There’s always something to howl about.
Ubertor has been teasing a new mystery feature on their weblog for days. What is it? Text me and I might tell. No, wait. Text them. What they’re offering is live chat for their agent web sites with live bodies at Ubertor to pick up the chat-slack. I’m nobody’s shill (and we code all our own web stuff by hand), but Ubertor really does seem to go the extra mile.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Redfin asserts itself. You were saying…?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
The other day I highlighted some real estate weblogs that I read every day, and, while that article is true, it’s not the whole truth. The Republic gives me all of 350 words in which to map whatever universe I see behind my eyes, so I end up focusing on the larger landmarks. In fact, I read from dozens of weblogs every day, and there are five dozen or more at any given time that I track constantly in my feed reader (Vienna for the Macintosh). As a matter of fairness to all the fine weblogs omitted on Friday, here is a prettified rendering of my OPML file.
Note bene: If your weblog isn’t on my daily diet and you think it should be, say so.
Apple blossoms — all things Macintosh
Apple Hot News
FreeMacWare.com
MacOSXHints.com
The Apple Blog
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
TidBITS
Weblogging and search marketing
Blogging Pro
Copyblogger
John Battelle's Searchblog
Lorelle on WordPress
Google Blogoscoped
Marketing
Seth's Blog
WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs
Arizona real estate Weblogs
BlogArizona.com – An Arizona Real Estate Blog
Phoenix Real Estate [Blog]
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy
Real estate weblogs
360Digest
4 Realz
Agent CEO
Altos Research Real Estate Insights
ARDELL's Seattle Area Real Estate Blog
Behind The Curtain
blogsonrei.com
BlueRoof Blog
Boulder Colorado Real Estate Research Blog
Carnival of Real Estate
Center for REALTOR® Technology Web Log
Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog
FollowSteph.com
Free The Drones
Hamptons Real Estate Blog
Housing Panic – The Bubble Blog with Attitude
Inman Blog
Matrix
Mike's Corner <br> Web 2.0 For Real Estate Pros
MOCO Real Estate News
Mortgage Blog – Industry insights from lenderama
Northern Virginia Real Estate Guide
PressReal.com
Real Central VA
real estate 2.0
Real Estate Investing For Real Blog – BiggerPockets.com
Real Estate Marketing Blog
realblogging
RealEstateUndressed
Realty Blogging
Realty Thoughts
RealtyObjectives
ReyEstate.com
Searchlight Crusade
Seattle Real Estate Professionals
Seattle's Rain City Real Estate Guide
SeekingAlpha US Market Stocks
Sellsius
SocketSite™
The Future of Real Estate Marketing
the Property Monger
The Real Estate Bloggers
The Real Estate Tomato
The San Diego Home Blog
TheREALTYgram Blogger
TRANSPARENT REAL ESTATE (www.TransparentRE.com)
True Gotham
Trulia Blog
Ubertor Real Estate Blog
Urban Trekker Blog
UrbanDigs: Tips on Profitting on New York City Real Estate
Zillow Blog
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
…is up at BlueRoof.com Blog. Our Lady Pompeia is in attendance, along with 30+ other articles on state-of-the-art real estate.
Mark your calendars: We are hosting the Carnival of Real Estate the week of October 9th. Whet your mind, sharpen your pencil and bring your A-game: I have a taste for the astounding, confounding or aboundingly profound, and I’m a tough grader. (The Leggy Blonde is a soft-touch, if you want to try apple-polishing.) But if you bring your best, we’ll do our best to bring it to the world.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, dual agency, real estate, real estate marketing
In an involuntary spasm of honesty, the Arizona Republic admits the truth:
The journalism school is considered the most crucial component of the new campus’ second phase, in part because it boasts an enrollment of nearly 1,800 students. Most of those are undergraduates who are more likely to live in downtown Phoenix.
That’s important because increasing the number of downtown residents is key to achieving Phoenix’s overall revitalization goals for the area.
Arizona State University has become the default financier of politically-favored real estate projects.
But don’t get the idea that increasing the value of land owned by very rich people is the only reason for plopping a pretend university campus in Downtown Phoenix. Far from it! The students are also needed to make the insane Trolley line we’re building look busy — as they trundle back to the real ASU campus at least once a day for their real college classes.
You could say Read more
Who can best judge what a piece of real property will sell for?
We all know the answer to that: The best estimate of the value of real estate will come from an experienced real estate appraiser, preferably one with a lot of experience in the neighborhood where the subject property is found.
