BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Real Estate (page 123 of 266)

April 20, 2008

Don’t Listen To The Arrogant Attention Whores — Just Skin Your Cat

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

As happens with blogging sometimes, certain topics inspire many to register their take. That’s what we do. Whether it’s real estate, loan, or tech oriented, it’s amazing how quickly certain subjects can morph into almost a spiritual debate.

Watching all the back and forth the last month or so has been, uh, enlightening — not.

I’m here to tell you, Bloodhound is all about making agents better at what they do. I adhere to that as my Bloodhound mission statement with whatever I write here, just as I do in my own house. Writing here is such an honor. The first thing readers realize is that most of us understand it’s not about us, but about you. This is a critical distinction when passing on expertise.

For example, as a youth baseball coach, (five all-star teams 🙂 ) I never told a kid he was stupid ‘cuz he hit a line drive other than how I’d taught him. On the contrary, I praised him for gettin’ the job done. There are so many ways to hit a baseball hard. But if you freeze frame the hitter at the point where ball meets bat? They pretty much look identical.

The same goes for real estate agents. Their success depends on one thing: How many prospects were they able to get themselves in front of on a consistent basis? In baseball parlance, how many at-bats do they get every week, month, year?

Wow, you made seven figures?! Yep. How’d you do it? The answer isn’t relevant. The target of the question did it — that’s what’s relevant. He skinned the cat. Now that you’ve discovered that fact, you can sit down with them and find out how. The next agent who impresses you with their income will have done it an entirely different way. Go figure.

We human types are funny. We figure out what works for us, then become evangelical about it. Billy Graham was never more passionate than those on either side of the discussions on SEO methods, what to call a lead (Are you serious?), cold calling/door knocking vs the internet, Read more

April 20, 2008

The Odysseus Medal competition will be postponed this week

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re busy with real estate stuff, and I’m grinding on all gears to push engenu out the door. Plus which, there were only 65 nominations, suggesting, perhaps, that the rest of the world has Teri’s Spring fever.

In the mean time, here’s a blog post from Mark Steyn illustrating why a reactive, me-too, catch-up strategy is likely to fail in the net.world:

Old media dinosaurs looking to the Internet to make up for declining print sales will find this analysis disquieting:

In the first three months of this year, the average amount of time visitors spent on newspaper sites fell by 2.9% to 44 minutes and 18 seconds per month, or less than 1½ minutes per day. In the same period, the average number of pages viewed per unique site visitor dropped by 6.6% to 47.2 per month…

The decline in the average duration of sessions at newspaper web pages suggests that visitors are not utilizing the industry’s sites as primary destinations, but, rather, as places to episodically view individual articles highlighted by Google News, Drudge, Digg, blogs or any of the thousands of other places they might be.

So, if you happen to see a link at, say, NRO to something in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, you’ll click and read it, and then go away and not return to the paper until you click another link that tickles your fancy. That’s a hard model to sell to advertisers.

American newspapers have only themselves to blame. Instead of recognizing the necessity to reinvent their approach online, for the most part they simply transferred their old dullness to the new technology. Their print drabness derived mostly from the complacency of their local monopoly, and that’s the one thing you can’t transfer to the Internet. It will take more than the web to save these sclerotic franchises.

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April 20, 2008

Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt

The big news in real estate is the market, of course. My view is that the American economy is much stronger and more resilient than you might guess from day-to-day reports.

But the other big story in real estate is the idea of “disintermediation” — replacing Realtors with some combination of do-it-yourself effort and hi-tech tools. The stock retort to this notion — and I have made it myself — is that people will never buy homes like they buy books on Amazon.

Perhaps so. But I lived through the desktop revolution in printing, so I have a different take about the dreaded word disintermediation.

If the triumphant yelp is that some travel agents and some stockbrokers still have jobs, I will point out that some blacksmiths still have jobs, too. Horses still need shoes. That much is beside the point.

Here’s my take on the matter: Don’t think in terms of disintermediation. Use the word “supplantation” instead. In industry after industry, old techniques are being supplanted by new ideas. More importantly, the old technicians are being supplanted by new ones.

This is not a necessary consequence, but it often works out that the “old hands” don’t want to make the change to the new ways of doing business. Even if they do, the “first-mover advantage” can be too great to overcome.

The same goes for everything — most especially real estate. Realtors who are not all the way onboard with the way business will be done in the future will be left behind at the station.

