There’s always something to howl about.
As a reminder, I will be on Real Estate Radio USA this afternoon at 2:30 pm MST. I’ll be talking about everything I can remember about BloodhoundBlog Unchained, plus, presumably, a lot of other stuff. I’m full of ideas and light on sleep, so I should be a fun listen. You can snag the MP3 later if you miss the show live.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
As I wrote about just a couple of weeks ago, Zillow and other online players have an opportunity to do something incredibly different as the national/local problem begs to be resolved. With the new Zillow announcement regarding mortgage connections, the network gets closer to realization of true partnerships. I believe, and I might be wrong, that Zillow is testing the waters — mortgages are a safer micro-experiment. It’s not that Zillow is creating tough criteria and selecting the best to recommend, but they are establishing criteria.
A couple of more steps and you might have something like this:
Zillow announces today it’s new Zeelocation Program. What Zillow will be doing is inviting RE professionals from around the country to join a partnership in an attempt to strengthen its online efforts to provide consumers with cutting-edge home searching experiences, and begin solving the problems of localism, personalization and context.
What does this mean? Well, the main home search experience for consumers will be unchanged. Home shoppers and home sellers still have free access to listings and all the useful functions Zillow has to offer. However, for those home-buyers who are more seriously and immediately looking for a home and who want reliable local information, Zillow will be creating what is called The Zeelocation Program. Consumers will pay a $15.00 monthly subscription fee for access to a list of RE professionals in the area of the consumer’s interest. These professionals have been vetted by Zillow and meet strict requirements for inclusion in the program. RE brokers, Mortgage brokers, RE attorneys, inspectors, etc. from all areas of country, after meeting the criteria for acceptance, and after paying the yearly fee that Zillow charges for acceptance, will be local partners with Zillow and will be offered to consumers who have subscribed to the program.
RE professionals will be required to follow strict guidelines dealing with consumers in the Zeelocation program – for instance, all forms of spamming are a violation of the program’s guideline and can cause the RE pro to be dropped from the program. Consumers who subscribe to the program will be given a list of local RE pros along with contact information Read more
I don’t know if Hell has actually frozen over. Even though I’ve been told to go to hell many times over the years, I’ve not actually gone there (in the literal sense). So I can’t say I’ve seen it frozen over. But if a year ago someone had told me that I would gladly and joyfully be sharing a stage with Glenn Kelman – and that I would have previously publicly stated that Glenn is not only brilliant but also a really nice guy – I would have said, “you’re nuts.” He won’t want to get on the same stage with me and neither do I. I would have been wrong. Glenn and I will be sharing the stage for our debate at BHB Unchained on May 20th. (None of this it to even imply that I won’t point out why Redfin, the company, is doomed to failure – but Glenn, himself, is destined for greatness.)
A year and a half ago, BHB was famous for bashing Zillow. Pointing out what was wrong with Zillow (and getting huge traffic, as a result). Zillow is now the main sponsor of BHBU. And David Gibbons, from Zillow, has practically become an icon in the area of how to win people over and get them to like you and your company.
But those two items above are just the introduction to what prompted this post. Jay Thompson has a blog called NAR Wisdom. When it was first started it didn’t seem Jay even wanted his name on it. But before long his name was on it and the blog consisted primarily of posts critical of and (rightfully so) mocking NAR. But check this out. I wrote there that I am impressed. I am impressed. And delighted.
East meets West.
Some things may take time but as far as I’m concerned this is the best news about the future of our industry I’ve ever seen. Now if we can emulate David Gibbons’ style (WWDGD?) we can get David Gibbons’ results too.
I’m all in.
I’m going to get the newspaper news out of the way first:
Starting now, if you are a loan originator, you can register with Zillow.com to receive mortgage and refinancing referrals from that Seattle-based internet start-up, once it ramps up its full — but still Top Secret — mortgage lending product. From Zillow’s PR team, presumably in the form of a Zillow Blog post:
To participate in this new product offering, lenders must have their professional status confirmed prior to connecting with borrowers, so we want to give lenders a head start on the process:
- Register with Zillow, if you haven’t already.
- Then apply as a lender, and answer a few questions about yourself.
- While access to borrowers is free, a one-time application fee of $25 is necessary to cover the costs of having an independent third party confirm your professional and employment status to Zillow. This is the only charge to participate; there are no other fees.
Why register early? The confirmation process can take up to several days. By registering early, lenders ensure they will be among the first to be notified when the product launches and ready to service borrowers on Day 1. We’ll also send out an e-mail to all pre-confirmed lenders giving them notice immediately after launch.
