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Category: Marketing (page 155 of 191)

December 8, 2006

In the trenches with Zillow.com: A working Realtor’s first-hand experience listing a home . . .

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Zillow has had Greg’s attention for a long time, going back to an Odysseus post from last February, when we were blogging for our own entertainment. Greg has debunked Zillow, he’s defended Zillow, but till this week I’ve been indifferent. Zillow has held as much relevance for me as Ragnarok Online. Both have inspired a lot of buzz among their audiences, but neither made my life better, easier, happier, so I’ve not wasted time on them.

But this past Monday, when David Gibbons told us about Zillow’s plans to add the For Sale and Make Me Move tools to their comprehensive database, he gave me a reason to care. When someone hires me to sell her house, one of my jobs is to let as many prospective buyers as possible know that this house is for sale. Zillow will help me find an audience that I might not already be getting through buyers’ brokers, drive-bys, Realtor.com, open houses… So now Zillow has made my life better, easier, happier, by giving me a tool to bring my client’s house to more potential buyers.

To get to know this new tool, I claimed our own house on My Zillow. Here I got to experience first hand the problem with using Zillow for an accurate estimation of a house’s value. We live on a wonderfully eclectic street of ranch, bi-level and split-level 1960’s houses in the North Central Phoenix subdivision, Terry Terrace. Lots are all around 8000 square feet, but the houses range between 1400 to 2850 square feet. At 1993 square feet, ours is about average. The people who remodeled the house before we bought it did some wonderful things — enclosing the carport to make a 2-car garage and landscaping were minor compared to the the major improvement of raising the ceiling and removing the labyrinth of walls common in 1962, to open up the living area side of the house into two huge, very livable and very workable rooms. Then they added requisite granite, 18″ tile, designer cabinets and upgraded appliances. And, since we’ve moved in we’ve upgraded the bathrooms and all the Read more

December 8, 2006

Retirement Lifestyle: 3 Quick Peeks Into Your Future

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I just got off the phone with a delightful lady, who has been assigned the impossible task of editing my blog. She’s now reviewing what I’ve done so far, and her preliminary opinion is that I’m not inarticulate. I’ll await her final call with as little anxiety as possible.

She did pose an excellent question about what I do.

She asked, and I’m paraphrasing here big time, “What about regular folk who are just plain afraid of taking that first step in investing in real estate for their retirement? The thought makes me more than a little nervous. Don’t most people fear their first foray into that world?”

Well, yes and no. Most have concluded on their own that the plan currently in place for retirement might be lacking in foresight. However, many think that if they just keep paying down their home loans, saving money in their 401K/IRA’s, and not living beyond their means, everything will work out. This is when they need a heavy dose of “I’ll never live that way” reality. The old ‘free & clear’ home plan is one of the most dangerous myths going today for Baby Boomers. It’s a prescription for a spirit crushing existence in what should be some of the best years of their lives.

Spirit crushing? If your kids live out of town, you can’t afford to visit them very often if at all without them paying your way. Trips to tropical islands sipping exotic drinks with umbrellas in them are not on your menu. Birthday and various holiday gifts – send a card because the money simply isn’t there. It’s Valentine’s Day and you want to take her to that ‘special’ place? You just don’t have an extra $100 for that. It gnaws at your spirit.

Many of us know retired folks living that life. It’s not a ‘lifestyle’ — it’s a life sentence.

I show investors three possibilities for their retirement lifestyle.

One is the status quo plan. They end up with $50-100k in their 401k, have a Social Security check for up to roughly $2k monthly, and if they can earn say 6% Read more

December 8, 2006

You were saying . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Chickens? Eggs? How about poached eggs on toast…?

BloodhoundBlog’s team coverage of the Zillow.com upgrades:

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December 8, 2006

Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution. That is what my daughter told me she would be learning about in her high school European History class. Right war, wrong Louis.

On the morning after the Zillow news, I had my own knee-jerk reaction. I subsequently took it upon myself to contact a preeminent real estate reporter for my local rag, the San Diego Union Tribune. I referred him to the many on-line discussions that were taking place, and suggested there might be a story here. Also, in an enlightened moment of shameless self-promotion, I suggested that on his next slow news day, he might investigate the real estate blogging phenomenon and perhaps even the surprising dearth of serious San Diego-based blogs. (Jeff, yours is an exception, of course).