After that, a Broker’s Price Opinion — same stipulations — will come second. In certain very homogenous neighborhoods, a Broker’s Price Opinion may be just as accurate as a full appraisal — and a lot cheaper.
Third place belongs to an experienced agent’s Comparative/Competitive Market Analysis. This can be very accurate in homogenous neighborhoods, substantially less so in areas where the homes or lots differ significantly from property to property.
Last place goes to the results produced by an Automated Valuation Method such as Zillow.com or NetValueCentral.com in the Phoenix area. I have written a lot about the defects in Zillow’s methods and practices, as has Sellsius&176; Real Estate blog. The Cliff’s Notes: An AVM does not evaluate houses, but rather statistics and records about houses. It cannot, for an extreme example, tell you whether the house is still there at the time of the evaluation.
It is fairly common to hear people say that AVMs will get more accurate in time. In fact, there is a finite limit to how much they can be improved. A CMA is essentially an all-paper calculation, with no inspection of the property on the ground. But a CMA is produced by an agent who has a great deal of on-the-ground experience, most of which will never be encoded into an AVM’s software. And nothing that would be considered an unzillowable factor — landscaping, decor, orientation, views, etc. — can ever be automatically accounted for by an AVM.
But: The other end of this question is need versus costs. If you want to know what your supervisor’s house is worth — use Zillow.com. It costs nothing, and close enough is good enough. If you need to know what to offer on a house you want to buy, you need a CMA at least. The good news is, your Read more
A vigorous cross-examination of David G. from Zillow.com. The richer ore is in the comments, so be sure to keep scrolling.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
This is from email I had earlier this week:
Jim Cronin from The Real Estate Tomato and I were just talking about real estate blogging being what real estate websites will begin to morph into. He sent me to your blog and I was wondering if that has been productive for you as a lead generator.
For the first point, I’m with Jim wall-to-wall. In every second of my spare time, I am preparing to repurpose all of our content to weblogs or weblog-like pages. Last weekend my son Cameron reformulated our content engines to make them site-independent (and therefore appearance-independent), and I want him to take a second pass at everything to build content that will look like an Ubertor site to people but will search like friendly old HTML 3.0 to Google. There are other weblog-like things we’re doing at the transaction-management level. It would be reasonable to say that in due course weblogging will be the defining metaphor of our internet presence.
For the second point — has weblogging been a productive lead generator? — I don’t know. A fuller answer is more complicated than that, but the whole issue is trumped by an even larger point: I don’t care.
I want to approach business as a vendor in the same way I approach it as a customer. In other words, I don’t want people treating me as a lead, as a link in their food chain. As soon as I start to feel like a salesman’s prey, I get creeped out. I don’t have to feel that way for very long to get gone. On the other hand, if I feel that you are looking out for my interests, offering me the sage counsel I have sought — and perhaps the advice I hadn’t known to ask for — then we have a sound basis for going ahead with a transaction.
There’s a lot of mercenary weblogging advice out there right now, and much of it strikes me as being doubly-dysfunctional. Yes, weblogging has huge SEO advantages, but if you go out of your way to write SEO-attractive copy, you will have Read more
Here is a good example of why short-term real estate numbers are so useless.
In Arizona, the foreclosure rate leapt nearly 27 percent in August compared to July.
Wow! Twenty-seven percent! That’s huge… right? Wrong.
Foreclosures in August were down nearly 12 percent from the same month last year[.]
Last August, there were almost no foreclosures. We were in the midst of an unprecedented housing boom.
So what does “leapt nearly 27 percent” mean? It means about as much as a four-year-old leaping 27 percent higher than a three-year-old. Tell the Chicken Little Brigade to stand down — and belay that call to the Olympic Committee…
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
Marlow Harris has a fascinating post on the barriers faced by Muslim buyers and real estate agents. Not to get too philosophical, but this actually ties in with Pope Benedict’s remarks earlier this week: Where Judaism and Christianity each represent measured compromises with Greek culture, Islam is in certain respects an anti-Hellenistic counter-revolution. (I can do this at a much more fundamental level, but you have to buy me beer.)
The Real Estate Bloggers address The new real estate paradigm — for real estate agents, citing the Mike’s Corner post I mentioned the other day. On the point, if you haven’t read it, take a look at my own entry on this topic, Seven essential skills of the 21st century real estate agent.
And The Phoenix Real Estate Guy posts a very funny rant on completely useless MLS listings:
I should probably cut the listing agent some slack about the photos. This is a new construction home after all. It was listed 569 days ago but was just completed in July. So the listing agent has only had 19 months to download a photo of the lot, the view, the home under construction or some sort of visual. Maybe a floor plan? And since it’s only been complete for 2 months, why should there be a photo of the never seen before pool design?
