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Category: Blogging (page 76 of 84)

September 14, 2006

Ask the Broker: Why would an MLS/IDX system forbid commingling with listings from other sources . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Giving my prominent proboscis a good hard tweak, a certain pseudonymous Scarlet Pimpernelesque semi-retired real estate weblogger asks: “Are you trying to say that the MLS’ are not fascist dictatorships???” The question refers to a weblog entry I posted last night chastising Trulia Blog for hyperbole in its complaints about MLS exclusivity. I actually have a lot, lot, lot to say about MLS disintermediation — but not now. For now, I’d like to take a swing at the issue Trulia raises, treating it more seriously than they did.

Here is the relevant rule from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service’s IDX policies and procedures:

12. An IDX Broker may not modify, enhance or manipulate a Shared Listing. In addition, listing information from other sources may not be combined with IDX Listings. For instance, property listings from other multiple listing services, for sale by owner properties and properties not in the MLS may not be combined with the IDX Database.

Why would ARMLS have such a rule? I can offer some reasonable conjectures, but before I do, I should like to make a meta argument: Whether or not you agree with anything I might say, it remains that MLS systems have every right to make their own rules however they choose. If the rules make sense to the membership, they don’t have to make sense to you. In other words, quibbling with me, here, gets you nowhere.

So why might an MLS IDX system forbid commingling with listings from other sources?

How about to protect the MLS brand? Or to avoid confusion between fully-cooperating listings and de facto exclusive listings? How about to preserve the cooperative system that is the sine qua non of MLS listing?

Here’s an even better reason: To maintain the quality level of displayed listings. We make fun of MLS listing quality, but egregious listings are funny precisely because they stand out (which is what egregious means). MLS listings are amazingly detailed compared to FSBO or RealtyBot listings. The simplified ARMLS feed, which any agent can download on-line, contains 213 unique fields — and it excludes the photos, their captions, the virtual-tour link and Read more

September 13, 2006

Bedtime links: Lawyer-free real estate, Zillowing Redfin, dancing with the dinosaurs, the map to mash-up excellence and memorable truths about Real Estate 2.0 . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Christine gives a nice run-down of seller-only agency as it is practiced in New York State. This is not very far from the way things used to be done in Arizona, except that, because of Article 26 to the state constitution, lawyers are not required to effect the transfer of real property.

Sellsius° whispers a plan for Zillowing Redfin.

Daniel is swinging for the fences, and he plans to look at at least one more pitch. The topic: NAR, MLS, IDX, VOW, DOJ (wasn’t that a song in Hair?). I think this is a classic example where doing nothing would have resolved the whole problem within a few months: NAR implements VOW policy as planned with opt-out provision. Dinosaurs opt-out. Young turks counter-market: “Why are they hiding your listing?” Dinosaurs opt-in. What we’ll get, eventually, will be years late and much worse.

Joel kicks the tires on the Windermere map mash-up: Windermere’s Property Point hits a home run.

We began this day with a thoroughgoing article from The Realty Bloggers about Real Estate 2.0 that happened to say nice things about BloodhoundRealty.com. We’ll end the day the same way, with a rigorous call to arms from Mike Price at Mike’s Corner that also says some nice things about BloodhoundRealty.com. Saying nice things about us is incidental. Saying true things memorably — this is irreplaceable…

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September 13, 2006

Is Windermere’s the best MLS map mash-up so far . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Dustin at Rain City Guide is pointing to this new Windermere MLS map mash-up.

“Ho hum,” you say. “Been there. Done that. Gave the tee-shirt to my kid.” Maybe so. My take is that this is the best map-based MLS search that I have seen so far, but I am not confident that I have seen it all.

Things I like:

  • Almost no wasted screen real estate
  • A super-accurate zoom feature
  • Excellent Ajaxification without waiting between every change in settings
  • Details are exhibited in a tabbed section using about 25% of the browser

The sliders at ShackYack.com are very cool, but they’re painful to use because everything refreshes in real time — plus ShackYack wastes huge portions of the screen, as do Trulia.com and PropSmart.com. Are there any other players in this same league?

