BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Real Estate (page 141 of 266)

January 14, 2008

Gannett’s onto us with Hyperlocals!

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

A few background facts that need to be entered into evidence:

a) My wife and I are the PROUD parents of 4 kids.
b) All parents with which I associate are PROUD parents. (Vanity thy name is author is accurate, but it has NUTHIN on vanity thy name is parent-grin)
c) Gannett’s 86 newspapers plus USA Today are locked in a desperate battle for advertising revenue both for newspapers and increasingly online. (All battles for revenue are desperate, no?)
d) They are getting creative at attracting eyeballs and MAY actually be listening to some luminaries in the journalism business who have crossed over to blogging success. James Lileks comes to mind. (He lost his column at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune despite being arguably the best blogging asset they had and one of the brightest minds in how to effect the organizational change they needed. He specifically called for them to “go local”.)

OK- So I was at work the other day and I get a call from my wife that our 16 year old son is going to be interviewed and have a two page article done about him in the paper. I inquire from Jen which paper and she replies the Courier Journal. I ask if they have told her which section. She says, the Southern Indiana Clark county section. Hmmm…Interesting. I just heard from a friend at church that his child was recently featured in the Floyd county section…sense a pattern here?

Apparently the reporters have called the local high schools from all over the area and are asking for kids with interesting background stories or who are “exceptional” to do stories about. They are being featured in a way that EVERY parent will tell their friends, family, church congregation and every other local person who knows our family. Very cool.

The article on our son will be published this coming Wednesday.

Other expose’s are being written on LOCAL issues that will appeal to the neighborhood crowd. They are specifically being for the “town square” as opposed to the “rip and read” AP stories.

So the take home lesson from this? REALTORS do not “own” the eyeballs Read more

January 14, 2008

The Odysseus Medal: “What Zillow has done is build a business model designed to work from the ground up, a MySpace for your home…”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Kris Berg for Zillow news: Upside-down and dumb like a fox:

Transparency is not just a buzz word anymore but expected, even demanded, by the consumer. The consumer wants information, lots of it, and they want honesty and full-disclosure in its delivery.

In Zillow’s case, the consumer is both the real estate agent and the homeowner (which makes for one crazy-big target market), and Zillow needs two things to succeed. They need data, sales and “for-sale”, and they need eyeballs. You can’t have they latter without the former, but rather than build their reputation and their inventory by taking the more-traveled route, courting the big real estate brokerages, they have reached this point primarily by appealing to the individual agent. It is the individual agent who is online and socially connected – and blogging. Appealing to us makes us happy, which in turn inspires us to write nice things about Zillow.

And, instead of pushing the information to the customer, they have given them ownership. What Zillow has done is build a business model designed to work from the ground up, a MySpace for your home. Rather than cling to yesterday’s antiquated marketing practices wherein the customer was slapped silly with a message and expected to respond, they have recognized what so many are resisting. Zillow is recognizing and capitalizing on a new social culture. The conversation is no longer between the guy with something to sell and the guy who might be buying, top down, but between the buyers themselves, upside-down.

The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Krista Baker with Does Your Advertising Ask Prospects To Do Too Much?:

When you decided you may be interested in someone romantically, you don’t jump from first date to marriage. Instead, you take the time to get to know the other person – what are their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, goals and fears. If both of you value the relationship, you may consider taking the relationship a step further – to engagement and then marriage – but likely, several months (or years) have passed before the relationship progresses to this Read more

January 14, 2008

Network Solutions – I-CANN too hold your domain ideas hostage!

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Why am I bringing this up? I have already mentioned it on my blog and it has been well documented on the web.

I am bringing it up in the real estate community because it may well affect how you look for and purchase domain names. I will try to keep this less technical and more practical. A more technical explanation is found here.

I-CANN allows registrars (like Network Solutions) a five day refund period and does NOT specifically forbid registrars from “using” the search data from people on their websites who search to see which names are available. Here’s an example of what Network Solutions is purportedly doing and why you should not search for domain names on their site…

Cost (as of this writing) to purchase a domain name for a year on many registrars is MUCH less than that of Network Solutions, yet many search for domains there due to an easy interface and Network Solutions’ longstanding presence in the industry.

