If you’re looking for a bubble, its name is Web 2.0…
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Category: Marketing (page 103 of 191)
Linked below is a podcast of the presentation Steven Groves and I did at PodCamp AZ. The video turned out to be vertigo-inducing, so I chopped everything back to audio-only. Steven and I both have distinctive voices, so you shouldn’t have any trouble picking us out of the chaos.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
I am buried. I have five houses in play and Cathy is on compulsory bed rest — on pain of hospitalization. I have a zillion little jobs that need doing around here, and I keep coming up with new ideas. For instance, I think it would be cool to promote the long list of Odysseus Medal nominees as a feed, as they come in, so that people can see what others are nominating. I say “sufficient unto the day” all the time, but, for now, I have to really mean it, because I can’t afford to get sick.
Here’s a classic joke:
Q: How do you get a professional poker player off your porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza, cheapskate!
I’ve never been a big booster of the idea of real estate as a profession because I tend to associate the word “professional” with people who lie about what they do for a living and live in Uncle Bob’s basement. Real estate is a business, on its best days, and someday it might grow to be an industry — if it ever dares to wean itself from Big Mother’s teat.
Bill Leider from Real Estate Shows has a different take on the matter, and he deploys it to take this week’s Odysseus Medal with What Is A Professional?:
When we shift the focus of the term professional from what we do to how we are perceived and treated, the definition and the entire concept of the designation “professional” changes.
In that context of status and respect, what exactly is a professional? I believe that a “professional” is someone who takes what they do, whatever that happens to be, and transforms it into an art form. They make the mundane look magnificent. They make seemingly impossible things look drop-dead easy. They cover all the details, all the time. They master the subtleties. They silently acknowledge that they have a gift for what they do and they give that gift to the people in their world respectfully and compassionately. They know that they have never “arrived.”
They are never content with their present body of knowledge. They live with a Read more
The winner of The Black Pearl Award a few weeks ago is the newest contributor to BloodhoundBlog:
Eric Blackwell is Director of Technology for a RE/Max franchise in Louisville, KY. He is active in the real estate webmasters community and consults on Search Engine Optimization and Marketing for select clients.
Eric is a good soldier, so he’s pointing his BloodhoundBlog traffic to his day job, but he also operates the hugely informative Eric On Search weblog.
How many contributors do we intend to add to BloodhoundBlog? As many as it takes to make sure we don’t miss anything. And with that in mind, if you have something we need, we need to hear from you. There is plenty of room in the RE.net for many voices. But if you can command the attention of a national audience, we can provide the platform so that your voice will be heard.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
The strike poses an interesting challenge for television at a time where internet usage has surpassed TV viewing time in most homes. Users are already choosing online entertainment over TV, how many more will switch off their televisions when their favorite shows stop going to air? These eyeballs present a real opportunity for online content creators at all levels; from the VC funded video startups through to the DIY part timers. The trends in viewer numbers have all been headed online to this point, this strike could well accelerate this trend, particularly if it lasts over the long term.
I was thinking about this yesterday, and, of course, this was the subject of the very first post I wrote on BloodhoundBlog:
In a subsistence culture, the work of the mind is precious and literally unsupportable. We are by now so rich that millions of people can create intellectual resources that they give away, in turn to be remarketed by others…. If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?
As an irony supplement, some of the free content that will be created during this strike will have been created by the strikers.
Amendment: Like this:
There are natural barriers to wealth, such as scarcity and inaccessibility. There are man-made barriers to wealth, like walls and laws. And there are barriers to wealth that are co-factors of relative wealth and poverty.
In a condition of vast abundance, trying to build walls around popular media content is an effort doomed to failure. What the Writers Guild actually needs to advance its agenda is not a strike but a campaign to forbid the creation of cheesy entertainment without a license.
And now you understand the National Association of Realtors…
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
A dozen-and-a-half nominees, but seven of them are from BloodhoundBlog. We had a great week; there were five more that I had to wince hard and cut.
A lot from the news, as usual, plus tools, tips, tricks and techniques and the kind of deep thinking that makes this competition what it is.
Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.
Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.
Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:
< ?PHP
$AltEntries = array (
"Galen Ward -- Photos Photos are worth 1,000 words (and a lot of money too)”,
“Kris Berg — The green room The Green Room“,
“Jim Cronin — RE weblogging The 7 Reasons Why Your (Future) Clients Should Care That You Are a Real Estate Blogger“,
“Jim Duncan — Martyr yourself? Are you willing to martyr yourself to the industry?“,
“Dan Green — Investors in ARMs Falling Prices And Adjusting ARMs: Real Estate Investors Have A Way Out“,
“Jay Thompson — Prize money? A Commission is Prize Money (?!?)“,
“Richard Warren — Trickle down The Economic Trickle Down Effect“,
“Rhonda Porter — Mortgage witch hunt The Mortgage Witch Hunt“,
“Steve Belt — Trulia Voices Opting out of Trulia Voices“,
“Brian Brady — Hiring a Realtor Hire A Realtor Like You Would Sign a Top NFL Draft Pick“,
“Bill Leider — What is a professional? What Is A Professional?“,
“Geno Petro — La spinster? Mademoiselle? Oui. La Spinster?…ZUT!“,
“Kris Berg — Gas guzzler My Hybrid is a Gas Guzzler“,
“Michael Cook — Perfect storm Real Estate Perfect Storm Warning: Do Not Miss This Window of Opportunity“,
“Brian Brady — HR 3915 HR 3915 Is Dangerous“,
“Teri Lussier — Twittering Twittering on a wing and a prayer“,
“Geno Petro — Search or sell Search Or Sell, Young Man“,
“Kris Berg — Genoa Petrol You, ma’am, are no Genoa Petrol!”
);
shuffle($AltEntries);
$radioGroup = “”;
$num = count($AltEntries);
for ($i=0; $i< $num; $i++)
{
$pieces = explode("\t", $AltEntries[$i]);
$radioGroup .= "
$radioGroup .= “$pieces[0], “;
$radioGroup .= “$pieces[1]”;
}
echo (“
- $radioGroup
“)
?>
Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Cut-off is today at 12 Noon MST, which means that folks on the left coast, particularly, need to adjust their thinking. In any case, if you know of something that reeks of pith (does that sound right?), your own work or someone else’s, nominate it now before you have to wonder what time it is in Phoenix.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Can a picture really be worth a thousand words?
This is my column this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):
How low can they go? Negotiating a real estate bargain
Everybody wants a bargain. The question for homebuyers is, how do you get one?
I was in a property last weekend with a buyer. The home was listed for $450,000 and the buyer asked, “Do you think they’d be willing to cut the price by $100,000?”
Stranger things have happened, but I’d bet against it.
Here’s why: Let’s assume the monthly payment is $2,000. The seller could afford to wait four years for a better offer before slashing the the price by $100,000 would make sense. There are other factors to consider in real life, and this kind of analysis is best done on a spreadsheet. But a lot can change in four years.
You certainly don’t want to pay any more than you have to, but you cannot possibly pay less than the seller will agree to.
What can make sellers particularly negotiable? A new job out of state and they can’t qualify for two mortgages. A new house under contract with a hefty non-refundable deposit. No one likes to think about profiting on the misfortunes of others, but sellers who are facing foreclosure are likely to be ready to cut to the quick.
In other words, sellers who have a strong motivation to sell now are going to be a lot more willing to negotiate price cuts than people who kinda-sorta want to move, provided they can get their price.
But even if you find a motivated seller, there’s a complicating factor: That seller has to have room to negotiate — equity in the home. If the house is encumbered at or near the list price, there’s a limit to how much the sellers can cut the price, no matter what their motivation. To go further would result in a short sale — the sellers would come to the closing table “short” of the full amount they owe.
Short sales can be great bargains, too, but, since you’re negotiating with the lender more than the seller, they’re a chancy proposition at best, and they can take a Read more
Don’t blame me for this, pin the blame on Matthew Hardy.
Note that if you happen to be the constantly-besieged president of a beleaguered trade association, I will be in Las Vegas on Monday, November 12th. I can show you how to get out in front of all these ethics complaints.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
We’re adding another new BloodhoundBlogger today — and I’m not done yet.
Today’s addition? A well-known name in the RE.net, Jim Duncan:
Jim Duncan is a third-generation Realtor, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a long-time real estate weblogger. He is active within the NAR, and has made a name for himself as an ethical lodestone in real estate.
Jim was one of the first webloggers to make contact with us when we started BloodhoundBlog. He is a very thoughtful man — a man full of thought — and he is never hard to find, since he’s always on the side of the angels.
I think Jim is one of the most important voices on the RE.net, period, particularly on the subject of Realtor ethics. So why didn’t I invite him to join us a long time ago? Pure thoughtlessness on my part. For the most part we have added people by self-selection, and I have tried to avoid stepping on toes. (Honest, I have!)
In any case, I finally caught a clue and thought to ask, and Jim was gracious enough to accept.
Last night in email to me, Brian Brady pointed out that we had had 15 posts by nine contributors in the past two days. We’re not trying to overwhelm you, but we are trying to do what we came here to do. More and more, you will have to learn to treat the enblogged globe like television, tuning in to what works for you and switching away from what doesn’t. I know we are not for everyone. But for real estate professionals who care about the ideas that will drive our industry in the twenty-first century, we need to be a hot-button on your remote control.
