Everyone in the policy community seems semi-paralyzed by the sheer scale of recent news and the volume of demands for basic explanations of what, exactly, is happening. But looking a bit past all that, isn’t there an enormous progressive opportunity here?
In November, there’s going to be an election. And in January, there’ll be a new President. And in the interim, progressive groups will probably come up with a lot of “ten ways to make everything awesome” proposals. And it’ll take 41 conservative senators to filibuster them all, and so they’ll all be filibustered. But if the government directly controls major financial institutions, that would give the new administration extraordinary leverage over the national economy. Suppose the new CEO of AIG decided he didn’t want to insure assets of companies whose executives make unseemly multiples of the national median income? There are all kinds of crazy things you could do. And of course not all of them would be good ideas. But some of them would! And the smart folks on our side need to be figuring out which ones they are. It seems doubtful to me that a progressive administration would ever be able to get away with this much nationalizing of everything, but what’s done is done and I think it creates a real opportunity for “socially conscious insurance underwriting” or whatever you care to call it.
Category: Group Therapy (page 74 of 81)
Oz is calling. My aversion to conferences has been pushed aside, and in the middle of the night I’ll be boarding a plane for Blog World in Vegas– possible only with the help of Dramamine and Pepto Bismol. It means that Friday morning I will land in Las Vegas loopy and stoopid, with drool stains on my shirt, but I was assured that I’d fit in just fine.
Eric Blackwell says that relationships are at the heart of these things, so I’m embracing my inner warm and fuzzy person and plan on saying Howdy to quite a few RE.net peeps that I’ve never met. Well worth the trip. At Blog World there will be plenty of self-proclaimed gurus with which I can mix and mingle. Me, being the eternal optimistic cynic, am wary of anyone who willingly takes on the title of Social Media Guru, but I understand that it’s Blog World, so I’m bound to run into a few.
BloodhoundBlog is the house: Dan Green is speaking, Brad Coy is speaking, Bawld Guy is marking territory on a dance floor somewhere. There is a gross of squirt guns winging their way to a Vegas pool party and, as if that wasn’t enough, someone has promised to wear a kilt and pull a mooning, a la Braveheart. See what you miss if you aren’t Twittering?
That’s fun! But still. The not so warm and fuzzy part of my brain keeps reminding me that I paid good money for this and I’m taking time away from income producing work. Friday is REBlogWorld, and Saturday and Sunday is the BlogWorld conference. I’m going to go and soak up the atmosphere, the information, the guruliciousness and hopefully learn a couple hundred dollars worth of bloggy goodness.
How do I do that? I’m suspending my disbelief, but I’m clueless. If you were going to BlogWorld, what would be the one don’t miss ticket for you? What would you want to see and why? I’m going, I want to learn, but I’ve not yet made any plans to hear anything specific. I was thinking of going where the wind takes me, but Read more
I don’t give a rat’s ass about traffic, but I care a great deal about being as big as we are.
It looks like those new Technorati numbers are going to hold, and that particular screenshot sings to me. We’re not as big as the real estate porn blogs or the bubble blogs or the investor blogs, but we are far and away the biggest of the category I call the RE.net, the real estate industry weblogs.
My delight is not a matter of traffic or links, that’s just so much shoes on the carpet. What matters to me is not where we are but, rather, how we got here.
In email today a friend of BloodhoundBlog said:
I love it that you’ve done this, but I love it most because you’ve done it without the Twitterati, despite people making public pronouncements that they are boycotting BHB, by bowing to no one, by keeping your own counsel.
And that’s exactly right. I don’t care if nobody is listening, so long as we’re doing this work our way.
But consider: Hardly anybody bothers me, these days, with bad advice on what and how to write or how to manage this weblog, but this used to be a common thing. But we are what we are despite all that bad advice.
I know there are a certain number of people reading here — even if they have insisted publicly that they don’t — who don’t understand what we are doing at all. There are a small few who understand all too well — and it drives them completely crazy. Another small few get it and love it and catch every delightful little nuance of the theater of the thing. But the ninety-and-nine — and I never forget the ninety-and-nine — are here for their own reasons, and a healthy self-interest is the perfect expression of the unchained ideal.
I know that you are confronted all the time with what I consider to be horribly bad advice — kiss up, kiss ass, bend, yield, compromise, to get along you’ve got to go along. Of all the many things we can do Read more
Please indulge me with a personal post.