Regarding the Zillow debate, and I will paraphrase, he indicated that they would not be pursuing the story at this time. Message being, no news here. Funny, I thought, as yesterday morning’s business section included the following headlines: Aeromexico begins nonstop flights from S.D. to Mexico City; Food is family’s matter (Chick-fil-A founder’s grandson opens a new local restaurant); and Yahoo! reshuffles top management. Okay, I’ll give them that last one. But, Zillow isn’t news? It took me an embarrassingly long time (one coffee refill) to grasp the underlying reason for his reluctance to acknowledge and address my issue.

The Sunday Homes section is gasping for breath. Newer, less experienced agents can’t afford it, and the more experienced, knowledgeable agents have all but value-engineered it out of the marketing equation. Print media no longer provides the results, the return on investment, that can justify this as a significant marketing dollar investment. In-line classified ads have become a component of our advertising arsenal only as they serve to placate our home selling clients, utilized almost entirely to “buy” our listings. The newspapers have their on-line counterparts, of course, in an attempt to compete in the IT revolution, but an announcement such as the one by Zillow yesterday serves as a painful reminder that they can’t.

I expect and hope that there will always be a place for the printed Read more

December 8, 2006

Price downturn less than scary

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me from this morning’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). I wrote this on Monday, and since then the end of the month errors in the MLS have been corrected, so the percentages in the fourth paragraph have been revised to reflect the changes.

Price downturn less than scary

Here’s a question that cannot be far from every homeowner’s mind: How low will home prices go?

Despite all the media hype, values haven’t gone down very much. For the types of homes of greatest interest to West Valley homeowners, our recent appreciation boom continued through December 2005. Since then, values have gone down only marginally.

What’s the damage so far?

For newer, three-bedroom homes, we’re down 10.27 percent from the peak. Year over year, prices are down 8.72 percent.

Here’s the good news: Looking at two-year results on these homes, values are up 29.37 percent. Over three years, prices are up 59 percent.

(All these figures come from our Market Basket of Homes, which is available online at www.bloodhoundrealty.com/MarketBasket.php.)

But the burning question is, have we found the bottom of the market?

That’s a complicated question.

Doomsayers insist that housing prices will plummet or at least undergo a regression to mean appreciation.

What this means is that if West Valley homes “should have” appreciated by 6 percent a year, we will have to give back the gains of recent years, either by a quick drop in values or a long stagnation.

On the other hand, inventories of Market Basket homes are down precipitously from earlier this year. Sales are fairly high, compared with November 2003. Builders are clearing their excess inventory at a rapid clip. With a decent spring selling season, we could be through the worst of this downturn.

However, inventories are still very high. So, if you try to sell now, you will be in fierce competition with other sellers.

It’s probably wise to resist the urge to tap that equity in your home. Interest rates are very low, so you might refinance to get a better loan, to eliminate a second mortgage or to reduce higher-interest debt.

It remains to be seen if we’re out of the woods. But, so far, the Read more

December 7, 2006

Zillow redux: A post-diluvian retrospective . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Drew Meyers is doing an excellent job of cataloging the Zillow coverage. My plan is to ponder issues arising in posts and comments, here and everywhere. No guarantee that I’m not missing something, so it would be a great favor if you would point out my lapses.

Zillow understands PR. They’ve had company bigfeet out doing media drop-ins for a while, and, for the weblogging community, David Gibbons separately briefed Ardell DellaLoggia, Cathleen and me, and a third weblogger in San Francisco, identity undisclosed. The point of all this was to spread advance news of the upgrade, but to have it embargoed until 10 PM last night. I’m sure the resulting blog-frenzy suited them just fine, but, even knowing what was going to happen once news broke, there was no way I was going to miss this show.

But: This is why I wanted to go at the thing in the greatest depth I could achieve, right from the beginning. The fact of the matter is, the center of gravity in the real estate world shifted last night — away from Chicago and toward Seattle. It was only a partial shift, and it might turn out to be only temporary, but the professional porcupine that is the National Association of Realtors lost a double-hand-full of quills last night. If it continues to lose more than it manages to grow back, soon enough it will be nothing more than a naked rat. Then what?