And if it all gets to be too much for you, you can tune out everything except the Jim Duncan Channel.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I caught this bit from the GeekEstate Blog in my feed reader.
That’s the list of weblogs in the suitable-for-framing map of “Real Estate Web 2.0” produced by the 1000Watt Consulting group, a consortium of people who make money by not understanding the difference between wattage and luminosity.
Notice anyone missing? It’s not just us. Curbed can’t find a parking space. Rain City Guide is left out in the rain. Even Bert and Ernie, who have been everywhere, can’t make it here.
We get snubbed from dumbass beauty contests all the time, and I take a certain kind of delight in it. First, nobody has to be told what is going at BloodhoundBlog — or anywhere else that matters. And second — and this is especially rich — the essence of Web 2.0 is that no one can tell you what does or does not matter. The first middle-men to be disintermediated by Web 2.0 were the would-be arbiters of taste.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Okay. So Cathleen is wicked sick, coughing like a rented tractor. We’re busy, and I don’t mean just a little. Applications are up, originations are up, rates are down, demand is maybe just short of a frenzy, and the mechanics of doom today accidentally discovered that the implications of currency inflation are that their desperately-sought collapse in values may already have happened — and no one noticed.
In any case, just to complicate my life, I agreed to present with Steven Groves this weekend at PodCamp AZ at The University of Advancing Technology.
We’ll be doing the session on “Real Estate and Social Media.” It’s Steven’s show, and his passion as well, so it should be worth seeing. We’re on from 3:30 to 4:30 pm, and we may be accessible in video live on uStream.com as well. I would like to shoot digital video, too, if we can rope a volunteer to operate the camera.
The links I’ve shown here will give you all the details. See you there!
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” — Samuel Johnson
Kris Berg asked me last night about my experiences writing for money. This was something I was interested in when I was very young, but, again from Johnson, “The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting.” I have an absolutely unbounded loathing for the word “submit,” and this was something I could never eradicate from my mind, every time I licked a hopeful envelope.
When I am retired, I may consider the matter again, although it seems certain that writing for money is going the way of recording pop music for money: Ever more popular, no money. That doesn’t even matter to me. I’ve given away everything I’ve ever written, and I don’t see myself stopping. It is up to the reader to decide if the product is worth the price — and we are so much mis-schooled that many of us don’t know how to evaluate something that comes to us without a price. But it is very satisfying to me to write and to know that my writing is not being mucked with by some drooling, drunken moron to whom I am expected to “submit.” That satisfaction, the freedom to write whatever I damn well please, has always been compensation enough for me.
But do not for a moment entertain the idea that I am not writing for money. Yesterday I had what I considered to be an unjustifiably low offer on one of our listings. You can’t blame a guy for trying, but, upon reflection, I decided that the problem was at least partly mine.
I’ve written quite a bit about writing for real estate, but I realized yesterday that I need to be doing more than rhapsodizing about benefits and lifestyle. I am a good persuasive writer, and some small part of the writing I do for a listing has to be devoted to wrestling with logic and not just gaily dancing with emotion.
So: I wrote this text and put it on the back of the flyer with the floorplan:
Defending the price of this home…
It’s common Read more
Today we’re adding another writer to our line-up, but we’re also revealing the secret subterranean agenda of The Odysseus Medal competition.
Every time I turn around, there is someone accusing me of underhanded methods. I was seeking to get rich at $6.17 a month as an Amazon Affiliate. The Odysseus Medal is alleged to be a link-baiting scheme. And — the worst of my crimes — I hogged all the good grades in school!
I live in a simple world. I figure things are pretty much what they seem to be. Certainly I am, as is anything I build. I don’t do double-talk. I don’t get it, and I don’t care to take the time to puzzle it out.
So what is the real, super-secret, ultra-nefarious objective of The Odysseus Medal?
To unearth and celebrate talent. Period. My secondary hope is that I might recruit talented writers whose work I haven’t seen before to come write with us. But I want to improve my own mind — as I assume you do, too — and a good way for us to achieve that objective is to tell each other about great writing and great ideas we find as we leap across these nets.
Ooh… Crafty…
Today’s introduction is a treat for me. I had never read him before Sunday morning. He was nominated for The Odysseus Medal, and I knew about a third of the way through his post that he had won it. By the time I had finished reading, I knew I wanted to recruit him for BloodhoundBlog.
Enough. The man:
Geno Petro is the voice of Chicago on the RE.net. A top-producing listing agent, he has done leasing and has worked in his own behalf as an investor. On top of all that, he is a stunningly original writer.
Geno Petro is an incomparable writer. Like Kris Berg, he takes you right into his world, and, while you are there, you cannot even imagine any other, so completely is it realized.
I love what we do here, but one of the things I love best is that it makes all of us stronger. We all have to run Read more