BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Group Therapy (page 68 of 81)

March 3, 2009

But Tonight, I’m Cleaning Out My Closet.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

A few things that are almost posts.  Wanted to put the thoughts into the Echo Chamber, quote song lyrics, and rock my baby Ruby to sleep since pretty Heather is all sick and stuff.   So here’s the best of my drafts.

[1] You’re Jammin‘ Me. I’m opting out of the political spew.  There’s plenty of negativity.  But really, I’m not into what the house, Senate, Obama does.  There’s not a dimes worth of difference between conservatism and socialism.  Neither are freedom. When we can stop genuflecting to abstract hierarchies and live and die by our individual contributions, we’ll be in a better place.   So, I’m recommending no more recoiling at the political BS.   Instead, I’m going to outpace everyone, including the looters.  I’m going to buy some gold, to be sure, but I’m going to keep moving forward.  No energy will be wasted.  I’ll run as fast as I can, and hopefully that will be enough to outrace the Horde.

[2] I don’t care what they say about us anyway… There is a profound difference to be here.  I went after Greg Swann, publicly , and in the comments with regard to him collecting money for Heap .  I never suspected his motives, but I wanted to guard against the appearance of impropriety.  He…gave a harrumph and now the Heap money will go to Charity.  I came at Greg hard enough to trigger 4 emails to me (I’ve never had 4 emails from one post).  I’m still allowed to post here.  Compare that to the comment I left elsewhere that prompted a shrill and bizarre call from a quavering webblogger on a Saturday morning…in may of 2008, and you know that we’re about ideas, and we’re all gonna change course when we’re wrong, or when we appear to some to be wrong.   It’s seriously different here, and if you can realize that, email Greg.  He won’t take your face off of a sidebar for taking pot shots at him.

[3] You Got a Lotta Nerve…To Say You Are My Friend …Never, ever try to start a relationship with anyone esp. ME by talking Read more

March 3, 2009

Tell Todd Carpenter to stand down. “The Social Media Marketing Institute” is how the RE.net will be sold to the NAR.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As Monsignor Cecil used to say: Oh, my sweet, suffering Jesus… And in echoing that exhortation, I am doing something none of these “experts” can do in return: Giving them a link from a PR5 weblog.

I would eviscerate the writing style on the web site, but it’s too painful to look at. Okay, just a taste, but you asked for it:

The designation course is the first of its type with relevant content-rich material and cutting edge techniques utilized by these Social Media pioneers.

They left out all the relevant content-poor material, along with the stuff that was content-rich but irrelevant, thus to leave more time for utilizing cutting edge techniques.

Evidently commas are not on the cutting edge, but they wouldn’t help, anyway. As we have discussed before, “Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune, whose words do jarre; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous.” People who write badly think badly. You permit them to enter your mind at your own risk.

I don’t mind these self-made mediocrities — all of them, not just this crew — chasing people away from here. It works to our benefit: We end up talking only to people who can keep up with us, a boon for everyone. But I can only foresee two futures for a stunt like this:

First, they will milk the punters with a second-rate curriculum. This by itself is hardly rare.

And, second, they will sell this lipstick-slathered pig to the NAR, where it will ossify — which is not to imply that it is, even at present, timely or relevant — or worthwhile. Given some of the people involved — and the recommendation to buy a Kindle! — I would expect the opposite.

But disappointing people don’t disappoint us — when we have our minds properly inverted. Consider this, from the “Affiliate Links” section:

In some cases, we have also negotiated a “commission” to SMMI as well.

Yours is not to ponder oughts, yours is to be sold and bought.

Drop me a line when you get sick of being the entree at the Feast of the Vendorsluts.

February 27, 2009

How does a success like REBarCamp avoid the shoe pinch of growing pains?

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Rob Hahn is at it again. He likes to instigate, but since he’s so charming, I fall for it. However, unlike our Fred v Gene cage fight, this time I’m serious.

Rob thinks a clearinghouse for national sponsorships for Real Estate Bar Camps is a fine idea, and suggests BHG, or Trulia could step up to the plate.

I don’t think it should become the organizer, or start putting rules and such into place (except the obvious unavoidable ones, like “don’t run off with the money”). But it would be helpful for those of us interested in sponsoring REBC’s.

I vote eek.

