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Category: Real Estate (page 130 of 266)

March 15, 2008

As if the Dollar isn’t already tanking…

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

You Know I Had To Say Something…

To read me is to know me and if you’ve read me before then you already know that I am no economist. Far from it.  I can reduce by 10% and multiply by 5%–the two basic math skills needed to be a realtor in Chicago–but anything much beyond that, I start spelling out the numbers instead. If I had to rely soley on the mathematic portion of my brain to come up with D’enouement in any given circumstance, then I’d be wandering the halls of Pi purgatory, ad infinitum. See, I just did it.

Nor am I now, or have I ever been, a candidate for political office of any kind although one entry on Google claims I was once the Treasurer for a Virginia chapter of the Knights of Columbus in 1993-94. (I will state for the record right here in a national forum that I don’t know what happened to that Bingo money but hookers were definitely not involved.)  In fact, according to Sister Mary Timothy from the old neighborhood, I ceased even being a Catholic after I got caught smoking in the Girls bathroom with Melanie Mortimer back in the 6th grade.  My blanket response to both of these scenarios is this—-and I paraphrase G. Gordon Liddy from his Watergate days,  “Much beyond that, Senator…at those particular points in time,…to the best of my knowledge,….I don’t recall.”

However, I am not completely without opinions.  And if I should ever find myself in such a position, my iPhone is sure to ping me otherwise. Such was the case this past Monday as I topped off my Mini Cooper, silently cursing any and all things OPEC, and wondering if I should have bought an even smaller form of transport.  The MSNBC feed alerted me that a notable politician admitted to paying $1,000 per hour for the services of a jezebel.  I just paid $39.79 for a tank of Premium,  then quickly figured (with the help of my iCalculator, of course) that alas…Super Premium was a mere $960.21 more.  As I read on, I imagined the following Govenor’s Mansion pillow talk later that evening in far, far away Albany:

First Lady of NY:  “You paid $1,000 per hour for a hooker?”

Govenor of NY:   “Yes Read more

March 15, 2008

Paradigm Shift? Not Quite Yet

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

In just the past couple weeks alone I’ve read over a dozen blog posts declaring a paradigm shift in real estate — specifically in what it takes to succeed as an agent. Before I continue, it’s not my intention to offend anyone in any way whatsoever. Seems about 2-3 times a year I manage to step in it big time, causing some sorta perfect $#%storm of wounded egos and/or encroached empires of ideology. This should be filed under, ‘Hey, I’m just sayin” and leave it at that.

Look at the history of the car, beginning at the turn of the 20th century. Going out on a limb, I’d say far less than 1% of the population had seen one, much less owned one. Now look at today’s car. A paradigm shift? Not in my thinking. They still require gas, a driver, a drive train, and brakes. A 1908 Ford got you from point A to point B faster and more comfortably than a horse — and so does the 2008 model. Yet many would say due to the myriad improvements over the last 100 years there’s been some sort of paradigm shift from 1908 to now.

Show me. Where is it? Does the ’08 version fly? Does it drive itself? Does it make its own fuel? No, it gets us from A to B faster and more comfortably than a horse. A paradigm shift was when the car replaced the horse.

Segue to real estate brokerage.

It was Saturday in the middle of a cloudy October in 1969 when I first stepped into a real estate office as a licensed agent. Not much has changed in the ‘paradigm shift’ kinda way.

Before you start your enraged fingers racing over your keyboard, read on.

Sure, there were no computers, no internet, no 2.0, not even 1.0 — hell we were barely 0.0 back then. Still, we did then what we do today. We seek opportunities to get in front of qualified prospects in order to make our living. We took listings, represented buyers, used the MLS, had to deal with contracts, dealt with lenders, Read more

March 14, 2008

What could be dumber than sticking a Flash widget on your real estate weblog? How about sicking two Flash gadgets there instead?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t know what to do. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “It is not my function to be a fly swatter.” And yet every time I turn around I find myself reading abject nonsense from technology vendors who have never in their lives sold real estate — who have never sold much of anything but hot air.

Should I just wince and move on to the next article in my feed reader? Or do I have a duty to point out obvious, bone-headed errors, so that y’all don’t repeat them, not knowing they are errors?

