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Category: Real Estate (page 131 of 266)

March 10, 2008

The Odysseus Medal: A breathtaking Daisy in the deserts of the mind

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I was talking to Teri Lussier in email last week about Desert Daisies, an annual wildflower you find in the Sonoran Desert. People harvest the seeds and bring them home, and the flowers will eventually take over the whole yard — for the few weeks they’re around.

Beautiful little clarions of Spring, announcing in advance the blossoming of the citrus trees — when Phoenix is at its ultimate perfect best and god himself is green with envy.

When I picked Teri to be my partner in last Spring’s ProjectBlogger competition, I chose better than I knew. I admired her spark, her spunkiness — what the Irish might call the soul of a poet. But I could not have foreseen her depths — although I have been more than delighted to discover them over the last year. I hope BloodhoundBlog has been good for her. I know she has been very good for BloodhoundBlog. Working here and at TheBrickRanch.com, she has blossomed into a powerhouse weblogger.

So it’s a delight for me to announce that Teri Lussier is the first person to win The Odysseus Medal, The Black Pearl Award and The People’s Choice Award all in the same week.

The winning entry? Zillow creates the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine, of course.

I know some poor benighted soul will have to go digging for evidence of corruption, so I will tell you now that the fact that Teri and I happen to be on the same side of the issue of real estate licensing had nothing to do with my choice. She hit not just a home run but a grand slam with her essay, and the position she took says nothing at all about the quality of her work — except insofar as writing the heartfelt truth puts the writer at one with the gods.

I normally quote from winning entries, but, in this case, I want you to go and read Teri’s whole post. Print it out and tape it to your monitor. Inscribe it into your mind as a particularly worthy example of the truth Read more

March 10, 2008

Hyper-Local Blogs — Mr. Purcell? You’re Officially Outed

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Last Friday an agent and fellow blogger wrote a post about hyper-local blogs. Spencer Barron decided the subject needed a Devil’s Advocate. His post was a fair one. I commented then called Spencer. His most salient comment was this — “I’m still looking in vain for the agent out their dominating with a hyper-local blog.” (paraphrased wildly) There are already those out there who claim to have one, and are do well with it, very well. I disagree however with their assertion the blog their maintaining is a bona fide hyper-local. I’m a purist on this subject, and not only drink the Kool-Aide but mix it. 🙂

Last October I wrote a piece on hyper-local blogs. I essentially claimed outside of owning a printing press with the original plate for $100 bills, that was one of the best ways to earn money as a real estate agent. I haven’t changed my mind. In fact, Brian Brady introduced me to another local San Diego real estate guy — Sean Purcell. Turns out Sean’s office is just down the street from my satellite office. (I allow them to bill themselves as Starbucks, but they know the real scoop.) 🙂

So we’ve met a few times now. Sean is technologically ahead of anywhere I ever hope to be. I like him, among other reasons ‘cuz he agrees with my thinking on hyper-local blogs.

While at lunch I told him I thought the first agent who set up 4-5 hyper-local blogs in La Mesa, a San Diego suburb, would print money. After some back and forth he totally agreed.

Fast forward to the other day. We’d met for coffee and were revisiting our above mentioned conversation. And that’s when he did it. He said he was gonna launch the La Mesa blogs himself. He said it while looking me right in the eyes. He never even blinked.

After that we went back and forth about how to cordon off the different neighborhoods based upon our local knowledge of the city. It’s not a large city — its population is about 50,000. The blogs won’t cover every single Read more

March 9, 2008

When Times Are Hard – Nothing Beats A Free Peep Show

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Right Now – More Than Ever – You Need To Make Every Dollar Count

One of the services that agents should provide to their clients is photography. Some perform this service, themselves; others hire professional photographers; while most perform this service, themselves – but should hire professionals, instead.

I enjoy photography, and joined a photography group last year here in Atlanta. They use Flickr as a means to communicate the groups conversations and show off their member’s works. Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) is a huge group of photo enthusiasts where you can find pretty much any kind of like-minded photographers and their works imaginable.

One of the groups on Flickr is the Photography For Real Estate group of which I am a member. The group focuses on the challenges of real estate photography. Although most of the members are photographers who contract their services to agents – many are agents, themselves, learning to improve their skills.

You can set up an account on Flickr for free, which will allow you to upload and share photos with the world. That’s free – as in no cost. Nada. The big goose egg. There are some limitations to a free account, such as only being able to create three groups of photos… but a pro membership is just $30/year, should you desire.

