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Category: Marketing (page 53 of 191)

February 10, 2009

Swanepoel’s Top 10 Real Estate Trends matter to me — and to real estate — quite a bit less than my own list of burning issues

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Stefan Swanepoel sent me a copy of his Top 10 Real Estate Trends Report, which was gracious of him, considering that neither me nor any of the Bloodhounds nor BloodhoundBlog itself are mentioned anywhere in the book — at least as far as I could detect on a cursory examination. I don’t mind, mind you. I’d be amazed if we were cited. That kind of attention is reserved for the likes of Sellsius and Agent Shortbus — the biggest little PR3 weblogs in real estate. Every pundit or entity even remotely connected to the official world of real estate honors us by ostentatiously affecting to ignore us. And: Even then: We care a lot.

I did surprise myself by actually cracking the book. I had it last year, too, but I don’t remember if I looked at it. And I don’t want to seem to be hyper-critical of Swanepoel’s effort. It ain’t for me, that much should be obvious. I can’t think of anything in the tome that strikes be as being either important or non-obvious — or non-trivial. The whole thing, and everything and everybody in it, seem like deck chairs on the Titanic to me — but so does everything else even remotely connected to the world of official real estate.

Here are the issues Swanepoel takes up:

  • Nightmare on Elm Street: What if Your E&O Insurance No Longer Existed?
    If the tenth biggest issue in real estate is a FUD factor, we’re in better shape than we knew. Excellent reason for getting rid of the broker’s license, but, of course, that doesn’t come up.
  • The “Real” Energy Crisis: Factors Shaping Housing Values and Development
    Predictions about energy are as reliable as predictions about the weather.
  • Winning the Gold: Green Movement Gains Grassroots Support
    If we assume an energy problem, much of the green issue will concern money, not the environment. For now, I read it all as a fad.
  • Information Highway Congestion: Too Much Traffic Creates a Virtual Parking Lot
    More FUD, in this case I suspect fuddy-duddy FUD. We are overwhelmed by information. Our only hope for salvation will come from Luddite real estate brokers who can’t Read more
February 9, 2009

How bad can the weather in Seattle suck? Come see the Bloodhounds this week and find out

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have been in Seattle in the late Summer, an idyllic time of year when it barely rains twenty inches a day and when the Banana Slugs start to think about snuggling up with you for warmth. I have been on Mount Rainier on Labor Day — playing in the snow.

(People say “ray-near,” but it should be pronounced “rainy-er.” I live among a bunch of mountains, but not one of them suffers from excess precipitation like Mount Rainier.)

Brian Brady and I are in Seattle later this week. We’re flying up to do a BloodhoundBlog Unchained preview, then we’re hanging out through Friday for REBarCamp Seattle.

The weather in Phoenix actually sucks right now, but, by state law, I’m forbidden to disclose just how badly it sucks. But our sucky weather is utterly nothing compared to what I have to look forward to later this week in Seattle:

Water freezes at 32 degrees. That never happens where I live, in North Central Phoenix. It can happen once or twice a Winter out in the sticks, but in town ice is something we buy at the supermarket to make Irish Whiskey more refreshing.

My plan is to go totally gnome, comfortably numb, in-to-it like an Inuit. A vast and cumbersome leather overcoat, with a sweater, a scarf, maybe even a hat. To understand how big an exception this is for me, right now I’m wearing a tee-shirt and shorts, no shoes, no socks. And I’m sweating.

Totally gnome for my presentation, too. Everything we do at Unchained is going to be hands-on, learn-by-doing, but I can’t count on being able to do that in Seattle. Instead, as with The Way of the Farmer from last May’s BloodhoundBlog Unchained, I’m going to go through a lot of hard-headed, practical stuff that you can take home and deploy at once, if you like — if you take good notes.

It seems likely to me that I’ll be sneezing and sniffling, too. I moved to Arizona from North Andover, Massachusetts, which makes Seattle look like a tropical resort. For the life of me, I cannot remember how I used to survive Read more

February 9, 2009

Some ugly questions about that $15,000 home-buyers tax credit…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I let the hoopla over the $15,000 tax credit for home-buyers of all incomes slide last week. There’s way too much sick-making news coming out of Washington right now, and, somehow, Republicans dancing in triumph because they had managed to squeeze out a little theft for the rich — and for the NAR — was more than I wanted to try to digest.

