BloodhoundBlog

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Category: Marketing (page 63 of 191)

August 14, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained has a home in Orlando for a twelve-hour event — and the price for tickets just went up to $199

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We have a place to howl in Orlando at last. We wanted something very sexy, very cool, but the constrictions on time and space were killing us. We finally settled on a hotel conference facility to get a room big enough to accommodate all the people who want to join us for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando. As a bonus, we get to go back to our original plan of a twelve-hour event. This will give us time to explore some mastermind ideas that we would have had to leave out of a shorter presentation.

The flip side of this is this: The Earlybird price is gone. If you go to BloodhoundBlogUnchained.com, the levy for tickets is $199 — full price.

But don’t take out a second mortgage — whatever that is. We’ve made arrangements with some good friends of the kinds of ideas we teach. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll spy opportunities on other web sites to snag Unchained tickets at a discount. If you want to pay us full price, feel free. But you will have plenty of chances to save yourself some money.

For example, lender Kevin Sandridge can get you into Unchained in Orlando for half-price. Be sure to thank him when you meet him in November.

There will be other offers out there — but don’t dilly-dally. We only have a limited number of seats available, and there will be 20,000 Realtors in Orlando for the NAR Convention. When the music stops, they won’t be seats available at any price.

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August 14, 2008

I fear the Geeks, especially when bearing gifts.

by

Free Market Cowgirl

Author website

I’m not sure if it was Greg’s post welcoming me to Bloodhound Blog or if it is last name “H” week for the Hi-Tech cold callers…but my phone has been ringing off the hook with people trying to sell (give) me stuff to enhance my web 2.0 career.

The pitch, has been very simplistic in nature: The vendor is willing to give me their product/service for free or at a drastically reduced rate. IF, I will recommend it to the agents in my office and the ones that read my blog.

The close, “Isn’t this a great deal! What do you have to lose?”

What do I have to lose? Let me shuffle my feet and look down at them with my hands in my pockets. Ummmmm. Geee. I don’t know. How about my reputation with the people that I work for and depend on me to make sound decisions? How about the respect of people who read me and trust me to make reputable endorsements? If those aren’t good enough reasons how about all the money that I could lose? Money lost when agents figure out that I’m willing to sell my soul for free products/services on their dime. Referrals that might not come in if I recommend based off personal gain instead of success.

Do you really want my business? Do you really want me to recommend you? Would you really like me to write about how your product/service is the greatest thing since IMAP on my iPhone? Do you really want to improve my web 2.0 career?

First, I’m not looking for a handout. Times are hard but I’m not offering to give away my services. You shouldn’t either. People pay me a lot of money to sell their homes. I’m good at what I do. Why should I expect any less from you?

Second, interact with me on BHB, Active Rain, My Space or any of the other online communities that I frequent. Comment on my posts. Ask questions. Disagree. Challenge the way that I think and do business. Show me something different. Something exciting! Knock my Read more

August 13, 2008

Give me your money, Part I: Sell locally, market nationally and build a real estate brand that actually means something to consumers

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been interested to watch Sean Purcell, Mike Farmer and Rob Hahn talk about alternative brokerage structures, but the only structure that actually matters to me is our own. It’s possible that BloodhoundRealty.com will grow bigger in due course — all but certain given the work we’re doing this year — but I am never, ever interested in growing so large that I cannot directly control the quality of experience we deliver to each of our clients.

Cathleen Collins and I both work constantly to come up with newer ways of doing our work better, more ways of knocking the socks completely off of our buyers and sellers. This is a process I want never to stop, much less see reversed by the three-headed monster that passes for “management” in most businesses: haphazard philosophy, hamhanded preparation and tightfisted execution.

That is to say, we are a brand, no matter how small we are. We approached our business that way from the very beginning, to have the iconic idea of a Bloodhound speak for us in every possible way. We have never pursued personal promotion, preferring instead to promote the idea of this brand — not just the images but the underlying ideas.

Our market penetration is very slight so far, as must be the case for a boot-strapped brokerage. But there is no one we have worked with, either our clients or their warm networks or neighbors, who does not remember us or the ideas we stand for. We don’t hit 1.000 — although we have not missed on a listing in 2008, knock wood — but we hit the ball so hard that everyone remembers us in the neighborhoods where work.

