BloodhoundBlog

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Category: Marketing (page 149 of 191)

January 22, 2007

BloodhoundBlog is adding another hard working dog to the pack

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Today we add a new contributor, Michael Cook of the Cook Squared Real Estate Enterprises weblog:

Partnering with his wife, Michael Cook is a commercial real estate investor who complicates his life as an MBA student at The S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

Michael is relatively new as a weblogger, and, here and at his home weblog, his plan is to share with us his journey as an entrepreneurial commercial real estate investor.

We trimmed a couple of names from our roster, as well. Tony Fredericks and Ronan Doyle have been too busy in their real lives, for now, to add content here. We’ll be welcoming them back into the pack when they are able to free up time.

We are talking with several other potential contributors, and, as always, we are eager to consider more. If we haven’t approached you directly, it doesn’t mean we’re not interested. If you would like to write with us, assert yourself.

How big is too big? The RE.net is turning strongly local, which I think is a sound idea. But at BloodhoundBlog we are not competing for business. Our goal is to apprehend if not completely comprehend the art, the science, the business and the philosophy of Real Estate writ large. We’ll stop growing when we’ve caged that beast, not before.

And: This question has come up: Qui Bono? Who benefits? This is what I said in the Rain City Guide interview with BloodhoundBlog’s contributors:

What we’re really up to is an idea I call The Third Career. Most of us came to real estate from something else, and, as we are wise, we know this is not our last stop in the world of work. My immediate goal for BloodhoundBlog is to make it the best-read, most-rewarding real estate weblog in the RE.net. Further out, I want for our contributors to be so well known that they can pursue other opportunities: Public speaking, freelance writing, books, seminars, television shows, etc. I don’t know that we will attain this, necessarily, but the goal itself is definitely attainable: Witness Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.

For now, I’m interested in growing Read more

January 21, 2007

This home is one-of-a-kind — and it’s got the back-story to prove it . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Richard Riccelli and I were talking today about the power of the back-story to sell historic and architecturally unique homes. Here are two car stories to make the point:

In both cases, what “sold” was not the “fair market value” of a vehicle, but, rather, the unique story that comes as an intangible accessory with the vehicle.

The same kind of “added value” can be applied to homes, if you know their stories well enough to share them with buyers. “The simple truth is, Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, there are plenty of homes you can have in this neighborhood. But this is the only one that was built by and for a returning Civil War General. The original plans are mounted on the living room wall. Isn’t that something?”

That Cobra Supersnake is a smokin’ automobile, and a true “comp” might easily run you half-a-million dollars. Except there are no truly comparable vehicles. Not only was it Carroll Shelby’s personal ride, it is the only surviving Shelby Supersnake. How much is it worth? How much ya’ got…?

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January 21, 2007

Are appraisers being pimped as involuntary seeing-eye-dogs for the congenitally blind AVMs . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From this morning’s Boston Herald:

Appraisers have resented AVMs for years, in part because the computer estimates have cut into appraisal companies’ business.

But the industry also challenges AVMs’ accuracy – especially in today’s market, where prices in some locales are falling rapidly.

And now, some firms claim a key industry player is even stealing data out of human-produced appraisal reports.

Critics say AppraisalPort.com – which appraisers use to electronically ship reports to banks – is extracting information and reselling it to AVM users.

To add insult to injury, appraisers say they must pay AppraisalPort parent FNC Inc. $5 every time they use the site to send reports to lenders.

“We are paying, (but) they are stripping out our work product without paying us a dime,” said Patrick Turner, a Richmond, Va., appraiser.

FNC spokesman Angela Atkins admits that her company extracts property-description data from appraisal reports.

But she said the firm can legally do so, and doesn’t take proprietary narrative analyses or valuation estimates.

She said FNC is building a national property-data repository for its customer base, which mostly consists of major U.S. mortgage companies.

“We are not an AVM company, and we could not exist without appraisers,” Atkins said.

But appraisers claim that what they include in reports – a home’s square footage, number of rooms, etc. – is proprietary information that goes way beyond public records.

For example, Turner said one appraisal he recently did showed a house had 2,900 square feet of above-ground space and a 1,200-square-foot, newly renovated basement.

By contrast, public records listed the home’s size at 1,100 square feet.

