There’s always something to howl about.
Kris Berg at The San Diego Home Blog:
I have met with sellers who were quick to point out that they have an ocean view. From the guest bath. While balancing precariously on a stack of books. In high heels. With a telescope. Do you think they just might add the “water view” description to their property?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Here’s a simple fact, one of the most important reasons why homeowners need professional representation to market their houses: Diogenes himself could not find an objective seller. It’s not enough to detail everything that’s wrong with the neighbor’s homes, the more important job, in a listing appointment, is to tell the Realtor why this home is worth much more than mere facts would indicate. The average American is slightly above average, and the average American bathroom remodel is worth tens of thousands of dollars more than you ever might have guessed.
This is to be expected. It’s simply not in our nature to discount for subjectivity where we are most in need of such a discounting. My kid’s smarter than your kid, and Helen herself is but a shadow to my best-beloved. This is only too human.
So: Zillow.com has a problem. People treat its silly Zestimates as though they were appraisals, even though anyone should know they can’t be appraisals. You could say caveat lector, but readers of Zillow.com’s web site have to dig pretty deep to find any caveats. What they find instead are big type and goofy pictures entreating you to… treat its silly Zestimates as though they were appraisals…
There is an obvious solution to this problem: Put up a disclaimer in even bigger type that says: “Ahem! A silly Zestimate is not an appraisal, which cannot be done without an objective, on-site inspection of a property.” That would be honest, and it would be sufficient to advise Zillow.com users that an Automated Valuation Method cannot reliably establish the value of real property.
This they will not do, possibly because it would cause those users to wonder why the hell they’re bothering with a tool that is admittedly useless. So rather than admit the nakedly obvious truth, Zillow.com has elected instead to propagate thousands of tiny lies.
In a comment posted here on September 1, David G. from Zillow.com broke this news:
Lastly, just a heads-up that we’ve decided to let homeowners edit and publish corrected home facts on Zillow.
That shoe finally dropped last night. Rich Barton, Zillow.com’s chairman and CEO, made the Read more
From Google Blogoscoped, Google has pulled the plug entirely on the Belgian newspaper that is suing it for theft of content. Whatever the merits of the case, acting out of caprice or spite while a judge’s gavel is poised over your head is dumb. This could be the tech’s Maginot Line, where Web 2.0 meets Government 0.99…
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation
I’m up to my elbows in Ajax (“You’re soaking in it!”), but I don’t want this to get washed away in the suds: With respect to Redfin’s assertion of propriety, Kevin Boer at In The Trenches (blogrolled) provides a plausible explanation for how Redfin might be so adept at identifying impropriety.
An idea has been bugging me, and I don’t know what to do about it. Realtors are too much identified with The Real Estate King, the cheesy, sleazy used car salesmen. But there is another image of the Realtor, one among those we used to call The Better Men — maybe stodgy, maybe stuffy, but a man of firm and fixed principles. Real estate 2.0 (come and get me!) might bring us greater efficiencies, but if it brings us even worse behavior — how is that a benefit? Zillow.com whispers the truth and shouts the lie. The listings aggregators steal content like bums in Grand Central Station mining the coin returns on pay-phones. And Redfin.com seemingly devotes its every living moment to making street criminals look like men of character. This is not an improvement.
If you think about this at all, please think carefully. I am up to my elbows in Ajax — with which I intend to cleanse Phoenix of every last greasy remnant of The Real Estate King. But we gain absolutely nothing if we remake our industry as a cabal of cheaper and more-efficient moral midgets. The realty.bots might be famous and they might have a lot of money behind them. But if they are our future, we might as well have changed nothing…
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Ubertor has been teasing a new mystery feature on their weblog for days. What is it? Text me and I might tell. No, wait. Text them. What they’re offering is live chat for their agent web sites with live bodies at Ubertor to pick up the chat-slack. I’m nobody’s shill (and we code all our own web stuff by hand), but Ubertor really does seem to go the extra mile.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Redfin asserts itself. You were saying…?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
The other day I highlighted some real estate weblogs that I read every day, and, while that article is true, it’s not the whole truth. The Republic gives me all of 350 words in which to map whatever universe I see behind my eyes, so I end up focusing on the larger landmarks. In fact, I read from dozens of weblogs every day, and there are five dozen or more at any given time that I track constantly in my feed reader (Vienna for the Macintosh). As a matter of fairness to all the fine weblogs omitted on Friday, here is a prettified rendering of my OPML file.
Note bene: If your weblog isn’t on my daily diet and you think it should be, say so.
