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Category: Group Therapy (page 66 of 81)

April 8, 2009

The Inman Prayer: “Deliver us not into deliberation and tempt us not into leadership, for ass-licking for lucre is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen…”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

You just can’t make this stuff up:

Inman News is launching a new feature: Real Estate Product Reviews.

Would you like to be part of a team of real estate professionals that reviews and rates new real estate technologies, tools and services?

We want to hear from you.

I’ll just bet you do…

I loved this bit of reptilian reciprocity:

Imagine if the digital/virtual book (Vook) knew at what point you stopped reading, and then starting sending you Tweets from characters in the story up until that point, or giving you a tease of what’s coming up next. I can riff a bunch of ideas off this but my head is going to explode!

Amazingly enough, this harshly critical review of vacuous vaporware comes from a vacuous vaporware vendor who has suffered equally harsh treatment from Inman “News” — call it quid pro lizard.

Our whole world is out of joint by now, so much has the word “supportive” come to mean “promotional.” Drew Meyers is a sweet, sweet man, but this article is nothing but vendor-pimping. The vendor might well deserve the accolades, but, if so, why bury the lead? The post is not about SEO nor about a well-optimized web site. It’s about the vendor who built that attestedly well-optimized site. Hiding that fact reeks, in my opinion.

And it wouldn’t do to forget the best little PR3 weblog in Texas. Agent Shortbus is not a whore, and don’t you dare say it is! It’s more like a big-hearted, big-haired, round-heeled gal who just happens to like a Prime Rib before and a Blue Agave Margarita after. What’s so bad about that?!?

Diogenes might as well be Cassandra, I do understand that. But we are too much at risk of becoming entirely enmired in bullshit, to the extent that we can’t even smell it any longer. When Inman News, the high temple of the vendorslut religion, can pretend to do product reviews — that seems like a good time to tune into Radio Cassandra.

We have this thing, and maybe none but few of us have understood from the first how unusual it is for real estate professionals to live Read more

April 8, 2009

IF (…for the real estate crowd)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

A little Hump-Day fun.  (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling.)

If you can keep your deal when all about you
Are losing theirs and talking of failure to you;
If you can trust your client when all clients doubt you,
And understand their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of writing offers,
Or, being lied to, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being rejected, don’t deal in scoffers,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream of clients – and not make clients your master;
If you can think of volume – and not make volume your aim;
If you can meet with REO agents and short sale specialists
And take pride in what you do just the same;
If you can bear to hear the comps you’ve spoken
Twisted by appraisers to make agents fools,
Or watch the escrow you gave your all to broken,
And start again with new marketing tools.

If you can save 10% of all your winnings
And run through a prospecting plan,
And gain nothing, and start again at your beginnings
And never make complaint or show you ran;
If you can force your assistant and lender and staging pro
To serve your turn after they want to be gone,
And so hold on to that open escrow
With nothing but the Will to say: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with banks and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Brokers – nor lose the common touch;
If neither real estate coaches nor time vampires can hurt you;
If all clients count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ of marketing done;
Yours is the farm and all the transactions in it,
And – which is more – this profession will be fun!

April 7, 2009

Please Get Out of My Face(book)

by

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

Part of my core schtick at Top of Mind is to ask my prospects two critical questions about email marketing:

1)  Why are so many companies leveraging email as their primary vehicle for communicating with clients and prospects?

Two reasons – email is cheap and email is easy.

2)  Why are you getting 200+ emails in your inbox every day?

Exactly.  Cheap and easy creates a low barrier to entry… and a low barrier to entry creates clutter.  Clutter is a marketer’s worst enemy.  Bad news folks – Facebook is cheap and easy too.

I’m very fortunate to have some groovy friends in the mortgage industry – and after my Facebook Webinar with Brian Brady, I made even more of them.  Now I’m getting my new friends’ updates and:

75% of the time they’re telling me it’s time to refinance, locking loans or boring me with industry vernacular I don’t understand.

20% of the time they’re giving me a play by play on what they’re eating, what color tie they’re wearing or something else I really don’t care about

Okay, so now we’ve identified the problem.  Next step is fixing it.  Here are some best practices I’ve seen and a few I haven’t.