“Imagine the difference in (appraised value) between a 1,100-square-foot house and a 2,900-square-foot house,” the appraiser said. (AVMs) can’t be accurate when the public records they are relying on are out of date or wrong. That’s why everybody wants to strip out our data – it’s valuable because it’s accurate and current. But they don’t want to pay us for it.”

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January 20, 2007

Don’t Drop That Listing Price…Just Yet

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Real estate agents have consistently used pricing as the primary mechanism to sell your home. Don’t forget owner-financed terms as a selling feature. Let me give you an example of how to offer a seller-carryback (and cash it out):

You listed your home at $500,000 and it isn’t selling. You are getting nervous and your real estate agent thinks you should lower the listing price to $460,000 to attract more potential buyers. You’ve already come down $50K. Don’t drop the price… just yet! Try offering a seller-financed second mortgage at 12% for $150,000. You can sell that note as early as one day after COE (settlement). You may only get 80 cents on the dollar when you sell the note but that is only $30,000 (less than the proposed reduction). If the home was fairly priced at $500,000, it might make sense to offer terms before reducing the price.

Let’s see how this would work:

Buyer obtains a 70% first mortgage for $350,000 (that isn’t too hard to get, even with lousy credit). You offer a $150,000 second mortgage at 12% and sell it for $120,000 after closing. You net $470,000.

When you offer terms, you open the property to people with recent bankruptcies, past credit problems, and hard to verify income. Seller-carrybacks significantly expand the pool of buyers. Your real estate agent can advertise in the paper and attract many buyers who need this help.

Realtors: Customers who buy on “owner terms” are grateful and become excellent referral sources. You will also develop quite a list of buyers from your advertisements to call when your next listing is not moving.

So what’s the downside?

1- You have to have equity in your home or you’ll be bringing cash to the closing.

2- You have to employ a savvy mortgage broker (or note broker) to market that owner-financed note. The secondary market for private mortgages is not large and highly illiquid.

3-The seller may have to hold that note for a period of time (and collect 12%).

4-The buyer may eventually default on that Read more

January 20, 2007

A potentially canonical list of real estate weblogs: 150 down, infinity to go . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Continuing on the subject of building what I hope can become a canonical catalog of real estate weblogs, we arrive at the starting place: 150 RE.net weblogs, each one of them vetted by at least one currently-active real estate weblogger.

I can’t promise that the list is 100% accurate — and I know it’s not complete — so I entreat you to email me about any errors or omissions you identify. If you can send me one or ten or a hundred missing weblogs, so much the better.

Dustin and others wondered why I want to do this is this way. Why not a social networking scheme or a wiki? The reason is that there is no substitute for human editing. Any system that allows self-selected volunteers to make entries will be instantly flooded with spam. For what it’s worth, I think we will discover that the purported “wisdom of crowds” consists mostly of coming up with new ways to spam or scam or both.

This list was built by human editors, and, going forward, I want it to be policed by human editors — volunteers suggesting additions and deletions as well as contractors going through the list link-by-link. At some point, I would like to have someone go through the list and split it by categories and locales, but that’s a job for another day.

For now: If you want to participate in this project, jump in. What’s wrong? What could be more right? What’s missing? What’s there that shouldn’t be?

And: What’s next…?

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January 20, 2007

Technology Review on Microsoft’s forthcoming Vista operating system: “Windows is complicated. Macs are simple.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Microsoft is about to obsolete its entire user base yet again, as it prepares to release its long anticipated replacement for Windows XP, the new Vista operating system. In a scathing assessment in Technology Review, long-time Windows champion Erika Jonietz reluctantly ends up here:

Ironically, playing around with Vista for more than a month has done what years of experience and exhortations from Mac-loving friends could not: it has converted me into a Mac fan.

Here is an extended rendering of her findings:

My efforts to get Media Center working highlighted two big problems with Vista. First, it’s a memory hog. The hundreds of new features jammed into it have made it a prime example of software bloat, perhaps the quintessence of programmer Niklaus Wirth’s law that software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster (for more on the problems with software design that lead to bloat, see “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta”). Although my computer meets the minimum requirements of a “Vista Premium Ready PC,” with one gigabyte of RAM, I could run only a few ?simple programs, such as a Web browser and word processor, without running out of memory. I couldn’t even watch a movie: Windows Media Player could read the contents of the DVD, but there wasn’t enough memory to actually play it. In short, you need a hell of a computer just to run this OS.