Apple blossoms — all things Macintosh
Apple Hot News
FreeMacWare.com
MacOSXHints.com
The Apple Blog
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
TidBITS
Weblogging and search marketing
Blogging Pro
Copyblogger
John Battelle's Searchblog
Lorelle on WordPress
Google Blogoscoped
Marketing
Seth's Blog
WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs
Arizona real estate Weblogs
BlogArizona.com – An Arizona Real Estate Blog
Phoenix Real Estate [Blog]
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy
Real estate weblogs
360Digest
4 Realz
Agent CEO
Altos Research Real Estate Insights
ARDELL's Seattle Area Real Estate Blog
Behind The Curtain
blogsonrei.com
BlueRoof Blog
Boulder Colorado Real Estate Research Blog
Carnival of Real Estate
Center for REALTOR® Technology Web Log
Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog
FollowSteph.com
Free The Drones
Hamptons Real Estate Blog
Housing Panic – The Bubble Blog with Attitude
Inman Blog
Matrix
Mike's Corner <br> Web 2.0 For Real Estate Pros
MOCO Real Estate News
Mortgage Blog – Industry insights from lenderama
Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide
PressReal.com
Real Central VA
real estate 2.0
Real Estate Investing For Real Blog – BiggerPockets.com
Real Estate Marketing Blog
realblogging
RealEstateUndressed
Realty Blogging
Realty Thoughts
RealtyObjectives
ReyEstate.com
Searchlight Crusade
Seattle Real Estate Professionals
Seattle's Rain City Real Estate Guide
SeekingAlpha US Market Stocks
Sellsius
SocketSite™
The Future of Real Estate Marketing
the Property Monger
The Real Estate Bloggers
The Real Estate Tomato
The San Diego Home Blog
TheREALTYgram Blogger
TRANSPARENT REAL ESTATE (www.TransparentRE.com)
True Gotham
Trulia Blog
Ubertor Real Estate Blog
Urban Trekker Blog
UrbanDigs: Tips on Profitting on New York City Real Estate
Zillow Blog
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
…is up at BlueRoof.com Blog. Our Lady Pompeia is in attendance, along with 30+ other articles on state-of-the-art real estate.
Mark your calendars: We are hosting the Carnival of Real Estate the week of October 9th. Whet your mind, sharpen your pencil and bring your A-game: I have a taste for the astounding, confounding or aboundingly profound, and I’m a tough grader. (The Leggy Blonde is a soft-touch, if you want to try apple-polishing.) But if you bring your best, we’ll do our best to bring it to the world.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, dual agency, real estate, real estate marketing
A vigorous cross-examination of David G. from Zillow.com. The richer ore is in the comments, so be sure to keep scrolling.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
This is from email I had earlier this week:
Jim Cronin from The Real Estate Tomato and I were just talking about real estate blogging being what real estate websites will begin to morph into. He sent me to your blog and I was wondering if that has been productive for you as a lead generator.
For the first point, I’m with Jim wall-to-wall. In every second of my spare time, I am preparing to repurpose all of our content to weblogs or weblog-like pages. Last weekend my son Cameron reformulated our content engines to make them site-independent (and therefore appearance-independent), and I want him to take a second pass at everything to build content that will look like an Ubertor site to people but will search like friendly old HTML 3.0 to Google. There are other weblog-like things we’re doing at the transaction-management level. It would be reasonable to say that in due course weblogging will be the defining metaphor of our internet presence.
For the second point — has weblogging been a productive lead generator? — I don’t know. A fuller answer is more complicated than that, but the whole issue is trumped by an even larger point: I don’t care.
I want to approach business as a vendor in the same way I approach it as a customer. In other words, I don’t want people treating me as a lead, as a link in their food chain. As soon as I start to feel like a salesman’s prey, I get creeped out. I don’t have to feel that way for very long to get gone. On the other hand, if I feel that you are looking out for my interests, offering me the sage counsel I have sought — and perhaps the advice I hadn’t known to ask for — then we have a sound basis for going ahead with a transaction.
There’s a lot of mercenary weblogging advice out there right now, and much of it strikes me as being doubly-dysfunctional. Yes, weblogging has huge SEO advantages, but if you go out of your way to write SEO-attractive copy, you will have Read more
Marlow Harris has a fascinating post on the barriers faced by Muslim buyers and real estate agents. Not to get too philosophical, but this actually ties in with Pope Benedict’s remarks earlier this week: Where Judaism and Christianity each represent measured compromises with Greek culture, Islam is in certain respects an anti-Hellenistic counter-revolution. (I can do this at a much more fundamental level, but you have to buy me beer.)
The Real Estate Bloggers address The new real estate paradigm — for real estate agents, citing the Mike’s Corner post I mentioned the other day. On the point, if you haven’t read it, take a look at my own entry on this topic, Seven essential skills of the 21st century real estate agent.
And The Phoenix Real Estate Guy posts a very funny rant on completely useless MLS listings:
I should probably cut the listing agent some slack about the photos. This is a new construction home after all. It was listed 569 days ago but was just completed in July. So the listing agent has only had 19 months to download a photo of the lot, the view, the home under construction or some sort of visual. Maybe a floor plan? And since it’s only been complete for 2 months, why should there be a photo of the never seen before pool design?
Indeed.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
This is me from today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). I wish I could deliver an SEO boost to the weblogs mentioned here, but I doubt that will happen. First, the paper didn’t create links for the web-based version of this story. And second, the Republic hides everything behind a for-pay wall within a few weeks.
Here are some blogs that stay on top of real estate
We publish a respected real estate weblog called BloodhoundBlog. In consequence, I am very aware of the goings-on in the real estate blogosphere.
A weblog, or blog, is a regularly updated Internet-based journal, in some ways akin to a diary. But a blog is also a conversation among the bloggers and their readers, who can comment on and discuss the blog entries.
But there is an even larger conversation going on, blog to blog, all of which are linking to each other and to the entire Internet. By following the links, you can explore an issue thoroughly.
There are dozens of excellent real estate blogs. Here are some I visit every day:
Visiting weblogs Read more
We’ll see. But I count two hits in two at-bats, an excellent start. Similar features, but Zorro’s gone home to Madrid. Blogrolled.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