1)  Keep an eye on your frequency. Here’s a general rule of thumb: the more compelling and fresh your status updates are, the more frequency you can get away with.  I think the sweet spot is 3 updates a week so long as they can pass the next test…

2)  Before updating your status, ask yourself if anyone really cares. How many of your 250 friends care that you’re getting ready for bed?  For me, that’s the equivalent of tuning into MIX 96 FM and hearing “I’ll Tumble For Ya” by Culture Club.  I’m flailing like a maniac for the next station even if it causes a 57-car pile up.  If I hear enough Culture Club on MIX 96, they’re off my speed dial FOREVER.  Same goes for my Facebook pals.  Sorry, just keepin’ it real.

3)  Have a strong take on something topical – politics, current events, sports, etc. You don’t have to tell your friends that you’re Read more

April 5, 2009

End of Daze

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

2542_54709363669_669028669_1333750_5640720_s2 As winters go, the current capricious season has been as tolerable as any I’ve experienced sober since being administratively abandoned here 14 years ago against my will.  So what if I left a smarmy sales vice president waiting (with 45 life insurance presentation kits and a slide projector) in Baggage Claim 7 at O’ Hare International for an ‘inexcusable amount of hours’ on a cold March morning  back in 1990-whatever.  Big whoop. I figure the suited puppet is corporate milk toast by now anyway so I have  no regrets in that regard. A year and a half later I had my real estate license and thirty days after that, I sold my first multi-unit building for condo conversion. ‘God forbid’  the ass clown would ever think to spring for a cab. Thinking back on it now, that’s what he  most likely had to do.  I just don’t recall it being mentioned in my Fed Exed severance package that so quickly followed.

And what I’ve concluded since that liberating (if not sentimental) six-figure parting of  the ways is this: If ever there was a super-imposed bordered, semi-landlocked example of urban, bi-polar personality disorder just waiting to spit in the face of cabin fever, it exists in  my fair city, Chicago, between the months of November and April, pick a year.  And, as is the case of  so many frost-bound salesmen who have come and gone before me, my own personal demons continue to appear in a variety of veneers (with mere weather and  spirited drink being the least seductive of my temptresses anymore).

My final hours in corporate America began to un-tick in the following way one blustery weekend a millennium or so ago. I had been sitting on the same Viagra Triangle bar stool since Saturday morning when Last Call was finally announced.  I allegedly paid another unwilling patron to help me locate my car and drive me home. When I hit the pillow and cold crashed on the bed hours later it was the break of daylight the following Sunday. I needed to be out the door in exactly 24 hours Read more

April 1, 2009

You’re Unique – Just Like Everyone Else

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

What makes you unique?  I’m not referring to your eleventh toe or your ability to recite the Arabic alphabet backwards.  That’s not unique – that’s plain odd.

Why do clients want to work with you?  What makes you better than the rest of the pack?  I ask this question based upon the comments I received in my last past.

Simply because you may rank first or second in a Google search does not make you unique – it makes you visible.   Now that you’re visible, what is the value you bring to the table?

I did a search on an address of a property I’ve listed, sadden to see that my SEO wizardry had failed me – Trulia and a whole host of other sites beat me to the punch – but honestly, I don’t care.  My client’s property is well represented in cyberspace.  It’s visible.  But visibility is not value in and of itself.

Now – say you use the fact that you rank first, maybe second on the list of the Google search you ran, specifically on the property’s address – or maybe even on the property’s characteristics – terrific!

But wait – as a consumer, I see your site and perhaps Trulia, Redfin or another local broker’s site with the same property – and a slew of other sites with the same information.  It’s visible but it is not specifically clear to me as a consumer why I would choose your site versus another.  Perhaps I choose your link because it’s first on the list.  Not a bad choice, but it was relatively arbitrary – it ranked first – not necessarily best.

If you’re marketing yourself as the best professional to sell a client’s home because you own the ranking of their property in a search result, you’re kidding your client – but mostly, you’re kidding yourself.

Greg Swann nailed the value proposition as to why high visibility on the web is a key differentiator:  he’s visible – but he also sells his clients’ listings in less time than comparable properties in his market.  Like almost 50% less.

