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Category: Marketing (page 163 of 191)

November 3, 2006

EmuBlog: An image in search of a reality . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Doug Quance sent me a very nice makeover of the photo of Odysseus seen above. He went after it at some length with PhotoShop’s sharpening tools. He did a very nice job, effecting an undeniable improvement. I elected not to use it — Odysseus, for all his many virtues, really isn’t all that sharp — but perhaps I can pay the effort forward.

Larry Cragun at RealEstateUndressed posted a gorgeous Emu photo, and I have adapated it here for use in someone’s weblog:


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November 3, 2006

The Zillow.com shake-down: At last a discouraging word about NCRC . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

All right, it might be a little naive, but it’s something. From the Square Feet Blog at the San Jose Mercury News:

So why has the NCRC decided to announce that Zillow is putting the American Dream in peril? What do you think? Genuine concern for consumers, or or just pining for some publicity? Perhaps a little of both, but my instincts go with the latter explanation.

Publicity is the means. Lucre is the end, I remain convinced.

But: Here’s another chance for someone with access to a Lexis/Nexis database to investigate NCRC.

Here is the pattern I see in NCRC news stories:

1. “Scandalous” situation announced, some sort of formal action initiated.

2. Parties meet.

3. Settlement announced with NCRC getting funds from formerly “scandalous” party, now cleansed/absolved by affiliation with NCRC.

It would be a wonderful thing for Zillow.com and the entire dot.com world if a reporter would look beyond the words “non-profit” to find out how NCRC is funded…

Our story so far:

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November 3, 2006

How do you sneak up on a Freeway . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Reflecting upon today’s Arizona Republic column, here is a story I’ve been sitting on all week:

Work is under way to build a bridge on Cotton Lane and expand the road from Maricopa County 85 to Estrella Parkway.

The project will produce a half-mile, six-lane bridge over the Gila River complete with bike lanes and sidewalks.

The Maricopa County Department of Transportation has partnered with Goodyear and developers to coordinate and pay for the $59 million project.

With Estrella Mountain Ranch and the planned King Ranch communities expanding or sprouting, the project becomes necessary to serve the area’s new residents, said Bill Hahn, a project manager with the county transportation department.

A six-lane bridge…

Lose the sidewalks and bike path and it could be converted to an eight-lane bridge…

This is not the emptiest land in Arizona, but it is close — for now. The trouble is, Estrella Mountain Ranch is maybe five percent built, with plans for 30,000 more homes. There are other huge projects planned for the immediate area, and The Sprawl Machine is going to start growing northward from Casa Grande and Gila Bend, as well.

I think this enormous bridge is de facto stake-driving for the unplanned, unannounced, unwhispered-about extension of the SR-303 Freeway south to the Interstate 8 Freeway.

I don’t even think it’s a horrible idea, stipulating that they’re going to build the Freeway anyway. Better to build the bridge right, even by sleight-of-hand, than to have to replace it later.

But: It’s sleazy to build a Freeway bridge without telling the tax-payers that they just signed up to build the whole Freeway.

And: The tax-payers shouldn’t build the damn Freeway in the first place…

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November 3, 2006

Government needs to stay out to stop sprawl . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). Presumably, there’s nothing here to annoy Realtors or brokers, so I can have a Friday free of vitriolic anonymous phone calls. We’re back to money again next week, though, so my relief will be short-lived.

 
Government needs to stay out to stop sprawl

It seems reasonable to suppose that someday, the Sun Valley Parkway will be called the Loop 404 freeway.

By then, Loop 303 might stretch south all the way to Interstate 8 and east all the way to Fountain Hills, and from there all the way south to Apache Junction and Coolidge.

Already, people are talking about turning Northern Avenue into a freeway connecting Loop 101 and Loop 303.

All of this is simply the inexorable logic of the “Sprawl Machine” in action.

How does the Sprawl Machine work?

First, developers put up houses on remote farmland, where the land is cheap. There are no roads, schools, libraries, fire stations, etc., but the developers know that the new residents will clamor for those things as soon as they move in.

Politicians, scared to death of negative opinion, build all these missing amenities, adding value to all the remaining unbuilt homes and undeveloped land.

The politicians finally get wise and impose “impact fees,” taxes assessed in advance to pay for the amenities that will be built as the new homes rise.

The developers argue that this makes the homes less affordable, which is true. The politicians argue that the new residents are bearing the costs of the new burdens they occasion, which is also at least somewhat true.

But here are two more true statements that you will seldom hear uttered aloud:

In our current mixed economy, if the politicians said, “Sorry, folks, you moved where you shouldn’t have,” eventually developers would stop trying to build in places where municipalities don’t provide services.

In a truly free market, developers would build all the amenities we’re talking about (and then some) at a particular project, or they wouldn’t build the project at all.