Second, users choosing to install the 64-bit version of Vista on computers they already own will have a hard time finding drivers, the software needed to control hardware sub?systems and peripherals such as video cards, modems, or printers. Microsoft’s Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor program, which I ran before installing Vista, assured me that my laptop was fully compatible with the 64-bit version. But once I installed it, my speakers would not work. It seems that none of the companies concerned had written a driver for my sound card; it took more than 10 hours of effort to find a workaround. Nor do drivers exist for my modem, printer, or several other things I rely on. For some of the newer components, Read more

January 19, 2007

Ask the Broker: An undisclosed verbal easement?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is one for The Hardy Boys: The Case of the Stolen Dirt.

As a buyer what rights do I have in the following scenario? I purchased a tract of land in 08/06. Closed on the deal 10/06. Visited the tract in 12/06 to find extensive excavation was performed for road building material without my approval. When questioned, the Broker/owner informed me that he forgot to mention that the developer (real estate agent that works for the Broker/owner) had a verbal agreement with the individual that sold the agent the 1/2 section for subdivision that if any material was needed to complete a road project further up the road and on a separate subdivision that it would come from the existing parcels. The agent owned and was attempting to sell two remaining parcels that she could have taken material from. She however gave approval to excavate mine. As a buyer I was never informed of any verbal agreement regarding this and there were no disclosures to this agreement. What rights do I have short of taking this disingenuous realtor to court?

The bad news is, your recourse is probably a lawsuit. The good news is, at least in Arizona, you will almost certainly win.

In Arizona, there is no such thing as a verbal easement. If a previous owner had given a developer verbal permission to remove dirt from your parcel, that verbal permission lapsed when you closed escrow on the land. The person removing the dirt since you took ownership is guilty of trespassing, theft and, reasonably, is liable for damages.

Having said that, I’ll bet you can guess the next part: You need to take this up with an attorney. You are aggrieved, and you have a right to be made whole, but this won’t happen without at least a little saber rattling.

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January 18, 2007

From forty links to infinity: Apprehending the full scope of the RE.net

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, here’s the meme game I mentioned yesterday.

I want to build something like a canonical list of every weblog in the RE.net. By this I mean weblogs created by Realtors or other real estate agents, including commercial brokers; lenders, appraisers, investors or other real estate professionals; mainstream media real estate weblogs; and vendors marketing to real estate professionals.

I’m giving things a kick start by citing 40 weblogs from the BloodhoundBlog blogroll. Here’s your challenge:

1. Add to this list by linking to real estate weblogs not listed here. Please be judicious. We’re interested in true webloggers — helpfully informative and not too self-promotional — not blog-based spammers.

2. Link to those blogs on your weblog, repeating the text from this challenge.

3. Add your links to a comment to this post, as well, since I may not see them by trackback or Technorati citation. (The moderation bot will eat your comment, but I’ll pull it out.)
Permanent link to the original post on BloodhoundBlog:

From forty links to infinity: Apprehending the full scope of the RE.net

If you can send more than 40 unique links, you’re my hero. I’ll build all of these links into a page on BloodhoundBlog, with a link to the source HTML if you want to mirror the list.

Note: This is not quite a tag game. Just because you’re not listed below, it doesn’t mean you can’t play. The goal is to leverage all of our information sources to get to a highly-comprehensive, strongly-vetted picture of the RE.net as it exists right now.

Once we’ve assembled everything, Cameron or I will put together a form for adding new weblogs. And if someone should want to volunteer to organize and maintain this list, your link will come first, lexicology be damned.

Here are my 40 links:

January 17, 2007

Digital real estate photography: Which photographer? Which camera?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The current issue of The Specialist, the official magazine of The Council of Residential Specialists, insists that “99 percent of home buyers say that photos are the most helpful feature on a Realtor’s web site.” I’m pretty much convinced that 47% of all statistics are made up on the spot, but I suppose that recalcitrant one percent is visually impaired or something.

In any case, I have two things to say about photography:

First, Karl Hoelscher is starting a real estate photography business in North Phoenix, and he would love to have some help honing his marketing message. Give him a look at HomeSnapz.com. Even if you use your own photos for your web pages, super-hi-resolution professional photography can work wonders for your printed pieces and MLS listings.