Actually, my pet bette noir last week was the ridiculous idea of a compulsory 4% mortgage rate. What this economy really needs is a mandatory 720 FICO score!

Pinocchio — the NAR — is a vampire, a dead thing that feeds on the living, we all know that. But I was writing about that $15,000 gift from the taxpayers to the NAR this morning, and some ugly question came to me.

For one thing, this is a direct transfer of funds from the Federal budget to the housing industry. Normally I love the idea of starving the government, but the net effect of this tax credit is that we will artificially buttress home prices, delaying but not avoiding the ultimate price decline that we have to go through to achieve a true recovery.

Am I wrong? I read the tax credit as being a net reduction in taxes paid. If you owe $15,000 in taxes, but if you bought a primary residence, you pay no taxes.

I can’t see lenders resisting a bait like that. They will find a way to lend you the dough now, and you pay it off over the next 12 — or 24 or 36 or 360 — months. Your $15,000 can pay for up to 10% of the purchase price of the home, and your net tax liability will be reduced by $15,000 next April. If you have another $15,000 in cash — set aside for taxes, perhaps? — you’ve got an 80/20 loan on a $150,000 home with no PMI.

Let’s go once better: $15,000 down on an FHA loan gets you to a $428,571 purchase price — in excess of the jumbo limits in Phoenix. Have you been craving that $400K house up the block. It Read more

February 7, 2009

Thirty-three touches from the cloud: Seriously seeking CRM

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We need a CRM solution, and it’s making me crazy that we don’t have one. We wrestled with REST for a couple of years, but we never got it cranking on all cylinders, and it lacks features I don’t want to live without. Chris Johnson raves about Heap, but I’m not sure it’s everything we need.

I need help, it’s true enough.

What I want:

  • Cloud-based. I don’t want any proprietary apps running on dedicated hardware. I want to be able to do my CRM business from any web-enabled computer and any iPhone anywhere.
  • iPhone empowered, therefore, of course. Needs to integrate with Contacts, iCal, etc., and it needs to sync periodically through the cloud.
  • Email-based data entry. Heap can do at least some of this. What I would like is to be able to have a form on a web page produce an email that is mailed to my CRM, with that email initiating a sequence of events: Create client record and initiate a particular set of sequences of follow-up contacts. These should be selectable by the email received: Investors should be subscribed to different campaigns from sellers or first-time home buyers.
  • Jott-able. Heap does some of this, also.
  • As tightly-integrated with Google Apps as possible. For example, I want the calendar to be the Google Apps calendar.
  • Action scripts or event scripts or whatever, as automated as possible, ideally already scripted with the text already written. By now we’re talking about the “33 touches” idea from The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but I want as much of this as possible to happen automatically and hands-free. As above, there will be different “8×8” scripts for new clients, and possibly also different “33 touches” scripts, but, once these are assigned, I want for them to proceed “untouched by human hands.” Agent 360 seems to be well-equipped in this regard.
  • Action scripts that require real live human action should create to-do lists for the affected team members.
  • We own our own data. That means we have the ability to move our data off in a usable format whenever we want, and our data is never shared with anyone else.
  • Simple to use, with Read more
February 5, 2009

Ask the Bloodhounds: What do people want on a real estate web site?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Flanagan of Flanagan Realty has a nice-looking Coldwell Banker site. But he sends along this question, which I’m passing on to the brilliant minds who read, write and comment here:

What does today’s real estate consumer want in (on) a real estate brokerage’s website? You may have answered this before but I have not been able to find the “list” on GOOGLE.

It’s an interesting question. Even if you have the secret sauce, how do you enhance that initial moment of engagement? Rephrased as a more metrical question, how do you cut the dreaded bounce rate?