Your high visibility facilitates your ability to sell Read more

April 1, 2009

An Open Letter of Apology to Chaz Berman

by

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

Ten years ago, as Director of National Accounts for MyPoints.com,  I found myself smack dab in the middle of an eerily similar boom-to-bust cycle we’re experiencing in real estate today.

Back then, MyPoints could do no wrong.   Advertisers were lining up to spend money with us. Investors were throwing millions of dollars our way.  We were partying like AIG executives – it was pretty sick.   Fun, but sick.

My boss at MyPoints was Chaz Berman.  During our meteoric rise, Chaz made promises that ultimately he couldn’t keep.  Promises of increased pay.  Increased responsibility.  I was on track for a VP Title and VP Bucks.  (Important note:  I was already very well compensated and had more responsibility than I could handle.)

Fast forward to 2009, the roles have reversed.  Instead of being the employee, I’m the employer.  Instead of taking directions, I’m giving them.  Here are the lessons I’ve learned from sitting on both sides of the table.

1)  Most employees are ungrateful whiners.

And looking back on my tenure with MyPoints, I was as whiny and ungrateful as anyone I’ve ever managed here at Top of Mind Networks.  Instead of focusing on what earned me promotions, money and praise in the past, I started letting some unrealistic promises made in a 180 degree different environment dictate my work ethic and my demeanor.  I took my job for granted.  I failed to realize that I was truly blessed – making a six-figure income, living in beautiful San Francisco, selling a killer product, etc.  As market conditions deteriorated, so did my attitude.  And for this, I owe MyPoints.com and especially Chaz Berman my sincere apologies.  Chaz, you were in a no-win situation and you were dealt a “Pai-Gow” of a hand.  I’m glad to see you still thriving today – you deserve it.

2)  Most employers stir the pot.

Nothing stokes the fire of negativity within a company more than a lack of transparency and communication.  In hindsight, I believe MyPoints did a poor job of setting expectations with employees – at every level of the company.  Perhaps the fact that we were a publicly traded Read more

March 26, 2009

Reflecting upon the Obamanation: “Love of our brothers? That’s when we learned to hate our brothers for the first time in our lives.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been thinking about the disgusting spectacle of millions of Americans presuming to have an opinion about whether or not some AIG employee deserves to be paid a bonus. This was once a country where the idea of minding one’s own business was virtually a sacrament. And then I can’t turn on the television without seeing some grandmother bragging that Medicare makes it possible for her to dine on her own grandchildren. And to top it all off, tonight I’ve been trading depressing emails with Joe Strummer about our progress down the Road to Serfdom.

I know people think they understand what I’m talking about, when I talk about political philosophy, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. The simple truth is this: I am sovereign in my person — and so are you. I do not have the right or power or privilege or duty to push you around by force, and you do not have that right or power or privilege or duty with respect to me. That’s easy to understand when we’re only talking about we two: If I overstep the boundaries, you will surely help me find my way back to the righteous path. But there’s no difference whether we’re talking about two people or two billion people. Each one of us is free in our person, free as a necessary consequence of being what we are.

Does that mean that other people cannot try to push us around by force? Obviously not. It simply means that failing to respond to human beings as sovereign entities, each one of us a unique end in himself, is wrong — epistemologically incorrect, morally unrighteous, politically criminal.

All of economics is based in collectivist premises, which leads to statements that are true but fundamentally irrelevant. Smith taught us that leaving men free to produce is better for everyone — which does not matter, because each one of us is free regardless of the benefits freedom yields for other people. Hayek among others points out that enslaving us is bad for everyone, which also does not matter. The impact upon the collective is meaningless. Read more

March 25, 2009

Is your business about to take a quantum leap? So is mine, so all I have time for is this: Whip your on-line and off-line marketing message into shape now, to make the most of the business coming your way

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you’re looking for the long, newsy pitch, I’ll try to get to it later this week. But for now I am working with and incubating more solid money work than I have in three years. I expect your dance card is starting to fill up, too.