Step 1: You go search for domain names on Network Solutions

Step 2: They GRAB your domain ideas for up to 5 days

Step 3: If you go to another registrar to register your domain name, you CAN’T (without waiting for the 5 day hostage period to end.

What they claim: Their response is that this is a “security measure” to protect you from “domain tasters” (people who use the same I-CANN policy to test domains to find the best ones that they want.)

My opinion: Like many others, I view this as a low class way to FORCE unsuspecting domain name searchers to pay upwards of twice as much for their domains OR wait for the 5 day hostage crisis to end. Well, my opinion is a little stronger, but we will keep it mild for now. I think an all out boycott is in order, if you want to know the truth of it.

The way around it?: Pretty simple. Search for your domain names for your blog elsewhere on the web than Network Solutions. Anywhere else.

The other reason I am posting about it here? They (Network Solutions) have had a few days Read more

January 13, 2008

A Canadian magazine publisher instructs Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman — and all of us — on the American tradition of Freedom of the Press

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As you may know, the Canadian Human Rights Commission accidentally read George Orwell’s 1984 backwards. In consequence, it has set itself the task of persecuting Canadian publishers for the crime of having published. Most notably, international gadfly Mark Steyn — along with Macleans magazine — has a date with the Star Chamber.

Ezra Levant, while serving as publisher of the Western Standard in Alberta, published the now-infamous Mohammed cartoons in his magazine. Two fundamentalist Islamists brought a complaint to the Human Right Commission, arguing that Levant’s act of publication was essentially a “hate crime.”

In these videos, you will see portions of Levant’s arguments before the Human Rights Commission — a stirring and passionate defense of the principles undergirding the idea of a free press.

Hannah Arendt taught us all about the banality of evil, and the seeming lack of affect in the functionary who presumes to judge the content of Levant’s character is chilling. But Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman is an exponent of the same sort of banal evil: In preference to disputing words with words, Todd Kaufman chose to try to force Danilo Bogdanovic to retract what he had published by threatening his livelihood.

If you truly don’t understand the principles involved, it were well for you to correct that deficiency before you find yourself in Mr. Levant’s place. He at least has the consolation of knowing why he is in the right.

Much, much more at EzraLevant.com.

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January 13, 2008

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A total of 17 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 75 posts. 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 $AltEntries = array ( "Andy Kaufman -- Cross the Digital Divide Quit Hiding Behind that Computer & Cross the Digital Divide”,
“Brian Brady — Buying Countrywide Buying Countrywide: Why Bank of America is the WRONG Buyer“,
“Dan Green — Loan Officer Attrition Homeowners With \”Orphaned Mortgages\” Pay More Money“,
“Dan Melson — Expert Consultants The Future of Real Estate Agency: Expert Consultants, Not Market Access“,
“Doug Quance — Zillow/NCI Finally – I Have Something To Blog About Zillow“,
“Geno Petro — The Blue Stained Dress The Blue Stained Dress“,
“Jillayne Schlicke — The Future of Countrywide The Future of Countrywide“,
“Jim Cronin — Strong Finish How A Strong Finish Has A Real Estate Blog Article Generating Leads“,
“Joel Burslem — Neighborhood Video Producing a Kick Ass Neighborhood Profile Video“,
“Kris Berg — Dumb like a fox Zillow news: Upside-down and dumb like a fox“,
“Krista Baker — Advertising Demands Does Your Advertising Ask Prospects To Do Too Much?“,
“Mike Mueller — It’s Humans that matter It doesn’t matter“,
“Morgan Brown — Our Conundrum Mortgage Interest Rates and Our Conundrum“,
“Paul Chaney — Data Portability Robert Scoble, data portability’s accidental hero“,
“Robbie Paplin — Trulia-nator Dear Zillow-meisters – Better start makin’ copies of the Trulia-nator“,
“Todd Carpenter — Countrywide Wholesale Will BOA cut Countrywide Wholesale? Good riddance.“,
“Tom Royce — Fear and Loathing Fear and Loathing in Business Media (Retail Real Estate Edition)“,
);
shuffle($AltEntries);

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

  • “;
    $radioGroup .= “$pieces[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.