A real estate transaction is so complex that most people will continue to want professional advice — even as they handle many of the simpler functions Realtors might have done in the past. The work we do will be superficially similar to the work others have done in the past — but those others won’t be doing it any longer.

Will they have been disintermediated? Not if you insist that they haven’t. Read more

April 19, 2008

Marketing performance: BloodhoundBlog is the last place crybabies should go when they need to have their boo-boos kissed, and, therefore, it is the last place to go looking for crybabies

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I want to talk about the idea of marketing performance as a disruptive strategy — but not quite yet. I’m using the term as a gerundive: Developing tools and techniques that by far eclipse your competition, then promoting that outsized commitment to excellence in your marketing. Not: “I’m the best.” Not even: “Here’s why I’m the best.” Simply this: “Here is everything you’ll get that you can’t obtain anywhere else.” This is the means by which we can flush most of the bums from the business even as we supplant the sclerotic dinosaurs who claim to be our leaders.

As a matter of general notice, it were well to take account of a couple of salient facts:

  1. This is not an alien message to the BloodhoundBlog audience. The people who come here are already committed to doing the best job they can do as Realtors, lenders, investors. We appeal to the elite of real estate professionals, and, not coincidentally, we tend to repel the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators.
  2. In consequence, beating up on the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators is probably a pretty poor strategy here. Most readers here would not just agree with but would joyously amend denunciations of specific bad behavior. But generalized complaints about unspecified groups of miscreants may have the opposite effect: The uncontested best of a group of people rising to the defense of the uncontested worst.

That’s as may be. There are no groups of people, there are only individuals. Defending a group is no less irrational than attacking that group, but I have no use and no time for irrationality in any flavor.

I’m interested in individual practitioners becoming so much better at the performance of their jobs, and so much better at marketing that performance, that they put themselves beyond competition. I want to put the bums in another line of work, and I want to put the dinosaurs in a museum, where they belong. To my ears, everything else is pointless noise.

I’ll deal with this all in detail, but not now: It’s Saturday, Realtor day, and I gotta go to work. Here Read more

April 18, 2008

The practical value of living by abstract principle: “I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Why is hewing to abstract principle, which is so often derided as being “impractical”, in fact the most practical course of action you can take? Because, when you cave in to bullies — in addition to committing a grievous injustice to your own interests — you are telling them in no uncertain terms that you’ll do it again.

I saw this passionate business letter cited at Coyote Blog the other day, but it was my friend Richard Nikoley who unearthed the gem quoted below.

I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable’s modus operandi in these matters. I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

I say this because my observation has been that Monster Cable typically operates in a hit-and-run fashion. Your client threatens litigation, expecting the victim to panic and plead for mercy; and what follows is Read more

April 17, 2008

What do gambling, pornography and real estate have in common?

by

Mapping Technology Entrepreneur

Author website

A: A lot of “SEO masters” trying to scam their way to the top of Google and Yahoo.

Is there an inverse relationship between an industry’s reputation and the number of “SEO masters” offering sage advice? It seems to hold true for gambling, pornography, payday loans, trial lawyers, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. You know you’re entering a shady industry when your industry has forums and contests devoted to industry-specific SEO (here is an awesomely not safe-for-work example).

Note to “SEO masters:” if this is true, helping politicians rank for searches is the next big thing.

April 17, 2008

Is managing your URL structure enough to achieve Truliamazing long tail search results in your target market?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s a true fact of BloodhoundBlog life: Trulia.com can be a redheaded stepchild around here. We’re always happy to pounce on Redfin.com or to pontificate about Zillow.com, but Trulia most often gets short shrift. It mainly comes across like Realtor.com’s younger, smarter, cheaper brother — and no one with a stock-option plan needs to write to me to tell me this is an unfair characterization. Trulia is certainly less adept at — or perhaps less interested in — grabbing headlines. The flip side is that the start-up is recovering its own costs, an unheard-of feat in the Web 2.0 world.

But here is another factor that sets Trulia apart, one that cuts much closer to this Realtor’s bones:

Trulia.com absolutely kills at long tail search optimization.

Mary McKnight advised us yesterday to ignore the long tail, but that advice doesn’t make sense in our business. If I were competing for prospects in Cedar Rapids, then focusing a lot of attention on Cedar Rapids keywords might make sense. But Phoenix is home to five million souls. The Metropolitan Phoenix real estate market comprises an area larger than Belgium. Moreover, our own real estate practice is focused on a tightly-defined niche. We live and die on long tail keywords.

