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Category: Real Estate (page 110 of 266)

July 9, 2008

Localism.com: It’s Not Just For Surfers

by

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

Author website

I remember when ActiveRain.com released its Localism.com portal.  SoCal surfin’ REALTOR dude, Rory Siems commented that he thought “Localism” was a term surfers used for defending their beach from “kooks“.  While Localism is not a surfing site, the principle of “protecting your turf” is alive and well for local real estate professionals.

Bloodhound colleague Michele DeRepegny vented her frustrations with the new site:

But this morning I’m feeling a little nauseous after the much anticipated revamp of Localism, The redesign is neutral and simple, with a few twists in navigation still needed.   I would have rather paid for an “outside blog” than purchased “communities“.  Maybe buying the way to the top as a community sponsor will actually reduce some of the crud posting just for points, but right now I’m having very mixed feelings about continuing to drink the Kool Aid.  Maybe I just need sleep.

I was privy to a pre-release tour so I know why they whitewashed the design.  The concept is that Localism isn’t just about real estate anymore.  It’s designed as a national host for thousands of hyper-local communities.  Membership is free and available to anybody in the community, including non-real estate related businesses.  The white washing was done to draw the readers to the user-generated content rather than an appealing design.  Community sponsorship is available to any business and quality content providers are rewarded with featured status on the pages.

Navigation is cumbersome but the site is in its infancy.  The designers are trying to create a sense of “stickiness” where the users are drawn to deep local content, be it pictures, video, or text.  They have some glitches but they should work it out.

The main feature of the site is that content will be edited for quality.  Active Rain hired editors to determine what user-generated content will be quality and what should be buried in the bowels of the server.  The intended result?  A sticky site about “your town”, for “your neighbors”, sponsored by “your Rotarians (local businesses).

Greg Swann feels it might be a SEO play:

What does it portend for you? For one thing, dumbstunt SEO plays like Localism are doomed. Read more

July 9, 2008

As good as a link: How would you like to “co-brand” with Zillow?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Do you want to see something huge in the guise of something that might seem quite small at first?

Click here.

This is new software from Zillow.com. It’s supposed to go live at 9 pm PST, but it’s already working for me.

What’s different?

Look up in the upper left hand corner.

C’est moi! A photo of Odysseus. A link to my Zillow profile. A link to my email. My phone number. And a link to our brokerage’s weblog.

Even cooler is that button in the upper right hand corner:

A quick-click button to take you back to BloodhoundRealty.com.

So what’s going on here?

As of tonight, Zillow.com is “co-branding” with anyone who links to it. “Co-branding” is the kind of wine-and-cheese-PR-event deal big companies make with other big companies, but Zillow is extending the idea down to the lowliest of grunts-in-the-trenches.

(We can take a moment to snicker behind our hands. Trulia.com is building its reputation on being niggardly and hostile toward ordinary working real estate agents, so what better way to throw the whole issue into the starkest possible contrast? I don’t think Zillow approaches things this way, but the irony can’t be lost on them.)

Why does this matter? Because it’s a very reasonable response to an objection. If someone says, “Providing or promoting content on Zillow.com improves their garden but not your own,” Zillow can offer up the perfect counter: If you shed attention to us, we will make you our partner for that entire visit, and we will entreat your guest to return to you with every page that person views.

This is brilliant every way you think about it, and, of the wannabe Web 2.0 players in the real estate industry, Zillow seems to me to be the only one who really gets the whole bundle of Web 2.0 concepts: You give to get, wealth is abundant, the expectation of good behavior yields good behavior, etc.

There’s more. Zillow.com is about to introduce a ton of new widgets and gadgets, each one of which will be co-branded to the end-user. You’ll be able to post real-time mortgage quotes, for instance, and anything built with the Zillow API will Read more

July 9, 2008

An introduction from the banking “Pup”

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Hi,

First I want to thank all of you for making me feel so welcomed as one of the newest members of the Bloodhounds.   I’ve felt very welcomed and I appreciate that.   I’ve also learned a lot.

As Greg said when we kicked off Project Bloodhound, he’d let all of the pups take the opportunity to properly introduce themselves.  I’m going to attempt to do that.

First the basics: My name is Tom Vanderwell, I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart and best friend for 23 years (well it will be 23 years in 11 days).   We have 5 children.  The oldest (21) is living and working in Ohio as a call center rep.   My 18 year old will be attending Calvin College in the fall to pursue a nursing career.  She plans on going into third world nursing, specifically at this point in Haiti.  Our 16 year old will be a junior in high school.   Four years ago we adopted two more kids from Haiti (www.glahaiti.org).  They are currently 6 and 7 (the 7 year is the only boy besides for me in the whole family!)   Let’s just say life is never boring at our house!