They remember not us as people, but the brand. One of my favorite clients came to us when, frustrated that his house wasn’t selling, he turned to his wife and said, “What we need is the Bloodhounds.” He didn’t remember us, he remembered our marketing efforts and our results. Iconic ideas Google well, so he found us in one quick search.

This is the kind of branding that I think can make all the Read more

August 12, 2008

Introducing Jessica Wynn Horton, a once and future mega-producer

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What do you do when you’re selling a thick slice of a billion dollars’ worth of real estate every year, when you’ve built your own RE/Max franchise from scratch, when you’ve hit the “30 Under 30” target at Realtor magazine?

Start over in another town, of course, and do it all again.

Today we add once and future mega-producer Jessica Wynn Horton to our roster of contributors.

In addition to her duties as broker, Jessica is hoping to replicate her earlier successes, this time with a decidedly Web 2.0 approach.

We’ll teach her what we can, but I think we’ll reap a good deal more from her experiences.

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August 11, 2008

Unchained Speakers, Ribak and Brady, on HomeGain “Ask The Experts”

by

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

Author website

Mitch Ribak spoke to the Barrys on Real Estate Radio USA last Friday.  Mitch started as an agent in 2001, opened Tropical Realty in 2005, and has grown his business to close 180 transactions, during the first six months of 2008,  in a down real estate market.

Mitch looks for newer real estate agents, who are personable, with a strong work ethic for his team.  He plugs them into his 100mphmarketing software after driving prospective buyers to his website from various pay-per-click campaigns. 100% of his buyer leads come from the internet (his referrals come from original internet leads).

Mitch will be opening membership in the E-Homes Realty Network later this week. What is the eHomes Realty Network?

Very simply, it’s a membership that gives independent Real Estate Brokerages the ability to have the same tools and training that the Big Franchises have for one very low monthly membership fee.  It’s your Franchise without a Franchise!

We started eHomes Realty Network after realizing that most Independent Brokers don’t have the resources, the knowledge or the time to test and determine which products will work best for their companies. It has also become clear that most Independents don’t have any formal training programs for their Agents.

If this sounds like an “Unchained” idea, it is. Mitch is offering the national exposure, training, and masterminding, to independent agents (and brokers) for forty bucks a month.  He has plans for an updated e-designation for network members.  This is what Sean Purcell calls “disbrokeration” at its finest.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), Mitch and I will be hosted by Home Gain on their first “Ask the Experts” segment at 10:00 AM (PDT).  There will be over 250 real estate professionals attending the webinar.  There is no charge for the webinar and you can register here.  I’ll be talking about mortgage financing but Mitch will talk about how to drive traffic to your website.

PS:  If you’re wondering why Mitch calls his software 100mphmarketing, you gotta hear him talk.  Listening to Mitch talk about internet marketing is like trying to take a sip from a fire hydrant; he gives THAT much good information.  Bring a pen Read more

August 10, 2008

Dogs in Disneyville: The BloodhoundBlog Unchained curriculum in Orlando and how it will differ from next Spring in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We have a venue in Orlando, very comfortable with lots of hi-tech support, but I don’t want to announce it yet. Whether or not by malicious intent, the NAR has dominated every available meeting space near the Orange County Convention Center, so we had to think way outside the doghouse to find what we needed. Suffice it to say for now that it’s within easy walking distance of the Convention Center, it has ample parking, and it’s probably closer to your hotel room than the NAR Convention itself.

We’ve also decided on a curriculum for Orlando. Of the 20,000 Realtors who will be going to the NAR Convention, almost none of them are already working in our world. Many of them are not even in the wired world at all, but there’s not a lot we can do about that. What we can do is go through everything that is a part of our world in detail, building a repeatable, duplicable Web 2.0 real estate practice.

In other words, we’re going to do eight solid hours on what to do and how to do it: How to use your net.presence to attract prospects, harvest leads, manage them through time and convert them, one-by-one, into real-world real estate transactions — producing real, spendable income. If you already live in our world, some of this will be pretty basic for you. But we’ll have plenty of brand new practical ideas to make Unchained Orlando worth your time.

At BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix, Geno Petro, Teri Lussier and others asked for something like this. From the inside, all of this stuff seems obvious to me, even though Brian and I approach it from somewhat different directions. But in discussions we’ve had since then, both here and in email, we’ve come to see the benefit of building a whole program of ideas, step-by-step. Think of it as Social Media Marketing meets The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. We have room for 500 students, and I would love to send 500 very dangerous real estate agents back to their home markets.

