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Category: Marketing (page 58 of 191)

October 30, 2008

NYMag: “NYC Real-Estate Developer Offers ‘Obama Contingency'”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

New York Magazine:

Holy election tie-in: Erik Ekstein, who’s developing +aRT, an 88-unit Chelsea condo that just began sales last week, says he’s including an “Obama Contingency Clause” in all contracts that go into effect between now and Election Day. If Obama wins, the contract goes through, but if John McCain prevails, buyers can back out — and presumably move to Canada — “with no questions asked.” (He says he came up with the idea after talking to potential buyers, who seemed to be holding off until the election.) Ekstein, a big supporter of the Democratic candidate, says he’s not worried he’ll lose business. “It’s a very narrow window, and we’re fairly confident he’ll win,” he says.

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October 29, 2008

And after Big Mother is finished subsidizing the mortgages of allegedly prosperous, allegedly self-reliant Americans, could it also please wipe their pwetty widdle noses?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When there’s taxpayer teat to be suckled, it seems nobody sucks like Realogy. The essence of Rotarian Socialism is bald-faced theft in behalf of the Rotarians. I cannot imagine a more telling, more shameless, more shameful example of Kleptocratic prevarication.

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October 29, 2008

LinkedIn As a Prospecting Tool

by

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

Author website

An old friend of mine recently asked me this about LinkedIn:

I see your active with LinkedIn… have you upgraded to the pay version of the site, and if so, which version and would you be willing to share your feedback with me?

Since I’ll be talking about this at the Bloodhound Blog Unchained Online Marketing Conference, in Orlando, on November 7, 2008, I thought I’d share this answer with the Bloodhound community:

I haven’t upgraded to the pay version but I use LinkedIn obsessively; I have since 2004.

Whenever I meet a new “contact”, I check LinkedIn and Facebook to see if they’re on that platform.  The automated “top of mind status” these platforms provide is invaluable.  If you were to look at my Facebook profile, you’ll see that I’m using the “status” tool a lot to talk about our mutually loved baseball team.  While that conversation has nothing to do with business, it gives past and potential clients a peek into my personal life.  In the age of the participatory web, customers crave information about people with whom they do business.

You’ll also notice that I’ve given people a peek into my political ideology; that’s probably not the best practice for a salesperson. The controversial conversations that spring from a Yankees/Red Sox rivalry are taken in fun.  The controversial conversations that come from ideological differences can drive a potential (or past) clients away.

Generally speaking, LinkedIn (and now Facebook) can be used as a database or CRM.  While it’s hard to balance the stated purpose of these media (connecting) with commercial uses (straight selling), a reasonably intuitive salesperson will learn “the community rules” quickly.

One of the biggest challenges for sales professionals is getting people on the telephone after meeting them on social networking platforms.  If you’re asking or answering questions on LinkedIn Q&A or participating in Facebook groups discussions, you’ll break down the digital wall and those prospective customers will be more receptive to your call.  I feel pretty comfortable calling someone if we’ve had an interesting exchange in the LinkedIn Q&A.  More than 80% of those calls are appreciated and future communication from me Read more

October 28, 2008

Sherry Chris To Be Keynote Speaker at Unchained Orlando Online Marketing Conference

by

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

Author website

I’m tickled pink with this announcement.  Sherry Chris, CEO of Better Homes and Garden Real Estate will be the keynote speaker for the Bloodhound Blog Unchained Online Marketing Conference.

Sherry has worked in real estate brokerage since 1980.  She’s worked for Royal Le Page, Real Living, and Prudential California.  She was the Chief Operating Officer at Coldwell Banker (a Realogy company) for about a year before taking the helm at Better Homes and Garden Real Estate last October.

Sherry’s mission?  To leverage a respected consumer brand into a household name for real estate.  Sherry’s comments about her mission:

“This will be a brand that embodies the future of the real estate industry while grounded in the tradition of the home,” said Chris. “The opportunity is tremendous. Better Homes and Gardens has a multi-media consumer brand presence that already exists in millions of households. Meanwhile, we have the rare opportunity to build a new system from the ground up by leveraging our expertise in real estate while benefiting from the full support of Realogy and all of its resources.”

Among the top priorities for the new brand during the next nine months will be the development of a platform that incorporates the best information technologies for both consumers and the real estate professionals who affiliate with the brand. Chris plans to develop a new media-rich Web site that will provide engaging and interactive content for a customer-base now highly adept at using the Internet for its real estate needs.