One of the questions that I enjoy asking others in the real estate world is “How did you get into the real estate business?”   So here’s my story.  In 1988, I was running the showroom of a local furniture rental store (not a rent to own, but a temporary leasing store) and got let go because I refused to lie to the customers (go figure?).   One of my customers was a Realtor and she made a comment to me, “You should think about selling real estate.”   Well, after a couple of months looking for a job, I decided to pursue the idea.   I ended up selling real estate for 3 1/2 years.  I don’t know how many of you were around during the first Persian Gulf War, but I didn’t sell a house for 6 months during that.   Needless to say, it was time to look for something else.

In 1991, I made the switch to mortgage lending Read more

July 8, 2008

BloodhoundBlog Unchained DVDs shipping; watch your mailbox

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The DVDs for BloodhoundBlog Unchained will ship tomorrow, at long last. I guess that’s only six weeks, but it seems much longer. If you live in Phoenix, you should have a package by Friday. Further out, you could be looking at next Monday or Tuesday. If you haven’t received yours by then, let me know.

As it happens, I have a few spare packages made up. Brian Brady has plans to take care of real estate webloggers shortly, but, if you don’t have a real estate weblog, you might slip over to BloodhoundBlogUnchained.com and snag a set for yourself. You’ll get more than ten hours of hard-headed, practical real estate content, much of it unavailable anywhere else at any price.

The more I think about this, the more stark the contrast becomes. Monday May 19th at Unchained, in particular, is like nothing you have ever seen at any real estate event. Monday is represented on Discs One and Two, and, while I don’t want to take anything away from Tuesday’s presentations, the work Brian and I did on Monday is a year’s worth of homework by itself.

We want a lot more than that in Orlando — and Brian hasn’t cut off the early-bird price so it’s still available as I write this — and last night we started trading emails to talk about how to offer an exponentially greater product next May in Phoenix. I don’t know if we can afford it, and I don’t know if we can pull it off, but we’d like to put together a fully-realized scenius scene next year, a concentrated boot camp for the first generation of fully-wired real estate professionals.

My ambitions are unchained, unbounded. I want for the people working with us to become so much better than their competition — so much more in demand — that they put themselves beyond competition. As a secondary consequence, I want for that level of excellent performance to supplant everything else in the marketplace. I want for all of us working together to be the catalyst that makes real estate a profession at last.

BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix was Read more

July 8, 2008

Let me introduce to you the one and only Dr. Beatrice Rowles, Real Estate Coach

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

Huff and Puff Your Way to a Fortune in Real Estate

Part 1: Get Your Head in the Game
BY DR. BEATRICE ROWLES, PHD, BSR, FUBAR

Dr Beatrice RowlesFilling up a plastic bag with propellant and and then squeezing the bag to force it into your lungs is the new, cutting edge way to stay positive about the Real Estate Market. Are you up on the latest?

“Huffing” — as its known — is the coolest thing since Twitter. If you aren’t killing a few hundred thousand brain cells before each showing with someone under the age of 50, then you are missing a golden opportunity to reach the red-hot Gen X and Gen Y market.

What You Need

Just about any air tight bag will work. Personally, I prefer the plastic bag from Wonder Bread.

Look for household and office products that include freon or compressed hydrofluorocarbons. I’ve had great results stealing the canned-air computer keyboard spray from my office’s IT geeks, but don’t let them catch you. Fortunately, I keep an industrial sized drum of Aquanet in the hatch of my Lexus SUV. That’s right, S – U – V.  “Oil is $140 a barrel!”, “Our Oil Based Economy is Unsustainable!”, “Al Gore is right!”, “A Gallon of Gas is $4!” these are the headlines that the Chicken Little press is using to scare us out of our SUVs and into a hybrid.

Don’t let them fool you into buying a Prius. Imagine what would happen if you got rear-ended by a semi with an industrial sized drum of Aquanet in the hatch of that tin can. Besides, according to OPEC, President Bush and Osama Bin Laden, it could be a lot worse. AND the Chicken Little press is wrong as usual: Gas is more like $4.25 a gallon. But I digress…

Of course, there are certain risks associated with inhaling propellant. Look at this way:  If you were able to look first-time homebuyers in the eye and tell them that house values always go up and a NINA was a great way to get into a home that was way beyond their earning potential, then you shouldn’t have much Read more

July 8, 2008

Organic Gardens, Solar and Public Transportation- Oh My!

by

Realtor, Certified EcoBroker

Author website

As Professionals in the Real Estate Industry we try and do everything to stay on top of our game.  We attend classes to further our education and knowledge, we try out the latest and greatest Social Networking Platform to find out about new Techie stuff, but what about what the clients are looking for?

