BloodhoundBlog

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Category: Marketing (page 148 of 191)

January 26, 2007

Recent refinancing can make selling a house costly

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in this morning’s Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Recent refinancing can make selling a house costly

A buyer e-mailed me a question about a house she might be interested in.

At first glance, it looked promising: A newer west-side home in good condition. The price wasn’t awful, maybe $10,000 over what it should be, and it was well within what she could afford to pay.

The house has been on the market for more than two months. The seller was transferred and has moved out. These are harbingers of a motivated seller. The listing even says so: “Motivated seller.”

This is the prologue to a story that should have a happy ending, right?

Probably not.

The seller should have had plenty of equity in the home, which from our point of view means plenty of wiggle room on price. We know going in that homes like this are selling now for about the same prices we would have seen in June or July 2005.

Regardless of what the seller might want, the price the home will sell for will be set by the prevailing market — a buyer’s market.

So what’s the problem?

The seller refinanced the home in August 2005, taking out most or all of the accrued equity.

In principle, there’s nothing wrong with this. Homeowners can convert high-interest debt on taxed income into low-interest, tax-deductible debt.

But if the homeowner has to sell soon thereafter, particularly in a down market, we can hit an iceberg.

The seller borrowed $235,000 in the refinancing. That will have to be paid, along with the marketing costs of the home, plus closing costs. The absolute minimum the seller can accept for the house, without bringing his own money to the closing table, is at least $5,000 more than the home is worth.

In this circumstance, sellers are apt to say, “But where’s my equity?” The answer: You already spent it.

We may pursue this house anyway, but if we do, it will have to be as a “short sale,” with the seller paying the shortfall between the purchase price and what is owed on the home.

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January 25, 2007

BloodhoundBlog to host February 5th Carnival of Real Estate

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So: We’re hitting all 12 cylinders, with two grand slam introductions this week. I should think we would be a slam dunk for next week’s Carnival of Real Estate.

Except…

We’re hosting it. Not this Monday, a week from Monday.

We offered a long time ago to pick up the slack if a hosting blog had to beg off at the last minute. It happened.

This is a cool opportunity for us: Group blog, group judging. We have Cameron working on software we can use to manage the judging process with multiple judges.

We’re also hosting the Carnival of Real Estate Investing on February 19th, with Jeff Brown, Michael Cook and Brian Brady doing the judging.

Plan ahead. Be ready for us. We’ll be ready for you…

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January 25, 2007

Podcast with Russell Shaw, Part One: “Be cause over it rather than effect of it”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is the first of three podcasts we have made with mega-producing Realtor and BloodhoundBlog contributor Russell Shaw. Cathleen and I talked with Russell for around four hours, recording about two hours and forty minutes of that conversation. This particular segment starts with a discussion of Russell’s real estate career and ends with Russell discussing an effective goal setting strategy. He cites the film The Secret as an aid to understanding the issues.

Why Russell Shaw? Because he sells 400 houses a year — and plans to sell 2,000 houses a year. We all of us spend so much time looking for hi-tech magic bullets that we lose sight of the fact that real estate sales is face-to-face, belly-to-belly, door-to-door. Russell is nobody’s Luddite, but he is very proudly a champion of shoe-leather real estate. I think he has a lot more to teach us than pre-IPO poindexters who have never actually sold a house.

As a warning, Russell has a salty tongue. Children and people with delicate sensibilities are duly advised.

The Russell Shaw podcasts: Parts I, II and III

January 25, 2007

Anonymous Posters Can Be A Destructive Influence, or How Communication Is The Difference Between Good PR and Bad PR

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

657 MLS Closed Listing Sheet

Sometimes, the difference between good PR and bad PR is communication.

In October 2006, I blogged about a condo building in Chicago that was more than 19 months late on delivery. To me, the story wasn’t that the building was delayed; that happens all the time. What was most interesting to me was that the contracted buyers actually started a blog to share information with each other about their experiences.