    Technorati Tags: , , Read more

    • January 13, 2008

    Happy New Year? Don’t mind if I do.

    by

    Rust Belt Realtor

    Author website

    Happy New Year two weeks late? Not for me. I get a two week extension on the New Year since my birthday is tomorrow (my fave color is orange, I prefer dark chocolate, cash is always welcome)- that’s a New Year to me, regardless of what that once rockin’ Dick Clark says. It gives me a little wiggle room on getting those resolutions done; of which I have only one this year. 2007 was a great year, full of milestones of both the personal and professional type, but it sucked in many respects. My resolution for 2008 is simple: More great, less suckage.

    Work is work and schnapps is schnapps, as an old German once told me. I like that idea: When you work, work. When you play, play- understand the difference between the two but appreciate them both. I can do that. At least I could do that. Social networking blurs the lines between the two, doesn’t it? Or does it?

    My own personal conundrum: So many cool tools to connect to people and how do I use them to connect to people. I like people. I like connecting to people. That part is easy for me. It’s how to turn the connections into the work is work part that has me flummoxed.

    Converging thoughts over the ether:

    I received a gift through my inbox yesterday. Amazing timing. One of my own Bloodhound ninety and nine made himself known. I didn’t know I had a ninety and nine here, OTOH, it’s very possible that I only have a one and one. Nonetheless it was a pleasant surprise. He wrote asking for blogging advice and words of wisdom and to be honest, I had none to give him. I’m struggling with my own demons right now, so I told him as much. The power of blogging: This kind man whom I’ve never met, generously poured out a condensed 20 years of real estate business advice. A powerful gift unlike any I’ve received. I hope I can pay that forward someday.

    This morning, catching up on my feeds, I see Bold Words has some excellent thoughts about what Read more

    January 12, 2008

    A Saturday night toy: Your file server as a linked hierarchy

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    I owe more “Speaking in tongues” stuff, but I think I may have bored everyone to tears. This, by pointed contrast, is purely for fun.

    Copy this code:

    <?PHP
$thepath = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
$dir = '*';
if ($Bfolder) $dir = "$Bfolder/*";

foreach (glob($dir, GLOB_ONLYDIR) as $filename)
   {
   if (!$Bfolder) echo ("<BR>");
   ?>
   <a href="<?PHP echo($filename); 
   ?>" target="_blank">
   <?PHP echo($filename); ?></a><BR>
   <?PHP
   $URL = urlencode($filename);
   include ("http://$thepath/windex.php?Bfolder=$URL");
   }
?>

    and paste it into a text file.

    Save the file with the name “windex.php”.

    FTP it into the top level of your file server.

    Then go here:

    http://MyServer.com/windex.php

    substituting the name of your server for “MyServer”, of course.

    What are you seeing? The entire directory tree of your file server expressed as links. Each sub-hierarchy of folders is visually separated by a space, just to make things pretty. Each one of those links will work, opening into a web page if the folder contains an HTML “index” file, or to a Unix like directory representation if not.

    Just a toy, just for fun. I’d explain it to you, but then you’d have to kill me.

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    January 12, 2008

    The Blue Stained Dress…

    by

    Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

    Author website

     …Come on, how much do you really want to know?

    Dow Off To Its Worst Start Since 1991…Bank of America Set To Bail Out Countrywide…Merrill Lynch Reports 15 Billion Dollar Loss…OJ Back In Jail…

    For me at least, the concept of transparency in the media became evident the first time I watched The Wizard of Oz and that little dog pulled back the curtain. I think I was five. Then there was that pre-teen realization of what’s really in a (pick one): Hot Dog, Pepsi, Twinkie. This was long before 1994 government reforms mandated that food labels be readable on a fifth grade level.