The current mess is occasioned by government intrusion into real estate.

On the one hand, developers build where they shouldn’t. On the other, Read more

November 3, 2006

What word needs to get out?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Thank you, Greg! That was such a flattering (and nice) introduction – now I have to eventually write something useful or at least interesting or I’ve let you down. I really appreciate you making room for me like this here on your blog – that is very generous of you and it is my intention to have you glad you did this.

I originally wound up looking at your blog due to an article I read on Inman News about Zillow. What you had to say regarding Zillow was more insightful and relevant than just about anything I had ever seen on the subject. So I am a fan of yours.

It is my hope that I can provide that same level of insight to your readers on the subjects I write about here. I have been interested in writing a blog ever since reading the wonderful book, “Blog”, by Hugh Hewitt. I was particularly impressed when I read that blogs made it impossible for the Main Stream Media (MSM) to continue to control what was to be considered “news”. Owning a printing press and buying ink by the barrel was no longer a requirement for getting the word out.

What word needs to get out?

Several: For example there are many functions that the National Association of Realtors (and the various state and local associations) do a wonderful job of handling. There are other areas where the “handling” is awful or simply non-existent. Any real estate media I’ve ever seen (Inman News, RIS Media, Realty Times, etc) all have deals with or sell advertising to the very people they maybe should be “reporting on” – or like Inman, have such a specific agenda (I can’t really call it hidden) that for the most part they are either bought and paid for or are nothing less than enemies of working Realtors.

All of the various companies, individuals, programs, lead generation services, lead generation websites, coaching services, seminars for Realtors, etc. that all seem to be saying to every agent in existence, “sign up for “brand X” and achieve unlimited success. Are they all really telling the Read more

November 2, 2006

Introducing Russell Shaw . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We built BloodhoundBlog to be a brokerage weblog. Obviously, we’re in love with Rain City Guide, and, even though we have thought at times about asking people to join us, we had never planned for this to be a group blog. Our plans haven’t changed, but we’re making space for Russell Shaw to join us.

If you live in the Phoenix-area, you know who Russell is. His “no hassle listing” is a staple of Valley television and radio stations. Russell’s team sells over 400 homes a year, and he consistently ranks in the top 30 of NAR members nationwide. Think about that: 1.2 million of us and he is among the first 30 in the line.

Russell’s Associate Broker’s license is with John Hall and Associates, an 800-agent local brokerage. The work he does here will redound to Bloodhound’s credit, of course, but I don’t think there is any threat that we’ll be stealing business from him.

What we can do is help him get his feet wet as a real estate weblogger and make a name for himself in national blogging circles, in anticipation of his going out on his own. I’m excited about this for a couple of reasons. First, Russell is a living, breathing exponent of the kind of business-oriented ideas I advocate. And second, he will be the first mega-producer real estate weblogger.

Now keeping in mind that this is a man who could write a blank check for Xanadu, what might you suppose is his motivation for weblogging? He has a good-humored disdain for much of real estate training, and he wants to share what he has learned in his almost 30 years as a mega-producing Realtor. We should be thanking him already!

Anyway, he will begin posting shortly. He’s learning how to do this, and it’s not an easy praxis to master, so help him out as you can. Someday very soon, we’ll all be saying, “I knew him when…”

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November 2, 2006

Defending Zillow.com . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Picture yourself living in Boston, Massachusetts, where the climate is six months of drizzle and mud followed by six months of deep snow and permafrost. Let’s say it comes to your mind to bid a final farewell to all things wintery and shuffle off to the endless, boundless, soul-enriching sunny skies of Phoenix, Arizona.

This is a rare adventure that only happens about 200,000 times a year, so you’ll want to do some preparation. So you put on your long underwear and your clothes, your overclothes and your overcoat, your socks, oversocks, shoes, overshoes and snow-boots, your gloves, your overgloves, your hat and your overhat, and you grab your umbrella and layer on a scarf or two for good measure and then you trundle out into the permafrost to face the day.

You waddle your way over to Out Of Town Books in Harvard Square and buy a copy of Phoenix Magazine. The photos are astounding — mountains, deserts, golf, tennis, spectacular sunny skies and stunning women in skimpy sun-dresses. If you’re looking for everything Boston isn’t, you’ll find it in the pages of Phoenix Magazine.

But: Is this adequate preparation for a transcontinental relocation? I really like Phoenix Magazine, and I have a client who is an Associate Editor there, so I have even more reason to like it. But there is a big difference between thumbing through one issue of Phoenix Magazine and making detailed plans to move from Boston to Phoenix.

Who could doubt this?

I’m being very serious. Even if someone could be so impulsive as to move from Boston to Phoenix on a whim, goaded by a photograph in a magazine, would even that will-o’-the-wisp conflate impulse with planning?

