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Category: Marketing (page 152 of 191)

January 4, 2007

If Retirement’s Called Your ‘Golden Years’ Why Shouldn’t You Keep The Gold?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

If you’re in the state/fed combined tax bracket of 33.3% and your home mortgage is interest only at 6%, your after tax rate is 4%. But you knew that, right? And if your loan is say, $200K, then your annual interest deduction is $12k. At your 1/3 tax bracket your actual interest paid is only $8K. This means you are not paying $4k in income taxes just because you own your home. Big deal you say, everyone knows that. True enough. But is there a way to take further advantage of that tax break?

What if you’re married and you’ve been putting $4k annually in your 401k. Why do people do this? They do it because they’ve been pounded since they can remember — “you’re saving taxes on every buck you put into your 401k. Don’t be an foolish, keep doing it.” What if you took the $4k in tax savings from your home interest deduction and put it into something that might grow tax free? Why would you insist on taking an additional $4k and locking it inside a retirement plan that’s telling you up front it’s going to tax everything that comes out in retirement income? And that tax rate will probably be the same or more than what you’re paying now. And we’ll tax your heirs when both of you are gone.

Golden years

“But my retirement tax bracket will be significantly lower than it is now” you reply confidently. Not so fast. Aren’t you and your wife doing your best to end up with a free and clear castle by the time you pick up your gold watch? If you guys put the same $4k in the retirement plan (401k/IRA) every year for 35 years and it grows at an average rate of 8%, you’ll have around $690K. At that same 8% you’ll have an annual income to add to your Social Security check (laughing in backround) of roughly $51,750 — pretty nice, eh? Not so fast. You’re earning too much possibly. What? Social Security may become taxable with your increased income. In any case, your retirement income is about what Read more

January 3, 2007

Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs: The BloodhoundBlog interview with Rain City Guide . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Beat out the Dustman with the Rain Dogs for I am a Rain Dog, too. A snippet:

Q: What are some of your favorite blogs (real estate or otherwise)?

A:

  • Greg Swann: Totally unfair question: I have over 160 weblogs in my feed reader. From the RE.net, you can bet we like the weblog if we’ve recruited its author as a BloodhoundBlog contributor. There are people we can’t approach (such as RCG’s very talented talent pool), and some we love — such as vendors — who would compromise either us or their employers by working with us. By now, a significant part of my attention, in reading real estate weblogs, is devoted to recruitment.

    Away from the RE.net, I read a lot of weblogging blogs, marketing blogs, SEO blogs, Macintosh-fanatic blogs and techno-geek blogs in general. Lately, TechMeme gets a lot of my time, simply because it links to such interesting content.

  • Brian Brady: Active Rain Real Estate Network. I’ve developed online friendships and a reader following there. I love Freakonomics Blog because of the off-beat hypotheses they formulate to otherwise explained problems.
  • Doug Quance: BloodhoundBlog, of course… and I have many others, but I wouldn’t want to offend those who, because of brevity, wouldn’t make the list.
  • Dan Green: My non-real estate blog list includes a strange mix of PopSugar, Olson’s Observations, Sabernomics, and Copyblogger.
  • Kris Berg: At the risk of sounding gratuitous, Rain City Guide was the first blog I encountered that really made sense to me. Since then, I have discovered many, many others that seem to strike the same, often elusive balance of having local and national appeal, of being instructional and entertaining, and of speaking to industry professionals and consumers. My first stops each morning include Sellsius, The Real Estate Tomato, 360 Digest, 3 Oceans, Bawldguy Talking, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, Real Central VA, RealEstateUndressed, Blue Roof, and (of course) The San Diego Home Blog, to name but a few. My feed reader includes about forty blogs at the moment, which is far fewer than for a lot of bloggers I know of, but barely manageable for me. I have been slumming over Read more
January 3, 2007

The frumpiest little dump in the Midwest makes news again . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

O, the ignominy! Danville, IL is in the news again…

This time, my frowsy little fly-blown hometown amends its past notoriety as the cheapest-of-the-cheap housing markets by refusing to release its abysmal sales data at all:

[T]he Danville Board of Realtors in Illinois has decided to withhold sales data from the National Association of Realtors trade group after the Danville metro area ranked as the lowest-price market in the nation during the second quarter of 2006.