The last 36 hours has been awesome. I am in Nanaimo, BC Canada for the Real Estate Webmasters conference. The last 36 hours is my definition of how life should be lived.
Beautiful surroundings.
Nanaimo (and British Columbia in general) is among the most beautiful places I have been. Words cannot do justice to the 2 hour ferry ride that I got to take yesterday. They just can’t. If you get the chance to visit this gorgeous part of the world, PLEASE do yourself a favor and make sure you do. It is amazing.
Amazing Friends.
I got to have dinner last night with about 15 friends. I try not to use the word friend loosely, and I certainly am not here. Morgan Carey (thank you for being a tremendous host. Seriously.). People like Dennis Pease and his lovely wife. Judy Orr, who I have moderated with and yet never met (until now). Knox. Drew. Tim. Tom. Mike Brown. Dave A. Jon Karlen. I am exhausted, and I know I am leaving a few out. (Lack of sleep is an excellent sign of a great last 36 hours!!)
These people aren’t just people. They are like family. Names and Avatars start connecting into an even deeper bunch of relationships that is just plain FUN. More of that will happen today and tomorrow.
This is not networking for me. It is connecting with people that I have known for 3 years online online but finally get to meet. That is what makes this last 36 hours special for me. I wish folks like Ryan and Wayne and Bramlett were here to experience it with me.
One quick point. It is about the relationships. I did not come to Nanaimo for the latest whizbang SEO secret. (A lot of those discussions ARE happening naturally, mind you! And no doubt that is a NICE side benefit!) BUT…I came for the relationships. If you take care of those, your web presence tends to take care of itsself. I am not being flippant. It is the truth.
And of course Cosmic Bowling.
This is one of Read more
Our good friend Tom Johnson in Houston by email:
Minor house damage to report, nothing that lets the weather in. We are one of about ten homes with power in our neighborhood (100homes). We were on the clean side of the storm, about 80 miles away from the hard hit part of Houston. We are very fortunate.
Watch the clean-up of the 4th largest US city. I have a feeling it will astound. The false alarm from Rita gave public officials around here a dress rehearsal on how to screw up, and I think they have a pretty good handle on what is required. There have been some FEMA issues but it was kind of funny. Yesterday FEMA informed the State that they weren’t able to move the relief commodities from Reliant Stadium to the Points of Distribution. The state, probably correctly, is focused on the coast and was unable to shift the National Guard to the PoDs. The Mayor and County Comm. just told the State to get out of the way. Apparently they had established some kind of volunteer corps for this type of eventuality. The state handed off permission to talk to FEMA to local authorities, and once the local to FEMA direct billing was verified with Chertoff, the trucks were rolling to the PoDs last night. They are fully stocked this AM and have restocking in place so there will be very little running out. The logistics of the relief effort are fascinating to me. It is totally devastating to a citizen to sit in line for what will be hours in the early days to be told we just ran out, so, keeping the supplies coming is as important as the initial relief effort.
All taxpayer paid workers were expected to be at work today. As the mayor said: This is going to be the largest garbage pick up in history.
I’ll have more as it processes.
I expect the Houston Red Cross would be happy to hear from you.
The good news is that Vlad Zablotskyy is nearing the end of his legal battles with ePerks.com. As you will recall, ePerks sued Vlad to try to compel him to squelch criticism of the lead vendor.
That bad news is that Vlad has had to take a night job to help defray his mounting legal expenses. The Vlad Zablotskyy Legal Defense Fund has raised a significant amount of money, but as anyone who has ever gotten trapped in the court system knows, there is never enough money to cover legal fees.
What can you do to help? Push the “Donate” button you see below or in our sidebar. If you want to add a button to your own weblog or web site, you can find the HTML code here. But the most significant difference you can make in Vlad’s life, right now, is to make as big a donation as you can afford.
Vlad is stuck in this quagmire a little longer, but it’s worth noting that no one else has been threatened, neither by ePerks nor by any other vendors. By participating in this Legal Defense Fund, we have made it plain that we will defend our right to speak freely — to speak truth to power. I count that a victory for the good guys. How about you?
Click on the “Donate” button and let’s put “paid” to this kind of intimidation against real estate webloggers.
Support Vlad Zablotskyy’s Defense Fund
Defend your own right to free speech!