By contrast, the curriculum for Unchained in Phoenix next Spring Read more

August 9, 2008

There’s more to the mortgage relief bill than just mortgage relief

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

Notes for insiders: The legislative thumbprint of the National Association of Realtors is churn. The NAR is not necessarily for or against any legislation. Instead, their lobbyists will look for ways to introduce short-term incentives to churn real estate — artificial inducements to buy or sell real estate now rather than on the consumer’s own timetable. In this bill, getting rid of seller down-payment assistance, introducing the new-buyer tax-credit and revising the capital gains exclusion rules all promote short-term churn. What about the long-term? The NAR knows it will be able to lobby for new real estate-churning legislation next year — at every level of government. This is just another example of the fundamentally anti-consumer character of the NAR.

Here’s another thought: Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of regurgitating Zillow’s gee whiz press releases, the real estate reporters of the mainstream media actually reported on what is really going on in real estate?

 
There’s more to the mortgage relief bill than just mortgage relief

Having trouble making your mortgage payments? You might be able to make a change in your loan, thanks to the mortgage relief bill President Bush recently signed into law. Under the bill, you can convert your high-interest adjustable-rate loan to a lower-interest fixed-rate note if you meet what might, in a declining market, seem to be Catch-22-like guidelines: Your payment must be more than 31% of your income, and your new loan cannot exceed 90% of your home’s value. Help is available — provided you don’t need it.

Starting October 1st, seller-paid down-payment assistance grants will be outlawed for FHA loans. This is bad news for lower-priced neighborhoods in Metropolitan Phoenix, where as many as nine out of ten homes are being sold with down-payment assistance. Expect to see a flurry of this activity in the next two months.

But the left hand gives where the right hand takes away: Buyers who have not owned a home for three years can take a $7,500 “refundable” tax-credit if they buy between April 9, 2008 and July 1, 2009. The credit Read more

August 8, 2008

Friday Afternoon Fun: Can anyone tell me what the hell this bowl of tossed jargon-salad says — if anything?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This came in my spam this morning, and I gave it nine seconds of my full attention: Babbling jargon-filled nonsense, probably with a well-hidden chokepoint to spill coins into the author’s pockets.

That was my instant take, but the truth is I don’t actually know what it says. To the extent that I actually tried to read it, it was too painful for me to pursue.

It could be you have more patience than me. If so, you might take a stab at figuring out what it says. It doesn’t actually matter, since the meatballs atop this sticky bowl of word spaghetti are the same ones who brought us Realtor.com and all the other big-hit NAR disasters. If anyone actually believes these wheezing antiques can outrun the VC-funded Web 2.0 world, I have a few dollars I might be willing to wager. The NAR will solve every problem it confronts by force of arms, as always.

But: That doesn’t mean you can’t have some Friday Afternoon Fun trying to parse the mangled prose that makes up this proposal. Plus which, I’m inclined to be very generous if you should unearth the chokepoint.

Note that this deeply heartfelt manifesto appears on a page full of advertising. Classy… Inman “News” dipped its pen in this spittoon, of course, but that’s such an obvious outcome it’s not even worth making jokes about… Oh, fine. Here’s one, just because it’s Friday:

Q: What do you need to get fawning, uncritical attention for your press release from Inman News?

A: A press release.

Read carefully and I expect you will discover how the NAR hopes to rape agents and consumers over the next decade. But remember this as you read: Divorce the commissions and every bit of this nonsense goes away, as it should.

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August 7, 2008

Unchained melodies: Take Five

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m with John Rowles — and then some — on the true, mostly unrealized, power of branding in real estate. I’ve been meaning to write about it, but I’m sick for the second time this summer, and it’s left me beyond stupid at the end of the business day.

Other matters: We are that close to negotiating a space for Unchained Orlando, this despite the best efforts of the NAR to dominate every meeting space. I may have an announcement tomorrow.

But for tonight, Al Jarreau and three fingers of Irish cough syrup. G’night.


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August 6, 2008

The just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you Realtor-spam of the decade: RECS wrecks twenty-six reputations for only a buck

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This

incites no end of questions for me.

For example, exactly how will my mastery of Real Estate Cyberspace have improved by sending these schmucks a dollar?

If I send two dollars, can I be twice as wizardly?

Precisely how much value should my clients put on a real estate designation that is just as difficult to obtain as an Official Inman News sippee cup — but $148 cheaper?