I don’t know what form Zillow’s lender referrals will take, but the important point — to which we will return — is that only duly-registered loan originators will be receiving them.
Zillow takes some pains to take away your fear of future pain:
While we’re not sharing more details right now, we can say that we’ve built our product around Zillow’s model of openness and transparency that is increasingly important in today’s home lending environment. And, consistent with our information-based model, we have no intention of being part of the transaction.
There’s a sweet little teaser at the end:
And if you happen to be in the market for a home loan, stayed tuned to this space as we announce an entirely new kind of mortgage offering built just for you.
Brian Brady believes that what Zillow will offer as its sticky mortgage product is a sort of interest-rates Zestimator. In Read more
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The Fed reported that home equity is at its lowest since World War Two:
Homeowners’ portion of equity slipped to downwardly revised 49.6 percent in the second quarter of 2007, the central bank reported in its quarterly U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts, and declined further to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter — the third straight quarter it was under 50 percent.
That marks the first time homeowners’ debt on their houses exceeds their equity since the Fed started tracking the data in 1945.
The total value of equity also fell for the third straight quarter to $9.65 trillion from a downwardly revised $9.93 trillion in the third quarter.
Home equity, which is equal to the percentage of a home’s market value minus mortgage-related debt, has steadily decreased even as home prices jumped earlier this decade due to a surge in cash-out refinances, home equity loans and lines of credit and an increase in 100 percent or more home financing.
Perhaps this is the cause?
U.S. mortgage foreclosures rose to an all-time high at the end of 2007 as borrowers with adjustable-rate loans walked away from properties before their payments increased, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today.
New foreclosures jumped to 0.83 percent of all home loans in the fourth quarter from 0.54 percent a year earlier. Late payments rose to a 23-year high, the organization said in a report today.
“We’re seeing people give up even before they get to the reset because they couldn’t afford the home in the first place,” said Jay Brinkmann, vice president of research and economics for the Washington-based trade group.
The solution to the first problem? Let it happen. Banks will close. Wall Street will get hammered and the country will go into a recession. The best way to cure a hangover is sobriety, not a “hair of the dog that bit you”.
I read about the outlawing of web site URLs in listings on the “Welcome to Tempo” page of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Services (ARMLS), but I wasn’t certain it meant what it seemed to mean. Since I have been a Realtor, we have promoted our single-property websites in the remarks section of the listing, as have many other agents. It seemed odd to me, given how anal ARMLS had been about contact information in virtual tours, but I thought it was a laudable concession to real life in the third millennium.
We talk in web sites — Bloodhound Realty does, particularly. We live in webbed-wide world. This is news to no one. The appropriate way to talk about houses is in web sites. Hurray for ARMLS! It doesn’t really “get it,” but it gets at least some of it.
Not so.
Comes today this email:
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Gregory Swann ABR CRS GRI,
Our new iCheck program identified the following Error. The Error and any related verbiage was removed on Thursday, March 6, 2008.
MLS#: 0000000 TEMPORARILY OFF MARKET/RES
Error: MLS Rule Error (000)
Description: Prohibited URLNo further action is required by you at this time.
Thank you for complying with the ARMLS Rules and Regulations.
I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. I understand, I just don’t approve.
First, this is an artifact of the co-broke, the archaic practice of buyer’s representatives being paid by the listing agent. If commissions were divorced, all of the Top Secrets of the MLS system — every one of which is a violation of the buyer’s agent’s fiduciary duty to put the buyer’s interests ahead of all others (which most certainly includes the seller and the listing agent) — would be swept away like the dusty relics of the anti-capitalist era that they are.
Second, the specific purpose of forbidding web site URLs in listings is to impose an artificial chokepoint on the free market. Buyer’s agent’s seek to hold their own clients hostage in the transaction. In order to secure their own compensation, they will withhold the fact of Read more
I’ll be speaking at Unchained — sharing what I’ve learned about creating new business through my online efforts. This post is about marketing. BawldGuy Marketing might just be the oxymoronic phrase of the year. 🙂
I’ve never understood the finer points of marketing. It takes a different kinda mind than the one with which I was gifted. (At least Mom said it was a gift.) There is a definite science to it. It’s hard to deny there’s also a certain art to successful marketing. To those who are good at it, I offer my profound respect.
Over the years we learn a bit as we watch the marketing masters. (The next original marketing thought I have will be the first.) I don’t think I’m all that in marketing, ‘cuz clearly that just ain’t the case.