As many of you are progressing into setting up your own blogs, you might be looking at different ways to insert images into a blog post. While Flickr does have the capability to compose code that you can use to insert images into your blog, a Swedish company called Admarket created an application called FlickrSLiDR, which takes a group of your Flickr photos and creates a slideshow for your blog.

It is easy to use… and the application delivers the goods. The viewer can mouse around to set the speed of the slideshow, pause it, or go to a particular image.

To help demonstrate this cool application, I have solicited the talents of famed photographer Scott Hargis, who is based in the Oakland California area. Scott is the most admired photographer in the Flickr Photography For Real Read more

March 9, 2008

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My take is that the most important news this week was Zillow.com’s announcement that it will be doing background checks on the loan originators it will be referring to consumers as a part of its forthcoming mortgage product. In consequence, this week’s short list is all about Zillow’s announcement and its implications.

So: We have just eight entries on the short list this week, out of a long long list of 115 posts. You can vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Brian Brady -- Mortgage Complaint? Mortgage Complaint? Welcome to The World Of Consumer-Policing at Zillow Mortgage”,
“Brian Brady — Zoriginators Delight Zillow Mortgage: Zoriginators’ Delight or Bane?“,
“Michael Wurzer — Who Holds The Bigger Gun, NAR or Zillow? Who Holds The Bigger Gun, NAR or Zillow? How About Tomorrow?“,
“Mike Farmer — Zillow Nation? Zillow Nation?“,
“Morgan Brown — Zillow Launches Mortgage Lender Sign Ups Zillow Launches Mortgage Lender Sign Ups – Points to a New Way of Consumer Control of Mortgage Process“,
“Teri Lussier — Zillow creates the end of the world Zillow creates the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine“,
“Todd Carpenter — Zillow Mortgages Zillow Mortgages to give loan originators \”absolutely free and unlimited access to consumers looking for a mortgage\”“,
“Sean Purcell — Success in Disbrokeration? How Do You Find Real Estate Success in Disbrokeration?“,
);
shuffle($AltEntries);

$radioGroup = “”;
$num = count($AltEntries);
for ($i=0; $i< $num; $i++) { $pieces = explode("\t", $AltEntries[$i]); $radioGroup .= "

  • “;
    $shards = explode(” — “, $pieces[0]);
    $radioGroup .= “$shards[0], “;
    $radioGroup .= “$pieces[1]”;
    }

    echo (“

      $radioGroup

    “)
    ?>

    Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.

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    • March 8, 2008

    Another record-breaking week: Is 2008 the Year of the Bloodhound?

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    BloodhoundBlog has had one record-breaking week after another in 2008, but this week was the first time we had more than 14,000 unique visitors, an average of 2,000 “uniques” a day.

    Nothing exceeds like excess: We add new subscribers every day, our Technorati links are on the upsurge, and we are pushing 100,000 backlinks. If the RE.net is like the Roman Republic, then we are like Gaius Marius, Caesar’s uncle: New on the scene, rude, crude, vulgar — and very powerful. That’s a role that suits me just fine. I’m happy to leave the Patricians squabbling amongst themselves over emoluments and honors. I’m much more concerned with the work-a-day Plebeians — and with the Barbarians at our gates.

    Why are we the biggest? Because we deliver the goods to hard-working grunts-on-the-ground like you. How are we going to grow even bigger? By delivering the goods to hard-working grunts-on-the-ground like you. It ain’t rocket science.

    Russell Shaw is convinced we have reached the “tipping point”, the point past which everything we say here can have an impact on the way our business is conducted. I retain my doubts, but I do not doubt for a moment that our words have a deep, a penetrating and an enduring reach. And to that notion, I cannot but shout out some slightly edited sentiments from latter-day America’s greatest satiric philosophers, Matt Stone and Trey Parker:

    America! [Heck] yeah!

    In the Web 2.0 world — in the disintermediated world — in the world without middle-men — delivering the goods is all that should matter. The BloodhoundBlog idea is simple enough — keeping the wealth that you alone produce in your own pocket — but it is in a sense a very ancient idea, a very Greek idea. The Hoplite Greeks were their own men, and this is why they fought better — and why they thought better — than any human beings who had come before them. The BloodhoundBlog idea is but a small reflection of the Hellenic revolution, but it is an idea that should win, that should prosper in a world where no middle-man can squelch an idea or Read more

    March 8, 2008

    Real Estate Web Site Extreme Makeover: If we help Russell Shaw get even richer, he might buy us drinks at BloodhoundBlog Unchained

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    As I mentioned on Real Estate Radio USA yesterday, Mary McKnight of RSSpieces.com will be joining us at BloodhoundBlog Unchained for a session called Real Estate Web Site Extreme Makeover. What we’re going to do is take a look at web sites and weblogs of audience volunteers and talk about how they might be improved — to be more attractive to visitors, stickier, better-optimized for search engines, etc. It should be a very robust, fast-paced overview of what does and doesn’t work in real estate web sites.