Yes, yes, I’m sure there’s fine print, but I’m a high D and I don’t care. Here’s the question that made me crazy for days:

I don’t know of all of those twenty-six people who lent their names and faces to this vastly stoopid promotion, but I know of quite a few of them. Presumably they took some pains to make themselves famous in the real estate vendor space. My question:

Why would they deliberately wreck their reputations by associating themselves with this sleazy wreck of a real estate designation?

I’m quite serious. I’ve had this email open all week, trying to figure it out. I get slimed all the time by creepoids trying to leech away the value of my recommendations, but the sole power I have in the marketplace of ideas is my reputation for integrity. Because I never attach my name to crap, you know that, if I do praise a product, I’m doing so for reasons I consider valid. I can’t imagine taking money to endorse a product, but, surely, it is far worse to take money to endorse a product that — by its own admission — is not even worth a dollar!

And it’s not one wannabe real estate bigfoot up there, it’s twenty-six of them! Reputation is all there is in the Web 2.0 world. Why would they squander the intellectual capital they worked so hard to accumulate?

I couldn’t work it out, but then I stumbled on an infomercial-like sales presentation that made the whole issue clear to me:

Mind what goes into your mind.

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August 4, 2008

Another real estate model, a less-radical variation on a current theme that can work within the present regulatory context: A national franchise of real estate franchisors, each of whom is committed to sustaining the value of the brand

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I read Rob Hahn’s ideas about brokerage-as-law-firm last week. I thought that much was kind of naive — a reflection of a lack of understanding the legal realities of real estate brokerage — but I didn’t jump in because I thought some of his other ideas were interesting.

Here’s the problem: A law firm is based on 1040 employment. The real estate brokerage safe harbor makes it extremely beneficial for brokers to have nothing but 1099 employees. There is no reason to expect that to change unless the IRS removes the safe harbor — three weeks after hell has frozen over.

The Team model works, but it’s inherently small-time.

Branding could work — but doesn’t — because the independent contractor status of agents dilutes the brand to homeopathic concentrations.

Hard-branding like Bloodhound does can only work with very strict control. Redfin has this — but it also has 1040 employees.

All that notwithstanding, present-day brokers are at risk of being wiped out at any minute by several liability — the designated broker is responsible for every idiot he puts out on the street.

Here’s a solution that makes sense to me:

The ideal case would be to get rid of licensing altogether, to get rid of the broker’s level of licensing or to get rid of the salesperson’s level of licensing and call everyone a broker, but none of that is necessary.

Instead, imagine an IntegratedRealty.com business entity that consists of a franchised brand for fly-you-own-flag brokers or brokerage entities. As the owner of IntegratedRealty.com, I franchise the brand and require certain standards and practices from the franchisees. I maintain offices, so, to all appearances to the public, we’re just like Realty Executives. Except that I am not anyone’s broker, and each individual franchised broker is the head of his or her own Team. They write and own their own contracts, and they’re free to sever their relationship with IntegratedRealty.com per the terms of our contract, with their representation contracts going along with them.

This could be rolled out city-by-city, like Realty Executives, or cross-competitively like RE/Max. Each new instance of IntegratedRealty.com could itself be a franchise, so you could Read more

August 2, 2008

New FlexMLS system is a bold stride into the twenty-first century for Phoenix-area Multiple Listings Service

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
New FlexMLS system is a bold stride into the twenty-first century for Phoenix-area Multiple Listings Service

Metropolitan Phoenix got a brand new MLS system this week. MLS is the Multiple Listings Service, the system by which Realtors share their listings with one another. Until this week, the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service had been using a computing system called Tempo to share listings. As of this Monday just past, we have switched to the FlexMLS system.

Had you guessed that something had changed? If your Realtor has been sending you listings from a saved search, or if you had been receiving updates to a Tempo Gateway, all that stopped on Monday morning. Chances are your agent has spent much of this week rewriting searches and reestablishing gateways. The FlexMLS system is more robust than anything we’ve had before, but it’s also quite a bit more complicated. It may take a while before things get back to normal.

So why make the switch? For one very good reason, to tap into that much more robust technology. Tempo permitted a crude kind of map-based search, but FlexMLS allows you to select houses from within multiple non-contiguous irregular polygons. So, as an example, I can search for homes that are either within walking distance of Apollo High School or within walking distance of Valley Metro bus lines servicing Apollo High School.