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January 31, 2009

Ask the Bloodhounds: “What are your top recommendations for a Realtor just starting out in today’s market?”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

An email from Nicole Ford, a newer agent working on the Gulf coast of Texas:

Hi Greg,
 
I’m a new agent (started in July) and have recently started reading the Bloodhound Blog. First, I want to say thank you for providing such an incredible resource. Second, I have a question that I’d like to ask of you and all of the other incredible writers (and readers) on your site: What are your top recommendations for a Realtor just starting out in today’s market? What are the most important things that I can be doing to guarantee my future success?
 
I realize that I have picked a very difficult time to start as a Realtor, but I’m convinced that once I weather this storm and become successful now, I can look forward to a great career in the future. I also believe that a positive outlook (even in the toughest times) can be a tremendous asset.
 
Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice that you share. I look forward to reading (and contributing to!) your blog in the years to come.
 
All the best,
Nicole Ford
 
South Padre Island Realtor
NicoleFord.com

I’m interested in answers to this question from all perspectives. I get the impression that Nicole has things more together than most new agents, but some sincere advice for beginners will be welcomed, I’m sure, by the ninety-and-nine folks who didn’t have the guts Nicole exhibits by asking the question.

So what should a new agent do to keep body and soul together in this market?

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January 29, 2009

The rest of the real estate industry might be Pinocchio — false in every particular — but nothing prevents you from being genuine

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Real estate is the most unbusinesslike business in the history of business.

I don’t want to defend that statement comprehensively, because it’s late and I’m tired, but I can offer some data points.

When we sat down with Greg Tracy, I argued to him that licensing inhibits the kind of competition for reputation that we expect and depend upon when deciding which restaurant to go to, for instance, or which auto mechanic to use. Instead, in real estate, after 90 hours of nonsense classes, we say, “Here’s your license, kid. Get out there and wreck someone’s finances!”

I met with a new buyer client on Wednesday, and we had a wonderful time cataloging all the things Realtors and brokers would do if residential real estate were organized like any other sort of business.

What kinds of things?

If real estate were a real business, Realtors would market the damn product, instead of engaging in two or three acts of rain-dancing and then waiting — for months or even years — for the rain to come.

If real estate were a real business, Realtors and brokers wouldn’t be so transparently mercenary about using, abusing and burning through their clients. One of the huge benefits of real estate weblogging is that Realtors are openly discussing the tricks they deploy to strong-arm their “leads.” In no other business do vendors have such contempt for consumers.

(Incidentally, although I say this all the time, apparently no one believes me: Consumers read industry-focused weblogs. When you admit that you do certain things to “force people to call,” you’re not telling them anything they didn’t already know about the real estate business.)

If real estate were a real business, commissions would be divorced and incentives would be aligned to put the agent and the client on the same side in negotiations. The longer the real estate industry delays in reforming its practices, the greater the opening it offers to vendors offering a better or cheaper alternative to traditional real estate.

I love it when I really get to talk to my clients, because I conceal nothing from them. We do well by doing good: This is Read more

January 28, 2009

This Unchained Seattle Lender Built A Huge Following, By Quoting Rates

by

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

Author website

Rhonda Porter, of Mortgage Master Service Corp. in Seattle, is speaking at BloodhoundBlog Unchained Seattle, on February 12, 2009.  BloodhoundBlog readers see Rhonda commenting here and Rain City Guide readers know her as the resident mortgage guru.  I know her to be one of the most savvy Loan2.0 practitioners; that’s why I chased her to speak at Unchained Seattle.

I interviewed Rhonda about what she does that WORKS, not what she does that’s cute.  At BloodhoundBlog Unchained we talk about things that are as practical as a jackhammer on a construction site.  When you hear Rhonda, you’ll learn that she ‘s a lunch-pail carrying, hard-hatted foreman, building relationships through her social media efforts.

Listen to my fifteen minute discussion, with Rhonda, here.

If you haven’t reserved your spot for Unchained Seattle, you just might be shut out.  Over 75 people have raised their hands and seats are going quickly.  Contact Scott Cowan if you’d like to see us on February 12.

The fun doesn’t end after BloodhoundBlog Unchained Seattle!  We jumped on the chance to be a sponsor of Seattle REBarCamp, the next day.  Todd Carpenter describes the ad-hocratic learning experience that is REBarCamp:

RE Bar Camp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees

BloodhoundBlogUnchained is proud to be a sponsor of this effort in the Emerald City.  Greg and I will be there to join in all the fun!