I sat on this one earlier today, but it just keeps bugging me. If you think I’m being mean for calling the author out, all I can think of to say is, “Dang!” I myself never, ever forget the ninety-and-nine. If I can spare just one person one dumb mistake, I’ll call that a win and ignore everything else.

So: Joel Burslem’s advice to build single-property widgets is truly bad counsel. The future of real estate weblogging is not widgets, and widgets are not valuable replacements for single-property websites.

First: Off-site resources are bad, m’kaaaay? If you watch where your pages drag when they are loading, you will see that your problems are almost always the result of calls you are making to other servers. In this context, it doesn’t matter if you are calling Flash, Javascript, PHP, PERL or plain vanilla HTML. What matters most is that the other servers you are calling often will not work as quickly as your server. Even if those servers are very sprightly, there are still going to be delays from hand-shaking. Flash and Javascript can madly exacerbate these problems, since they require processing power in the client computer also. As cool as the free stuff you can get from vendors can seem to you, much of it is white noise, at best, of absolutely no benefit to advancing your marketing message. And if those widgets, gizmos and gadgets are slowing down your pages, they are acting against your marketing objectives — by coming between you and your clients.

Second: Flash and Javascript do not search. Read more

March 14, 2008

BloodhoundBlog is the most popular real estate industry blog, but for now we’re the fourth most popular real estate weblog overall

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Biggest, most comprehensive and most popular real estate industry technology and marketing blog

The last time BloodhoundBlog scored this high on BlogTopSites was May of 2007. At the time, I said: “It may not happen again for a while…”

What’s going on? Brian Brady is showing you why you will reap huge benefits by attending BloodhoundBlog Unchained. This is just the beginning…

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March 14, 2008

If you thought the iPhone rocked, just wait for the iPhone 2.0

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

David Pogue in the New York Times:

Before you start reading this, a word of warning: this column is about the iPhone. If you’re one of those people who are sick and tired of hearing about the iPhone, then scroll on while you still can.

Then again, if you’re one of those people, you’ve got much bigger problems than this column. Maybe you’d better take six months off to explore the Serengeti.

That’s because last week, Apple announced iPhone 2.0. It’s not a new phone model (although that will be coming this year, too)—it’s new software for the existing phone [update: and for the iPod Touch!]. And in my considered opinion, it will be an even bigger deal than the iPhone itself.

The new software, slated for the end of June, will have two parts. First, it will tap into Microsoft Exchange, the e-mail distribution system used by hundreds of thousands of corporations. You’ll get “push” e-mail, meaning that messages appear in real time on your iPhone. And when anybody changes your calendar or address book on your computer at work, your iPhone will be automatically, wirelessly updated, wherever you happen to be.

All of this is already on the BlackBerry, which is Apple’s obvious target here. Without an actual keyboard, the iPhone won’t kill off the BlackBerry entirely (although I do like the way the on-screen keyboard forces iPhone people to be super-concise). But it will carve away a certain chunk of the BlackBerry’s market.

The big knife is Part 2 of iPhone 2.0. That’s the SDK—the Software Development Kit—which Apple has released in beta-test form. The idea here is that any programmer can now write software for the iPhone. Not illicit, hacky apps like people have been writing so far, but authorized, tested, legitimate software, much of it free, that can tap into all the features of the iPhone.

More:

I can’t tell you how huge this is going to be. There will be thousands of iPhone programs, covering every possible interest. The iPhone will be valuable for far more than simple communications tasks; it will be the first widespread pocket desktop computer. You’re witnessing the birth Read more

March 13, 2008

Earned Media.

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I was working late tonight and listening to the Hugh Hewitt show ( a habit of mine) and was enjoying a new segment of his about entrepreneurs and small business when I heard those two words. I knew then and there that I was going to be working even later. This time on a blog post.

Hugh’s guest was a young man just starting a music instruction business and they promised to get around how he marketed without a budget per se’. They never made it there (although Craig’s List was tantalizingly mentioned) and the next caller to his talk show inquired further stating that she “really wanted to know how to do it”. Hugh replied (paraphrased) that today’s guerrilla marketing was mostly Earned Media and much of it online.

