” is being pushed out of the valley by very hot, dry weather rolling in from the Mohave Desert. Within the next couple of weeks, we will shift back to the dry heat that makes Phoenix so perfect all winter long.

August 31, 2011

Reuters: “Homeowners without a job or good credit histories have been essentially shut out of the refinancing process.”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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And this is bad news?

That entire Reuters article is interesting, as will be the forthcoming stories on President Obama’s big, big plans to put Americans to work.

Two important facts emerge, I think:

First, no one in the entire ruling class has any idea how jobs are created. Stimulating demand while you stymie production is just another way of driving up prices at the cash register.

But second, I think Obama is managing to do what decades of conservative and libertarian ideologues have failed to do: He is demonstrating the futility of the entire Keynesian approach to government.

It’s an internet effect, of course. The massive increase in information velocity makes smoke-and-mirrors academic obfuscation more and more difficult.

But Obama’s uncanny political ineptitude is making it that much easier for Americans to discover that, for all the hype, the emperor has always been naked.

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