“We will build the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brand with an eye on innovation and a respect for tradition,” said Chris. “Our innovation will be reflected in a contemporary, high-quality service offering that addresses the needs of today’s consumer while providing franchisees with significant competitive advantages. As for tradition, the brand will exemplify a full-service approach to the business that fosters personal relationships to meet the needs of every generation of homebuyers and sellers.”

Unchained Phoenix attendees will remember the brilliant address by Redfin CEO (and Bloodhound) Glenn Kelman.  There, Glen offered an “open-kimono” approach to his business model and discussed the power technology has to Read more

October 28, 2008

God Save Me From Another Real Estate Flyer

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Over the past couple weeks I have been reading every real estate flyer I could find.  I am sure many of you are asking why I would submit myself to such torture… and you would be right to ask.  If I had to guess, eight out of every ten flyers I read were sheer torture.  How familiar does this sound:

Just look at all the room in this lovely 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch style single family residence with attached garage.  Enjoy 1742 square feet of flowing space with enough room for parties or quiet solitude overlooking your own private backyard.  Hurry, this one won’t last long!

Did you just call that home a “single family residence?”  Why are you repeating the bedrooms and baths?  Is that information not available somewhere more appropriate?   Who are you talking to when you look up over your slide rule and say 1742 square feet?  Appraisers?  Contractors?  How many people do you think know the difference between 1742 square feet and 1648?  Or even 1700?  “Honey, stop the car!  This house has that extra 42 square feet we have been dreaming about.”  Please STOP… or you won’t last long.

Most of the real estate marketing I see starts like this and goes downhill from there.  The reason is simple: this is not real estate marketing.  Unfortunately, most agents do not know the difference.  I attribute some of this to the poor copy writing we are inundated with via the television and a lot of it to the fact that marketing is just not taught, or at least not taught well.

THE BIG FIVE
Over the next few posts I am going to discuss real estate marketing.  The list of potentially innovative ways to market a home are never-ending.  Many new ideas are shared right here on BloodhoundBlog.  I do not hold any illusions of being so creative myself.  But I do understand the basics of marketing and I am quite adept at borrowing great ideas from other people.  With that being said, in the next couple of posts I am going to discuss the five basics everyone should be doing:

  1. MLS Read more
October 26, 2008

Want to learn how to pull maximum search-engine results from minimal SEO efforts? Come see Eric Blackwell at Unchained Orlando

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Are you coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando? Bloodhound Eric Blackwell will repay your investment all by himself with a talk he has prepared on using easy-to-implement SEO tactics to drive traffic to your web site or weblog. This is guerrilla marketing at its best, and Eric will bring his own unique perspective on the topic: What works, what doesn’t, dumb stunts that will hurt you more than they help and traffic-building techniques you may never have thought of.

This is right up our street, maximum benefit, minimum spend. Click on the PayPal button below to join us in Orlando.

Click on the PayPal button shown below to get your $99 ticket for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando on Friday, November 7th, 2008


















When: Friday, November 7th, 2008, 8 am to 8 pm

Where: Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center, Orlando Airport, 5555 Hazeltine National Dr, Orlando, FL 32812

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October 25, 2008

Why Bloggers Fail To Become Top Producers

by

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

Author website

I know your secret.  Honestly…I do.

You aren’t knocking the ball out of the park, regardless of your blogging effort.  You play around on Twitter, Facebook, Active Rain, and might even comment on Bloodhound Blog.  You’re probably REALLY smart and can’t believe that you’re having problems in business.  I know you are; I’ve read most of your blog posts, Tweets, and Facebook messages.  You fancy yourself ethical.  I believe that, too.

Why is a smart, ethical real estate agent like you failing then?

You got hoodwinked.  Tricked.  Sold a bill of goods.  That snake oil you bought?  Web 2.0- it was supposed to be the new way to do business; you just didn’t realize it was gonna take 3-5 years.  It’s taking longer than you imagined and you’re stuck.  Your spouse is riding your ass as she punches a clock while you play on Twitter.  Your kids wonder why you treat the occasional prospect who calls you to Ruth’s Chris while making them eat off the value menu at Mc Donald’s. You’re failing because you bought into the hype and you’re scared to admit that you blew it.

That’s okay- it’s not your fault.

You see, I got hoodwinked too.  I was all puffed up, speaking in San Francisco and New York like I was some kind of expert.  As I was hob-nobbing with the RE.net, I heard more than one of the “blogging elite” talk about their fear of personal foreclosure.  I heard the practitioners talk about losing their homes and the tech gurus talk about how rich they were getting…

…off the poor practitioners whom they appointed “experts”. THAT disgusted me.