I like the idea of BarCamp- loose, free, perfect fit for my brain. And I like that it’s organized by passionate people. I have years of volunteer experience under my belt- big, national organizations, and little local organizations. I can appreciate and respect the time and talent that goes into creating a successful event. My concern with Rob’s suggestion is the fact that sponsors do get preferential treatment. Often this type of arrangement is benign, as in local businesses contribute $20.00 worth of coupons to help fill out a PTO raffle, but we are not talking about that. Although, as an aside, if REBC organizers are not looking at the local businesses- local inspectors, local lenders, local photographers as participants (and maybe they do?) then they might be missing some extraordinary partnering possibilities. Looking at the REBarCamp/Seattle site, it’s all national sponsors. Getting local companies involved would truly be in the BarCamp philosophy, wouldn’t it?

Back to the point. Here’s the thing: Corporations don’t give to organizations, or un-organizations, out of the kindness of their hearts. They just don’t. They give because they expect something in return. Always. Their name here or there, their “presentation”, their branded junk, their “let us help you use our product” panel. BarCamps are free flowing and loose, the sponsor is twittering away with us, and golly darn-it, they are super nice! They bought us drinks at that other wingding- don’t you remember? What can it hurt if they become the go-to guys?

It hurts because you can’t speak out Read more

February 26, 2009

We know sheep will follow a Judas goat to their slaughter, as will cattle. Now the NAR is testing the idea on lemmings…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Todd Carpenter becomes one with the Borg and the charming little lemmings elbow each other out of the way to dive off the cliff head first.

One of two things will happen: Todd will discover he’s made a terrible mistake and will quit this job with dispatch — I hope very loudly. Or: Todd will deliver us to our slaughter.

Anyone who expects anything other than evil from the National Association of Realtors has either not been paying attention, or, much worse, embraces that evil.

In any case, this is not something to be celebrated, not even to affect to be “nice” in chorus with the rest of the lemmings.

The NAR may want to infest our world in order to destroy it. More likely, they want to take it over.

What they certainly do not want is to approach the public as we do — openly, authentically, concealing nothing. The entire edifice of residential real estate is founded on secrets and lies, and, as long as it is, the NAR will be nothing but a cesspit of tyrannical motives and vendorslut con games.

And — more is the pity — Todd Carpenter cannot take their money without being their shill and their Judas goat — or worse.

I’m saddened by this, because of all the gutless big-name real estate webloggers, Todd has more guts than most. But nothing good for us will come of this, and the only good that can come of it for Todd is for him to escape with his scruples intact as quickly as he can.

February 25, 2009

The three little pigs and the housing rescue plan, a modern fable

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and, although they were brothers and looked a lot a like, they could not have been more different.

The first little pig was hard-working and thrifty. He spent very little of his income, saving and investing as much money as he could. He lived with his mother well into adulthood, helping her with her expenses. He finally bought a home of his own when he could afford to pay for it all in cash. As you might expect, the thrifty little pig’s home wasn’t flashy, but it was all his, free and clear.

The second little pig didn’t save very much of his income, but he earned a lot of money as a rising executive, and he had an uncanny luck in the housing market. He bought a condominium on his 18th birthday, then traded up to his first single-family home before he was 21. By the time he was 30, the lucky little pig owned a very stately executive home — and he had been able to make a whopping 50% down-payment.

The third little pig wasn’t very good at working hard, and he had never kept a job long enough to get a raise. He wasn’t at all good at saving money, but he could borrow and spend it better than any little pig anywhere. Like the lucky little pig, he moved away from home early, but he just kept moving — from apartments to friends’ couches to rental homes and then to one girlfriend’s house after another.

If you are a liberal, you may be thinking of the third brother as the unfortunate little pig. If you are a conservative, you will want to call him the lazy little pig — or worse. To keep the peace, let’s just call him the puerile little pig — the little brother who never quite grew up.

The original version of this story was about construction quality as a metaphor for planning ahead, anticipating disasters so they don’t take you by surprise. But the world of real estate has changed a lot since then. The most important Read more

February 24, 2009

Quietly going about our business

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

We go about our business, most of us, very quietly, with an attempt at dignity. One foot in front of the other, moving forward, striving, reaching, yearning to be the best we can be. We want to provide for our families, do right and do well for our clients. We want to put our heads down on our pillows at night, satisfied with the day’s work, and wake up the following morning excited to do it all again.

We don’t, most of us, want to be rock stars in the blogiverse. We want, most of us, to be appreciated for what we can offer, allowed to give freely without grief, and left to go quietly about our business.