Second, the article I mentioned in The Specialist is a wonderful example of really bad advice. As we talked about in BloodhoundBlog months ago, the two most important features in a camera to be used for everyday real estate work are a wide-angle lens and a fairly small image size:

Except for print reproduction, the best size for a real estate photo is 640 x 480 pixels — which is 0.3 megapixels. Ideally, your everyday camera should be able to produce that size image without post-processing. The photos on your web pages can be bigger than this, but not by much. If you try to load 20 images on a page, with each image weighing in at one megabyte or more, you’ll overtax most web browsers — well after you’ve overtaxed the patience of your audience.

What you want from a lens is not a long zoom but the widest possible angle. Most digital cameras have their widest angle setting at 45 – 55mm, if the lens were on a 35mm film-camera equivalent. A few cameras get down to 38mm. This is inadequate. What you want is 28mm or less — with reservations.

The features camera-makers advertise, megapixels and zoom lenses, are mostly useless for taking photos of homes.

So what does The Specialist suggest you buy? Cameras with long zoom lenses and massively megapixelated images — just exactly the Read more

January 17, 2007

Celebrating the spirit of transparent real estate weblogging: BloodhoundBlog can and will do more . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m thinking that I should take a much larger role in the growth of the RE.net. Many people are convinced that hundreds of agents and lenders will be starting real estate weblogs in the coming year. That may or may not be so, but it is a certainty that the sharks are circling in the water, looking for another pound of flesh. I don’t absolutely hate vendor involvement in the real estate blogging world, but I’d like to do what I can to make sure people are getting what they’re paying for — and not paying to have smoke blown up their… noses.

Moreover, I am very concerned that new entrants will miss the forest in a quest for leads. There is nothing wrong with forging business relationships through weblogs, but we will kill everything if the RE.net comes to be seen, in consumers’ eyes, as just another spamvertising channel. Weblogging is about the good, the true and the beautiful first, and only secondarily about commerce. If we screw this up, it won’t work — not for commerce and not for anything.

I’ve talked with Brian Brady about doing blogging seminars, and I’ve traded email with other RE.net luminaries on the subject. For the moment, I feel like this is overkill. Arranging an event is a logistical nightmare, and, even then, it’s tough to get enough people together to make a dent in the problem. Worse yet, somebody has to pay for a seminar, either the attendees or a sponsor.

But what’s really needed is already here: Weblogs, podcasts and video podcasts. For now, I’m going to start putting together a basic set of tools in weblog and podcast form. As these materials start to gel, we’ll go buy some video studio time and commit the more important ideas to video podcasts. Maybe in the long run, we’ll produce a DVD or CD, but my thinking, for now at least, is that the best medium for discussing the world wide web is the world wide web.

But wait. There’s more. I’m going to start a meme game that we can use to catalog the RE.net Read more

January 16, 2007

NAR & DOJ – Russ & Russell Part 2

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Russ Cofano responded:

Russell,

I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you on this subject.

First, my comments should not be taken to mean that I support the DOJ’s position and hope that they win. Nor do I necessarily support the NAR position with its rulemaking. As I have said before, I do support innovation and think that brokers need to spend more time finding new ways to deliver value to consumers.

Second, let’s define a couple of terms.

“Broker” means any person or firm that has been licensed as a real estate broker under applicable state law.

“Traditional Broker” means a Broker who either directly or through agents, actually assists buyers and seller with buying or selling a home.

Third, this is a VERY long post and I apologize in advance as I usually don’t like posts of this length. Proceed with caution and a good cup of coffee…. )

Regarding the definition of MLS Participant, you said:

“And that is the most logical definition possible under the circumstances. It is important to keep in mind what the MLS actually IS – a communication system set up by brokers for offering and accepting offers of compensation…..to fail to define a real estate broker (the only people ever originally intended to have access to the MLS) any other way than someone who is actively working with buyers and sellers makes no sense.”