January 27, 2009

Turning LiquidBlue into steady green: Is it possible to found a new real estate brokerage without going broke?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cleveland real estate broker John Kalinowski and I have been batting around some ideas of his on how to structure his new brokerage to make it work well for everyone — clients, agents and ownership. Surely I’m not the best person to ask about this, since we are doing everything we can to avoid adding agents. So John decided to throw it out to the Bloodhounds — contributors, commenters and readers — to see if y’all can come up with better ideas.

Here’s John’s epistle to the dawgs:

Hi Greg!

I’m reaching out to you and the Bloodhound community for a little advice as I prepare to take the next step in the fascinating world of real estate brokerage. I left RE/MAX in early December to start Liquid Blue Realty with a secret weapon of sorts, a custom sign sign idea built around your original concept. So far the response has been beyond incredible. It takes a ton of work to create each sign, and they’re not cheap, but the attraction is unlike anything I’ve seen in our area.

Our market is in a state of transition, just like everywhere else, with agents concerned about whether or not their brokers will survive, and struggling with monthly desk fees and transaction charges. Right now I have one other truly excellent agent working with me, along with two part-time admin assistants who have the ability to work full time. I’m ready to start talking to other agents, and I plan on being very selective in who I choose to join our company. Our approach to listing homes is an important part of our business, and providing a reliable, repeatable listing experience to the public is one of my main goals.  No matter who a seller works with at our company, I want to make sure they receive the same attention to listing detail and transaction management as I bring to my clients.

Where I’m stuck is how to best create a compensation plan that makes sense, particularly with all the extra services we intend to provide to our agents.  We will partner with them on their listings, taking Read more

January 21, 2009

Selling real estate the engenu way: Because I can make content-rich web sites so easily, I can make my points more convincingly

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Can premium rental homes in suburban Phoenix throw off positive cash-flow at 75% of market rents?

An investor asked me that question the other day. It’s an academic problem, really, a matter of costing out typical homes to see how they perform under that scenario.

I can do that much standing on my head, but answering a question like that with a spreadsheet is not terribly satisfying. We live in a data-rich world, and I wanted for my investor to understand exactly what we were talking about. So not just the spreadsheet, but also MLS listings of typical homes. And not just the listings, but also detailed photos of those homes, with descriptions of what might be wrong with each one.

In fact, I could have answered the question any way I wanted, from tap-dancing on the telephone to an attempt to set a showing appointment. But I know from experience that the more questions I can answer in a completely credible fashion, the greater my chances of forging a long-term client relationship.

And that’s a big “Duh!” — isn’t it? How would I want to be treated if I were thinking of dropping some substantial fraction of a million dollars on investment real estate?

And this is where engenu comes in. I can shoot the spreadsheet across immediately, as an appetizer. But I’m not selling spreadsheets, I’m selling houses, so I put together a list of houses that I thought might be financially impressive. I toured each one, taking photos of everything, then came home and built an engenu web site from my findings.

I’ve been talking about engenu for nearly a year, but I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten the point all the way across. We use engenu to build our single-property web sites and to provide supporting documentation when we blog about homes for sale. We use it as a way of previewing homes for out-of-town buyers and investors, and as a way of communicating staging advice to our sellers. The language of real estate is photography, and engenu enables us to build (and rebuild) large, photo-rich web sites with minimal effort.

So: I came Read more

January 17, 2009

Hittin’ Fat Fastballs — Diggin’ For Gold — Skinnin’ Cats

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I remember something a great football coach once said. He’d been asked about the vanilla offense he ran, and how defenses were shedding old fashioned ideas, and learning how to stop tradition offenses with ease. He said, “Let ’em do whatever they need to. If my guys block their guys, we win.” That coach was a 1.0 guy if ever there was one. 🙂 I bring that up only as a preface to what my point is today.

It’s still all about skinned cats. It’s amazing how many are still calling guys like Chris dinosaurs. I’m sure his feelings are mortally wounded as he cries his way to the bank every month. Much like USC football coach John McKay replied when asked about his ‘student body left, student body right’ running game. Said Coach McKay: “When they find a way to stop it, I’ll try something else.” His boring, predictable offense produced multiple Heisman Trophy winning running backs.