The answer is obvious, isn’t it?

This is how we can know with a certainty colder than the wrought iron railings of Beacon Hill in Olde Boston Towne that the complaint brought against Zillow.com by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) is completely specious.

Do you see why? There is no possible way that any thoughtful person could confuse a number regurgitated by a piece of software with a responsible evaluation of a home. NCRC Read more

November 1, 2006

The Zillow.com shake-down: The piling on begins — and Spencer Tracy is nowhere to be found . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Zillow news since the New York Times story broke:

These are all mainstream news sources, not weblogs, and I omitted the (many, many) duplicates. The Times article was picked up by Reuters and echoed far and wide. The AP article, shown here from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will have run in hundreds of newspapers and will have been broadcast in abbreviated form on hundreds more television and radio stations.

Devotees of old black-and-white movies may be thinking that Zillow.com will prevail in court. I invite you to reread those headlines. None of this will ever get to a courtroom, and Zillow.com has already lost in the court of public opinion — the only court this “issue” was ever intended to reach.

Apparently, the company’s plan now is to have the meeting with NCRC “in two weeks.” Presumably, Zillow.com thinks it is going to prepare itself in that time for a honest, civilized debate. What will happen instead is that the NCRC will leak a few very damaging sound-bites every day, vilifying Zillow.com for a pervasive white-glove racism in its algorithms. It’s the death by a thousand cuts. By the time the meeting occurs — which I would expect to be quite a bit sooner than “in two weeks” — Zillow.com will be willing to pay anything to stop the loss of blood.

Entrepreneurs can afford to fight this kind of battle — even to the edge of doom. Any business with third-party investors will eventually cave to the will of those investors. Zillow.com might still win this if it comes out hard on the attack, demonstrating by a preponderance of widely-publicized evidence that NCRC is nothing but a shake-down outfit. I would love to see that happen, but I don’t expect it.

Instead, Zillow.com will dither, as it is doing now, thinking Read more

October 31, 2006

The Zillow.com shake-down: Preparing for the denouement . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Via Matrix, The New York Times:

Zillow.com, the Web site that provides free home valuations, has been accused by a coalition of community activist groups of undervaluing the homes in black and Latino neighborhoods.

The headline of the story: “A Home Valuation Web Site Is Accused of Discrimination.” I said the headline would be “Computerized Redlining,” but this is The New York Times, the dignified hand-maiden of the left. In any case, the charges of racism will get more hysterical until Zillow.com either pays up or shuts this shake-down down.

But why is this article in the Times today, when this “news” broke last week? To soften Zillow.com up, to let them know what they’re in for if they resist.

If you want something to be frightened about on Halloween, here it is…

Our story so far:

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October 31, 2006

Business Journal: “Housing market could bottom out in six months”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From The Business Journal of Phoenix:

The housing market could bottom out during the next six months, according to Metrostudy’s latest report on local real estate markets.

“Cutbacks in new production, aggressive incentives by sellers, the exit of the majority of investors and the fundamental demographic support for housing demand are positive indicators for a housing turnaround by mid-2007,” said Mike Inselmann, president of the Richmond, Texas, company. “The Federal Reserve has ended its series of rate increases, and mortgage rates have dropped notably in the last few months,” he added.

Phoenix continues to have one of the nation’s strongest economies, said Ben Sage, director of Metrostudy’s Arizona division. Even though job growth declined from a peak of more than 100,000 new jobs for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2005, the 91,900 jobs posted at the end of September 2006 puts the state at the top of the nation, he said.

It will take a few days for the errors to shake out of the MLS, but October’s Market Basket looks pretty weak: Sales down, prices down — but inventories continue their downward trend. Given that we’re headed into the holidays, it’s reasonable to expect the rest of the year to be slow.

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October 30, 2006

The Zillow.com shake-down: BloodhoundBlog’s take so far — and a chance to win a BloodhoundRealty.com Tee Shirt . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If Inman Blog sent you here, here is our side of the story so far:

A question might arise in a thoughtful mind: Why am I defending Zillow.com from this outrage?

First, because they have the right to run their business however they choose. If I can persuade them to add a disclaimer to their front page, that’s great. If not, it’s still their business, their private property.

Second, and of much greater importance, if Zillow.com caves in to extortion, that will open the net up for raids by every flavor of “non-profit” piracy. It is very rare that anyone can make any difference at all in the way things are done. This is one of those times, a transition point, and what Zillow.com does may have decisive impact on future events. Will the net become another corporate cash-box for “non-profit” groups who will — for a fee — “protect” you from legislation they got passed? Or will the net remain the exception to the way business is done in America?