    Here’s a news flash: The purpose of a real estate web site or weblog — the purpose of real estate marketing in general — is to sell houses. Pull-based marketing is still marketing.

    With that much as preface, consider this: Russell Shaw is one of the biggest newspaper publishers in Northeast Phoenix. By way of Custom House Publishers, Russ prints and distributes almost 50,000 newspapers a month — distributed as the 85022 News, the 85024 News, the 85028 News and the 85032 News. These are the zip codes of Russell’s geographic farm, of course, and the newspapers are one way he has of “dripping” on sellers in his farm.

    Russ also has four domains for those four zip codes, each one running a templated web site built and hosted by Superlative Web Systems, one of our local — and lame without exception — IDX vendors. These are the four sites: 85022News.com, 85024News.com, 85028News.com and 85032News.com. As with all templated web sites, if we examine everything with a critical eye and then work up every ounce of salesmanical enthusiasm we can muster, we can dig deep and bring forth a hearty: “Eh…” Not absolutely awful, but nothing that is insanely great.

    Now it could be that Russ has that kind of frail and fragile ego that regards every bit of professional criticism as a grave and grievous insult — but not on this planet! Instead, Russell Shaw is the kind of phlegmatic, pragmatic, practical guy who understands that, no matter how well he might be doing today, he can always do even better tomorrow. My kinda guy. So instead Read more

    March 8, 2008

    Zillow creates the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

    by

    Rust Belt Realtor

    Author website

    Perhaps it’s cabin fever; Dayton is dealing with a late winter blizzard. The city is shut down giving me plenty of time to put on my own little version of a big-thinking cap and ponder away the what-ifs. Call me foolish but today, with a fresh cup of coffee at my side, I’m taking on the subject of repealing real estate licensing laws. Oh my. First things first: I’ve never read Ayn Rand and I don’t study the finer points of Capitalism. I truly love freedom, but I don’t philosophize about it. Now that we have that out of the way…

    Let’s do a little time traveling. Step into the Way Back Machine and return to that point in time when you decided that real estate is what you wanted to do with your life. Do you remember that moment? You want to sell real estate. Forget what you know now and concentrate; remember then? You want to sell real estate. Consider what would have happened if there was no licensing. How would you have gone about breaking into the business? Don’t tell me you would have simply hung up a sign, c’mon, you know you wouldn’t get hired! Really think about this a moment- what would you have done?

    Is it reasonable to think that you would have spoken to someone who was already in the business? Would you have picked just anyone in the business, or would you have carefully considered the reputations, the business models, the success rates of different brokerages? I know we wouldn’t have brokerages the way they exist today, but for our purposes, we’ll stick with that terminology. So. Would you have looked- really looked- at the other agents working at that brokerage? Would you have sought out past clients to get their opinions and comments?

    Use your imagination and stay with me here. This is how you are going to feed your family. What are you going to do to make sure that you can put ramen noodles on the table? What if you want an occasional steak? You are working where you live, or in close Read more

    March 8, 2008

    The Wile E. Coyote School of Mosquito Extermination — and why you need to put a condom on your trusting nature

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    That headline is lousy for Googlization, but it got your attention, didn’t it?

    First, Russell Shaw unearthed an ugly little bug in WordPress that permits malware mechanics to hi-jack certain features of a weblog. If that sounds vague, you bet it is. I’m not going to tell you what happens, where, or how. It is sufficient to say that the exploit is possible in any currently-running hosted version of WordPress. Why did we get hit? Despite the scare stories in the newspapers, malware is almost-always devoted to some kind of quasi-legitimate commerce. Basically, the bug that bit us was trying to use our hosting and our traffic to conduct its business at our expense.

    Not cool.

    The exploit is recurrent. I can kill any particular instance of it, but since the trapdoor is in WordPress, the only way to keep this little mosquito from coming back is to keep slapping it dead — with the only alternative being to kill WordPress entirely.

    Enter cron, the Unix utility that will run any Unix process on the schedule you set. With luck, this exploit will be fixed in WordPress 2.5, which is due to be released shortly. In the meantime, once a minute we’re swatting that mosquito, leaving not so much as a bloodstain. Most of the time, it’s not there, of course. When it is, it has 59 or fewer seconds to suck our blood before it dies again.