The person I was most interested in hearing from last night was Galen Ward, and I said so right away at Rain City Guide. He didn’t disappoint, delivering a trenchant analysis without the advance notice Ardell and I had:

Zillow has the best shot at getting the chicken or the egg (you need one to get the other). Most non-MLS sites (Trulia, Propsmart, ForSaleByOwner, etc.) have had the nasty problem of beginning with no listings and no searchers (no chickens or eggs). Each has tried a novel and somewhat successful way of getting searchers or listings – crawling sites for listings, offering free listings, pay-per click ads to lure searchers, etc. None Read more

December 7, 2006

Bearding the BawldGuy in the land of the never-setting sun . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

BawldGuy Jeff Brown was in Phoenix yesterday, and he made time to sit down with Cathleen and me before he flew back to San Diego. We had a wonderful time talking about real estate and inhaling Cheesecake Factory desserts.

I’d tell you more, but I accidentally sold a house today, so I have to open escrow and then go buy 93,000 packages of Top Ramen.

In any case, I’m showing this picture for two reasons. First, the BawldGuy really is that bald. And second, he really is that much fun to be around.

I like him so much I may even share some of my Top Ramen with him…

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December 7, 2006

Never show up at someone’s home empty-handed

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

Hello, world.

It’s a pleasure to meet everyone, and I thought I’d bring you some flowers to warm you over. I am thrilled to be a part of BHB, but can’t tell for the life of me who our true audience is and — without knowing the audience — I don’t know what you want to read from me.

My “other” blog is The Mortgage Reports. It’s easy for me to write TMR because I know my readers and what interests them.

Writing here, however, is a little different. Would you believe that I started my inaugural BHB post three separate times and then decided to write this introduction instead of something meaningful?

Even though Bloodhound Blog is getting larger, my inclusion as the first (only?) mortgage lender adds a new element. I need to be reponsible to the existing readers, though.

So, I ask the crowd: What do you want to read about from a mortgage lender? Macro issues like government regulation and home loan products? Micro issues like what drives mortgage rates each day? I wax poetic on a variety of topics so just lay it on me and I’ll make it happen for you.

It’s important that I know what you care about so I can give you meaningful insight. If I can’t do that, I become just another pretty face in the BHB lineup.

December 7, 2006

Early morning Zillow news round-up . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a walk-through this morning, so this is just a list of what I’ve seen out there this morning. I’m sure there’s stuff I’m missing, and the real news will come when people have had time to play with the new feature set. No particular order, no presumption of agreement or endorsement, just wall-to-wall coverage.

Drew Meyers’ list of links has been expanded.

Ardell has a list of her own going.

Much more: ZillowBlog, LA Times, Ardell’s other weblog, MSNBC, Seasttle Post-Intelligencer, HotPads, SocketSite, TransparentRE, Ubertor, Three Oceans Real Estate early and later, Sellsius, Galen Ward at RCG (cited last night, also), Real Central VA, Matrix, 360 Digest, BlueRoof.com.

BloodhoundBlog’s team coverage of the Zillow.com upgrades:

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December 6, 2006

2006 is the Year of Zillow: The 900 pound AVM has been upgraded to be a free listing platform and the presumptive national MLS system . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The News

An upgrade made tonight to Zillow.com‘s on-line home evaluation system will add the following new functionality:

  • Owners or listing agents for any of the 67 million homes in Zillow’s database will be able to list those homes for sale at no cost.
  • Owners of any Zestimable homes will be able to post a “Make Me Move” price on their homes, the price at which all objections to selling will have been overcome.
  • Zillow is creating a real estate wiki to serve as a sort of Wikipedia.org-like encyclopedia of real estate.

From the company’s press release:

Leading real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced a major upgrade, allowing homeowners and real estate agents to post homes for sale for free. Additionally, in redefining what it means for a house to be “For Sale,” Zillow? is enabling any homeowner to post a Make Me Move? price.

“To date Zillow has created a Web page for almost every home in the country – close to 70 million – on which we’ve placed public records data and our Zestimate? home valuations,” said Rich Barton, Zillow’s co-founder and CEO. “With today’s new release we are opening up every home’s Web page on Zillow.com for owners and their real estate agents to plant virtual ‘For Sale’ signs in their Zillow front yards for free.”

In addition, any homeowner can now post a Make Me Move price. “What number would it take for you to call the movers and hand over your keys?” asked Lloyd Frink, Zillow’s co-founder and president. “Make Me Move is our twist on the traditional ‘For Sale’ sign.” A homeowner can easily post a Make Me Move price without exposing any personal information. Zillow then enables interested buyers to contact the owner through an email “anonymizer.” There is no charge for the service.