Because the developer’s team was not disseminating information as fast as the building’s buyers wanted, a blog looked the perfect choice to disseminate information quickly and efficiently. I can’t think of a better use of a community-like blog that this.

I also found it nice that the blog host including the following text:

Thoughtful comments and respectful opinions on the status of 657 Fulton are welcome. Off-topic, slanderous, disrespectful or abusive posts will be removed at the host’s discretion.

What I didn’t find nice? The host’s not-so-subtle decision to allow anonymous posting.

At the start, the blog behaved quite well, providing a community-like atmosphere for scores of buyers just wanting information about their building. The developer and his team chimed in, too, with updates and notes about permits and progress.

Slowly, though, the tide began to turn. As the delays grew longer, communication from the developer’s team grew more sporadic. Buyers visiting the blog were clamoring for information but all they found was each other.

Before long, with anonymous-like names like “657 Fulton”, “Angry Buyer on the 4th Floor” and “Frustrated on Fulton”, buyers in the building began to voice their anger and unrest. They wrote whatever they wanted and knew that there was no recourse. Who would ever find out the name of the real author? Libel and slander? Why not — it couldn’t be traced anyway? As I think back, even the blog’s host was never publicly named on the site.

The 657 Fulton blog then became a breeding ground for nasty remarks, rumor and conjecture about the developer, and his team. One derogatory remark led to another and led to another and led to another. Sarcasm and mean-spiritedness ruled. And, given the choice Read more

January 24, 2007

Catch your kid doing something right: Our son Cameron and the upgrade path of SlideShowMarge

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been building web pages and web sites for clients since I started as a Realtor. In the dark days of the early millennium, email services — especially AOL’s — were unreliable. Plus which, who wants to receive four megabytes of photos by email?

And while building a one-off web site to show off houses sounds like a lot of work, it really isn’t. If I had previewed ten houses, I would end up with a folder on my hard disk containing ten subfolders, each with the photos I had taken of a particular house.

In the Mac world, to get a list of files, you just Select All in the folder and Copy. When you Paste in a text file, you get the filenames in the order you had them sorted, one to a line.

From there it was easy to run two Search and Replace operations to recode the filenames as HTML img calls. Chop and drop that code into a standing dummy web page, type a headline and any needed body copy, and save the edited file under the name “index.html” in the same folder as the photos.

Voila! Instant web page. Do that in each of the ten folders of photos, then do it with those folders in the top level folder. In about twenty minutes’ time, I could build a web site full of photos.

Okayfine. But I can write all kinds of elaborate code from scratch. And, perhaps more importantly, I can catch my own mistakes. What about normal people, born into this world without a propeller beanie?

About fifteen months ago, I wrote a piece of software in PHP called SlideShowBob (I named it after Side Show Bob, Krusty the Clown’s sidekick on The Simpsons, and I am very far from being the first dink to think up this dumb joke).

Here is what the original SlideShowBob did: It took a folder full of photos already stored on the file server and built a web page from them, prompting for the headline and body text. We could do ten folders of photos in ten minutes or fewer. But SlideShowBob couldn’t handle Read more

January 24, 2007

Podcast: Local results in real estate weblogging will come from making local connections, not SEO results

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cathy and I spent about four hours with the incomparable Russell Shaw last night. We recorded around two hours of our discussions for podcasts I will be putting together in the coming days.

I have been planning for a week to do a podcast on the movement toward local content among real estate websites, but I hadn’t gotten the job done.

Fortuitously, Brian Brady phoned yesterday afternoon, and one of the things we talked about is an idea he has for generating locally-focused content. In the course of talking to him, I addressed almost everything I had wanted to cover, so I’ve chopped out a chunk of our phone call. Brian is very quiet in that section of the call, but it’s okay because I barely let him get a word in anyway.