Windermere has MLS feeds from wherever it has franchisees — 35 systems so far, mainly in the Western United States.

Go play with it. My take: Totally rocks…

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September 13, 2006

Cute little Trulia pleads, “Can’t we share the hate?!?”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Displeased, perhaps, that outfits like Redfin.com draw all the negative attention, Trulia Blog asks:

Does the MLS continue to believe that fascist dictatorships work?

Inasmuch as an MLS system is a mutually-voluntary membership organization composed of self-selected volunteers, each of whom voluntarily agrees to abide by a set of rules voluntarily established by the membership as a whole, it easy is to understand how Trulia Blog would mistake MLS systems for the second-most murderous branch of Totalitarian Socialism in history. They’re like twins!

An MLS system is a club. Whatever bad things we might think to say about a club, a club is still far more benign than even the most benign of governments. Why? Because you can quit a club, where quitting a government is difficult at best, impossible at worst — and almost always fatal under Totalitarian Socialism. If you haven’t seen a huge pile of bodies stacked up behind the local MLS office — there’s a reason for that.

There are three things you can do about a club you don’t like: 1. You can try to change it from within. 2. You can try to change it from without. 3. You can turn your back on it and up your own organization.

I have had nothing but good things to say about Trulia.com so far, but after this stunt, I have this much to add: Trulia, up yours!

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September 13, 2006

Could Valley resale home inventories really only be 15% over normal?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Interesting notes from John L. Wake’s Arizona Real Estate Notebook:

Dr. Jay Butler, the head of the Arizona Real Estate Center at ASU, made a presentation yesterday at the Industry Partners Conference, an annual meeting of real estate industry folks – agents, escrow officers, mortgage brokers and many others.

Looking at listings for sale as a percentage of the total number of homes in the Valley (the housing stock), Dr. Butler said the normal number of listings today would be 32,000 to 35,000. I found the actual number this morning to be 41,014 (all home types) in Maricopa county. So, listings are high right now… but not super high.

Given that we have added an enormous number of houses to our inventory over the last three years, I had wondered what our baseline normal should be by now. It will be a couple of years from now before we know if Dr. Butler is right (yes, those words did emerge from my fingers!), but his projection seems to correspond to the observed data: Our surfeit of available homes is not so large as to induce fire-sale pricing.

John has a very rich weblog, including excellent city-by-city graphing of Dr. Butler’s median home price numbers.

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September 13, 2006

Real estate connections: Deep thoughts, podcasts and dead bugs on the headlights . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato waxes philosophical, wondering, Is Big Brother Dead? A stray thought to the contrary: Panem et circenses?

The Realty Bloggers have a smart reflection on the slow but on-going ramping up of on-line real estate vendors.

There are two fun developments in our friend Richard Riccelli’s trial-by-FSBO-fire. First, he was approached by John Keith, an enterprising Boston Realtor and weblogger, who, having read about Richard here, offered to help him with a limited-service MLS listing. And second, Richard has a Strange New Respect for the idea of pushing the whole job of marketing a house off onto a professional. It’s not something he could actually do, of course. He’s too much a perfectionist — and the work product he produces for his home should be very instructive. But he understands now why someone else would delegate all that work, happily paying the fee.

Jim Duncan at Real Central VA asks Should buyers forego inspection in a hot market? His answer: “Hell. No.” I agree wall-to-wall, but there is a middle ground here: Inspect, retaining the right to cancel upon inspection, but specify that the home will be purchased with no seller-supplied repairs. In the Arizona Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Contract, we have seller warranties for all the major systems, so the buyer’s exposure is relatively minimal. (The AAR produced an “as-is” addendum that waives these warranties, making it entirely useless.) None of this matters in Arizona right now, where smart sellers repair absolutely everything before they list their homes for sale. But it’s a way of doing an “as-is” transaction without giving up everything.