Chris Johnson stimulated some pretty productive give and take with his last couple posts. Chuck Marunde and I joined in with our own thoughts on the subject. Where Chris was in his glory talkin’ about his use of Ma Bell’s favorite toy, Chuck was lamenting his local market’s dreary numbers. And dreary might be an optimistic description. He was up to here with high maintenance owners on sloooow moving listings. Me? I think Chris is a born cold caller, one of those rare people who knows the percentages, shrugs his shoulders, then works ’em, all the while wondering why his competition can’t see the gold too.

Chris’s core message as I see it is this: If he told you that digging a 100 three foot holes a day would uncover a pot of gold a week, every agent with a pulse would be grabbin’ gloves, a pick & shovel and headin’ out the door. Why? Because they’d be thinkin’ of the year’s worth of gold they’d have by consistently diggin’ those daily 100 holes, right? You know that’s true. Yet in real life they don’t, do they? Those who won’t dig understand why, Read more

January 15, 2009

A Call to Arms

by

CEO, Redfin.com

Author website

Why, in an industry in which customer service is one of only two ways to set yourself apart, have brokers been so wary of measuring customer satisfaction?

It isn’t because agents don’t care. I’ve never met a Realtor who didn’t care about his customers. In fact, when we talked about Redfin’s customer satisfaction goals last week, a broker immediately contacted us to ask how we measure customer satisfaction.

Will the Brokers Who Measure Customer Satisfaction Please Step Forward?
I was going to refer him to someone else in real estate who uses our scoring system — we’re just beginners — but then I couldn’t find anyone else. Which is surprising, given that it’s the same system used by Apple, Costco, FedEx, American Express, Dell, Vanguard and literally thousands of other companies in virtually every industry — except real estate.

The broker ended up scheduling a meeting with Redfin’s Matt Goyer at Inman Connect. It may have been one of the only Connect meetings explicitly about customer satisfaction all week. In looking over the otherwise dazzling agenda — I have been to both Inman and Bloodhound conferences, and both are very good — I noticed that every type of marketing under the sun was in the program — except the one that works best: customer marketing.

The Perils of Transparency Are Worth It...

The Perils of Transparency Are Worth It...

The reason measuring customer satisfaction wasn’t more prominent is because people think of customer testimonials as the old-school word-of-mouth that Realtors traditionally rely on, whereas Connect is all about the new school: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

E-Commerce for Agents Not Houses
But the message matters as much as the new-fangled medium, and our message to the world has to be about the quality of our service. The same transformation in how consumers research listings will change how they choose an agent. Rather than meeting face to face to review listings, consumers now evaluate listings online. They can’t see or smell the house in person, so they bury their nose in numbers. When their first encounter with an agent is online, they’ll take the same approach.

Therein lies the great fallacy in many people’s original Read more

January 14, 2009

Shawna Ebersole’s iShopGreenwood.com is very rich in content — but it may be just a little bit too rich in color

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My apologies for my recent absence. I came down with a cold — a warning from god about going to Seattle in the Winter — then got bit in the ass by a long-standing Real Life Dilemma. I missed all of the vendorslut “news,” so I don’t even know how deeply inspired were the attendees by being yelled at by Gary Vaynerchuk. (“C’mon! People! It’s not customer service unless you emote from the throat!”)

Am I being hypercritical? I don’t think so. We’re all of us victims of bullshit now and then. The trick is to scrape it off your shoes before you track it all over everything.

Meanwhile, Brian Brady shot this to me by email:

Shawna Ebersole asked us to critique iShopGreenwood.com and give her some ideas for promoting her weblog.

Well. At the risk of seeming hypercritical, I will say that the site seems to me — a male specimen — to be girly and cluttered. The overarching them is High Concept — which means you have to figure it out. No, that’s not a collection of girly-colored boxes, it’s a mall, a big-city indoor shopping mall.

Even so, I don’t care. I don’t care for the colors and I didn’t like having to figure out what was going on, but I don’t think that hurts anything. I also don’t think it helps anything. There are a zillion much-less-clever real estate weblogs, and they probably do just about as well as this one.