And this is why I am hyper-aware of Trulia’s long tail efforts. I keep a constant eye on street names where we are strong or want to be strong. People cruise the neighborhoods we work at 15 MPH, looking at every house for sale. If they write down an address and Google it later, I want for them to find us. If it’s our listing, so much the better, but I want for them to find the breadcrumbs we leave behind us no matter what.

Watch this: 921 West Culver Street is for sale, but nobody told Google. In consequence, one of our old single-property web sites comes up first for that search (YMMV), giving us first crack at any buyers who Google for more information about that home.

By contrast: 714 West Culver Street is also for sale, but there’s only one dog peeing on that tree right now. Read more

April 16, 2008

Who can reinvent real estate marketing? At MikeCanDoIt.com Mike Rohrig howls like a Portland Bloodhound…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Look at this. Isn’t that…?

Yes — that’s a custom yard sign, mounted right there in the yard. Here it is up close:

The sign was made by Mike Rohrig, a Portland Realtor and Broker who is pushing the boundaries on his marketing.

Here’s a note Mike wrote to me:

The accidental brainwashing in the real estate industry is almost staggering.  The saying ,”think outside the box”, is almost cliche anymore but once I saw your custom sign on the Blog, it left me perplexed that neither I, nor anyone else in my market has created a custom sign.

It is a simple and effective tool.  It truly will get the home noticed as well as allow me to separate myself from others.  It cost me less than an typical ad in the Oregonian newspaper.  We have certain regulations that don’t allow me to make signs the same size as yours but I think I did okay for my first try.

For single property websites I have been using WordPress and learning some tricks to make it easier.  I had an idea that you might find helpful. I added a FAQ page.  After talking to my client about some buyer feedback I realized that this would be a perfect way to answer questions, objections or concerns ahead of time.

One question was about a school boundary line that moved so I put the email response from the school in the FAQ.

I am not the wordsmith that you are so I use a lot of pictures. I take pictures of nearby parks and anything else I think will help someone make a decision.

I also make pertinent links on the side in case someone is not familiar with the area.I think I will work on business cards soon as I implement these ideas into my business practice.

Here are two of my sites that are getting compliments.
http://1140swhuntingtonave.com
http://2904seberkeleypl.com

Mike’s main weblog is the aptly named MikeCanDoIt.com.

There’s a lot that we do, at BloodhoundRealty.com, that no one we compete against does. But everything we do, in one way or another, is built upon work that came before us. We watch, listen and learn, and Read more

April 16, 2008

Making A Case For Blundering Nincompoopery

by

Realtor, Audio Engineer

Author website

Did I spell that right? Hope so. . .

So anyway, I’m back with more “tales from the dark side.” I am going to continue on my  Saga, while throwing Papa John’s Pizza into the mix. Let me just state flat out, in as clear a way as I know how, that CountryWide’s loss mitigation department is the most incompetent group of blundering nincompoops that I have ever seen.

Case #1: I have a certain short sale that Countrywide has had in their possession since February 19th. Two loss mitigators later, and they just ordered the appraisal yesterday.

Case #2: On another active file, newly minted, fresh outta loss mitigation school comes Paul Romero (the name has NOT been changed, so as to shame the guilty) . Now Paul, bless his little heart, indicates that he’s gonna “send the file to the investor” to get their response. Uh. . .Paul? Countrywide owns the loan.  He calls me back two days later to indicate that he was wrong. Problem? He’s suddenly discovered that there is PMI on the loan, and he’s “sending the file to them immediately.” That’s great Paul, but their is no PMI on this loan. He argues with me for awhile and says he’s gonna send it to the PMI company to get their response. In the meanwhile, I’m off to demonstrate conclusively that there IS NO PMI on this loan. Within about 3 hours, I have written confirmation that there is indeed NO PMI on this loan. Fast forward 24 hrs. Here’s Paul on the phone again: “Uh. . .the PMI company has denied the short sale. They think the property is worth more than the offer you have given them”. Ok. Paul, let me explain this to you again, real slow. . .: There is no pmi on this loan. He proceeds to tell me that he’s sorry, but the short has been denied. Okay Paul. Give me the policy number, inception date, & contact information for the person handling the case at the PMI company. “Uh. . .I don’t have that information.” Well then how did you send them our offer? Read more

April 16, 2008

Raising the Bar or Bellying Up to It?

by

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

Author website

I hear a lot of chatter from successful REALTORS® about “raising the bar” for being a REALTOR®.  In other words, do a better job of distinguishing between REALTORS® and licensees.  This came up during a strategic planning break-out group today and we all thought it sounded like a good plan, but had no idea how to get it done.  So where do you go to figure out how to make the term REALTOR® actually mean something more than a common licensee?  A bar, of course.  Surely a few beers would generate enough creative thinking to solve this conundrum.