A signal defect of audio and video, in the weblogged world, is the lack of links, so if you want to click through to the sites and pages discussed as you follow along, these are those:

I haven’t even begun to sort out the recording we made with Russell last night, but I think it might break out into three chapters: I. The Horatio Alger Story, rags to riches. II. Why anyone committed to success in real estate can achieve it. III. A colloquy with Russell on hi- and lo-tech real estate marketing.

In the latter section, we’re going to come back to this same point: There is nothing you can do with passive marketing that will repay your efforts as well as active, person-to-person marketing.
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January 24, 2007

Lessons Learned While Watching American Idol

by

Real Estate Marketing Executive

Author website

Teresa Boardman helped me understand why I sit through all of the excruciatingly bad performances on the first few episodes of American Idol.

My wife and I watch American Idol religiously. It’s one of our guilty pleasures. I know we’re probably going to hell for it, but we’re obviously not alone in our sin. We’ll have some company. The ratings for the Idol are ridiculous. The premiere episode drew 37.4 million viewers last week, a 15.8 rating/36 share in the adults 18-49 demo. The second night was just as big for Fox. But if you’re a saint and don’t watch American Idol, then you have no point of reference for what I’m about to say. So, I’ll explain briefly.

The first episodes feature a laughable string of truly pathetic “performers” trying to make it big in an industry that they are clearly NOT cut out for. Some of the performances are so hideous I literally have to cover my eyes. I want to watch, but it’s just too painful. At one point this evening, my wife said to me, “No! Uncover your eyes. This one is dancing.” OK? No! See, this isn’t “So You Think You Can Dance.”

This is American Idol. It’s a singing competition. If you have to dance, then you probably can’t sing. In fact, if you have to dance, you probably can’t dance either. This is proven over and over again in the first few episodes, before the chosen few “make it to Hollywood.” And one thing is fact – if you have to tell me how great you are… you aren’t.

I don’t watch these first few episodes of American Idol because I like watching people make complete fools of themselves on national television. While I admit there is that morbid fascination, the real joy comes from being able to guess, purely from their self-styled introductions, if a performer is going to be a singer that truly has that special something that distinguishes those who really belong in Hollywood from those who can only tell me that they should be.

Now, here’s where Teresa Boardman comes in. Teresa invited me Read more

January 23, 2007

Just incredible: IncredibleAgent.com steals images and content from prominent real estate webloggers to sell “free” weblogs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Wanna hear something incredible? Odysseus the TV Spokesmodel Bloodhound, unbeknownst to anyone, has been serving as the Spokesmodel for an internet vendor’s site. Involuntarily. Without compensation. Without permission.

Forgive me for the following enormous image:

Who doesn’t love those eyes staring out at you, looking for you through the mail slot. But what you are seeing are BloodhoundBlog, Pittsburgh Homes Daily and Mike’s Corner, all pimping for the “free” weblogs offered by Incredible Agent.

Incredible chutzpah, in any case. I’m sure they would want to argue that they are using these three weblogs to illustrate the idea of a real estate weblog. Why wouldn’t they use some of their own weblogs as illustrations? You answer that one. What matters is that they cannot use the work product — and likenesses! — of the contributors to BloodhoundBlog to sell their product without our permission.

We have asked them to cease and desist, informing the other offended parties.

I am told — I have not checked myself — that their “free” weblogs are not even free weblogs in the sense that you can get a free weblog from Blogger.com or WordPress.com — sign up and you’re on your way. Instead, the Incredible Agent “free” weblog offer seems to be a lead gathering form. I don’t care. I cannot imagine a worse way to advertise their business that inciting three prominent real estate webloggers to publicly express our anger at their sleazy sales tactics.

Smart…

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January 23, 2007

Addressing what matters about Mortgage Matters

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a certain affection for the Mortgage Matters weblog by Holden Lewis at Bankrate.com. It’s a little bit enbubbulated, but that’s to be expected from what is, in fact, a mainstream media outlet. That notwithstanding, the site is very informative, and a lot of fun to read. I get the impression that Lewis doesn’t like BloodoundBlog all that much, but that’s okay: The link-love he sends our way is abundant and unconditional.