    That much was easy, but I’ve had plenty of time to watch this little critter in action, and in consequence I’ve learned a ton about malware theory, as it were. So once every 15 minutes, cron is running a different job that combs our whole file server looking for suspicious files. And if anything else pops up, I already know how to kill it and keep on killing it.

    All of which leads me to say: I love the Apache web-server technology. Where else can you drop a ton of Acme DDT onto one little mosquito once a minute — like Wile E. Coyote at his most frenzied — without even breaking a sweat?

    Alright, that’s the first thing. Here’s Read more

    March 8, 2008

    Kevin Kelly will teach you everything he knows about the economics of abundance — for free

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Mike Farmer is the gift that keeps on giving. Last night at his place, and today at our place, he takes us deep inside the mind of Kevin Kelly.

    I’ve been catching notices of Kelly’s name in the tech blogs, but I haven’t made time to read him. Big mistake on my part, corrected at some length this morning.

    Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans forms the basis for a survival manual for exemplary-service Realtors and lenders.

    His Technology Wants To Be Free is a much deeper discussion of the “free” economy than the Chris Anderson essay I talked about last week.

    I may go into greater detail later, but you don’t need to be bottle fed. Get yourself to the Technium and drink from the fire-hose.

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    March 8, 2008

    Real Estate Web 2.0: Epiphany — Thanks To Kevin Kelly

    by

    Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Reading Kevin Kelly’s post again created a fire storm of epiphanies as I relate his generative points to RE web 2.0.

    http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php
    I will take his ideas and twist them a bit to meet my purposes. First, the ideas of “copy” – in a sense all RE sites are a copy of one another — plenty of listings to look at. What makes one more valuable than the other is the “generatives“. I see the free copy stage as the beginning, but just the bare beginning – bang bang bang, site site site – popping up here, there and over there. Now we are entering the generative stage and this is where it gets interesting, where winners joke and losers yell “DEAL!”.

    Kelly listed eight generatives, with the first being “immediacy“. This is a little vague, but to me it’s related to constant innovation, getting ideas out to the consumer, and being the first to experiment with new ideas. One thing I liked about my website provider Point2Agent was its “immediacy” with press releases coming out on a regular basis of new ideas and functions and plans. Now it’s lagging, and whoever achieves immediacy will outshine them. There’s a lot to be said for being there, being present, being vital and creative. Zillow is doing a great job with immediacy, and lately Homegain has shown a gift for immediacy. As for my own site, I need to “be there”, be vital.

    The next generative is “personalization” and this is something I’ve written about ad nauseum. To me, it’s the Big Key to success with Web 2.0. Adding value by personalizing your offer opens the great door that few go through. Kelly writes:

    “It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can’t copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that “stickiness” because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.”

    Nothing is truer. Once the generative process of personailzation begins, a relationship is borne between provider and user. It’s time consuming, and this is what makes it valuable. It’s one of Read more

    March 8, 2008

    A Deficiency Judgement? In Arizona? Not Likely.

    by

    Realtor, Audio Engineer

    Author website

    Hello again!

    Have clients asking you about short sales? I know I certainly do! In fact, it’s become a big part of my business. In fact, I am conducting short sale negotiations for 3 different REALTORS, as well as 5 different clients. Unfortunately, a lot of questions have arisen lately about Arizona’s Deficiency Statutes regarding foreclosure. I say “unfortunately” because I feel somewhat less than qualified to definitively answer these questions. Greater legal minds than mine (and mine is decidedly NOT legal) will be required to put the issue to rest. I will, in spite of the danger of blatantly misrepresenting the facts, case law, and statutes, attempt to answer one (NON-) simple question:

    “If I do a short sale, or my property is taken from me by foreclosure, can the bank ‘come after me’ for the difference between what the property eventually sells for, and what I owe them, including sale costs, legal fees, etc?”

    First, let me point the reader in the general direction of actual legal minds on this issue. Here is a rather esoteric treatise on the subject of getting sued for a deficiency judgement. Very good read, and fairly definitive on the issue.

    Here is another article, that is more user-friendly on the same subject. Now, because I have a public education, and am somewhat literate, I will attempt to provide a synopsis of the above:

    In Arizona, there are two types of “notes” given for real property: a “Deed of Trust” or a “Mortgage”. Despite the common parlance of the term “mortgage,” most people in most states do not actually have Mortgages. They have Deeds of Trust. I won’t go into the differences here, but suffice to say that a Deed of Trust has three parties to the agreement, and an actual Mortgage has only two. Actual mortgages are very uncommon in most states.