I thought quickly about what it is that we do. I thought of all the real estate agents and mortgage professionals out there, struggling to set themselves apart from the rest. Everyday we grapple with how to expand our reach and serve more customers, with the end goal of financial gain in the process.

Our marketing campaigns, however strategically complex (or not), derive their exposure from either the expense of time, money or a combination of the two. They are the two arbiters that determine the exposure that we generate for our businesses. Simple as that.

Blogging is Earned Media. The glory of the internet is that it affords the little guy / gal the ability to compete for eyeballs, minds and hearts in a marketing world that used to be dominated by the sheer force of money. This new found freedom to market using Earned Media is a good thing. It is more available now than ever.

Earned media is fun. The other day our little blogging group in our office got a pretty good laugh. A couple of the charter members of our team, Jon and Jennifer Karlen (Jon goes by the handle “Malok” online – a throwback from his online gaming days) got a pretty interesting voice mail regarding their horse farms blog. Here’s how it went:

“Umm…yeah…this is XXXX from Bloomberg Read more

March 13, 2008

Wow… Life stinks when you’ve got your head up your… community…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Notice anything missing?

In a world without middlemen, no one can prevent you from discovering anything you want to know. That’s a freedom more complete than humanity has ever known, until now.

The counter-proposition is that no one can protect you from derision, if you insist on trying to communicate with your head up your “community.”

All of the dinosaurs are extinct.

 
Update: Todd Carpenter has a hammer:

This is beside my point, but now the whole of our little world is watching.

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March 12, 2008

What REALLY matters…

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Today’s posts have made me quite introspective…

I have had a few health issues (nothing big, I’m fine now) that have slowed my efforts and posting. After viewing Greg’s great post this morning, I visited a place I had never gone before (seriously…for some reason, I had never read the ABOUT US page!!). If you haven’t, then now is the perfect time to check this out. With each post from now on, I intend to write in my posts the takes that you would NEVER read in the REALTOR magazine, but wish were there–and beyond.

Pithy, yes, Greg…more importantly –spot on.

Like Doug’s post in which he used the Circular Firing Squad analogy, I totally think that playing the blame game with the Housing issues we faces is a waste of time. You would not get a magazine that is bent on protecting NAR individually (different IMO from agents collectively) to say publicly that when it comes to the blame game…it doesn’t matter. We are where we are and the people affected are PEOPLE. They have FAMILIES. They have DREAMS. And Greg, as you so eloquently pointed out, they have kids…I’d add that they have kids who think an ARM is actually an appendage to the body and who want to stay kids as long as possible. We sell the American dream and it only makes sense to me that it hurts us and we FEEL it when those we have sold the dream to wake up with a nightmare…even if it is partially their fault.

One of my favorite balladeers is Gordon Lightfoot. And while the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” seems applicable at times as we watch this stuff unfold, I think the excerpts below from “The House You Live In” apply more correctly. (emphasis added)

The House You Live In

When you’re out on the road and feelin’ quite lost
Consider the burden of fame
And he who is wise will not criticize
When other men fail at the game
Beware of strange faces and dark dingy places
Be careful while bending the law
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger Read more

March 12, 2008

Practical dual agency in real life: It is possible to have a fiduciary duty to your sellers — that you cannot get away from — that feels like a complete betrayal of your buyers. What then?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There is a debate on dual agency going on at VARbuzz. This is my contribution to the conversation.

I abhor dual agency — notoriously so. I make no distinction between one licensee or two in the same brokerage, and I am more than prepared to be suspicious if there is any relationship that might seem more important to the practitioners than the fiduciary relationship to the client.

Even so, Russell Shaw convinced me in person that there could be circumstances in which I might have to do a dual agency, like it or not.

What circumstances?

Like this: I’m at open house at my listing, some buyers come in, fall in love with the house and insist they have to put it under contract right away. I would prefer they got their own representation, but my fiduciary duty to my sellers is clear: I owe them the best possible chance at these buyers.

The question is, what duty do I owe to the buyers? The state and federal governments have so gummed up the process of transferring real property that ordinary people cannot competently represent themselves. Moreover, the due diligence process demands expert oversight and advice.