I don’t agree with everything written on real estate blogs, and I don’t much like some of it, but the people who read these national blogs, the people I meet at Unchained, and the real estate professionals who email me to share their own triumphs- these people are inspiring. They are just like me, quietly going about our business, picking up information like sponges, moving forward, learning, striving, laughing, loving- just people, just real estate agents (without big hair).

I’m disturbed by the idea of a NAR Social Media Director, when I think about it. But the thing is, I don’t think about it. I don’t care. I don’t wish the new SMD any ill will, I don’t wish them anything at all because it really doesn’t matter to me. By the way, I’m going to call this position The SMeD, just because it makes me giggle.

So The SMeD will have a job to do, but none of it matters to me because I have my job to do, and as Greg points out, “All we have to do is keep doing what we’ve been doing — and keep getting better at it — and the Boojum under the bed will be gone forever.”

I’ve always believed this, and it’s always proved true. Anything that we have given power to, in our own minds, can easily be dethroned, defrocked, destroyed, by doing exactly what we do so Read more

February 24, 2009

The Butcher, The Banker, The Candlestickmaker

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but to think that it’s deja vu all over again.  Is it really 1980 again?   Congress appears to have stolen a page from the Conservative’s play book – but with a twist.

It seems trickle-down economics applies as much to government spending as do tax cuts to the rich, yet with the latest infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the most powerful corporations – America’s largest banks and insurance companies, we have yet to see much of a trickle – less a drop.

TARP did in fact keep the economy dry.

Perhaps the irony of it all – to me at least –  is that the so-called “Socialists” also see virtue in starting at the top – fork over billions to the most powerful to get the engine running again – the proof is not quite in the pudding pie, Georgie.

From my perspective, the deluge is starting at the bottom.  My email has been flooded with comments from my condo association regarding the complications my neighbors are facing in the sale of their condo.  Economic circumstances are hitting very close to home – my neighbors, one of whom is a fellow Realtor – directly below me in my building – is in dire need of selling their home.  Our association has a first right of refusal clause which deems FHA financing impossible.  My neighbor has been soliciting the board and fellow owners that an amendment in our bylaws is required to make the sale of their home possible to more buyers.

I was amazed at some of the comments from fellow neighbors concerned about the “quality” of potential buyers who only qualify for 3.5% down – I could only chuckle thinking that some existing owners were able to buy with 0% down 3 years ago.  Where’s there equity now?

One neighbor argued that we want to prevent a short sale – moreover a foreclosure – from impacting the values of existing homeowners.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t read The Chicago Tribune on Sunday – there was an article about the substantial increase of foreclosures Read more

February 23, 2009

Taking little teeny steps toward single-property web sites on little teeny mobile web browsers on little teeny mobile phones

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Little Teeny Eyes by Tom Digby

Oh we got a new computer but it’s quite a disappointment
‘Cause it always gave this same insane advice:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So we re-read the instruction book that came with the computer
But it kept on printing crazy stuff that reads
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY SHOES FOR CENTIPEDES.”

So we got an expert genius and he rewrote all the programs
But we always got results that looked like these:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY LICENSE PLATES FOR BEES.”

Then we tested each resistor, every diode and transistor,
But our electronic brain just raves and rants:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE BRANDING IRONS FOR BRANDING ANTS.”

Now we’re looking for a buyer for a crazy mad computer
That will only give out crazy mad advice
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So I got spammed yesterday for yet another piece of vendorslut crap. TextMyMLS.com will send a SMS text message containing details about your listing to a mobile phone-using prospect who requests information from you. The text message can also include photos if the prospect’s phone supports them.

What do the text messages look like. Look up and you will see a demo screen, as seen on my iPhone. That’s 100% to scale, y’all, and, no, you’re not getting old. These message might look good on other devices, but on the iPhone they’re useless.

There’s more, of course. TextMyMLS.com is a stealth lead-capture system. When the prospect “texts” for more information, the TextMyMLS system pages the Realtor with the prospects phone number — which is transmitted without the prospect’s knowledge or consent. In addition to the text about the home, possibly unreadable, the prospect also gets spammed with information about the Realtor. And then, of course, the poor punter is stuck having to fend off sales calls for the next 90 days — Read more

February 23, 2009

Adding a new hound to the pound: Introducing Ryan Hartman

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Ryan Hartman has been a fun and fascinating voice in our comments for a long time. My error was that I was too stupid to invite him to join us as a contributor. I corrected this defect yesterday, and Ryan joins us today.