Because I like it, and because I have no idea how to send an email to Lewis, here are some things I would like to see changed about the site:

  • I think Bankrate.com should invest in WordPress Multi-User. They have multiple weblogs already, and, without doubt, they will be adding more. It’s time to jump to a real weblogging platform.
  • Once that move is made, Lewis should start working in contemporary weblogging style, one topic to a post, each one permanently linkable. For now, he is writing in journal-like entries, multiple topics in, at most, one post per day. This harkens back to the posting style of Andrew Sullivan’s old Blogger.com weblog, but he didn’t know what he was doing. He has since learned better.
  • Each of the Bankrate.cm weblogs should have its own RSS feed — easily done with WP MU. Right now, there is one feed for all of Bankrate.com, news, blogs, the works.
  • Enable comments. I don’t agree with the notion that a weblog is not a weblog without comments, but, certainly, conversation builds community. Enable trackbacks and pingbacks, too.
  • Provide a way to email Lewis. Right now, you can use a little contact box that will email Lewis (or possibly anyone) provided you already know what email address to use. I love things that are this perfectly broken, but, even so: It’s broken.

Switching platforms now will be a hardship, surely, but switching platforms later will be worse. Mortgage Matters is a good weblog. It deserves more exposure.

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January 23, 2007

Introducing Jeff Turner: Father, poet, entrepreneur

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

And today we introduce still another new contributor:

Jeff Turner is the founder, president and COO of Real Estate Shows, which produces internet commercials from Realtor-supplied photos. A life-long successful entrepreneur, Jeff is also the proud father of six children.

Readers here may be familiar with Jeff’s blog on ActiveRain. He also runs Rain for Change, a sort of direct-action community assistance weblog.

Jeff is a vendor, and I will tell you that we have been very careful in our relationships with vendors. “Everybody sells something,” which is a speech I think everyone should give at their next Toastmasters meeting. But there are two perils a weblog like ours confronts, should it become too engaged with vendors.

First is the charge of having sold out. I’d like to think we’re insulated from that, first by our sheer quantity of opinion-makers, and second by the raging diversity of those opinions.

The second peril is simply the cacophony of very polite clamoring from other vendors: “Why not us, too?”

We’re making an exception for Jeff. We trust him not to go all promotional on us, and he is simply too fine a writer to be missed. He even writes poetry…

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January 22, 2007

WordPress 2.1 has been released, and it may be the perfect platform for real estate web sites as well as weblogs . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

WordPress 2.1 is out. More news from BloggingPro.

Standout among the new features:

You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.

What this means is that there is no need to distinguish between your real estate web site and your local real estate weblog. The two can both run on WordPress, reaping the SEO advantages in tandem.

Caveats: WordPress 2.1 wants MySQL 4.0 on the server side. If, like us, you’re hosted by GoDaddy.com, you’re all set.

Ten Things You should Know About WordPress 2.1. Best news: A lot of legacy code that was to have been killed is retained, albeit deprecated, so most 2.0.x plug-ins should still work.

BloodhoundBlog won’t be making the switch right away. I like to let other people find bugs in new software. But Cameron and I may start playing with it as a tool to use with single-property websites.

Further notice: Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing has already taken the plunge.

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January 22, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at Minneapolis Real Estate Market Update.

And the winner is… our own Kris Berg with The Plastic Pig (and How to Pick Your Agent).

Kris also wins The Carnival of BloodhoundBlog, a testament to her excellence amidst the stiff competition around here.

The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is up at Real Estate Investing For Real. We entered Jeff Brown’s Compounding, Return On Investment, & What Matters To Investors — Invest $1 Get $2 Back, but, alas, it didn’t win.

But: There is more to life than BloodhoundBlog. There are lots of great articles at both carnivals. Check ’em out…

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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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