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Category: Marketing (page 142 of 191)

March 10, 2007

What is the difference between a weblogger and the press?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

The other day I was on the phone with Jessica Swesey from Inman News and 17 bigfoot real estate webloggers. We were discussing the plans for the Bloggers Connect event at this summer’s Inman Connect. Someone suggested that a panel could address how bloggers can come to be treated as “press.”

To which my instant reaction was, “Ew!”

I really like Jessica Swesey, but, to me, “media” or “press” or especially “mainstream media” suggest the worst kind of teacher’s pet, hall monitor, establishment toadyism. Support the blood drive! Adopt a puppy! Come to the Ladies Auxiliary Bake Sale! It’s not the intense fascination with bad news that riles me as much as the plastic-smiled saccharine boosterism. I am least comfortable when I don’t know if I am being lied to. When I lend my mind to the “press,” I feel like I am being lied to in one way or another most of the time.

This is exactly what weblogging evolved to eliminate. Love him or hate him, Charles Johnson is never trying to hustle you or pander to you. Webloggers say exactly what they mean, and they document every controversy with copious links. Doubt me? Please do! Here’s how you can find out everything I know, with links at each stop to further amend your knowledge. You will die trying to pursue all the links, but — unlike all the preening Read more

March 9, 2007

Stopping traffic to sell houses

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is another level of our hoped-for untouchable assault on the marketplace. I’ve talked about our custom signs before, but this is what everything looks like on the post. We compete against broker’s signs — never custom but really, really ugly. We built a promo postcard out of the main sign, just to rub it in.

We are a boutique brokerage. There are just the two of us, so we are certainly a very tiny brokerage. It would not be wide of the mark to insist that we are an experimental brokerage. I, personally, would rather play with new ideas than do anything else. But, house by house, and piece by piece of this listing puzzle, we are going to take the market for these kinds of homes. The kinds of things we do would be useless on other homes. At $400,000 and up, there is no limit to what we can do, and no limit to the demand to have those things done.

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March 9, 2007

Single-property weblogs: Our latest vision

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been slugging away for days on a new single-property weblog for 909 West Culver Street in Phoenix. Sandboxed for now, and who knows if the extra searchability will matter. The ease of editability for people who aren’t me is a huge bonus. The idea of using WordPress as a CMS only really works if the upfront investment is going to pay off over time, which is not the case here. But the fixed-first-post idea in WordPress 2.1 is perfect for our application, putting the “cover” plus eleven slide shows all in one spot.

What’s new in what we’re doing?: The slide shows and the interactive floor plan. I tried using a Google API map, but it clobbered MSIE 7.0, so I have a static map for now. I’ll be adding a video podcast, but that ain’t there yet.

Not as pretty as Dan Green’s site, I don’t think, but what could be?

Take a look and let me know what you think. We’re aiming at complete untouchability — a listing so rich in value-added features that none of our competitors can touch us. Are we wide of the mark?

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March 7, 2007

Poster for Free Russell Shaw Sales Success seminar

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cathleen has ironed out all the details for next Tuesday’s Russell Shaw Sales Success seminar.

As a reminder, the event will be held Tuesday March 13, 2007, at the offices of North American Title, 3200 East Camelback Road, Phoenix, AZ 85018. The event will run from 6:30 PM to approximately 9:30 PM, and refreshements will be served.

There is no charge to attend.

Russell will handle two meta-topics, followed by question and answer sessions, with a short break between.

North American Title and Worldwide Credit Corporation are sponsoring the event.

I’ve made a poster you can hang up in your office to let other agents know about the seminar. All the details plus driving directions.

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March 6, 2007

What’s a Realty.bot? Not me, alas . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re listing Thursday, and it’s been long enough since we’ve done one of these Grand Opera listings that I have a lot of new stuff to invent from scratch. Ideas are easy, it’s execution that’s hard. The sign and the collateral cards are built and being printed. We’re playing with a card that plays off of the sign to emphasize the differences you get by listing with us.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can monitor the changes in the web site/weblog named in the sign over the next 48 hours or so. The template is one I’ve been playing with for our brokerage web site (itself to be a weblog), but this version of it will be unique to this house.

I’ve got other balls in the air, too, so I might be thin on the ground for a little while.

James Hsu asked me to define Realty.bot, so here’s an on-stilts explication:

A Realty.bot is an internet start-up that plans to undertake some part of the residential real estate transaction, usually as an adjunct to selling advertising.

Trulia.com and PropSmart.com are listings.bots, acquiring listings by scraping, direct entry and XML feeds.

Zillow.com and several others are AVMs, Automated Valuation Methods, and Zillow is graduating to a direct-entry-only listings.bot, but they don’t like that designation.

Redfin.com can seem like a Realty.bot, but, as with many other new entrants, it’s really a brokerage with a higher-tech front-end.

Arguably, a true Realty.bot is strictly a media/advertising play, but that’s something that could change in time. ShackPrices.com, for example, plans to become a leads vendor, and it is not unreasonable to argue that this may be the ultimate business model for most/all Realty.bots.