In short, if both parties are unwilling to countenance the idea of separate representation, I’m stuck. I cannot betray the seller’s interests, and I cannot in good conscience permit the buyers to betray their own interests. (And it is plausible to me that I have created an Implied Agency with the buyers in any case.)

This has nothing to do with compensation, and, if we ever have to do this, we will probably split the buyer’s agent’s commission three ways — a point each to the buyer and the seller, in consideration for suffering with limited representation, and a point to us for the extra work. But even that would be at Close of Escrow. My Buyer-Broker Agreement would specify that the buyers could obtain separate representation at any time, even down to the last minute, and I would joyfully pay the buyer’s agent’s commission.

But wait. There’s more. We had a multi-party debate about dual agency at BloodhoundBlog, and, while I would Read more

March 12, 2008

Appraisers – The Latest Target In The Circular Firing Squad

by

Associate Broker

Author website

The Blame Game – Go Find A Scapegoat And Pin The Tail On Their Donkey

Pundits pontificate about the reasons that the real estate market is in a shamble, and the latest target in their crosshairs is appraisers.

“Those crooked appraisers jacked up the values of the properties!” they scream.

Last night, Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants, was on the Glenn Beck show. Miller agreed that there are fundamental problems regarding how some banks award appraisals to appraisers… and that roughly 80% of appraisers are “in the tank” for the banks.

While I have the greatest respect for Mr. Miller, I don’t believe that the problem with appraisers is so wide-spread. Perhaps in Manhattan – where Mr. Miller specializes – but I don’t believe that 80% of the appraisers nationwide have been corrupted. I do, however, agree that the process could use reform.

Let’s look at the role of the appraiser. S/he is in the business of providing an opinion of value… not a guarantee of value. Their services are NOT required by real estate law – but rather as a requisite of most lenders. Their job is to safeguard the lender from fraud by assuring the lender that the collateral for the loan is sufficient.

In a rising market, an appraiser takes recent sales into consideration… but must also allow for a free market causing the values to rise. After all, what is a better indicator of market value than a willing, ready and able buyer who places an offer on the table? Is that not the true definition of market value?

I have seen many transactions that are questionable, but the vast majority of them have been well within the acceptable range of value, IMHO.

While there have been – and still are – instances of fraud involving appraisers, these instances have been the exception and not the rule… and certainly not the reason for an over-exuberant run-up in real estate prices.

In reality – there is no single factor that you can attribute to this mess.

No, ladies and gentlemen, the fault does not lie with the appraiser. In Read more

March 12, 2008

Four photographs from a day spent looking at houses: Two of them are tragic — but the other two are infuriating

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m working this weekend with an out-of-state investor. I don’t know that Phoenix has hit the bottom in what is the ninth quarter of declining home prices, but we’ve shed enough value that newer suburban tract homes can once again throw off positive cash flow as rental properties.

That’s the happy news. The sad news is that many of the houses that seem to be attractively priced to investors are in some stage of the foreclosure process, from negative equity to short sales to lender-owned properties.

If you do this job long enough, you see just about everything. If you’re good at drawing inferences from artifacts, you can figure out the story of the home life in just about any house — family structure, recent financial history, reason for moving — whether or not the survival machine that is a home is functioning properly.

But in a normal market, in a normal time, in a normal neighborhood, the tragic stories don’t come so thick and fast. Who hasn’t seen a skip? Who hasn’t seen an eviction? Who hasn’t seen the sad tell-tales of divorce? But it’s a rare thing to see these awful signs twelve or fifteen times in a single day.

Look at this:

I saw kids’ bikes left behind in several garages today. Not enough room on the pick-up truck, the truck packed to bursting with everything the family could carry. Children are so easy to hustle. I can hear the fake enthusiasm behind the lie: “We’ll get new bikes! Better bikes! You’ll see!”

That’s sad, but it was those ceiling valences that got me, those fabric clouds in a girl kid’s sky. That’s a mother-daughter thing — “What can we do to make this your room?” Not too much money to spend, but just the right touch, just the right expression of a budding young lady’s individuality. Abandoned in the rush to get gone. Will that little girl ever be able to look at a ceiling and not miss those fabric clouds?