    And as best as I can figure, transparency in the modern Press probably blossomed with the Washinton Post’s breaking of the Watergate scandal in 1972.  Before that fateful event, editorial dictum pretty much suggested there were just some things the general public ought not know.  Unconfirmed rumors? Maybe. Back room whispers? For sure. But the butt ugly, hot dog ingredient nasty facts? Not so much.

    If truth in reporting has taught me anything over the past 50 years it’s that the deeper one digs into a story, the gnarlier the unearthed details become. For the longest time we masses seemed content with mere Orwellian halfspeak from above only to discover through Newspeak (and Newsweek) that Big Brother may in fact, be gay and tapping his toes in an airport latrine near you. Rumor had it that those Kennedy boys would sometimes entertain a whole White House pool full of bikini clad Twinkies (of a different variety but just as unhealthy, I hear), sipping Cuba libres all (Coke, no Pepsi), and splashing about the presidential grounds while Jackie K was off riding horses in Northern Virginia. They say….the Press was also invariably present, in close proximity to be sure, and  sworn to unspoken secrecy in the name of patriotic duty and national security, if not fidelity; their collective eyes all glazed and bleary, no doubt, from looking the other way.

    “That was when ‘off the record’ meant off  the record,”  I recently posed to a table of family and friends discussing this very subject after dinner. A moment of silence passed before the youngest attendee, a second grader,  posed a question of her own to the group of adults, “What’s a record?”  Oh Read more

    January 12, 2008

    Two-thirds of BloodhoundBlog’s pages were spidered and indexed this week — 1,900 pages in seven days

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Wanna see something cool?

    Google indexes 2,850 pages for BloodhoundBlog. Out of those, 1,900 have been spidered and reindexed since last Saturday, when I added the scrolling panel of Odysseus Medal long-list nominees.

    That’s two-thirds of everything spidered and reindexed in a span of seven days.

    That little scrolling box is already the best link blog in the RE.net, documenting every post of moment anyone thinks to nominate.

    I am not an SEO, and I am not even all that much in love with SEO as an audience-building strategy. But, even so, the structure of the thing — nearly-continuously varying content in what is pure HTML by the time a spider sees it — seems to be catnip to Google.

    I think I know why this is happening, and I’ll know more soon. But in advance of certainty, I built a similar list for BloodhoundRealty.com, a scrolling catalog of my Arizona Republic columns.

    I’m keeping those in date-order, so the list will only update once a week. But, obviously, that site gets spidered a lot less frequently, anyway.

    As an interlinear note, if you are linked from BloodhoundBlog, your links were spidered a bunch of times this week.

    If you write for BloodhoundBlog, your links were spidered a minimum of 3,800 times. Doesn’t mean the linked pages or sites were also spidered, necessarily, but it can’t hurt.

    Here’s my thinking:

    First, you should put the scrolling list of Odysseus Medal long-list nominees in your sidebar. It’s well-behaved and non-intrusive, fitting neatly into your design scheme. It’s a nice list of very good reading, updated frequently. It’s link-love back to the authors of the nominated posts. And, for now at least, it’s a potent search engine attractant.

    Here is the code to paste into your sidebar:

    <?php
include ("https://bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/TheLongList.php");
?>

    Second, Cameron will build you something like this, if you want it. For example, you could have a randomized scrolling list of your flagship posts, the content you want to make sure your readers see. That would deep-link back into your own weblog, so it would benefit your audience now, and it should help your search engine performance over the long haul. Let me know if you’re Read more

    January 12, 2008

    Seller financing can give you an edge over your competition in the Phoenix real estate market

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

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

     
    Seller financing can give you an edge over your competition in the Phoenix real estate market

    If you have significant equity in your home, you have a potent weapon at your disposal on resale.

    The big news this year is likely to be more and more stories of people with little or no equity trying to get their homes sold. Values for an average suburban Phoenix home were down 14.66% year-over-year. That doesn’t sound too bad, but prices were down almost six percent just in December. We’re down 24% from the peak in December of 2005, on average.