It is a job in itself to stay on top of what the Local Inventory is to know what may be suitable match for our clients.  Although Real Estate is local, it’s pretty safe to say that for several years, MOST large Metropolitan areas have been experiencing the Sprawl of the Suburbs, the desire for Material items, and the need to be bigger and have more.  However, just of the past 3 months I have experienced this Dynamic shift in the approach that people are taking in the features they want in homes.

In the title I mention Organic Gardens, Solar and Public Transportation.  These are the Top 3 items on my clients and potential clients wish list over the past 45 days.  Not a single buyer has mentioned the desire for Granite Countertops, Stainless Steel Appliances or even a McMansion.  It’s minimal footprint on both the land, environment and lifestyle.

What is it that Real Estate Professionals can do to keep up with this enormous shift in thinking from the Homebuying population?  If Solar Panels and Rain Water Capture Systems are getting to be the new Sexy, who can keep up?

Many of the people that are looking for Organic Gardens are tired of hearing about all of the Crud that is stuffed in our food.  Food Dye and Preservatives have been linked to Behavioral Disorders in children as well as Cancer, Depression and even Skin disorders in Adults.   Those that are looking for Solar and proximity to Public Transportation are looking to reduce Gas and Electric bills, or maybe even to give a subtle Finger to the Gas and Electric Companies.

Who would have thought that the Health Care and Energy Crises could have such an impact on the decisions that people make when they purchase a home and where Read more

July 7, 2008

Attention Realtor association wannabe geeks: All monopolies suck by definition, so you must open up our forms to multiple vendors

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I wrote a couple of times yesterday about using the iPhone as the laptop killer for real estate transactions. If my guesses about cloud computing play out, the iPhone and subsequent hand-held computers have the potential to replace our desktop machines as well — or at least give us every bit of the power we expect from a desktop machine no matter where we happen to be. This is all for real, a brand new world unfolding before our eyes.

What is not new, alas, are the monopolies of morons imposed upon us by the National Association of Realtors and all of its many tentacular sub-cartels. Where everything in business is about to change radically — in response to the iPhone, to Web 3.0, to the unforeseeable efficiencies of the cloud — everything in our business will change at its usual glacial pace — driven not by the pursuit of profit, not by the thrill of innovation, not by the ever-more-vast oceans of information available to us — driven only by the need of the NAR and its cabal of sleazy vendors to hold Realtors hostage.

In late May I bitched about the vast hordes of bugs that infest Zipforms, but I knew going in that this was a Sysiphean effort. The people who impose these awful products on us are not the ones stuck using them. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are off-budget contributions — subsidies for Realtor association parties, for example — written into the contracts, which simply introduces bribery into what is already a capricious decision-making process. Caprice, it is worthwhile to stress, is the opposite of reason.

Tom Farley, the new CEO of the Arizona Association of Realtors actually called me in response to that post, but I could not manage to convey to him the importance of multiple, competing vendors to a free — or even quasi-free — market. What he told me is that, instead of Zipforms, in the future we will be inflicted with a different hopelessly buggy Windows-only piece of crap software. I know the man was in deep earnest, and I know Read more

July 7, 2008

Being a part of Social Media does not mean contributing to the 3,000 advertising messages the average person recieves everyday.

by

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Author website

Sure, the below slideshare will come across a bit heavy handed, but the facts are real.  Exercise choice by filling in the asterisks with either one of my favorites.  One (for the sci-fi fans out there) the over used intensifier from Battlestar Galactica.  Or two, remember that you are reading this on a blog and choose one of the late George Carlin’s 7 dirty words (NSFW version).  Our freedoms are precious and not shared world wide by any means.

Now, if you heard what was spoken at the Heard then it’s how passionately the message was delivered.  Ever since your chosen dalliance after logging on became more than checking email and playing mine-sweeper, everyone has been asking a lot of the same questions.  Only now instead of dropping some type and waiting … waiting … waiting  for a response, we have a variety of platforms to communicate on by chat, video, and even fantasy character.  But who’s listening in Real Estate?

If your clients are not asking to connect with you via a variety of social media, the day will come soon enough.  If you are interested with dealing with what we are calling the Millennials or Gen-Y at all then pay real close attention to slides 38 – 44.  “Tomorrows consumers are today’s digital natives”.  “96% of them have joined a social networks and they don’t care about your ad.  They care about what their friends think”.