There’s more: The FlexMLS pricing software is comparable to the tools appraisers use. Realtors will have to stretch themselves to learn how to tap this power, but our Comparative Market Analyses are going to be painstakingly accurate.

But not without some growing pains. ARMLS is by far the largest MLS system FlexMLS has taken on so far. This first week has been a trial for the North Dakota company — a strain on their servers, and, no doubt, a strain on their tech support staff as well.

And workaday Realtors are sharing the pain. No doubt many are grumbling, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But FlexMLS is a bold stride into the twenty-first century for Read more

July 30, 2008

Bloodhounds and the Bar: Introducing Chuck Marunde

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’ve picked on and pissed off so many attorneys over the past two years that I’m amazed one actually wants to join the pound. But Chuck Marunde is not just a real estate attorney, he’s also a working real estate broker — not to mention a very talented writer.

Here is the man speaking in his own behalf:

After practicing real estate law for 20 years in Washington, Chuck concentrates on residential sales in Sequim and Port Angeles on the beautiful Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Chuck has personally closed 100’s of transactions and litigated most real estate issues.  He founded his first real estate law website in 1995, and is a minority shareholder in an International technology company.  Chuck is the author of numerous magazine and Internet articles with a primary focus on real estate. Because he has two sons who became professional athletes (Strongman and Mixed Martial Arts), he has also authored articles on the Strongman sport and has been a freelancer for Ultimate Grappling Magazine. In his spare time, Chuck is a sports photographer.  Chuck has combined his love for real estate and technology to create a growing Internet presence in his market. Chuck has degrees in Economics, Law, and Education.

Port Angeles is a quaint New England fishing village accidentally misplaced at the tip the Olympic Peninsula in the Puget Sound. Beautiful country, and a milder climate than any New Englander has a right to expect. The Olympic Peninsula is a rain forrest, and the whole of it is about the most radical tourist experience you can have without leaving the lower 48 states. As much as I love Port Angeles, my favorite spot on the OP is Ruby Beach. Highly recommended. Take the kids.

Meanwhile: Chuck joins us today as the newest hound in the pack. Here’s hoping he doesn’t come to regret running with such a lawless crowd.

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July 29, 2008

LA Times…the 1st of many?

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

My buddy Jon Karlen writes on one of my blogs, RealEstateIndustryWatch. Today, he beat me to the punch and posted this.

Yes it is true. The LA Times Sunday Real Estate Section is now gone. Due to space constraints and budget cutbacks, it has printed it’s last issue.

One has to wonder if this will not be the first of many to face a new reality (for them). The online real estate marketplace IS the real estate marketplace. How many more will go? How soon? How many will consolidate into other sections of the paper? Who knows.

Thoughts?

July 29, 2008

I slipped my DISCo in Orlando: Psychometric analysis that’s actually simple enough to be useful

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A big part of the StarPower curriculum is the DISC system of psychometric analysis. I’ve talked quite a bit about Myers-Briggs and Cathleen is a big fan of the Enneagram. These are useful tools, especially for self-analysis. But INTJs will behave very differently from INTPs — and from each other, for that matter — so having a tight bead on someone in Myers-Briggs terms is not all that preternaturally useful.

The DISC system, on the other hand, is simultaneously very useful in real life and very simple to deploy. Once you understand the four DISC categories of behaviors, you can make reasonable on-the-fly analyses of the people you happen to be working with. High D? Don’t waste time on details, unless you are asked for them — and then don’t stammer. High C? If you don’t volunteer volumes of detail, you must be hiding something.

There is a good deal of academic theory behind the DISC system, and I don’t want to portray myself as an expert. Cathy and I took two short classes on the subject, both taught by serious amateurs. Even so, we learned a ton about what we’re doing right with people, what we’re doing wrong, and what we could be doing better.

There’s more: We set about to do a gut-feelings-based DISC assessment on everyone we know, this for practice. When we finally get around to deploying a CRM solution, we’re going to use DISC to classify our clients. This will be useful at every touch, but one thing we thought of doing was deploying DISC-oriented drip campaigns: Cut to the chase for the D’s, fun and games for the I’s, home and hearth for the S’s, charts and graphs for the C’s.

Brian and I were talking about this on Sunday, and we both thought it would be interesting to DISCify the cut-outs on a landing page. That’s not just fun for marketing geeks, it’s a testable procedure that should result in higher conversion rates.

There’s no end to the value in this system, since it enables you to tailor any presentation to the predictable psychometric style of the person 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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