But here’s something I really, really liked: The site is very rich in content. My take is that Shawna Ebersole predates real estate weblogging by quite a while, and she seems to have retained every bit of the content she had developed before she took the plunge with a blogsite from Jim Cronin’s RealEstateTomato.com.

Isn’t that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’ve written before — and should write more extensively — about the idea of satisfaction — feeling full. When people are sampling any of your marketing, they need to be able to consume enough to “feel full.” No one acts before they’re ready to, and you have to hang Read more

January 13, 2009

More Arguments in Favor of Ma Bell.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Guess who woke up full of passion, piss and vinegar?

Shiver me timbers, it’s GenuineChris.   So, let’s talk 1.0, 2.0 and stuff.

NEVER did I say–or advocate–that it’s acceptable to burn through clients.  You can AFFORD to when you have 1.0 skills.  But it’s wasteful, stupid and inefficient.  So, get this: I said I’ve been wasteful stupid and inefficient in the past.  Who hasn’t?  Who admits it?  You find people to honor.  To help, to serve.

NEVER do I say that you list anything, work with anyone.  INITIATING a conversation doesn’t obligate you to take junk listings or work with mentally ill drama queens.  You’re looking for the BEST AND MOST PROFITABLE people to sell to.

NEVER did I–or will I–say that “cold calling was the ONLY way that I generate business.”   Fact is, I adovocate “deliberate connecting,” first, THEN cold calling.   Connect with, and build a Brian Brady proof fence around EVERYONE that you know.  EVERYONE that you interact with.  (By the way, a Brian Brady proof fence would be a magnificent thing).   Connect, DELIBERATELY.  A call to your top 400 people once a quarter.  That’s just: 133 calls/month.  Or ~40 calls a week.  Or ~8 calls a day.    And it’s unobtrusive, and if you do it serving them…

…you’ll never starve.

Most people won’t even do that.   I dig the drama, the tension, and that’s why I like honing myself as a “cold” caller.  I do it to build my ability to connect with people as much as anything else.  Fact is, I’m persistent, I’m Rocky Balboa.  I get my face beat in but I keep coming back for another round.  And the fact is, I call people, in roughly the order:

-People that know, like trust and seek me out: every 30 days.  There are 45 people on this list.  And I talk to them as often as I can, and I make it a point to honor all of them.  Never forget the people that have helped.  Be present and ready to give them a %%^& referral.

-People that know me and recognize me. Every 90 days, a CONVERSATION.   Today?  We’re at about Read more

January 11, 2009

Doing the right kinds of repairs and remodeling to your home is the key to maintaining its resale value

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
Doing the right kinds of repairs and remodeling to your home is the key to maintaining its resale value

Cleaning, painting and doing small repairs around the house are just about unlimited virtues for homeowners.

They’re a matter of necessity for people who hope to sell their homes. Only the best-prepared homes are selling at premium prices right now, with the rest going at or near the lender-owned price.

But even if you’re not selling, staying on top of the little things promotes your enjoyment of the home, and it helps to sustain its resale value. At a minimum, regular maintenance will help you catch small problems before the become big, expensive problems.

But if doing little jobs matters a lot, what about doing big jobs? Should you redo the kitchen and bathrooms while the market is low? Should you convert the carport into a garage and the patio into a family room? Should you add on a brand new master suite?

The definitive answer to all these questions is: Maybe.

Remember that the Phoenix real estate market may be down for years to come. It’s possible you won’t see a return on your investment for quite a while.

On the other hand, if you know you’re going to be in the home for the next five years, and if a new kitchen will substantially improve your enjoyment of the home, it might be worth doing.

Labor can be very cheap right now, and money is easy to obtain if you have equity in your home. But you have to resist the urge to over-improve for your neighborhood. Brazilian Blue Marble is gorgeous, but it probably won’t be worth more than Corian or Formica countertops on resale.

Serious additions are a bigger question. If you know you’re going to be in the home for five years, you’re probably okay. If the addition makes sense — if you live in a neighborhood of two bedroom homes, adding a master suite makes great sense — then go ahead.

Build with permits and follow the building codes, though. The worst thing you 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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