So what are you doing to get on board?   For me it’s testing and exploring different platforms.  It’s asking those I meet what they are using to communicate.   Your mileage will vary given your market and demographics, but there is a certainty in that your presence, your reputation, and your voice could be working for you 24 hrs. a day.

“Content is the new democracy, and we the people are ensuring that our voices are heard”

July 6, 2008

Head in the cloud: This week’s new iPhone is the first strike at a universal remote control for cloud computing

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As part of our breathtakingly romantic anniversary weekend, Cathy and I were talking today about all of the various types of digital storage devices we have actually used in our lives. I thought it would be a fun exercise at a conference, simply as a way of illustrating how rapidly technology changes while we’re not paying attention.

But stop for a moment and think: Right now, you’re probably using hard disks, CD- or DVR-ROMs and thumb drives for storage. You used to have Zip drives and streaming tape drives and flexi- and floppy-disks, but we are within a year or two of being rid of magnetic media altogether. Solid state hard disks will be hugely capacious, hugely fast, very secure and wicked cheap.

And then: What next?

It’s plausible to me that the next level of off-line digital storage will be the cloud itself — multiple, multiply-redundant, self-replicating, self-maintaining copies of your data, instantly accessible and virtually indestructible. I’m presuming the advent of Web 3.0, as well, but we are there already anyway.

I rank on Windows because it’s funny, but it doesn’t mean anything. In the cloud, Windows is a dead letter, and Apple only matters as a model of how to build elegant, functional software. The cloud is beyond operating systems, because, just as Web 2.0 is ideally browser-independent, Web 3.0 is operating system-independent. It will not matter how you address the cloud, since every way you have of doing that is simply a user interface — browser-, operating system- and device-independent.

This is why it is worthwhile for everyone — not just people in the real estate business — to think about the iPhone. It’s not a Mac OS computer, it’s the first strike at a universal remote control for cloud computing.

The ideal way to do forms on an iPhone (or any mobile device) is not by filling in the blanks on a PDF file, but, rather, filling in the blanks on a multi-page HTML form. The complete contract language could be there, in readable HTML, and the Realtor or lender could let the client type their own text fields and click their Read more

July 6, 2008

Friday is iPhone day: Do you know of anyone who is building a paperless real estate contracts-processing application for the iPhone?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The headline asks the question. In Arizona, forms software is a monopoly controlled by the Arizona Association of Realtors, which simply means that the solution available to us is satisfactory to no one.

That much is very sad, since filling in the blanks on PDF files is about as easy as you can get in the world of dedicated applications. It’s built into the Acrobat API. Even so, ZipForms is an amazingly buggy, amazingly Window-centric piece of crap.

Do you know of anyone out there who is pushing the envelope? I suspect the AAR is planning to make a change, but I know it will just be another half-assed Windows kludge. Is there anyone, anywhere doing better work?

The iPhone is the perfect platform for writing contracts, since, with electronic signing, you could transmit an executed copy to your client, to the other agent, to title, to the lender, to the inspectors — to anyone, just like that. If paperless doesn’t also mean deskless, it doesn’t mean enough to suit me.

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July 5, 2008

You Just Don’t Get It — Get This! — There’s The Door

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Nothin’ big time here. A pet peeve. My intuition tells me I’m not the Lone Ranger.

To give credit where it’s due, this idea came from Mark Cuban, who takes a pretty tough stand against those using this phrase.

Ever been going back and forth with someone on the merits of a topic on which you disagree, when out of nowhere, the other guy says, “You just don’t get it”? Most of the time they say that for one of two reasons.

1. It’s absolutely, irrefutably true. They’ve tried every approach in explaining their position, including empirical evidence documented with multiple examples. Yet in the face of this overwhelming tsunami of evidential proof, you continue to maintain the earth is actually flat.

Example: The Dodgers were World Champs in 1963. A New Yorker complains bitterly I’m mistaken. My assertion is an historically provable position, which I proceed to do — to no avail. I’m justified in my refusal to waste more time with one who will not see — so I say to them, “You just don’t get it.”

2. They’ve run out of anything meritorious to say in support of their position. It’s at this point you’re supposed to realize how incredibly dense and/or stoopid you are, and that arguing with you is a worthless endeavor.

Here is an example of #1 and #2.

#1 — Newspapers just don’t get it.

Wouldn’t ever say this is universal, but at the rate they’re going down, one might conclude they really don’t get it.