“We looked into it – all avenues of what we should do,” stated Debbie Borgwald, executive officer of the Danville board, in the article. “We want to let people know Danville is a great place to live.” She also told the newspaper that the low prices for the metro area had generated negative publicity.

I personally am only interested in rental homes that will appreciate in value. It’s nice to be cash-flow neutral or even mildly positive, but all the money from residential real estate investing comes from leveraged appreciation. An “alligator” in a growth market is the world’s most lovable pet.

However… If you’re the kind of investor who likes to buy cheap dumps for the positive cash-flow that can accrue from providing affordable rental housing to motorcycle enthusiasts and tenants even less savory, by all means go to Danville. You can pick up single-family homes for $20,000 or less. The rent might only be $300 or $350, but the houses will throw off positive cash-flow no matter how you finance them. Plenty to choose from, too…

January 3, 2007

Project City Center in Las Vegas: Now that’s a model home!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What you’re seeing is an over-the-shoulder peek at the new model home center for Project City Center in Las Vegas, to be built on the Strip-front parcel formerly occupied by the Boardwalk casino-hotel-resort, as well as behind the Monte Carlo and New York-New York properties — all owned by MGM-Mirage. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The $24 million sales pavilion for the residential components of MGM Mirage’s $7 billion Project CityCenter isn’t your average model home community.

The nearly 30,000-square-foot pavilion, which opens today, is on the Strip between New York-New York and Monte Carlo.

With a spacious design, two different scale models of the CityCenter site, high-tech features and information about the project’s four residential developments, the sales pavilion is designed to give potential CityCenter owners a taste of what life will be like inside the 66-acre urban village.

“We’re using a number of audio visual tools and state of the art technology that will put the perspective buyer inside their residence and present to them information about CityCenter that they might not know,” said Tony Dennis, executive vice president of CityCenter’s residential division.

The sales pavilion, which is a temporary structure, has individual boutiques dedicated to CityCenter’s four residential developments; Vdara Condo Hotel, The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Veer Tower and Residences at The Harmon. In total, CityCenter will encompass 2,700 residences.

The sales pavilion includes model units, floor plans, unit locations, interior design options and other details.

Project City Center (we can only hope this clunky name will be changed) is the kind of real estate development I’ve been waiting to see for more than twenty-five years: Residential, retail and commercial all in one structural footprint.

This is not a brand new idea. Rockefeller Center in New York combined retail and office spaces. Copley Place in Boston is a shopping mall with office towers above it, anchored by two hotels — all of it built on top of the Massachusetts Turnpike. By now, the mantra “mixed use” is intoned for every new condo project cooked up.

This is not enough. The ideal — at least my ideal — would be to create a structure that, at least Read more

January 3, 2007

Kibble and Bits

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

KIBBLE

Odysseus, meet Simon. Tell me, can you really teach an old dog new tricks?

Simon

Odysseus is our resident cover boy, a Bloodhound, described as a large, powerful dog tireless in his keen pursuit of a scent. Simon is a Golden Retriever, my family pet, or as we like to call him, the world’s dumbest dog. Goldens are a friendly and people-loving breed valued for their high level of socialability, yet they make poor watchdogs.

Astute and inquisitive versus dumb-as-dirt and lovable – You make the call.

BITS

Agents, as I see it, generally fall into the Bloodhound or Golden categories. I can’t speak personally for Odysseus, but I know Simon all too well.

  • Puppy Agent: Fresh out of their Principles class and newly armed with a License to Sell, these agents attend the mandatory company obedience school. They quickly learn to perform rote tasks, such as announcing their new and exciting career to all of the people in their Sphere of Influence, sending letters to Expired Listings, dropping notepads at the doors of the neighbors, and shoving business cards in the hands of unsuspecting waitresses. Puppy Golden: I did my “business” where they told me to. I’m a Good Boy!
  • The Programmed Agent: You know him. He is the one that spends all of his business development time sitting in costly training classes in search of the “answer”. He is the first in line to purchase the costly books and cassettes which will reveal the “secrets”. While he is being coached and trained and recoached and retrained, others around him are building actual businesses and establishing successful careers. The Programmed Golden: Look! Another tail to chase! I bet I catch this one!
  • Myopic Agent: A conversation was related to me in which the broker of a small, local real estate firm said, in reference to our blog, “I could have a blog, but I prefer to spend my time serving my clients. Meanwhile, at the office holiday party, I was chatting with two veteran agents about the latest Zillow news to learn that neither had ever heard of Zillow. Myopic Golden: My snout is stuck in this soup Read more
January 3, 2007

Glow, baby, glow: The revolution will be illuminated . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth Godin is on a tear about fluorescent light bulbs, and I join him in it not just because he’s promising a link for a trackback.