All postings, be they “For Sale” or Make Me Move, provide free uploading of pictures, home descriptions including “what I love about my home,” and neighborhood commentary. Additionally, real estate agents who post homes they are representing for sale can publish their own contact information, link to listings on their own Web sites, and upload a photo Read more

December 6, 2006

Ask the Broker: Can I cancel my listing agreement . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I am currently in a contract with an agent who is not only disappointing me with her lack of enthusiasm and professionalism, but seems to be giving up on my house as well. She keeps saying she doesn’t know what else to do, short of lowering the price of the house dramatically, which I’m not willing to do — we’ve already come down by about $100,000 — not sure we can go much lower than that! So if we’re mutually unhappy/dissatisfied with the arrangement, what are my options? Do you think it will be easy to “legally” get out of the contract? I have a few more months left, but I am hoping to get out ASAP. I really feel that listing with her is a waste of time. What do you think I can do, and is this a common situation?

Very common situation right now, I’m afraid.

I’m going to assume you signed an Exclusive Representation contract, a normal listing agreement. Unless there is explicit language in that contract providing for unilateral cancellation, it can only be cancelled by mutual consent.

As a matter of course, all of our employment contracts include this language:

This agreement will be terminated without recourse upon written notice by either party.

If you’re done with me, I’m done with you. Another way of doing something similar is a buy-out clause: You can unilaterally cancel upon payment of a contract buy-out fee. That may seem unfair, given that your house hasn’t sold, but your agent went out of pocket on the listing expecting to have six months (or whatever) to recoup that investment. For my own part, I don’t want to take your listing unless I’m convinced I can hang a “SOLD!” sign within a month.

But there may be a way out of this labyrinth. My very first listing cancelled on me. I went to my broker at that time and said, “The seller wants to cancel, but it’s your listing contract, not mine. What do you want me to do?”

And the answer he gave me was beyond wisdom, in essence a one-sentence encyclopedia on how to run a Read more

December 6, 2006

And then there were ten . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Today we add a tenth member to our team of webloggers, Dan Green of The Mortgage Reports:

Dan Green is Certified Mortgage Planning Specialist working out of Chicago. In an industry too well known for its churn and burn methods, Dan and his team take a thoughtful, deliberative approach to mortgage lending.

We’re delighted to have Dan with us. If you’ve followed his weblog, you know that he writes in a way that makes arcane topics not just clear but fascinating. And he certainly plugs a gap in our line-up, bringing us an expertise in the lending side of the real estate transaction.

I was email-interviewed yesterday by Jim Cronin of The Real Estate Tomato. We went through the history of BloodhoundBlog and our goals for the future. The advent of Dan Green is hinted at, and it is by adding great webloggers like Dan that we will achieve those goals.

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December 5, 2006

I’m a Granite Counter Top

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Or rather, most mornings I greet the day with the eerie feeling that in one nanosecond I just may become one. If you can follow my stream of consciousness, I will explain.

In 1989, Steve and I left our condo at the beach and bought our first “grown-up” house in the ‘burbs. Those were the good old days in San Diego, and our purchase required that we camp out at the new home sales office to assure we would beat the thundering herd to the holy grail of mass-produced, cookie-cutter stucco living. Actually, we had a guy named Bradley camp out for us. (Honestly, I don’t remember his name, but he could have been a Bradley). Bradley (if that is his real name) was apparently younger, dumber, and hungrier than we; he spent 48 hours in Steve’s little backpacking tent on the sidewalk of Frank Daniels Way to hold our place in line. After two days of delivering Breakfast Croissants?, Happy Meals?, and Whopper Combos? to our employee (Bradley was a big eater), we were able to waltz into the sales office on Phase Opening Day (behind the Stevens-Family-from-the-Winnebago) to secure our Dream Home. Of course,
we have since sold it.

Our 1989 Dream Home had stylish bleached oak cabinetry reminiscent of the, well, late eighties and, most importantly, white tiled counter tops. I’m sure granite had been invented, but it was not a builder option. Fast forward to today when a buyer in the builder “design center” is subjected to information overload. The buyer can customize just about everything but the foundation. At some point, and I am not sure precisely when this occurred, certain “upgrades” became viewed by home buyers as a divine right, as critical to the home as, say, the insulation. This is particularly true of granite counter tops. Today, a home with them is not considered enhanced. Conversely, the home without them is considered deficient.

Which brings me to real estate (finally). Last week, Toby Boyce wrote an excellent article (and a Carnival favorite) which identified information overload as one of the big paralysis-causing buyer plagues. I am the victim 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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