#2 — Some blogging expert tells a blogger that because they’re disobeying some particular sacred cow of blogging, that they ‘just don’t get it’.

I disagree with one point Mark Cuban makes. He says using the offending phrase means the speaker is lazy. OK — maybe even most of the time. However, we all know examples where continued debate is time we’ll never redeem. Attention: Totally needless cheap shot coming. Just checked the NBA records listing league champions the last 20 years. The Mavericks don’t appear. It would seem that organization just doesn’t get it. 🙂 Disclosure: Author is Read more

July 5, 2008

Musical chairs: You can buy a home on leased land for a bargain price, but you must be prepared to sell before the music stops

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
Musical chairs: You can buy a home on leased land for a bargain price, but you must be prepared to sell before the music stops

We’re preparing to list a condominium that sits on leased land. Land leases aren’t common in the Phoenix area, but they do exist.

The most common way to own real property in the Valley is in fee simple: You own the land and all the structures on it, plus any mineral, water and air rights that haven’t been alienated by legislation or previous sale.

A very distant second way of owning property is the condominium plat: You own the airspace described by your interior walls, and you and all of your neighbors own the land and structures in common. Most often you will also own the air conditioner, and possibly also the roof. These are expensive to replace, so crafty developers and their HOAs socialize the risk to you.

We have a few co-ops in the Phoenix area, but very few. In a cooperative, you and all of your neighbors own the land and the structures in common, and you have a right to occupy your living space.

In a land lease, the structures can be owned in any one of these three ways — by individuals, by a condominium HOA or by a cooperative corporation. The important difference is that the land is owned by a landlord, and the landlord will be taking that land back someday.

What happens to the structures? They revert to the landlord’s ownership, and the former owners of those structures are left owning nothing.

In essence, it’s a game of musical chairs. The structures on the leasehold pass from owner to owner, but, when the music stops, no one then on that land has a place to sit. This tends to depress property values on leased land.

But land leases are written for very long terms, and a lot can happen in that time. If the landlord gets a huge offer for the land, the people who own the structures could get bought out early at Read more

July 2, 2008

Do you work like a Bloodhound? I have a no-fee referral in Cary, NC

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of our past clients is looking for aggressive representation in Cary, NC. He worked with us on the buying side and later as a seller, so he knows all about how we work. That’s what he wants in his new locale. He’s smart, he blogs and he could end up being a very good source of referrals for you in the Research Triangle area. If you over-deliver in everything you do, the referral from me is free. I want to help him, but I want to help hard-working dogs wherever and whenever I can.

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July 2, 2008

Farewell Countrywide: How The Bank of America Merger Will Keep Wells Fargo As The Mortgage Origination Leader

by

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

Author website

WARNING!  Long commentary about the Bank of America/ Countrywide merger ahead:

Bank of America Press Release from July 1, 2008 (italicized) with my commentary:

CHARLOTTE, N.C., July 1 /PRNewswire/ — Bank of America Corporation today completed its purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp. to create the nation’s leading mortgage originator and servicer.

Bank of America will focus on responsible home lending, serving as a reliable source of mortgages for the American consumer. Bank of America also will assist new and existing customers with selecting the right product to meet their needs.

Bank of America fires a proactive shot with this statement to exempt its originators from proposed national registration and licensing.  I think they’ll get the exemption.  I predicted that the merger/rescue of CFC would be brokered by Ben Bernanke and that BAC would call in its chit, one day.  Expect BAC to lead the borrower suitability trend.  By setting itself up as the “leader” they can effectively eliminate competition by crying that the “innovative mortgage products” just aren’t suitable for Ma and Pa.  This paternalistic approach will work for the next 2-3 years and BAC will have an unfair competitive advantage by fiat….but, they’ll blow it.

“Mortgages are one of the three main cornerstone consumer financial products along with deposits and credit cards,” said Bank of America Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis. “This purchase significantly increases Bank of America’s market share in consumer real estate, and as our companies combine, we believe Bank of America will benefit from excellent systems and a broad distribution network that will offer more ways to meet our customers’ credit needs.”

BA management are bankers, not mortgage bankers.  It helps that mortgage bankers are a profession akin to drug dealers and pimps today.    Public perception will be that the mortgage bankers blew up the economy and that the bankers can save it.  Wells Fargo (a mortgage banking firm DISGUISED as a bank) will quietly steal MORE market share in the retail and wholesale mortgage origination market.

As previously announced in April, Bank of America plans to offer the following types of first-lien mortgages: conforming loans underwritten to standard guidelines of 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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