Here is the problem from the DOJ’s perspective. Before this rule change, a licensed Broker could join the MLS and open up a store front with no intent of helping a seller sell or a buyer buy. They could call it “Referral Realty” and have full access to the MLS database for purposes of cultivating potential buyers to refer on to “traditional” brokers in exchange for a referral fee. This is allowed by most state license laws. In fact, this type of situation occurs today in some areas where retiring licensee hang their licenses with a Broker in hopes of leveraging their referral base despite having no intent to actually assist a buyer or seller. The problem with this business model is that the referral business Read more

January 16, 2007

ShackPrices.com: Anything but ORdinary . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Responding to my kvetching last night, ShackPrices.com today launched itself into a new ORbit among map-based real estate search pORtals — with OR without MLS access. Not satisfied with ORdinary searching, the Seattle-based company yesterday added a loosely-structure keywORd search. The search suppORted the AND and NOT logical operatORs, but the OR operatOR was left on the cutting room floOR.

Until today, that is. This is email from ShackPrices.com co-founder Doug Cole:

Doug here (the other half of ShackPrices), thanks for the kind words, just thought I’d let you know we just added the OR operator to ShackPrices, so now something like “fixer or tlc” works. Also to clarify we don’t have a way to group words together yet, so the example in your post the search “waterfront, -shake roof” actually goes through more like “waterfront and roof, not shake”. It’s something I’d really like to fix soon, but we have to pick our battles since there are only two of us, and that one missed the first round.

So: I immediately put the booger to the test. This is from my FindTenants bot, which runs on the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service. The actual bot is much more stringent than this, but what is shown here is a search that is run into the Realtor’s Remarks section of the listing to determine if a potential investment property is in fact tenant-occupied:

rented OR leased OR renter OR long term renter OR long-term renter OR tenant OR lease ends OR lease agreement OR tenants in place OR rented OR leased OR lease until OR lease til

What did ShackPrices.com turn up? Rain, snow — and tenants…

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January 15, 2007

Mapping, schmapping — ShackPrices.com is keyword searchable . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

ShackPrices.com has added keyword searching to its map-based real estate searching tool. In addition to searching by location, amenities or price, home shoppers can search for any text that might appear in the MLS listing made available to ShackPrices.com: Subdivision or neighborhood names, types of architecture, roofing materials or anything that appears in the remarks section of the listing.

Vide licet:

  • Any words in the agent description
  • Project name (Emerald Court Townhomes, Madrona Annex, etc.)
  • Status (subject to inspection, active, etc.)
  • Waterfront (lake, ocean, creek, etc.)
  • Parking (carport, garage, etc.)
  • Architecture (colonial, craftsman, etc.)
  • Site features (hot tub, cabana, disabled access, Fenced fully, etc.)
  • Terms (variable price, lease/purchase, owner financing, etc.)
  • View (sound, golf course, mountain, etc.)
  • Exterior (brick, stucco, wood, etc.)
  • Interior (2nd kitchen, sauna, high tech cabling, etc.)
  • Style (split entry, townhouse, etc.)
  • Pool (above ground, indoor, etc.)
  • Flooring (slate, carpet, etc.)
  • Roof (cedar shake, composition, metal, etc.)
  • Appliances (double oven, dishwasher, etc.)
  • Energy Source (electric, natural gas, etc.)
  • Heating/Cooling: (heat pump, radiator, forced air, etc.)

So far, there are two logical operators in the text search function, AND and NOT. So “waterfront, shake roof” (omitting the quotes) would find listings which had the word waterfront AND the phrase shake roof in the listing. But “waterfront, -shake roof” would find listing that had waterfront but did NOT have shake roof in the text of the listings. (I believe I am misrepresenting this; your mileage may vary.) I have already started the wheedling campaign for an OR operator, because many true MLS searches are highly OR-dependent.

Here’s my take: ShackPrices.com started good and is getting better at a nice clip. I want them in Phoenix…

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January 15, 2007

It turns out we ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you bet on Brian Brady’s “Predatory Lending” post to take the real estate blog carnival trifecta, you could be sleeping in the dog house tonight — or perhaps “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Brian won the BloodhoundBlog Carnival by a unanimous vote.

He placed in The Carnival of Real Estate Investing, held this week at Sadie’s Take on Delaware Ohio.

But Elvis left the building without taking note of Brian’s effort at The Carnival of Real Estate at Marlow Harris’ 360 Digest.

Oh, well. By now we know the formula at Marlow’s places: A little more bite and a little less bark, a little less fight and a little more spark. We’ll do better next time…

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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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