A better bright-line dividing point might be face-to-face end-user contact. We may come to a point where a Realty.bot is distinguished from other vendors by being untouched-by-human-hands, a completely automated real estate product offering.

By then I will have made up different words.

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March 6, 2007

Weblogging as if it really mattered: How to write with integrity and passion

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Do you know what stinks? The world is acrawl with canned-spam, cookie-cutter, rinse-and-repeat weblogging advice — and people follow it slavishly instead of keeping their own counsel, living their own ideal, following their own star.

That is: If I read another weblog post on how to write weblog posts, I think I’ll scream. To absolve myself of charges of hypocrisy, in advance, this not a post about how to write posts, it’s a post about how to write.

Do you want to know how to write? Here’s the tiniest taste of a first lesson: Start in the middle.

Not: “This is my report on…”

Not: “Webster’s defines…”

Not: “How can I begin to tell you…?”

Start in the middle, the way you’d start a phone conversation with someone you knew would be calling.

Like this: “Do you know what stinks?”

Oh, yes, comforting rules abound, but they are the very same rules you rebel against in every other aspect of your life. You say, “I don’t want the cookie-cutter taupe-on-taupe one-size-fits-all same-damn-thing.” And yet you scour the web, looking for sage advice about how to produce weblog posts that will not challenge, will not inspire, will not aspire, will not invoke, convoke or provoke, will not do anything except testify to your perfect ability to master perfectly bad advice.

If you are not interested in what you’re writing, how could you expect anyone else to be interested?

If you are convinced (by your own conviction or by having imbibed from too many fonts of false wisdom) that you cannot hope to connect with other people except by resort to EZ-reading tricks — dumbing the entire universe down to the drooling imbecility of the dumbest conceivable specimen — why would you expect anyone to respect and reflect upon your brilliance?

Good grief!

If you are writing to manipulate, follow the rules. They work.

If you’re writing to sell a product, follow the rules. They work.

If you’re writing to hide, writing to dissemble, writing to occlude, writing to obfuscate, writing to pull the wool over as many eyes as you can capture — follow the rules. They work.

But: If you are writing to communicate — make Read more

March 5, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at Salt Lake Real Estate Blog. Host Nigel Swaby invokes a March Madness format. We entered Brian Brady’s interview with Lenn Harley. Brian made it to the Elite Eight, but not to the Final Four. Next week’s Carnival: The Phoenix Real Estate Guy.

The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is also up at The Landlord Blog. We entered Jeff Brown’s article on accelerated depreciation. This is the best investment article I have ever read anywhere, by the only standard that matters: Money. When it appeared here, I immediately sent it to every one of my investor clients. If you didn’t do the same, amend that omission immediately. In any case, it didn’t win. Go figure…

We had a lot of great stuff last week, but The Carnival of BloodhoundBlog award goes to Jeff’s essay. When a sweet and thoughtful man shows us how to make thousands more per year from our investments, a tip of the hat doesn’t even begin to pay the debt we owe him…

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March 5, 2007

True reform in the real estate industry will not result from undermining buyer representation

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been sitting on a post from Jeff Corbett, The X-Broker, for a few days. Jeff Argues that Realty.bots will eliminate buyer’s agents. This actually ties in with recent announcements that major brokerages will be feeding listings to Realty.bots like Trulia.com and Google base. I get the idea Jeff thinks these are good things. I think he’s mistaken.

Start here: Jessica Swesey at InmanBlog asked:

If the DOJ wins and NAR is forced to retract policies, what is the likely chain of events to follow? Who wins and who loses?

My reply:

If the DOJ tries to play pirate with the current system, the big brokerages may go all in-house, which they could easily do already. Then there will be no small brokerages.

Jeff objects to this, but it’s not an unreasonable proposition.

Note, for example, the the overwhelming majority of listings in Tucson are held by one brokerage — Long Realty. Who gains more from the cooperative system imposed by the TARMLS system — Long or all the little brokerages competing against it? If Long pulled out of TARMLS, what would happen happen to those smaller players?

In Phoenix, the market is dominated by Realty Executives and by RE/Max, Keller Williams, Coldwell-Banker and Century 21 Franchises. If they pulled out of ARMLS, either in isolation or by forming a new big-boys-only MLS system, brokerages like mine would be wiped out overnight.

Too much of this debate is beside the point. Pundits simultaneously attribute too much and too little importance to the MLS. From a professional’s point of view, Realty.bots are not comparable to MLS systems, and they probably never will be. They are good for window-shopping by consumers, not for searching by professionals. But wresting control of the MLS away from brokers, somehow forcing them to produce content against their own interests, will not change anything that matters in the practice of residential real estate representation. The reason for this is simple: What is wrong in residential real estate representation has nothing to do with the MLS itself.