    Now, the remedy of a lender for a home in default depends on what type of note was used to secure the property. If there is a true mortgage in place, the lender must sue in civil court in a process known as “judicial foreclosure.” The particulars of a Read more

    March 7, 2008

    Do you want to know the best Black Pearl of all? When someone offers you a valuable jewel, show up to collect your prize!

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    During the ProjectBlogger competition last Spring, I advised the contestants to enter a writing contest Problogger.com was hosting. Of all the apprentices, only Teri Lussier entered, with the result that she finished the competition with a huge number of Technorati links and a Page Rank of 4 — truly astounding results for almost no effort.

    Say that again: “Truly astounding results for almost no effort.” That’s like a BloodhoundBlog mantra. That’s everything we’re looking for, the leveraged opportunity that produces the best benefits for the least effort at the lowest cost.

    Even so, I knew when I announced the BloodhoundBlog Black Pearl Diver’s contest that few people would enter. The effort was nothing, really, just another blog post. The Grand Prize is a full scholarship to BloodhoundBlog Unchained, but every winning entrant would get a link back to their site on our side-bar. This is possibly the most powerful link in the RE.net. It’s certainly the most powerful link anyone is offering you for free. And we had — count ’em — four entries.

    The good news is, they were four great entries. But before we get to them, I’d like to cite three honorable mentions:

    1. Mike Farmer brought us This is not for the contest — just tipping my hat, discussing his plans to create single-property weblogs for his listings.
    2. Teri Lussier took on the entire Social Media Marketing universe with Does the RE.net mean Real Estate or Resist Everything?
    3. And Todd Carpenter knocked my socks off last night with this simple Google search. For now, Todd is dominating the keyword zillow mortgages by sheer blog-power. It will be interesting to see if Zillow is able to take that keyword away from Todd, but, no matter what, he is demonstrating the search-engine leverage of weblogging.

    And now… on to the winners:

    Kevin Warmath weighs in with If A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, A Video Must Be Worth a Million, a discussion of his odyssey through visual marketing media for his listings.

    Brian Miller offers up “…Vee have our vays. You vill sign zee papers…”, which details how he learned how to get more by demanding less.

    Colleen Kulikowski Read more

    March 7, 2008

    My Real Estate Radio USA debut — and a reminder that the price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained tickets goes up at midnight tonight

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    You can go to Real Estate Radio USA to hear the MP3 of my appearance today. I went into it expecting to kind of goofy and fun, but we actually ended up covering a lot of nuts-and-bolts real estate techniques.

    As Brian Brady announced when he made his own appearance on Real Estate Radio USA, the price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained tickets will be going up at midnight tonight. If you want to get the whole package — a $350 value — for the Guerrilla-only special price of $149, you need to make your purchase now.

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    March 7, 2008

    When The Dog Bites The Hand That Feeds It

    by

    Associate Broker

    Author website

    The Race To The Bottom Is Getting Really Crowded

    Some twenty-odd years ago I worked in the petrochemical engineering industry as an electrical designer – but we quit building oil refineries, so thousands of engineers, designers and draftsmen like myself were put out of work. Hey – that’s the breaks.

    So I started a landscaping company and became a licensed irrigation system designer… which worked out okay until the oil bust in Houston caught up with the residential construction market… but I digress.

    One of the local irrigation supply houses – the one that I used – decided to start installing irrigation systems… in direct competition with companies like mine.

    I couldn’t compete with them on installation bids, as they bought equipment and supplies at much lower prices. So I stopped giving them my business.

    Fast forward to today.

    I was listening to talk radio and heard an ad for another flat-fee broker offering a listing in both of our listing services for $295. I went online to take a look – then logged into the Georgia Real Estate Commission’s website to research this broker.

    Interesting enough, this broker has been licensed for a long time… but only became a broker less than a year ago. I noticed that he had failed to renew his license from April 2001 to November 2004… which made me wonder what he was doing for a living during that period.

    Digging a little deeper I discover that this broker is a REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY. Admitted to the Bar back in 1997. Member of one of the big real estate law firms.

    How interesting.

    Virtually ALL of our real estate transactions in Georgia are conducted by attorneys, so it was unsettling to see one of them setting up shop to compete with the agents who bring him work – kind of like the irrigation supply house I mentioned above.

    To top it off… the name of his website is ListingDog.com. What a coincidence.

    The idea that an attorney – who is probably earning more than 98.9% of the agents in this town – is now horning on what few dollars are being spread around so thin that 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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