No, there is a matter of profoundly-important principle here: The redemptive power of Capitalism. The curly fluorescent bulb shown above is one of many in our home. Bulb-by-bulb we are swapping out the old Edison-style bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.

Is it because we’re granola-fed greenies right down to our Birkenstocks? Not hardly. It’s because we’re greedy, and we want to hold on to as much of our money as possible. Lumen for lumen, fluorescent bulbs are a lot cheaper than incandescent bulbs, and, because they are outrageously long-lived, they are cheaper to replace as well.

I have zero faith in the good intentions of capital-E Environmentalism as a movement. I see it as a further expression of the global totalitarian movement. The original Marxist argument — the vicious exploitation of the incredibly rotund poor people — is so obviously absurd, Environmentalism was cooked up as an unanswerable substitute.

If there were such a thing as a true environmentalist movement, its very first target would be government interference in real estate — starting with the collectively-owned roads that yield up thousands of acres of pristine land to taxpayer-subsidized development every month. The fact that capital-E Environmentalism does nothing to combat the massive environmental destruction caused by government argues to me that its actual objective is — surprise! — more government, not “saving the earth.”

But this is not about Environmentalism, it’s about Capitalism. Just as companies like Pur and Brita used the free market to solve the problems resulting from government mismanagement of the potable water supply, so, too, are entrepreneurs using simple market solutions to reduce the costs of government-regulated energy — “saving the earth” as an unintended consequence.

You have to give Marx his due, though. World-wide, 159 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marxism has produced nothing but mountainous mounds of corpses — 160 million and counting. In that same time, Capitalism has taken us from coal oil lamps to fluorescent bulbs (and light-sensitive LED night-lights in Read more

January 3, 2007

ShackPrices.com takes on the big fish from a lofty perch . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

ShackPrices.com hits the big time at InmanNews (free for now):

The latest real estate site to trace its roots to this rainy city is ShackPrices.com, which plots home listings in the Seattle area and western Washington state on Google maps.

ShackPrices.com went live a few weeks ago, and joins a growing list of sites aiming to simplify the hunt for real estate. Its founder, Galen Ward, has a technical background in mapping and databases and is a contributor to the Rain City Guide real estate blog.

Other real estate search sites vying for consumer attention include Trulia, HomePages.com, Realtor.com and the many broker-operated sites that also include listings.

“Our goal at the site is to make the process of finding and buying a home easier for consumers,” Ward said. Unlike some real estate search sites, ShackPrices is a member of the multiple listing service, which enables it to display a more comprehensive list of local properties for sale than a site operated by a nonmember.

The site enables consumers to enter home-search criteria from the homepage, and also features “Suggested Shacks” — homes that buyers might be interested in viewing based on their criteria and a proprietary algorithm.

Ward notes the importance of “all the niche decisions that go into buying a home” like neighborhood information that he felt were lacking in many existing real estate sites.

“When I started making maps and working in spatial databases four to five years ago, it occurred to me one day that the world is really lacking in info about what’s nearby a house. You could look up the price and size and stats on a house, but it was really lacking on the context of what the neighborhood was like, how close it is to amenities, what the views are,” he said.

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January 1, 2007

Our Home Has Only Been Shown One Time In Five Weeks

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Heather wrote in an email to BloodhoundBlog:

We listed our house right before Christmas. It has only been shown one time in 5 weeks. Can this be attributed to the holidays, our realtor, price? We have listed in the area listings papers and homes and land and we have signs but that has been the extent of advertising. An open house is scheduled for in 2 weeks. What would
you suggest we do? Thanks