Three from Sellsius°: The Future of Residential Appraisers links to an article discussing the further encroachment of Automated Valuation Methods on the appraisal industry. If I were building an AVM (ahem), I would hire the best available appraisers to point out the bone-headed mistakes in the software, then keep them working as an on-going Quality Control effort. As it happens, we are refinancing our home right now. I comped it for the lender, then Zillowed it to see how far off-base Zillow.com would be. Read more

September 12, 2006

New BloodhoundBlog feature: Ask the Broker . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A lot of the searches that land on this weblog take the form of general real estate questions. “What is an earnest deposit?” “How long is a typical escrow?” “What is dual agency?” But search engines don’t answer answer questions, they simply shuffle up web pages that have have a high degree of keyword correspondence. Those pages may answer the question — or they may be totally off base.

So: It occurred to me that I could make asking questions easy. If those questions happen to be blogable, so much the better. If you ask a question about a confidential matter, I will answer it privately — and I will keep your name and email address confidential in any case. But if you have a real estate question of general interest, I would be honored to answer it here on the weblog, so we can all kick it around. In the long run, I might build a FAQ out of the questions — a monument more lasting than bronze.

Got a real estate question? Click on the button in the sidebar to the right and ask away. I’ll get to your question as quickly as I can.

Caveats: I am not an attorney, an accountant or a trust, financial or tax adviser, and my body of real estate knowledge is in many ways limited by my real estate experience, all of it in Arizona. But there are a lot of people who visit here who can help me fill in the gaps, and, together, we can pursue a fuller understanding of the art, the science, the business and the passion that is real estate…

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September 11, 2006

Negotiating buyer representation: “Real estate is probably the only industry that doesn’t respect fully the person who pays . . .”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

On the general topic of buyer representation, Jim Duncan at Real Central VA has a post up about being very choosy about which clients he will take on.

Interestingly, Jim provides a link to a specimen copy of a Virgina Asscoation of Realtors Buyer Broker Exclusive Employment Agreement.

I think this is a fine idea. We make copies of all of the commonly-used Arizona buyer contract forms available on our web site. Here is a link to a specimen copy of an Arizona Asscoation of Realtors Buyer Broker Exclusive Employment Agreement.

We are talking about how we might prepare this document differently, but for now we amend it as follows: The compensation listed on line 17 is “$10.00 or any mutually-agreeable sum.” The retainer fee on line 25 is “$0.00.” And at line 48 we add our standard firing clause: “This agreement will be terminated without recourse upon written notice by either party.”

My essay on empowering the buyer to negotiate the fees for their own representation is included in this week’s Carnival of Business at My 1st Million at 33. Frugal accuses me of being unfocused, to which my sole retort is a diffused glare, but adds this:

It really angers me that the sellers and the agents just don’t know who comes up with the loan or cash to pay their bills. Real estate is probably the only industry that doesn’t respect fully the person who pays.

I think that is beyond brilliant…

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September 11, 2006

Nine 9/11 links . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Gaping void:

Douglas Heddings at True Gotham isn’t writing about real estate today, and I understand and respect his reasons. It’s business as usual here today, but also for a 9/11 reason. I didn’t show for 29 days in a row after the attacks. You could say it’s a testament to American fortitude that we able to swallow hard and get on with it in only a month — but at the time it didn’t seem quite that fast.

In that spirit, Jim Duncan discusses the costs and benefits of being a Realtor on call.

I missed this when it appeared last week, but Marlow Harris weighs in on a weighty and serendipitously titled topic: Real Estate Agent Jihad.

It doesn’t do to insist that the sky cannot fall. Five years ago today it did. But The Real Estate Bloggers have a nice take on bubble frenzy: “Will we see the huge housing increases again for a while on a national level, probably not. But will we see wholesale carnage on the horizon? I sincerely doubt it. A deep breath and a little logic will go a long way to understanding the market.” Amen.