I knew I had to make a VERY big change in my life.  I was following the “wrong crowd” and if I kept it up, I’d be face-down, lying in the gutter, with no customers at all.  I definitely didn’t want that…so I made some changes.  Those changes, combined with the things I learned from the folks who DO make money online, grew my business while my competitors were submitting employment applications at the mall.

Let me do my best Joe Biden…  It’s not your fault.

Greg Read more

October 25, 2008

Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
Foreclosure homes are sold “as-is” — but most need only minor restoration to bring them back to fully-livable condition

If we were to have a contest for the Valley’s most-gutted home, judging might take a while.

A significant number of homes for sale in the Phoenix area, especially at the low end of the price spectrum, are in the foreclosure process. Not all of these homes are in rough shape, but a lot of them are. At a minimum, buyers of short-sale or lender-owned homes should anticipate painting the walls and replacing the carpets.

But virtually all foreclosure homes will be sold “as-is.” This means, first, that any defects discovered in the inspection process will be the buyer’s responsibility to repair after close of escrow. But the “as-is” addendum also often implies that there may be serious deferred-maintenance issues.

Still worse, many lender-owned homes will have been looted, either by the former owners on their way out or by burglars. Missing ranges, microwave ovens and dishwashers are common. Air-conditioner compressors and hot-water heaters are also absent from many homes. It is not uncommon to see that all of the ceiling fans or all of the knobs on drawers and cabinets have been removed.

My pick for the most-gutted Valley home? The entire kitchen was gone — even the kitchen sink — and the air-handler had been removed from the attic.

I would not want to refurbish that last home, since there is no telling what else has been taken. But for most lender-owned properties, the cost of bringing the home back to livable condition is fairly low.

A new set of kitchen appliances is maybe $2,500. A brand new air-conditioner compressor is around $4,000. A decent water heater is perhaps $1,200 installed. Paint, carpet and tile in the high-traffic areas should run $5,000 for a typical suburban home, less if you do the work yourself.

There definitely are homes to avoid in this market, but there are many, many others that are selling for very low prices. These properties need only very minor restoration efforts to bring Read more

October 24, 2008

Two weeks to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando: Learn how low-cost prospecting techniques can help you dominate in 2009

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I gather through the grapevine that the NAR Convention is shaping up to be a somber if not quite funereal event. Travel budgets are much constrained. That’s understandable. I can’t see a cost-benefit payoff of going to yet another vendorfest.

But BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando is another basket of oranges. We are about nothing but teachable tools, tips, tricks, tactics and techniques that you can use to start snagging new business right away. Even better, most of the things we talk about are highly-leveraged: Minimum expenditure, maximum results. If you’re a Realtor or lender running in survival mode, we’ll show you how to get more bang for fewer bucks — right now.

If you’re coming to Orlando anyway — or if you already live in the Southeastern United States — make time for us. We’ll show you how to make more money for yourself.

Click on the PayPal button shown below to get your $99 ticket for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando on Friday, November 7th, 2008


















When: Friday, November 7th, 2008, 8 am to 8 pm

Where: Crowne Plaza Hotel and Conference Center, Orlando Airport, 5555 Hazeltine National Dr, Orlando, FL 32812

See you in two weeks!

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October 21, 2008

Orson Scott Card on the Fannie/Freddie melt-down: “Would the last honest reporter please turn on the lights?”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Orson Scott Card is a Hugo-award-winning science fiction author, having written Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead among other best-selling works. In the intro to this article from Meridian magazine, he is presented as being a Democrat, but it would be more accurate, I think, to portray him as an anti-idiotarian, the post-9/11 movement of liberal, conservative and libertarian anti-islamist webloggers. Card is an insanely great writer. You can find him at his best at his Hatrack River site. As always, I don’t have any great use for Republicans, but I think this is a fine excoriation of the suicidal negligence of the mainstream media.

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate Read more

October 20, 2008

No layoffs at Trulia: The San Francisco treat is still hiring

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

CNET:

Real-estate sites had some tough times last week. First, Redfin, an online brokerage for residential real estate, announced that it was laying off 20 percent of its staff, then Zillow, a service that delivers home values and lists sales, announced that it was forced to lay off 25 percent of its workforce.

But Trulia, which lets buyers find homes for sale across the United States, says it has no layoff plans and that it has enjoyed so much growth, it’s actually looking to expand.