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
[This is the introductory text to an eBook I have prepared discussing the idea of divorcing the real estate commissions, a topic I have discussed here at some length. You can find the eBook by clicking here. If you like, you can post a button linking to this book — there is code at the end of this post. But my primary motive for putting this together is to appeal to the various consumer-facing personal finance weblogs. I don’t foresee any meaningful reform in the real estate industry originating from the inside, so I am doing what I can to arm consumers against the pernicious evil that is the National Association of Realtors. –GSS]
Introduction
Here are three interesting real estate questions, two that came to me directly and one that was commended to me by Rudy Bachraty of Trulia.com.
Question #1: “Potential buyers for our home ($800K – California) have a realtor but he did not find our home for them. The buyers did and have visited both times without him. He has played no role whatever in bringing us these buyers. If we accept their offer why on earth should we give him 3% ($24K) of our home’s equity for contributing nothing whatsoever?”
Question #2: “When looking at homes on our own and calling the listing agents ourselves to set up appointments, does that obligate us to go with the listing agent if we decide to place an offer on the property?”
Question #3: “Since the amount of work involved doesn’t really differ according to the value of the house, financially, it seems like the percentage commission would make higher prices more favorable from a buyer’s agent’s perspective. If this is the case, why would the buyer’s agent be motivated to help negotiate the price down?”
Now, there are nice, long, complicated answers for each of those questions, and nice, long, complicated answers are the very essence of a certain type of salesmanship. It’s called Tap-Dancing, and it works — at least if you’re easily confused. But here are much shorter, much more truthful answers to those three questions:
Answer #1: If you want to hang Read more
Time is physics, the stately transit of the stars and planets. Time is space is mass is energy, four faces of the same one thing, elegant in its simplicity.
The passage of time — or, rather, the awareness of the passage of time — is a human artifact, a man-made thing. The Greeks or their forebears gave us seconds and minutes and hours — elegantly composed of factorials. Days, weeks, months, decades, centuries, millennia — time marches on, don’t it?
Here’s my thing, and it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about with other people: I am constantly aware of the passage of time. It matters to me that I get things done, so I am always measuring my performance against the clock.
Even moreso if I have set aside time to complete a task.
Even moreso at the end of the workday.
Even moreso on Friday afternoons, when I look back to see what I accomplished for the week.
And much, much moreso at the start of a new month, when I not only look back at what got done in the month just past, but also look ahead to what the coming month promises.
If you’re in straight commission sales, you live out of a pipeline, that’s understood. It’s nice to watch those paychecks coming out of the pipeline, but the haunting question — always — is what am I doing right now to put future paychecks into the pipeline?
Like many people reading here, August was a great month for us. I won’t know until I see the final numbers, but it may have been our best month ever. Certainly it’s in the top five.
September shows real promise, both because lenders are getting back on their bicycles and because Phoenix is suddenly very appealing to all-cash buyers.
But still… I look at the calendar and I think about that pipeline…
I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to go to work.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Ah yes, it’s an election year. How do I know for certain? As Jeff Brown, who’s married to a native Ohioan- smart guy- recently twittered to me: “Ohioans’re gonna be very popular in the next 9 weeks. As usual, you guys are the babe at the prom without a date.”
Every four years we are courted and kissed by those same folks who forget we are here the rest of the time. I don’t welcome or enjoy the attention. I wish the federal government would forget we are here completely. I don’t want to be trotted out as an example of what went wrong with this or that administration. Don’t use Dayton to push your agenda and don’t use Dayton to make yourself feel good. Don’t do me any favors.
Dayton native Emily Langer wrote an article, Excuse Me, But I’m From Ohio, in the Washington Post today, accurately describing the strange political position in which Ohio, and the Midwest, finds itself every four years. In part:
Presidential candidates, in their efforts to look like regular folks, are among the chief purveyors of one of the most destructive stereotypes of Midwesterners: the working stiff who can’t work, thanks to the Rust Belt hemorrhaging all those jobs. During a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry set up shop outside a boarded-up building so that photos and television footage would show the city’s “ugly rump,” as the New York Times wrote, rather than the new office building across the street. No hard feelings, senator. The voters of Youngstown understood: It was easier for you to show that Ohioans needed your help if you pretended that they couldn’t help themselves.