On the subject of phlegmatic logic, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy publishes something I’ve been dying to see: A 35-year interest rate chart. I’m going to blow it up and stick on the wall in my office.

Also at The Real Estate Bloggers (blogrolled), a link to a slide-show of the Freedom Towers in New York.

Whether the topic is 9/11, real estate — enbubbled or not — interest rates or something else, today is a good day to try on your blogging shoes. Sellsius° is offering an open mike to people who have something to say but don’t have a weblog of their own.

Wired: 9/11: Birth of the Blog.

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September 10, 2006

Caesar’s wife on the witness stand: The moral, the practical, the marketable and the defensible approach to forbidding dual agency . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had a great letter today from Bob Hunter of the Muljat Group about our policy forbidding dual agency. I’ll quote the whole thing first:

Greg, my wife and I are agents in Bellingham, Wash and I have a question relating to your position on dual agency. Our brokerage is a 100% desk fee operation. The broker takes no cut from any commission. Why would a transaction between two agents from this office harm either of the parties? I have read your website (twice) and think I understand your philosophy (since your make it very prevalent marketing appears to be a pretty important motivator also). Still, in our situation I’m not sure how the clients are harmed.

We have tried different strategies, I represent one client, my wife the other, referring one client to another agent in our office, representing both clients. We have not yet referred to an agent out of our office. In all the years of doing this, we do more dual agency than the industry standard, I can think of only one instance where the buyer ‘felt’ his interests were not being represented fully. The transaction would have the same result with separate agents but any bad feelings are negative. In retrospect we should have contributed money to his cause which would have alleviated any feelings of misplaced loyalty.

If dual agency is outlawed and if the consumers rail against it, then it is a moot point, but I am still interested in your opinion of our office dynamics and why it is not equitable or ethical.

I read your blog regularly and hope to start my own.

thanks

Bob Hunter
The Muljat Group Realtors

Dual agency has a bad reputation for three reasons, only one of which is wholly deserved. That one is true double-dipping agents or brokers who are looking for the biggest payday regardless of who gets hurt. Second is the public’s perception of dual agency, which is colored to some degree by negative opinions about real estate agents generally. But third is the conviction, justified or not, on the part of buyers and sellers that dual agency resulted in unfair Read more

September 9, 2006

The FSBO and BUBBA variety hour: How to make the buyer’s agents dance . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Our friend, colleague and personal marketing god, Richard Riccelli is getting ready to FSBO his Boston townhouse. He’s spent a year planning this down to the last detail, including condo-izing his property into two apartments so that they can be sold separately — or together if someone wants a residence plus servant’s quarters.

Richard was all over the idea of being a risk-loving seller, offering “broker participation” in such a way that a buyer can choose what, if anything, to pay for representation. This is the language he’s using on his promotional materials:

Buyers or buyer-designated brokers receive 2.5% of sale price at closing.

Perfect! A 2.5% commission is normal in Boston, and agents are always looking for that “broker participation” rider on a FSBO sign before they’ll invest any effort. But if a buyer wants to come in as a BUBBA — a buyer unrepresented by a buyer’s agent — the money’s there for closing costs or whatever.

It’s not quite right out there that the buyer can decide how that money is to be divided, if the buyer hires an agent, but there is nothing to keep the buyer from figuring it out. Either way, Richard gets what he wants: Avid interest either from buyers or from their agents.

With three exceptions, the silence from the real estate community on the idea of paying the buyer to pay the agent, rather than paying the agent directly, has been deafening. But there is more to real estate than Realtors. Unrepresented and semi-unrepresented sellers aren’t going to be invited to the Association of Realtors golf tournaments anyway. Writing their “broker participation” language the way Richard did makes perfect sense for them.

And that’s why it makes sense for Realtors, too. Whether they are correct or not, many people believe they can buy a home by themselves. In states where one or more attorneys are going to be involved anyway, they just might be right. Even in Arizona, if you have identified the property, agreed with the seller on terms and have effected the due diligence amicably, a title company will do all the necessary paperwork in exchange Read more

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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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