“We are not making any layoffs. All companies need to be smart in this environment and adjust to the market movements,” Pete Flint, CEO and co-founder of Trulia, said in an interview. “As a company, we are in a strong position. We always believed that we had to be aggressive but fiscally responsible, and that is why we are in the position we are (in) today. In fact, we are still making a few select hires, where they are important to our revenue growth.”

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October 18, 2008

Tom Johnson to the Realty.bots: All that free stuff you gave us would have been a bargain at twice the price!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In a comment at the Future of Real Estate Marketing, our friend Tom Johnson delivers a fatherly lecture on the facts of life:

This is the free market and unintended consequences at work. There is a reason that the commission rates have been stuck for years where they are. The contingency nature of the listing relationship drives the business. The consumer is unwilling to pay for service that does not result in a sale.

Pouring VC cash into the real estate space has improved technology. The RE.net came on the scene with plans to disintermediate the real estate brokers by tapping into the commission honey pot. This put pressure on commissions forcing brokers to cut costs, so the RE.net responded by giving the services away for free. Free outbound doesn’t earn a return inbound. The cash burn continues, brokers continue to cut costs by not buying RE.net products causing more cash burn and layoffs.

As transactions slow, the commission honeypot shrinks. Brokers will cut cost and redouble efforts to get salable listings, by using the free tools that are provided by RE.net.

It seems to me that the RE.net did indeed disintermediate, but it was not the RE brokers that were disintermediated, but the print media. So here we are, marketing listings for free on the web. Because of the fractured nature of the RE space, it takes unimaginable amounts of time to manage all that free stuff, so we are where we were. The consumer is still unwilling to pay cash for RE services on a non-contingency basis. So, we tweet and blog and facespace our listings, to get a transaction started, and then the real work begins-getting the contract to the closing table. That is the part of this industry that the RE.net sort of forgot about and the cash burn continues…

Indeed. We have seen the future of real estate marketing — and it is us.*

As might be obvious, I don’t have a lot of time for other RE.net sites right now, but it is worthwhile to note that tFoREM has four whole posts this week, a huge number by comparison to recent Read more

October 18, 2008

This just might be the optimal time to buy a home in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
This just might be the optimal time to buy a home in Phoenix

Who should be buying residential real estate in Phoenix right now?

If you have been planning to buy a home sometime soon, and if you know for certain that you won’t need to sell it for at least five years, this just might be your magic moment.

Interest rates are still deliciously low, but both current events and long term trends suggest they’re headed higher. You’ll probably have to sell your current home for less than you wanted to, but you’ll be buying your next home at a bargain-basement price.

Sadly, you may not have enough equity in your home to move up. But if you do, there are some amazing homes out there selling for unheard-of prices. Houses that sold for $375,000 in 2005 are going for $175,000 three years later.

If you do have substantial equity in your home, even at today’s prices, moving up now may make a lot of sense. The rules for the capital gains exclusion on primary homes change on January 1st. If you’ve been in your home for more than the last 24 months but fewer than the last 60 months, moving before the end of the year could save you a significant amount of money on your taxes.

It makes sense to me for college students and their parents to snap up condominiums and starter-homes while prices are so low. After the start of the year, if the student holds title, it will take five years to realize the full benefit of the capital gains exclusion — approximately the length of a college career.

First-time home-buyers are taking advantage of this market, as well, with low-down-payment or even nothing-down government-sponsored loans.

Who else should be buying? Investors, of course, but the smart ones have already figured that out. For now, it’s very easy to acquire a premium home in a commuter-friendly suburb that will be cash-flow positive from the first tenant. Investor loans can be hard to obtain, but prices are so low that many investors Read more

October 16, 2008

Peter Schiff: “Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Peter Schiff in the Washington Post:

Amid the chaos of recent days, as the federal government has taken gargantuan steps to stabilize the financial markets, realigning the U.S. economic system in the process, comes a nearly universal consensus: This crisis resulted from government reluctance to regulate the unbridled greed of Wall Street. Many economists and market participants who were formerly averse to government interference agree that a more robust regulatory framework must be constructed to cage the destructive forces of capitalism.

For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits, this crisis is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Absent from such conclusions is the central role the government played in creating the crisis. Yes, many Wall Street leaders were irresponsible, and they should pay. But they were playing the distorted hand dealt them by government policies. Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets.

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow — until it could grow no more.

Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate.

Similarly, the FHA, Fannie and Freddie were created 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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