I’m Japan.
They don’t produce many original products — they take a product or idea and put their spin on it. They see their own gold in others’ ideas.
Although I certainly lay no claim to making particular marketing ideas better, (a laughable concept if ever there was one) I do reshape them to fit my company’s agenda. What may not work for me as originally designed, works like gangbusters when tweaked juuuust a little bit. Sometimes I just extract one extraneous factor from a major marketing concept.
Here’s an example taken from my own personal WayBack Machine.
About 20 years ago I began sending out targeted letters to local investors. Original, huh? Anyway, the results were OK, calls were coming in and business was being done. However it wasn’t delivering the results for which I’d hoped. Then one day I remembered a book I’d read, written by a local guy who’d transitioned from a totally unrelated industry into investment real estate. He wasn’t sending letters. He was cold calling — except he added his own twist.
I adopted his new twist, but into my letters, not phone calls. The results were unexpected. What was this brilliant new angle? He simply took pictures of the properties whose owners he was calling. The owner would be politely trying to get Read more
[Russell Shaw taught a symposium today in Phoenix on Geographic Farming. Cathy and I were there, and Russell was sweet enough to give a plug to BloodhoundBlog Unchained. At the break, I was swarmed by people wanting more information on Social Media Marketing, especially weblogging — most regretting that they hadn’t gotten started sooner. Teri Lussier is a scorching read on those same kind of ideas today. Both events put me in mind of this post, which I wrote on July 23, 2006 — a Sunday — I can remember the day. This is flagship content for BloodhoundBlog, one of the posts that established who we are, our steady position in this discussion. But it’s amazing to me how timeless this advice has turned out to be — how much we are all still “situated at various points from painfully awful to Insanely Great on the continua for each one of these skill sets.” This one is worth studying — and worth pursuing the links. –GSS, 03/05/08]
People leaving comments at BloodhoundBlog keep confusing Cathleen Collins for me, so I decided to steal an idea from Rain City Guide and put our photos beside each of our posts. That entailed revising BloodhoundBlog’s weblog template, of course, which also meant adapting its Cascading Style Sheet. A significant number of people reading this already don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll endeavor to lose most of the rest: I had to rewrite a few little bits of PHP to make everything work.
Like this:
That puts the pictures, which I had prepared in Photoshop, in place. This code:
is the actual name of the photo. That dumb little bit of PHP says, “Get the ID number of the current author and replace everything from the < to the > with that number. The photos are named 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc., so the PHP substitution makes the right photo show up for the right author.
PHP is an amazingly robust and incredibly loose language, but the amount and kind of PHP you use to manage a WordPress weblog is minor and very simple — baby-steps PHP.
But this occurred to Read more
In a recent post, Brian Brady said he’s been talking to me and that’s kinda sorta true. What’s really going on is that he’s been doing the talking while I’ve been doing the whining, just like a lot of us in real estate. What he didn’t tell you is that he gave me a much needed swift kick in the arse. He gave me some great practical advice on networking, and he challenged me to create a bigger Twitter channel than he. I’m up for the challenge- how can I lose? So what if Brian gets more channels than I, what did I lose? I now have more connections and contacts than I did before. Tell me again what I lost?
From Brian to me, from me to you: Bad market? Okay fine. So what are you going to do about it? I’m still pretty new to all this, Dayton isn’t the easiest place to be selling homes right now- so what? I’ve still got a job to do, I need to do it.
How can you spend anytime reading in the real estate blogiverse and not be inspired? Jazzed? Excited? Twitterpated? Are you really that stubborn? I was going to say pig headed, but I don’t want to offend anyone.
Five great ideas: Brian, Greg, James, Teresa, Todd– within a week? Are you kidding me? Who am I missing? Who else has offered up inspiration the last few days or months? Where are you getting inspiration? Have you tried any of these ideas or are you simply showing up to whine about them? Are you waiting for someone else to make it work, then you will monkey-see, monkey-do, or are you engaging your brain- coming up with your own twist to ensure that something does work for you?
I remember, back in the day, when Greg wrote about blogging about listings, but I sat on my ass hands and did little about it. I remember when Jeff wrote about hyperlocal blogging and getting out there and door knocking, again I sat on that information. Brian’s been using SMM for how long now? I did take that idea to Twitter– that’s beginning to pay Read more
Just a reminder: The deadline for the BloodhoundBlog Black Pearl Diver’s contest is tonight at midnight.