His biographical sketch is simply incomparable, so I will quote it in its entirety:

Ryan dropped out of a Philly college and started selling real estate at age 19 in 1998.  He invested pretty much all of the GCI he earned in his early 20’s on beer, mushrooms, and florida. Then a wife and some kids showed up, so he figured out a way to “settle down” by replacing  7 day Realtor work weeks with lead-generation/blogging/tech-type gigs at a few local RE/MAX offices.

The man is wicked smart and a very fun read. We’re lucky to have him among us.

Technorati Tags: , ,

February 22, 2009

As the NAR makes its first forays into the participatory internet, wired Realtors must get a handle on a very difficult question: How do you get rid of the Boojum under the bed?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, so the National Association of Realtors has made a big deal out of its search for a “Social Media Director.” Apparently I’m the only person who finds the terms “social media” and “director” to be inherently self-contradictory, but that doesn’t matter anyway.

Why? Because the NAR is interested in social media for two reasons only, neither of which will resonate with anyone in our world.

Their two objectives are these:

First — and primarily — they want to clamp down on and control everything associated with real estate in the participatory internet. Dinosaur organizations are censorious by their nature, but the NAR is very much like the Mafia in its need to control its message, silencing dissenters and whistle-blowers.

Second, the NAR wants to turn the Web 2.0 world into yet another distribution channel for treacly, sleazy sales propaganda.

I never thought of Pinocchio as a wise-guy before, but it comes to the same thing. You can’t get too near The Boys without becoming one of them, and if you lend any part of your credibility — your reputation for moral probity — to the NAR, it will turn you into yet another insipid, perpetually-smiling marionette. Dance, puppet, dance!

I think this might be a three princes fable. If it is, the first prince may well be Todd Carpenter, who for some insane reason actually wants this job. At least he had better want it, because he gave me as a character reference and I gave him a glowing review. If the NAR actually understands its world and ours, my recommendation should have worked the other way for Todd. But my impression was that they ate it up.

Prince number two is NAR CEO Dale Stinton, who has announced that the new Social Media Director has already been chosen, but who won’t reveal who is the poor benighted soul who will get to be torn to shreds by both the lady and the tiger, never knowing for sure which is which.

I don’t actually know who the third prince is, but for the moment I’m betting on me. I abhor the whole idea of leadership, but serving as Read more

February 21, 2009

In the world of internet marketing, Realtors and lenders have to know how to solve their own on-line marketing problems

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cathleen encouraged me to take exception to Jeff Brown’s most recent post, and, by the time I was done, I had a whole new post.

Quoting from Jeff:

If you honestly believe your income is higher with you spending time changing your own hi-tech oil, then continue along that path — it’s obviously working for you. On the other hand, if you think putting yourself in front of 50 more serious prospects a year might be more productive for your bottom line, AND that would make you happy, you may want to modify your approach.

This is a false dichotomy.

First, you do not have to change your own oil, so to speak, but if you don’t know how to change your own oil, you are at the mercy of every money-hungry automobile service writer on the planet.

Second, assiduous hi-tech marketing, going forward, is the best path to belly-to-belly appointments. This could our best year ever in volume of sides (not, alas, volume of dollars), and much of it — and all of the multi-home buyers — came from our web presence. There is room to be impressed by lo-tech success stories, but the two details left out are these: Buyers and sellers are increasingly shopping on-line, and the cost-per-conversion of old-school lo-tech marketing is comparatively very high. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much makes it all the way home.

Third, as should be obvious from everything I talk about, the kinds of chores Realtors and lenders need to keep a fat thumb on are those that would be too costly, too onerous or too error-prone if done by vendors.

As an example: Cathy and I made more than 1,400 engenu pages last year. The end result is work product that was done faster and made a much better impression on our clients than trying to communicate by other means. This stuff knocks the socks off clients, which I consider to be our most important sales function in everything we do. But those pages also put 1,400 new, permanent breadcrumbs on the web, so that other clients can find us in the future. As Read more

February 19, 2009

The bad news: Obama’s housing relief plan is a giveaway to lenders, not homeowners. The worse news: It won’t work, anyway.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you read the news this morning, you’ll find Realtors all over the country rejoicing that President Obama has surged into the depressed real estate market on a white charger, bearing with him an heroic plan to rescue everyone — borrowers, lenders and especially Realtors. No discouraging words? To the contrary. Some Realtors think Obama’s promise of $275 billion in mortgage bailouts does not go far enough.