The Future of Real Estate Marketing has more today, as does Realty Thoughts. For my own part, I believe the crux of the issue is racial politics and Fair Housing legislation, rather than the plights of starving appraisers or disgruntled Realtors. These groups may have their own axes to grind, but every NCRC shake-down I have been able to uncover has been related to Fair Housing law or the Community Reinvestment Act.

These are the three instances I have found, having invested less then ten minutes’ research time:

  1. NCRC routinely shakes-down banks.
  2. NCRC shakes-down lender for red-lining. Note that the article reads like the lender was fined, but the payment actually went to NCRC.
  3. NRT hires NCRC to teach its Fair Housing classes. In this instance, NCRC was the white-hat protector called in to fend off the black-hat protectors.

My belief is that fleas don’t come in threes: If every story I found Read more

October 30, 2006

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up already at Jim Duncan’s Real Central VA. The pingback in my mailbox said 4:27 am. Arizona doesn’t change time zones, so I have no idea what time it is anywhere today, but clearly someone was burning the midnight oil in his pumpkin.

Jim Cronin from The Real Estate Tomato takes first place, just as he is about to host his own Halloween Carnival.

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October 28, 2006

A radically different way of thinking about real estate: What if Las Vegas Boulevard were private property . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

For Galen Ward from Rain City Guide, here is a weblog post I wrote in 2003 on the idea of mass transit and private property in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Monorail was then still in construction, and I was busily demonstrating why it must fail — which it has, as the ultimate slow-motion train wreck. Much has changed since I wrote this (and the links are not warranted to work): The Mandalay Resort Group has been swallowed by MGM/Mirage, the Boardwalk is in redevelopment and the Stardust is about to be. There are semi-residential towers being built on The Strip — although there still will be no commuters living there. Most importantly, the PediCabs, the bicycle-rickshaws, have been banned. Public pretext: Safety issues. Real reason: Too effective at competing with taxicabs.

Anyway, using Las Vegas Boulevard as an example, here is a completely different way of thinking about real estate:

BetterVegas: No-train-ware…

Harkening back to this, deconstructing boneheadedness is simply a matter of determining how and why the solution deployed did nothing — or less than enough, at least — to satisfy the original objective. It is boneheaded not to connect the resort with the casino that is its reason for being. It is boneheaded to turn an entertainment venue into a regimented drill, then move the patrons though an inane non-exit. It is boneheaded to build a trolley system in Phoenix that will not empty a single car, but which will cause those cars to move slower and pollute more.

It is boneheaded to build a transit system for The Las Vegas Strip that is not on The Strip. But what’s worse, it would be boneheaded to build a rapid transit system even on The Strip.

Why is that so?

The answer comes in the form of two more questions: What is the product? And who is the client?

The Strip runs on Las Vegas Boulevard from Sahara Avenue to the north to Russell Road to the south. When we think of mass transit systems, we think of commuters. In this we are being thoughtless, because on that four-plus mile stretch of road there are Read more

October 28, 2006

Tab-surfing: Cataloging my collection of good posts…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It really is a matter of browser tabs. I live in Safari for the Mac, and if I see something in Vienna, my RSS feed reader, that I want to explore, I’ll open the window, then slide the tab over to another open window that is already full of tabs. I end up with a sort of codex of open browser windows, each one stuffed with elemental goodness. Every once in a while, I catalog my collections of tabs. At that point, the marginal cost of doing so publicly is nil, and there’s a good chance I can share with you something important you might have missed. Now you know my secret method…

It’s a six-month-a-versary at The San Diego Home Blog. It turns out all the great RE.net raconteurs are in San Diego. Kris Berg has some thoughts on MLS fragmentation, as well.

Jeff Brown, the other great San Diego spinner of yarns, wants you to think about the relative merits of stocks versus real estate.

Bonnie Erickson has thoughts on the call for underperforming Minnesota Realtors to have a glass of Kool-Ade, as does Daniel Rothamel.

Dustin Luther at Rain City Guide has four posts (so far) on the Seattle Blog Business Summit. My skeptometer may need re-calibration, but I’m wondering if there is a difference between being well-known and being well-thought-out. Austin Bay got to interview Donald Rumsfeld this week, you tell me why. Robert Scoble, who praises Zillow.com because it’s always wrong in his experience, advises webloggers to “write well.” Ya think?

Here’s real news, in any case: WordPress 2.0.5 has been released.

John L. Wake at the Arizona Real Estate Notebook has found someone with the perfect solution to high land costs in San Francisco and Manhattan…

BloodhoundBlog is four months old tomorrow. Technorati says we’re linked by 180 weblogs so far. RSS Pieces has advice on how to boost traffic 40% in one hour per day. Here’s my advice, an elaboration on the philosophy of the inestimable Robert Scoble: Write well, write wisely, write often — and don’t please anyone more than you please yourself. Quantity matters a whole lot less than 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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