Also: I will be on Real Estate Radio USA this Friday at 2:30 pm MST. I think that means 1:30/2:30/3:30/4:30 pm, west to east, but you might check my math. If you miss it, their shows are always available as MP3s soon afterward.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I read this HUH! this morning and immediately smirked. I suppose I’m jaded having worked in a psych-related field where I saw for years every burp and fart psychologized by some frisky Ph.D. or another. I told a co-worker once that the co-dependency crowd had effectively covered every conceivable form of behavior as a symptom of co-dependency, therefore destroying the meaning of their concern.
But then I began thinking that maybe we need to bring psychology into real estate, especially after the trauma from the last few years.
Real estate therapist (RET): Why are you afraid to lower the price of your home?
Seller: I’m not afraid, it’s just that…it’s…uh…it’s
RET: It will make you feel less than?
Seller: Maybe, I mean it’s a smaller price, and I just think…well…you know my neighbor has a large price…and I…uh
RET: You might be experiencing price envy.
Because now we’ll soon be seeing sellers entering treatment with PTSD, and perhaps we can help them before they hit bottom. We need to get to the source of their emotional turmoil. When your seller starts avoiding his emotional pain by asking about open houses and marketing strategy, stare deep into his eyes and ask:
But how do you feeeeel about your house not selling?
Allow the seller to express his/her feelings while you remain silent looking as thoughtful as possible. Say “ummm, I see” every so often.
Ask the seller if his mother nurtured him when he was young — let him know you are there for him and it’s okay to cry.
Let’s say you’re working with a buyer, a young lady who keeps making lowball offers beause she’s heard it’s a buyer’s market, but she’s being unrealistic and seems to relish attempting to make the seller suffer. Delve into her relationship with her father. Her father may have been an overbearing, emotionally-detached authoritarian, and the buyer may be trying to get attention and revenge by projecting her deep-seated resentments and pain onto the seller.
Allow her a safe place to vent her resentments, maybe a park, after you gently bring this transference to light.
Yes, real estate psychology, it’s time to start the healing process. When sellers and buyers over-react, let them know you understand that real estate transactions Read more
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Structured Debt and Equity
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Mortgage fraud seems to be the hot topic, today. I attended a party this weekend where I was pelted with questions and varying opinions about the topic. Many came from the legal crew, a few from bankers, but most were from worried consumers. The former two groups scared the crap out of the latter. Each question that was posed was answered by each of these three parties:
CORPORATE ATTORNEY: Any lie on a federal form is a felony.
PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY: Were you coerced by the mortgage broker? Most clients were and you could sue for damages.
BANKERS: If it’s a portfolio loan, we may pursue legal action. If we securitized it, it was built into the pricing.
My opinions to some common questions, about mortgage fraud, are below:
If I obtained a loan as a stated income loan, did I commit fraud?
Not if you didn’t lie. Stated income loans were designed for those with erratic income or rising income. The best litmus-test would be to pull the 3-6 bank statements prior to application. If the monthly deposits mirrored your “stated” monthly income, you didn’t lie. If you grossly overstated that amount, you lied and probably committed fraud. Cash flow rules.
I bought a second home with the intention to use it as a vacation rental property. I financed it as a second home, did I commit fraud?
Not if you resided in it for at least 15 days each year. It’s a “vacation” home and if you used it for vacations, you’re fine. You are still allowed to rent out a vacation home.
I bought a property, in my daughter’s name, as an owner-occupied home but she rents rooms out to students. Did I commit fraud?
FHA has the “kiddie-condo” program. Actually, that means that you can be a non-occupying co-borrower and still get a owner-occupied rate. If your daughter qualified on her own, and you helped her with the down payment by signing a gift letter, you might be liable for taxation but the transaction appears to be legit.
I have funky employment. It’s not steady so I coerced my existing employer to “fudge’ the dates on a Verification of Employment form. Read more
Very early on in BloodhoundBlog’s history, I argued against blogging listings. The argument actually concerned styles of anti-blogging that were common then: Stealing and reposting newspaper articles verbatim, for example, or posting listing after listing with nothing to engage the reader in any way.
Later on, when I was working on the posts that became Real Estate Weblogging 101, I reversed that position in a big way:
So what are we looking for? Hmmm… There’s no place like it, and, when you go there, they have to take you in…
We’re looking for home, of course. If I could lay one blanket complaint against locally-oriented real estate weblogs — allowing for particular exceptions — it’s that they are way too much locale-oriented and way too little focused on — what? — on homes and families.