Reporters do their part as well, stocking their dispatches from the Midwest with caricatures of down-at-the-heels factory workers and embittered waitresses. If you read enough of that prattle, you might start to wonder: Don’t these people have anything better to do than sit around carping about NAFTA? Don’t they know that McCain was just being honest when he said that some of Michigan’s vanished jobs won’t reappear? And by the way, don’t they Read more
It’s Saturday, which means it’s my Sunday, which means it’s my one day off if I’m lucky. This last month has been the busiest I have seen this year. The choices of my clients, both on the buying and listing side have seemed more challenging now than I have ever seen. Well, that’s not entirely true, many buyers have had no problem sitting on the fence. On top of that, the opportunities that have been presented to me have be overly scrutinized this week. I was out to dinner last night with some guests from out of town when it hit me. The stress and lack of sleep has had me going around acting somewhat zombie like, I literally responded to the Maitre d‘s question of “how are you this evening?” with a “nnnnyaeh”. The obviousness of my failing condition was now as apparent as the gibberish expelled from my throat.
Now before this comes across an absolute whining session for me to vent off the frustrations of my life at the moment, let me tell you that I have the tools to navigate rough waters. I’ve been here before, as we all have. The bumps along the way keep it interesting if nothing else, right? The unpredictable events the follow poor decision making are ones that can be reversed or taken into a more positive direction given the awareness of the direction of said bonehead moves. I’ve never thought that it was helpful to beat one’s self up over what could be a mistake. What I do feel is negligible is witnessing someone (or yourself) having the awareness of a mistake and keeping that action on the same path. This, a good friend of mine would say is like sticking your head in the oven only to find that it’s too hot for a head, and then going back again the next day to try it again and still find it’s still too warm…. though I could never figure out why somebody wanted stick their head the oven, the lesson was not lost on me.
Simplicity is always my best fix. Making Read more
I had a house close yesterday, and there was a little incident as I was trading keys with the buyers that I found instructive.
Back story: These folks came to me through my Arizona Republic column. That column produces almost no business for us, and I don’t milk it for business. But the clients it brings out are invariably very interesting, and they often bring with them multiple transactions. This particular family will do two listings and one purchase, and it was the purchase that closed yesterday.
They had started out thinking in terms of $800,000 homes in very tony desert locations. There are health issues, so I suggested that a smaller home closer to town might work better. We ended up buying a very nice home that comped for $425,000.
They were willing to risk losing the home in order to make sure they weren’t overpaying, so we offered $335,000 — $90,000 under two recent comp sales. We got that price, and the seller didn’t flinch at our repair requests. A fun, painless transaction, my kind of deal.
But wait. Didn’t I betray my sacred duty to milk the consumer for every last penny? I talked myself out of a commission on $800,000, then talked myself down again to a commission on $335,000. I don’t even think that way. I got a smokin’ deal for my buyers, and we all had fun every step of the way.
Because we’re doing multiple sides, we gave them a break on all three commissions. They didn’t ask, we just did it. Commission is always the elephant in the room, so, no matter what we plan to do, we always raise the issue first.
Why? Because doing the right thing is always the right thing to do, no matter what.
But also: Because affecting to ignore the elephant in the room only serves to make you look oily, evasive and corrupt — and the other party can use your presumptive corruption as leverage against you.
I believe that we do well by doing good — that consistent virtue reaps commensurate rewards in the long run. But even if we don’t, doing the Read more
Owners, brokers, exalted ones lend me your ear! Today is the day to become students of history. To learn from mistakes made in the past. Does the royal library lack history books? Send out the servants to fetch them! The servants are busy on other important affairs of state? Perhaps, while exhausting yourself with strenuous retail therapy or the daunting task of where to holiday next, you could swing the golden carriage by the Barnes & Noble bookery? It will only take a minute, Sire. Books written about the French Revolution or the American Revolution would be a good place for his Highness to begin.
Why such laborious reading? Sire, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who can’t read the writing on the walls are likely to wake up from their feathered pillows and find that neighboring brokerages have raided their precious little kingdoms. They will find themselves oblivious to the fact that their former citizens voluntarily renounced the crown and ever so enthusiastically swore allegiance to their new brokerage.