Indeed.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
This is me from today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). I wish I could deliver an SEO boost to the weblogs mentioned here, but I doubt that will happen. First, the paper didn’t create links for the web-based version of this story. And second, the Republic hides everything behind a for-pay wall within a few weeks.
Here are some blogs that stay on top of real estate
We publish a respected real estate weblog called BloodhoundBlog. In consequence, I am very aware of the goings-on in the real estate blogosphere.
A weblog, or blog, is a regularly updated Internet-based journal, in some ways akin to a diary. But a blog is also a conversation among the bloggers and their readers, who can comment on and discuss the blog entries.
But there is an even larger conversation going on, blog to blog, all of which are linking to each other and to the entire Internet. By following the links, you can explore an issue thoroughly.
There are dozens of excellent real estate blogs. Here are some I visit every day:
Visiting weblogs Read more
This is an excellent question:
Do buyer’s agents have to disclose ALL compensation he receives from all sources to his client? It would be important to know who’s filling his lunch sack. Example: Builder pays a bonus above the commission listed in the MLS to the buyer’s agent if his client purchases.
What does a buyer’s agent have to disclose about his compensation? In Arizona, the answer is crystal clear:
It depends.
A buyer’s agent is not required by law to disclose the amount of the co-broke commission or finder’s fee offered by the real estate broker of the seller. On the other hand, both RESPA and state law require the disclosure of bonuses, rebates, referral fees or any other sort of non-commission compensation.
This is ARS R4-28-1101-G:
A salesperson or broker shall not accept any compensation, including rebate or other consideration, directly or indirectly, for any goods or services provided to a person if the goods or services are related to or result from a real estate transaction, without that person’s prior written acknowledgment of the compensation. This prohibition does not apply to compensation paid to a broker by a broker who represents a party in the transaction.
There are a lot of things that reek about this, in my professional opinion. First, a bonus is just an attempt to induce a buyer’s agent to betray his fiduciary duty to the buyer. But second, a lot of bonuses are being paid right now in the form of commission. If I take you out to buy a new home tomorrow, the builder will pay me at least 6% of the purchase price, all of it of your money — and I do not have to disclose this to you.
In fact, all commissions and fees paid will be disclosed on the HUD-1 form — which you will see for the very first time at Close of Escrow. Wonderful…
My take on the subject: Buyers need to learn the five little words that sellers mastered long ago: “How much do you charge?” The agent may not be required by law to disclose commissions, but you can condition your working with that Read more
We’ll see. But I count two hits in two at-bats, an excellent start. Similar features, but Zorro’s gone home to Madrid. Blogrolled.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Giving my prominent proboscis a good hard tweak, a certain pseudonymous Scarlet Pimpernelesque semi-retired real estate weblogger asks: “Are you trying to say that the MLS’ are not fascist dictatorships???” The question refers to a weblog entry I posted last night chastising Trulia Blog for hyperbole in its complaints about MLS exclusivity. I actually have a lot, lot, lot to say about MLS disintermediation — but not now. For now, I’d like to take a swing at the issue Trulia raises, treating it more seriously than they did.
Here is the relevant rule from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service’s IDX policies and procedures:
12. An IDX Broker may not modify, enhance or manipulate a Shared Listing. In addition, listing information from other sources may not be combined with IDX Listings. For instance, property listings from other multiple listing services, for sale by owner properties and properties not in the MLS may not be combined with the IDX Database.
Why would ARMLS have such a rule? I can offer some reasonable conjectures, but before I do, I should like to make a meta argument: Whether or not you agree with anything I might say, it remains that MLS systems have every right to make their own rules however they choose. If the rules make sense to the membership, they don’t have to make sense to you. In other words, quibbling with me, here, gets you nowhere.
So why might an MLS IDX system forbid commingling with listings from other sources?
How about to protect the MLS brand? Or to avoid confusion between fully-cooperating listings and de facto exclusive listings? How about to preserve the cooperative system that is the sine qua non of MLS listing?
Here’s an even better reason: To maintain the quality level of displayed listings. We make fun of MLS listing quality, but egregious listings are funny precisely because they stand out (which is what egregious means). MLS listings are amazingly detailed compared to FSBO or RealtyBot listings. The simplified ARMLS feed, which any agent can download on-line, contains 213 unique fields — and it excludes the photos, their captions, the virtual-tour link and Read more