“Sam Adams, please.” 

The first order of business is to figure out how we got here – by “here” I am speaking figuratively and not how we arrived at the Dog House Bar and Grille.  Why is there no difference between a REALTOR® and a licensee?  I blame license law.  That’s right, license law.  It seems to me that over the years, state license law has “improved” to a point that there is very little difference in the REALTOR® Code of Ethics and state license law.  The ironic thing is that the REALTOR® organization has worked hard to strengthen license law over the years.  That’s a classic example of a raising tide lifting all boats.

Take disclosure, for instance.  I can only think of one thing that the REALTOR® Code requires to be disclosed that the license law doesn’t – REALTORS® are required to tell their seller clients about verbal offers where license law only requires disclosure of written offers.  Well there’s a strong marketing point!  Other than that, I can think of nothing significant that REALTORS® are required to do that a licensee is not also required to do.

“Another Sam Adams, please.”

So, what is the solution?  Do we think up a whole bunch of things that REALTORS® have to do or disclose that a common licensee does not?  Maybe we could require REALTORS® to disclose that the neighbor will throw potatoes at you if you purchase this home?  Or maybe we require REALTORS® to disclose all the future development plans within a mile of Read more

April 16, 2008

If 90% of the Buyers Go Away Will 90% Of Realtors Go Away As Well?

by

Real Estate Broadcaster and Investor

Author website

Supply and Demand | AP Aol Poll says real estate is in trouble 

Nearly 90% of consumers recently polled say they are not interested in buying a home any time soon.  A joint poll of the Associated Press and AOL indicated that the recovery of the housing sector will not be any time soon if the retail American consumer has anything to say about it.

60% of those polled stated that they were DEFINITELY not going to buy a home anytime soon while just 0ver 10% said they would be looking to purchase a new home in the near future.

You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to see that there is a tremendous amount of inventory available for a very slim and decreasing demand. If supply and demand ideology is true, then it is safe to say that there are going to be an overwhelmingly increasing number of unsold homes.

Since unsold homes equates to unearned commissions, what are the majority of real estate agents going to do? Earlier this year, we wrote what was viewed as an inflammatory article announcing the NAR Going Out Of Business Sale. Doesn’t sound too far fetched anymore does it?

Don’t Believe It’s A Going Out Of Business Sale…Then Somebody’s Lying To You!

While this news of prospective buyers not wanting to purchase any homes is somewhat disconcerting, it’s not the main reason to be alarmed. It’s merely a by product of a continued misunderstanding of the simple economic precept of supply and demand.

Many current home sellers do not understand it, and many listing agents do not understand it. It is my opinion that if this theory was more understood and accepted, then it is possible that the housing market would not be in the state that it is.

The Laws of Supply and Demand represent the cornerstone of economics and these laws are the basis for a free market economy. DEMAND is based upon how many buyers are interested in acquiring a certain product or service AND how much of that service or product they are interested in consuming. The latter part of that statement is often overlooked.

When planning to bring a product or service to market it is prudent to have a good Read more

April 16, 2008

Sometimes The Listing You Don’t Get Is The Best Listing Of All

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Looking For That Silver Lining – And Then Finding It

Around the beginning of this year, my favorite loan officer called me up to ask if I would list one of her clients homes for sale. He had fallen on hard times, and needed to sell quickly. He had only been in the property for a year, but had adequate equity to get him out.

The home was a fairly long drive (outside of my normal area) but I agreed to go and talk to him. I spent a few hours with him – including walking him through many low-cost steps to bring the home up to a more marketable condition.

I also educated him on the current market conditions – including the status in his subdivision. This education included a drive to inspect a couple of active listings (featuring a HUD foreclosure) so that he could see firsthand what he was up against.

The sad reality of paying too much for the house when he bought it (he was an unrepresented buyer); the current market conditions; combined with some damage from teenagers and dogs – meant he wasn’t likely going to get much out of the property when sold – especially since he couldn’t continue making payments.