Surely I must jest? Certainly not! The people are tired. The people are hungry. The people are overworked and underappreciated. The people are frustrated with being asked to wait weeks to receive their commissions from the Royal Treasury. The people moan at their deprived conditions while you bask in your splendor. The people are growing deaf from all the lip service uttered from the Throne. Bothered by all the pretty windowdressing that brought them here but window shopping is as close as they are allowed to come. Outsiders looking in…
They demand action! They long to see a plan. They want to witness improvements made to the Kingdom. Fortifications made to protect them from outside forces hell-bent on plundering their farms and territories. Training to help them embrace changing times and rapidly evolving technologies. But, most of all they want to know that you actually care about their wellbeing more than prancing in your fancy robes at Court like a peacock strutting around the barnyard.
Who can you learn from in order to right the Read more
I’m not sure if it was Greg’s post welcoming me to Bloodhound Blog or if it is last name “H” week for the Hi-Tech cold callers…but my phone has been ringing off the hook with people trying to sell (give) me stuff to enhance my web 2.0 career.
The pitch, has been very simplistic in nature: The vendor is willing to give me their product/service for free or at a drastically reduced rate. IF, I will recommend it to the agents in my office and the ones that read my blog.
The close, “Isn’t this a great deal! What do you have to lose?”
What do I have to lose? Let me shuffle my feet and look down at them with my hands in my pockets. Ummmmm. Geee. I don’t know. How about my reputation with the people that I work for and depend on me to make sound decisions? How about the respect of people who read me and trust me to make reputable endorsements? If those aren’t good enough reasons how about all the money that I could lose? Money lost when agents figure out that I’m willing to sell my soul for free products/services on their dime. Referrals that might not come in if I recommend based off personal gain instead of success.
Do you really want my business? Do you really want me to recommend you? Would you really like me to write about how your product/service is the greatest thing since IMAP on my iPhone? Do you really want to improve my web 2.0 career?
First, I’m not looking for a handout. Times are hard but I’m not offering to give away my services. You shouldn’t either. People pay me a lot of money to sell their homes. I’m good at what I do. Why should I expect any less from you?
Second, interact with me on BHB, Active Rain, My Space or any of the other online communities that I frequent. Comment on my posts. Ask questions. Disagree. Challenge the way that I think and do business. Show me something different. Something exciting! Knock my Read more
“Oh that the Roman people had but one neck, that I might cut it off at a blow!” –Caligula
Here is the naked essence of Saul Klein’s so-called “MLS 5.0” proposal:
The MLS of the future will bring a marketing service and benefit to the industry by being the single point of entry for listing data and then, based upon the election of the broker, distribute that information to web portals, newspapers, even radio and television, handheld devices and applications.
The emphasis was in the original, which is a nice illustration of how much Klein trusts you not to see what he’s up to.
What does that sentence actually say?
It says that Klein’s idealized “MLS of the Future” will be a national monopoly system controlled by real estate brokers and the NAR — to the immediate and permanent detriment of independent MLS systems and vendors, Web 2.0 listings aggregators and — most especially — individual real estate agents.
What Klein is proposing, ignoring the presumed benefits to accrue to his own ventures, is to give the real estate industry one chokepoint, one bottleneck, so that the NAR can put a choke-chain around it.
Who will control that “single point of entry for listing data”? The NAR.
Who will control who can and cannot have access to listing data? The NAR.
Who will have the entire real estate industry in a chokehold? The NAR.
This is so diabolical, it makes me wonder if the fix is already in — if this evil plan is going to be rammed down our collective throats in November in Orlando.
Let’s assume it is not. Klein’s proposal is an undiluted evil, and it is incumbent upon everyone working in hi-tech real estate to oppose this vicious plan with every fiber in your being.
To say more is to gild the lily. I think Klein’s actual objective is to pull off another Realtor.com heist, to get the NAR to sell him a national MLS monopoly. But the benefit to the NAR is obvious: With a national monopoly MLS system, brokers will once again have the power to bring their agents to heel. If you understand what it means Read more
Teri Lussier sent me this clip as a celebration of Unchained in Orlando:
That’s sweet, but I always think of this when I think of lullabies:
And that’s so brutal that it’s almost unimaginably brutal — until you look at this:
That’s the real face of war. Not well-turned-out soldiers with their bootlaces smartly tied, not bombers or aircraft carriers. War is your grandmother wailing because everything she has ever known has been burned to a cinder.
Julie Gold is a great songwriter. She wrote From a Distance, and Bette Midler couldn’t quite ruin it as a massively over-produced anthem. But Nancy Griffith, on her best days, can sing a simple song simply. This is a lullaby for the people who are not sleeping in Tbilisi.