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March 24, 2009

By applying CDSs to CDOs, did AIG go MIA? Or could the SEC, the OTS and one unhired CFO have kept it from turning up DOA?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A totally killer run down of the Wall Street mess from — you’ll never guess it — Rolling Stone magazine:

There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was there to rescue them. But when Goldman Sachs — a company whose average employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a depression — was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, the government was there in an instant to patch the hole. That’s the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayers’ credit card.

The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street community aren’t much for sharing information with the great unwashed. Because all of this shit is complicated, because most of us mortals don’t know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the word “zero coupon bond” in a sentence without sounding stupid — well, then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them.

That roll of the eyes is a key part of the psychology of Paulsonism. The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize “toxic” risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage Read more

March 23, 2009

The “Bad Bank” Plan…..(complete with music and video)

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

I’ve copied the announcement from the Treasury that sent the markets on a moonrocket today and thought that I would “walk you through it” so that we can get a better feel for whether this is a relief rally or something sustainable (and therefore what it means for mortgage rates).   So, here goes.  As usual, my comments are in bold and italics…..

The Financial Stability Plan – Progress So Far:

Over the past six weeks, the Treasury Department has implemented a series of initiatives as part of its Financial Stability Plan that – alongside the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – lay the foundations for economic recovery: and spend about how many trillions?  I’ve lost count.

* Efforts to Improve Affordability for Responsible Homeowners: Treasury has implemented programs to allow families to save on their mortgage payments by refinancing I’m glad that they didn’t characterize Fannie and Freddie’s 105% plan as a foreclosure prevention step because only one of the borrowers I’m doing that type of a refi for is anywhere near close to “at risk”, assist responsible homeowners in avoiding foreclosure through a loan modification plan, and, alongside the Federal Reserve, help bring mortgage interest rates down to near historic lows. This past month, the 30% increase in mortgage refinancing demonstrated that working families are benefiting from the savings due to these lower rates.

* Consumer and Business Lending Initiative to Unlock Frozen Credit Markets: Treasury and the Federal Reserve are expanding the TALF in conjunction with the Federal Reserve to jumpstart the secondary markets that support consumer and business lending. Last week, Treasury announced its plans to purchase up to $15 billion in securities backed by Small Business Administration loans.  The fact that the Fed and the Treasury are buying these “packages” of consumer and business loans doesn’t mean that 1) Consumers and businesses are going to start, en masse, living on borrowed money again and 2) That the banks are going to find consumers and businesses who are credit worthy enough to write loans to.

* Capital Assistance Program: Read more

March 22, 2009

Why should you buy real estate — and lots of it — now? Well, inventory abounds, prices are low, and interest rates are incredibly low. And there’s one other factor you might take into account…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Follow the tiny blue line. That’s the growth of the U.S. money supply. That vertical surge you see there at the right is, essentially, a doubling of the number of dollars in (virtual) circulation since August 2008. Every dollar you own will soon be worth fifty cents. And every dollar you owe will soon be worth two bucks. You do the math…

March 21, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: “I’d prefer one gall bladder surgeon to fifty Botox experts, a good Perkins engine mechanic to 1,000 deconstructionists at the MLA, one competent chemist to fifty government attorneys.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Victor Davis Hanson, a brilliant old Hellenist, here seeming more old than brilliant, wonders, “Who is John Galt?”

We sense we are trimmers and redistributors, and wouldn’t dare build a new dam a transcontinental railroad, a new 8-lane freeway.

Instead we would sue, file reports, argue, quit, delay—anything other than conceive a majestic idea and finish it, sighing, “It is not perfect, but damn good enough and will do.” Instead, here in California we are simply destroying agriculture by drying up its sources of water-giving life—a once brilliant farming that was the sum total of millions of brave lives from 1880 to 2000 who took a desert and fed the world.

Instead, ensconced in the Berkeley Hills or Woodside, our elites demand of better others to save for them not people, but a smelt, a minnow, or a newt-like creature that must have the entire Kings or San Joaquin River as it dumps its precious cargo out to sea.

So as scare snow melts, it goes out to the ocean, gratifying a lawyer or professor in Palo Alto that rivers flow as they did in the 19th-century, as millions of acres go fallow, hundreds of thousands lose jobs, and we feel so morally superior to those of the past who really were our moral superiors.