When we look at the subject of marketing it is important to know WHO we are marketing to. Marketing isn’t done to “the public” but to “A public”. The two primary “publics” a home seller needs to reach are other Realtors and home buyers. The communication lines used to reach those two are not necessarily the same. For example, “Homes and Land” can be a good way to reach possible home buyers but would not be a reliable method to reach other agents.
Open houses have almost NOTHING to do with actually getting a home sold. I know there are people who will want to disagree with that statement – but they have not fully examined the facts. All real buyers either are or are not working with an agent. If the buyer has an agent the open house would have nothing to do with them seeing the house, even if they happened to stop by while the house was being “held open”. The buyer with an agent will usually wind up seeing the house when it is convenient for them (which is seldom Sunday afternoon). If the buyer did not have an agent the only thing it is necessary to do to get them to call is NOT put a “take one box” on the sign. The original purpose of a “take one box” was to improve the quality of sign calls. Skip the box with a flyer and if they see the house, don’t have an agent and like it – they will call.

Open houses, ads in picture magazines, web sites, Realtor.com, etc. are ALL attempts to get a buyer (who does not have an agent) to originate a Read more

January 1, 2007

That’s The Way It Goes – First Your Money – Then Your Clothes

by

Associate Broker

Author website

It’s funny how just when you start to learn a little about this blogging thing… and about monetizing your blog… you then start to notice the thieves out there stealing your content.

At first, I thought I should feel flattered that someone felt my stuff was good enough to steal. Kinda felt good, in a perverse way.

Then I got pissed and started writing emails demanding the practice stop. As a blogger, you don’t want to be penalized for the duplicate content. Rojo is already hosing me as my content often gets indexed there, first.

Now I’m thinking more about revenge.

Oh, it’s not just my blog… a bunch of you guys are being ripped, too.

So I am noticing this latest theft, and I sez to myself “Self – let’s have some fun!”

The recent theft was of my last post, which included a picture. Oh yeah… they are stealing my bandwidth, too. So I went in and replaced the picture with another one. Oh – I kept the original… I just renamed it and relinked it for my blog. The theives, however, get a new one: (click on it to enlarge)
blogtheft.jpg
You can go see this particular thief at www dot nakedrepublic dot com. While you’re there, take a look at the other blogs they’ve ripped. Including BloodhoundBlog.

Next time you find yourself getting thieved on – have a little fun!

January 1, 2007

NAR dead pool . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of the things Cathy did yesterday between finishing her real estate work and popping the cork on the champagne (she makes me do that, of course), was paying our dues. Not figuratively — literally. Yesterday was the deadline to pay the following creditors:

  • Phoenix Association of Realtors
  • Arizona Association of Realtors
  • National Association of Realtors
  • Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council (ABR)
  • Council of Residential Specialists (CRS)

I don’t know what this cost us, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: How many people didn’t do it?

The first three are paid in one lump sum. You don’t have to belong to ReBAC or CRS, but you have to belong to the local, state and national Realtor’s associations to call yourself a Realtor. Taking account that we know that some significant number of Realtors didn’t do very well in 2006, how many, do you think, did not renew their membership?

The NAR Fact Sheet touts 1.3 million members for now. How many fewer will there be at the next reckoning…?

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January 1, 2007

LongTail.TV: Welcome to five-hundred-thousand-channel television . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve written a lot about radio here, to the extent that you might get the idea that I really like radio. I do, and I think this might apply to a lot of people who habitually work very long hours.

One of my very favorite radio movies is Pump Up The Volume. It’s actually a teen angst film, I suppose, but the interesting wrinkle for me is pirate radio. In the end the protagonist calls upon his audience to set up their own pirate radio stations, to break the mainstream media monotony monopoly with thousands of new voices.

That much is impractical, of course: Pirate radio stations cost money and require technical expertise. But guess what? The there that could never be there turns out to be here, in weblogging. This is pirate radio made practical, 57 million alternatives to Dan Rather. Quality comes and goes, but — my goodness! — choice abounds.

Here’s a further development on the same theme: WatchItVegas.com. What is it? A net-based, on-demand TV station. The owner produces the videos used by the DiamondScan signs on Las Vegas Boulevard, so he has the technology and the content to set up his own TV station.

What does it mean? In the short-run, practically nothing. It’s net video, after all, small and crappy. But in the long-run…

I have an uncle who shoots trap and skeet. He’s good, maybe two or three rungs below the Olympic level of competition. The guys who do this are fanatics in the best web-based sense of the word. There aren’t many of them, but they are devoutly interested in what they do, and they are free-spending to the point of extravagance to get their hands on the absolute best of everything.