Here are two important questions to put the matter into perspective:

1. By how many dwellings will the standing inventory of housing be reduced under Obama’s plan?

2. By how many households will Obama increase demand for housing?

Since the answer to both of these questions is zero, we can predict with certainty that President Obama’s housing relief plan will do nothing to relieve the housing crises.

What will it do? The true essence of the plan is Rotarian Socialism for lenders. Obama’s hope — probably hopeless — is that if lenders take a lot of small hits now — by refinancing homes for substantially less than is owed on them — they can avoid a lot of much bigger hits later — by not having to foreclose on those homes.

But the real problem — in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, South Florida, the Rust Belt, etc. — is that the residential real estate market is overbuilt. There are more houses seeking homeowners than there are homeowners (or tenants) seeking houses. The real estate crisis will not end until supply is reduced, demand increases — or both.

Obama is trying to shove a floor under home values. But since this does nothing to correct the systemic problem — oversupply — he is simply pissing away money while delaying the ultimate and unavoidable market correction.

Want a true housing relief plan?

Here in Arizona, we could do ourselves a huge favor by repealing the employer I.D. check law that drove all of our undocumented friends out of the state — just at the wrong time.

And it would make great sense to make immigration to America easier and faster. Imagine having neighbors who work hard, pay their bills on time and can spell correctly!

But those Read more

February 16, 2009

Piling onto Heap: I’ll trade you a big bunch of CRM development ideas for an affiliate link click-through

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If your contact information is on any of the BloodhoundBlog Unchained interest lists, I spammed you last week with a form email that pitched the then-upcoming Seattle Unchained preview as well as the still-upcoming BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix event.

The form letter was sent out as bulk email from the Heap CRM software application, and I played a few games with the software: The letter asked recipients to click on a link that opened a web-based form that in turn solicited them to complete and update their contact information — not just name and email but also phone numbers and snailmail address. That form in turn fed its input back to Heap, in effect semi-automatically scrubbing our Unchained database.

The response rate is over 25%, so far, which is just astounding to me, but the essence of the thing was to put Heap through its paces. As I discussed a little while ago, I want a highly-programmable CRM solution that I can use to automate our databases. Heap seems to be the best solution for the work we need to do, as a compromise between power and cost–per-user.

I’m going to be talking about everything I do with Heap, going forward. I’ll make the tools I build with it available, starting with a new version of my universal contact form that will not only create new contact records within Heap but will assign those contact to the appropriate drip email campaign.

After that, I want to build code that will do a truly robust round-trip contact scrub, because I’m thinking you can get people who really want to do business with you to tell you anything you might want to know.

For now, I need some help from you:

If you are signing up for Heap, I’d appreciate if you would use this link. I will get credit in Heap’s affiliate program. We’ll donate the affiliate fees to charity, but with each new sign-up, I will gain clout with the developer. As always, I’ll be sharing every new idea I come up with, but if we can demonstrate that wired real estate professionals are a significant portion Read more

February 16, 2009

The ActiveRain hokey pokey: You shoot your left foot off, you shoot your right foot off, you shoot your left hand off — and then you present the audience with an invoice…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What costs $360 a year and puts you in touch with vast hordes of sweet people who cannot do business with you? Starting today, Active Rain will cost $30 a month for new members.

That’s a load of dough. If you want to host your own WordPress.org weblog, a perfectly adequate hosting account at HostGator.com will run you $4.95 a month. Toss in ten bucks a year for the domain and you’re still less than $70 a year. For $7.95 a month, you can host unlimited domains, which puts two domains at $116 a year, three at $126, ten at $196. For $360 a year, you could host 26 unique domains. Or you could get a BloodhoundBlog.net blog for free, aliasing it to your own domain name for free.

The demurrer from ActiveRain will be that they are delivering added value. But most of that added value comes from selling the membership to each other — all with advertising and extra-cost features piled on top.

I met many of the AR folks in Seattle last week. Very nice people, fun and enthusiastic. But if your idea of a productive use of your time is schmoozing with other Realtors, Twitter is (still) free…

Technorati Tags: , ,

« Older posts Newer posts »

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.

Media Contacts