It is easy to dismiss our ancestors as illiberal, or with the caveat “Oh, but if we were as poor as they were, we’d have to prove just as tough”, but we still sense they were different in the sense of far better. When I drive up to see those Sierra dams poured in the 1920s, one wonders how they made such things with only primitive machines, and in contrast, are amazed with our sophisticated tools, we do so much less. 

This self-congratulatory generation can hardly, as we are learning, build a Bay Bridge again. Yet when we see on the Internet pictures of a new aircraft carrier we are stunned in amazement—we did that? We built such a powerful, sophisticated ship? We—at least someone— can actually still do things on rare occasion like that?

The American people are, to be frank, nauseated Read more

March 21, 2009

A Few Thoughts About Mortgages…..

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Since I already sent an update out earlier in the week outlining what the Fed did and how it can/will impact the economy and the mortgage markets, I’m going to focus on a couple of other topics this time.

First I’m going to talk about the four most important things to know about mortgage rates. Then, in the lower section, we’ll take a look at a good strategy to consider when thinking about when to lock in an interest rate.

The four most important things to know about mortgage rates:
What influences them – contrary to popular opinion, mortgage rates are not tied to the 10 year Treasuries any more. For years they used to be and that made predicting short term market movements easy. Now they don’t and it’s much harder. So what does impact them? A couple of quick thoughts about that: 1) Market sentiment – is the market feeling good about things or bad? 2) Political manipulation – does the market feel that Washington is trying to run over Wall Street or is it the other way around? 3) Expectations vs. reality – it’s not so much that the news is bad as it is a question of whether it’s worse or better than it was expected. 4.) Inflation/Deflation and the value of the dollar. 5) Investor appetite for mortgage backed securities (aka how good are loans performing?


Why mortgage rates won’t go down to 4%. According to what I heard and saw, there were experts on places like the Today Show and Good Morning America who were proclaiming that mortgage rates were going to go down to 4.0%, probably by Monday. There are a couple of reasons why that won’t happen: 1) The Law of Supply and Demand – the government is literally flooding the market with additional debt. If there is more debt “chasing”fewer investors, that’s going to push rates upward. 2) The Value of the Dollar – the dollar has taken a beating in the last few days and as the dollar gets cheaper compared to other currencies, interest rates have to go up. 3) Falling House Prices Read more

March 20, 2009

Priced Well? No Offers — Not Even Insulting Offers? My 2¢

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Greg Swann just published a post lookin’ for help from the professional community for one of our own. Barry Bevis, a Realtor in Tallahassee, has a listing that’s been giving him fits. He and several knowledgeable agents around town are in agreement — the current listing price is where it should be. The house is well kept. The lot is over a third of an acre. Very nice yard, and a hot tub. He’s done just about everything right to get this puppy into escrow. Its own site. Buncha cool pictures. Even had a custom sign made. Still, no sale.

No sale? Not even an insultingly low offer.

I went to the listing’s site. Plenty of info, and many photos, easy to navigate, and easy to get ahold of Barry. He obviously cares, and has clearly gone the extra mile as he markets this home. So what’s the problem? What might be going unaddressed?

Before continuing, let’s be real here. We’ve all been where Barry is with this listing. How many of us have scratched our heads, totally mystified by a listing that simply seems to defy a mountain of empirical evidence dictating it should’ve sold a dozen times by now? I have, many times. It’s maddening. Shortly after studying what Greg Swann does to market his listings, I had an epiphany — well, actually two. For me it was a good news/bad news joke. On one hand I was elated to have stumbled onto such a gold mine — which is surely what it is. On the other hand, I felt like such a doofus as I mentally compared his method to mine. But as often admitted, I’m ‘Japan’. I’ll steal anything cool and make it mine — screw my ego. Thanks Greg

First, I realized as experienced as I am, and as many properties as I’ve sold in the nearly 40 years of my career, I still couldn’t carry Greg’s jock when it came to the nuts and bolts of marketing listings from A to Z. The guy is head and shoulders above anyone else I’d studied.

Then the second epiphany hit 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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