So we pretty much agreed on the listing price, and that I would come back in a week after he had the chance to knock off the items on his punch list – as he needed to leave and take his kids to a special event.

I spoke with him a few times during the week to check in on his progress (which wasn’t going too well) but he assured me that he would be ready by the following week for me to come out and get the listing signed and the pictures taken.

Meanwhile, I ordered his website domain and sign for his single property website.

The day before going out to take his listing, I called him up to confirm our appointment… but didn’t reach him – so I left a voicemail.

He never called back.

So the day of the appointment, I called him… and again – no success. Normally, Read more

April 16, 2008

Introducing Chris Johnson, New Market Survival Enthusiast

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Until today, I thought Richard Riccelli had the best job description among our contributors: “Marketing Provocateur.”

Loan Officer Chris Johnson offers plausible competition with “New Market Survival Enthusiast.”

Chris Johnson calls the tiny town of Westerville, Ohio, home — a challenge for a loan officer. A prolific weblogger and an incipient father, Chris is a tireless advocate of continuous self-improvement.

Chris and I have been dancing with each other for months. Time will tell, but I think he’s joining us now because he wants to deliver unto us a deep and difficult-to-master marketing philosophy: Get behind the mule and plow! Sounds like a BloodhoundBlog message to me.

At the same time, I am pruning our Frequent Contributors roster by a few names, folks who haven’t had as much time for us lately: Lani Anglin, Bill Leider and Galen Ward. We’ve never retired a contributor account, so it could be they’ll rejoin us in future.

Our recent additions have all been very big dogs, so it will be interesting to see if Chris can out-howl them. Nothing like a big challenge to bring forth big results.

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April 14, 2008

The Odysseus Medal: “This stuff is simple to learn. No heavy lifting.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Sunny and 93 degrees outside right now. This is warm for April, but not hugely so. I rode my bike when I should have been writing this post. Dock my pay. I deserve it.

There was a lot of great stuff on the nets this week, but nothing totally slayed me, so I’m not awarding an Odysseus Medal. We’ll see what next week brings. (I’ve already see one insanely great Black Pearl.) Here are this week’s awards:

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Russell Shaw for I Want To Be A Lister – The Listing Presentation – The Objections:

About a year ago I wrote what was really part 1 of The Listing Presentation. Anyone wanting to increase their listing skills will likely find time spent on this post and that first post time well spent. I have mentioned the short list of different things a seller might say (or objections they might have to listing) to you. All good listers know these objections and are not startled or thrown off by the seller bringing them up. In fact, great listers know the objections so well that they want the seller to bring them up and if the seller does not bring them up the agent will bring them up. That’s correct. If you already know what they are thinking, why not just address it before they even mention it? It is usually fun to hit a softball when it is a slow underhand pitch.

As the nature of the objections has never really changed it is really sort of silly for any agent wanting to take a lot of listings to not know – in advance – that these are the concerns of the seller. I know that the internet and these new-brand-new-all-new-discount-really-really-low-maybe-even-no-commission companies have changed the very nature of life on earth, as we know it – but I am pretty sure the main objections that you could hear from a home seller back in 1968 were still the same in 1978.  They are still the same in 2008. I am thinking they may be still quite similar in 2048. Just Read more

April 14, 2008

Is Eric Blackwell the best father? The best friend? He could be on his way to being named Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Eric Blackwell showed us all yesterday what a great job he’s doing as a father.

Today, Ryan Ward offers potent evidence that Eric is a very good friend to have: He is throwing his support behind Eric in the SEO contest to determine who is the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World.

I have been an honorary member of Team Eric — a member in the sense that I have done what I can, honorary in the sense that I don’t know how to do much — but Ryan has been a serious contender in the competition. Advising his supporters to send their links to Eric’s entry instead is a stunning tribute to their friendship and to the respect they share for each other.

This contest has been fun and very instructive. It doesn’t matter who wins if we all learn from it. Even so, if you would like to help Eric in his final push for the finish line, put up a link to his Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World post.

Here’s some sidebar code if you want it:

Copy all the code from within the box and paste it into the sidebar of your web site or weblog. It’s plain vanilla HTML, so it should work fine in any page.

At this point, every drop of Google juice is going to matter, and we don’t want for Eric to finish the race on fumes. He’s been a great friend to everyone who reads BloodhoundBlog. Here’s our change to pay back a little of what he’s given us.

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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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