I see this all the time, and I never get over it. That’s a man trying to kick down a door so he Read more

March 11, 2008

How do you get visitors to come to your home’s custom weblog? Shoe leather works well. Search engines? Not so much…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
How do you get visitors to come to your home’s custom weblog? Shoe leather works well. Search engines? Not so much…

Okay, so you’ve built a custom weblog to help sell your home, and you’ve dressed it up with photos, a map, a floorplan — every bit of content you could think of. Now what?

Your home now has a twenty-four-hour salesperson on the internet. How do you go about getting potential buyers to visit your blog?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is not search engines. For one thing, your site is brand new. The search engines don’t even know it exists. Even if you manage to get indexed, you won’t have the kind of popularity to bring you to the top of search results for your keywords.

But there is an even more compelling reason why search engines won’t be much help to you: Visitors brought in by search engines are very loosely motivated. Many will have been looking for something else entirely, so they will bounce right back off your site in seconds flat.

Your objective in promoting your weblog is to target people who are motivated to buy your home — or who know someone who is motivated to buy your home. Your job is not to broadcast your appeal to everyone but to narrowcast to just those people who can do you the most good.

You’ll put notices about your weblog anywhere online that you can — Zillow.com, Trulia.com, CraigsList.com, local weblogs supporting nearby schools, little league teams, etc. But your primary promotional strategy is going to be offline — person to person.

We print business card-sized promotional pieces to advertise our open houses. These are distributed to every house in the neighborhood, since the neighbors may know someone who wants to live nearby.

During the school day, there will be more than 100 cars in the school parking lot, most of them driven there from out of the neighborhood. Some of those folks are sick of commuting.

Most local retailers will have some kind of bulletin board. Your cards belong there.

Your buyers probably won’t Read more

March 11, 2008

When the little things matter most

by

Realtor, Real Estate Investor

Author website

One of the things I want to see in this industry is the bar raised.  I hope what Zillow is doing now with the lending industry will carry over into the agent’s world.  I understand mistakes can happen and do happen, but the ability to minimize the number of mistakes made or how fast you can fix them is paramount in any industry or facet of life…especially ours when we have someone else’s money/house on the line.

I was putting a pricing/marketing report for a client today and I come across a listing that’s only been on the market for 3 days and it already had a price drop. Naturally I was curious to see why the sudden price drop.  I find this in the listing history:

idiots

Okay, …again …mistakes happen.  But this mistake is almost unforgiveable.  First, in our MLS system there are two text boxes for you to fill the price in separated by a comma.  If the intended price was $599,000, I could fathom someone not noticing the second text box right after the comma (which is pre-populated with 000) …and enter the entire list price in the first box …but that would have resulted in a $599,000,000 list price.   No…the only way to get the original list price was to enter the price wrong $59900 , 000.   This person obviously needs to go through the MLS training class again.

BUT…that wasn’t the worst offense.  As a seller, I could probably forgive my agent for an entry error.  Don’t see how it could have happened, but fine…it happened.  What is really unforgivable is that it took this agent practically 48 HOURS to correct their mistake.  For the first 48 hrs of this listing’s life, it was probably THE most expensive house in our MLS.  Do you not look at your own listing after you’ve posted it..even as a cursory check to make sure it actually posted?!

Not to mention this $600K house still has…62 hours later ….zero pictures posted for it.

Good times.

March 10, 2008

Save $100 If You Are Going To Starpower This Year

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

This year it is July 23 – 26, in Orlando. Here is the email I received from Howard. I think you know I want to be a hero.

__

Greetings to our Stars!


It’s hard to believe that we’re only about four months away from this year’s STAR POWER Annual Conference! Obviously, in today’s market, your fellow REALTORS® need the ideas, insights, and inspiration from top producers like you now more than ever! That is why attached you will find a very special Star Referral Credit that we encourage you to share with as many real estate professionals as possible. It will save them $100 off their Annual Conference registration and make you a hero in their eyes! You
certainly are a hero to us!

Thanks for helping to make the 2008 STAR POWER Annual Conference the most important event in the lives and careers of so many of your peers! Together, we’ll thrive in these changing times!

Have a positively productive day!

Your partner in success,

Howard Brinton

2008 Conference Star Coupon - Russell Shaw

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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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