Russell Shaw is beyond brilliant, and BloodhoundBlog is very lucky to have him as a contributor. But if no one learns anything else from Russell, please read, learn, mark and inwardly digest this sliver of his genius: Buyers don’t want agents, they want a house.
The very first thing I want to see at your neighborhood/community/town-focused real estate weblog is a house. A nice, big, homey house, with a welcoming front door. I want to see a gleeful little girl on a swing-set and a Chocolate Labrador playing Frisbee with her brother. I want to see the Spring flowers and the Autumn foliage and the glowing of Christmas candles — all at the same time. I know you can’t do all that, but I want to feel that way anyway.
I want for you to have made me feel instantly at home.
At a minimum, that means adapting the stock weblog theme you’ve adopted. Okayfine. Get on it or hire it out. First impressions are lasting. If you don’t sell me on the idea that there is no place like your home on the web, I’m movin’ on. Buyers don’t want agents, they want a house.
In truth, I think your target market should be sellers, not buyers, but it’s going to be people with their buyer’s hat on — even if they need Read more
Here’s the news, snipped to the quick:
Online real estate broker Redfin Corporation today released Redfin Listing Metrics, a dashboard for Redfin’s listing customers to analyze neighborhood inventory trends and recent sales, and to compare their listing’s online traffic to that of other listings in the neighborhood.
That sounds slick, doesn’t it? A Redfin listing is a hybrid between a full-service listing and a for-sale-by-owner. This new software is a hybrid, too. On the one hand, Redfin is providing real-time access to information you wish you were getting to your sellers once a week. On the other, the Seattle start-up clearly intends for sellers to micro-manage their own listings:
The Listing Metrics dashboard, currently available only to Redfin listing customers, graphs how key marketing and pricing trends change day to day and week to week:
- Online traffic to the listing on Redfin.com as compared to the neighborhood average, so Redfin customers can determine if their listing is competing for online buyers’ attention;
- Sources of online traffic to the listing on Redfin.com, so Redfin sellers can evaluate the effectiveness of promoting their listing on other sites;
- The number of competing broker-listed properties in the neighborhood, so Redfin customers can evaluate supply and demand to determine if pricing conditions are changing; and
- The average days on market for broker-listed properties in the neighborhood, so Redfin customers can determine if their property is taking too long to sell.
The dashboard also provides an overview of nearby similar listings, so Redfin sellers can compare their listing’s pricing, photos and amenities to those of its competition, and an overview of recently sold properties in the neighborhood, so Redfin sellers can evaluate closing prices as well as listing prices. Using the dashboard, Redfin customers can also schedule and promote open houses.
Okayfine. Few blessings come to us unmixed. Sellers will surely like the greater control, even though an experienced lister might try — and fail — to warn them about the unhappy consequences of “over-marketing” a listing. But, guess what? Their house, their money, their risk. Redfin might not be giving sellers what you or I might think they really need, but it is proving itself Read more
I had mail from a vendor just lately asking me if I might be interested in a forthcoming story. This was my reply:
Just so as not to disappoint, this is the way we work:
Good for consumers, agents or lenders, we eat it up.
Good for the vendor, we ignore it.
I should think this would be obvious, but much of the RE.net has gone into pure PR mode — more high-fives than your kid’s soccer match — so I just wanted to be clear.
As evidence of this phenomenon, witness the fawning coverage for Inman News’ relaunch this weekend. For all the hype, what actually happened was that they moved the furniture, and gave everything a coat of paint — hardly earth-shaking events.
Interestingly, it’s still a for-pay site, but, as far as I can tell, the “news” is now free. Here’s an unencrypted telegram from Secret Agent Slobbering Dog to Brad Inman: Regulating access to the news was the chokepoint. No one should pay for ordinary information — mostly regurgitated vendor press releases, just like Realtor magazine. But no sane person has any reason to pay a hundred-and-fifty bucks a year for an official Inman News sippee cup.
Of course, while everyone else was fawning over that boffo furniture-moving job, we were talking about strangling the last of the chokepoints in the twenty-first century marketplace. Oddly enough, we have the idea that what is important is what is important to you — not to the people we have drinks with — or hope someday to have drinks with.
My take is that people can crave affection or admiration or companionship entirely too much. The same goes for prestige. What makes real weblogging work — and what makes most corporate or commercial or vendor blogging fail — comes down to spin, juice, PR. You either shun it or you embrace it, and there really isn’t any middle ground. It’s a nice thing that Inman News did a little sweeping up. But that ain’t news.
On the other hand, there is ample room in these events to draw inferences. BloodhoundBlog has nothing to gain or lose. I set it Read more