We’ll come back to that. First: Buyers buy from the selection that is available to them. This is true of everything Read more

March 4, 2007

The RE.net waist-loss challenge

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When I met The Leggy Blonde, I had a 34-inch waist. I was working out for at least 45 minutes every day, and I was maybe a can-and-a-half short of six-pack abs. I had been through a pretty bad car accident, and being in good shape was a secondary consequence of re-mastering the art of ambulation. (I can’t run at all, if you want to challenge me to a contest you know I’ll lose.)

Things change. Being enthralled by a woman takes time, and among the blocks of time I devoted to being enthralled — then being involved, then being a couple, then being a team, then being espoused — was the time I had spent working out. I have worked from home since 1993, and in all that time the refrigerator has never once forgotten my name.

By now I have a 45-inch waist, which doesn’t even count this great bulbous thing that hangs over my waist. I’m 47 years old, but I have always felt like I was 19. I weigh about 250 pounds, where I have always felt like I weigh about 160. I never, ever cease to be surprised when I see this old fat guy staring back at me from the mirror.

At the New Year, I resolved to do something different. Until the last ten years or so, I had always made time to read for pleasure. And, obviously, I haven’t been making time to work out. Now and then, catch as catch can — not enough. So I resolved to put in at least a half-hour a day on the stationary bike, this so I could also read at the same time.

The reading part is working out fine. I know the exercise is also working out, because I can feel the strength in my thighs, calves and glutes. My wind is better, and my overall stamina is improved. But I’m not seeing any visible weight loss. I’m not worried about losing pounds, so far, because muscle mass is more dense than fat. But I would like to see some evidence of evaporating fat.

Take it to the next Read more

March 3, 2007

First Russell Shaw Sales Success symposium scheduled for Tuesday, March 13

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Mega-producing Realtor and BloodhoundBlog contributor Russell Shaw is hosting a series of Sales Success symposia for striving Realtors. The purpose of the events is to establish the most vitally-important points to be covered in a sales training curriculum, to be produced in the coming months in audio and video podcasts. Russell will address larger meta-topics and then entertain questions from the audience to unearth smaller but still important sub-topics to be addressed in the podcasts.

The first of these events will be held on Tuesday March 13, 2007, at the offices of North American Title, 3200 East Camelback Road, Suite #150, Phoenix, AZ 85018. The event will run from 6:30 PM to approximately 9:30 PM, and refreshements will be served. There is no charge to attend. Russell will handle two meta-topics, followed by question and answer sessions, with a short break between. North American Title and Worldwide Credit Corporation are sponsoring the event and will make short presentations.

Who should come? A striving Realtor is one who has learned how to stay afloat in this business but wants to learn how to build a bigger, more profitable business. In other words, if you’re a brand new agent or if you’re happy with your current level of production or if you’re already a top-producer, these symposia are not for you. Because Russell is building the curriculum for a full-blown Sales Success training course, his goal is to hear from the Realtors who want most to learn the lessons he has mastered in his career.

If you would like to attend this event, fill out our RSVP form. The space available to us is limited, so don’t fill out the form unless you know for sure you can attend. This is an opportunity to learn a whole lot even as you help other Realtors learn a whole lot — for years to come. Plus which, it should be a lot of fun…

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March 2, 2007

The numbers are clearly bogus, Mr. Kelman. Show us the files . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kevin Boer thought he found an error in Redfin’s accounting of its MLS results. What he found turned out to be trivial, which led to another round of war-hooping from the Redfin tribe.

Meanwhile, our new contributor James Hsu has demonstrated that Redfin’s horse runs behind the middle of the pack among big-name Seattle brokerages. In other words, as predicted, experienced traditional agents do out-perform Redfin’s salaried agents.

I finally took a look at Redfin’s spreadsheet today, which they were kind enough to share with me. There are two formulae for calculating the Sales Price to List Price ratio, but I’m not sure that matters. Ten houses sold for less that 65% of list, which I find amazing. More amazing still, nine sold for more than 150% of list. One of them sold for 1,068.526% of list.

One condominium sold for 10% of list price. At that price, I think I might have taken more than one. Condo buyers are smarter, though. Only four of them were willing to pay more than 144%, although a whole bunch sold for more than 110% of list. In Phoenix, they’d be investigating for loan fraud.

Here’s the cute part: Redfin sold 45 condominiums, of which 20 sold for more than its vaunted average performance of 99.340%. Okayfine, fewer than half. For residential listings, however, Redfin kindasorta sucked: Out of 125 sales, 70 homes sold for more than their average.

I named all kinds of reasons for holding Redfin’s claims in doubt. The overarching question — tough agents or tough clients? — is the one Redfin seeks to avoid. Its claims all week have been a textbook example of the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent: If P then Q, Q therefore P. If Redfin’s agents are tougher than average, then its ratios should beat the market. Redfin’s ratios beat the market (a specious if not actually false claim in any case), therefore Redfin’s agents are tougher than average. The conclusion does not follow, and the raw numbers seem to argue eloquently that the results achieved by Redfin’s clients were caused by Redfin’s clients, not by its agents. The skinflints did 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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