Can you say LongTail.TV? Sure you can!

We are graduating from five-hundred-channel television to five-hundred-thousand-channel television. If there is a niche, if there is content and if there are advertisers, there will be a net-based TV network. The advertisers are optional, actually. We don’t want them here, for example.

But: Advertisers want the biggest possible return for the smallest possible outlay. If an internet television network devoted to fanatical Read more

January 1, 2007

Real estate resolutions: Cough less, earn more . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When I get sick, I get really sick. I’ve had full-blown pneumonia twice in recent years. I have always been able to blast through illness, but, sometime after my arms got too short to read without glasses, that privilege was revoked. In consequence, when I get a respiratory infection now, I try to take it very seriously. Not as seriously as Cathy and our doctor might like, but I do my best.

In consequence, I’ve been laid up through the span of time we might have spent on big-picture business planning. Our course is well set, so we didn’t have a lot to worry about. But today Bonnie Erickson goes us one better with an excellent list of real estate resolutions for the coming year. Here’s a sampling:

  • Narrow my marketing focus to a manageable farm or neighborhood where I can meet the people and become known personally.
  • Focus my existing marketing to the narrowed sphere.
  • Contact each person in my sphere of influence at least once a quarter.
  • Contribute more to my networking group possibly through technology.
  • Finalize a cold calling system and stick to it.
  • Continue to contact expired and unrepresented listings.
  • Restructure my blog to incorporate more consumer friendly resources.
  • Re-examine my websites for consumer friendliness and SEO.
  • Continue to "bird dog" for investment properties which will be purchased for rehab and sale, rehab and holding, or sale without rehab to other investors.
  • Learn from losses in the business.

One of the things we were going to do last year and didn’t get to was implementing Daylite, CRM software for Macintosh networks. The big hurdle is taking all of our existing contact management “solutions” and merging them into one database, cleaning that for duplicates and errors, and then systematically adding to it. The task is even more daunting by now, but many of Bonnie’s resolutions show why it is worthwhile.

Easy for me to say. It’s a chore for Cathy and her pack of teenage hound-puppies. But touch-management, even if it runs on a database as faulty as memory, is worth money…

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December 31, 2006

LEREAH PUSHES IT EVEN FURTHER

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

NAR Chief Economist, David Lereah totally ignores his detractors by continuing to make predictions about the real estate market. Now he is officially in the dictionary (dictionary.com), listed under the word, “persuasive”.

Lereah persuasive

United States citizens not wanting to purchase a home have been powerless to resist Mr. Lereah’s announcements that “they should” purchase a home now.

Using a form of Mind Control known only to the initiated few, Lereah has run roughshod over anyone trying to not buy a home.

Now, even his detractors, previously intent on renting, are starting to “call a Realtor” – as Mr. Lereah has “suggested” they do. 2007 will be very interesting to watch, as this battle continues to unfold.

What is at stake in this fight is the freedom for individuals to think what they want to think. It seems the National Association of Realtors will stop at nothing short of World Domination and uses Lereah to force everyone to “see it their way”.

__

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

December 31, 2006

Real Estate Blogging For Cash

by

Associate Broker

Author website

I am noticing a troubling trend.

Many real estate blogs are using text link ads and Google ads – and now some bloggers are even getting paid to post. Does anybody else feel like this is a fundamental mistake for most real estate professionals?

Don’t get me wrong – those bloggers whose blogs ARE their business need to be compensated for their time… I have no problem whatsoever with those guys.

It’s the Realtors that I question.

First of all, I think it’s fairly stupid to allow ads from competing Realtors to be shown on your website. I was on an agent’s site this morning and before you knew it – BAM – I’m on the competitor’s site. Needless to say, I forgot all about the original site I was on – and closed my browser window before returning to it.

Now there are a few companies out there that are paying bloggers to post about advertisers products or services. Although this practice is supposedly done with transparency, I can’t help but wonder…

“What business are you in? Real estate or blogging?”

I can’t believe that the public views it any differently.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before. Many times, in fact. Maybe I’m just an overly critical type of person.

I will be very interested to hearing YOUR thoughts on this phenomenon.

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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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