    But here’s the silver lining: If you bought that average home in December of 2003, and if you resisted the impulse to refinance your loan, you’re still up over 40% from your purchase price.

    That equity gives you a source of leverage on resale that you might not have considered.

    First, as always, for your home to sell it must be priced right, prepared right and presented right to the marketplace. You can’t do any kind of elaborate negotiations if buyers don’t even see your house.

    But because you have equity in the home, you have the ability to help a willing buyer navigate the suddenly-more-perilous shoals of the lending process.

    Suppose your buyer has five percent for a down payment, but the lender is willing to make a much more attractive deal for ten percent down. If the lender is willing to accept the arrangement, you can offer to carry back a note for the extra five percent, using part of your equity as seller financing.

    You’ll be taking a second or third position in the line of creditors, should the buyer default — and it’s always possible that you will lose every cent you are lending. But given the direction of the market, you could be a lot better off risking five percent now, rather than accepting ten percent less a few months from now.

    As with everything, read the fine print, ideally in the company of your accountant. But seller financing is one more weapon you can Read more

    January 11, 2008

    Buying Countrywide: Why Bank of America is the WRONG Buyer

    by

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

    Author website

    Countrywide (CFC) has been acquired by Bank of America. This should come as no surprise to Bloodhound readers; we discovered the weakness at CFC last Spring and speculated about the price last Summer. Robert Kerr, Matt Heaton, and Bob Wilson, all Bloodhound readers, tipped me off to conjecture, asked all the right questions, and provided insightful commentary as I chronicled the descent; it was a demonstration of the power of weblogging. The Bloodhound community got this story correct while Wall Street was still starry-eyed about the strength of the “Mozilo franchise”.

    Stock picking is not our mission at Bloodhound; industry analysis is. The Countrywide acquisition will be a nightmare for Bank of America (BA) for one simple reason- they really don’t know the mortgage business. BA is a bank, and a damned fine one at that. Their grew their asset base by acquiring regional banks. Bank of America is not and will probably never be a real player in the residential real estate finance arena.

    Why? They’re bankers. It’s a cultural thing. Bankers react while brokers (Wall Street) create. Bankers imitate while brokers innovate. Let me give you some examples:

    1. BA lauds it’s Teacher Flex and Neighborhood Advantage programs as innovative thinking. The not so secret reason is that these loan programs were REACTIONS to the NCNB merger; NCNB had a less than enviable lending record in lower-income census tracts. The creation of those loan programs was a direct response to mandates imposed upon BA. BA was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the “homeownership mandate”.
    2. BA botched their sub-prime mortgage product line. They entered a business they didn’t understand and sold it at the worst possible time.
    3. Bank of America alienated over half of the retail origination channel when it cut off mortgage brokers. I think they bought CFC to shore up their weak retail origination business. That will fail, also. The cultural divide between these two companies is huge.

    Here’s the dirty little secret for REALTORS; BA is not your friend. Read more

    January 11, 2008

    Want to get more done in the world of Social Media Marketing? Repurpose your content!

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Like this:

    1. I had sweet fanmail from a would-be man of letters who had found some of my more writerly writing and wanted to tap my mojo. I wrote what I thought was good advice to him — briefly, both because that’s the soul of wit and because I am perpetually short on time. (Note the equation of haste with perpetuity. You can’t learn this stuff in a correspondence course.)
    2. ProBlogger Darren Rowse is hosting a competition to see if people can write good blogging advice in Twitter-length posts. So I cut my writing advice down to 140 characters on the nose and posted an entry.
    3. Yesterday at his Conversation Media and Marketing weblog, Paul Chaney wondered how webloggers produce content that is “Well-written, insightful, practical, providing value to the reader.”
    4. Finally, every day brings news that someone new is following me on Twitter, even though I’ve posted perhaps six times on Twitter since it was introduced at South-by-Southwest almost a year ago.

    Ergo, in one fell swoop — for my young fan who would be better off writing than reading, for the ProBlogger hordes, for Paul Chaney and for the Twitterpated — four birds with one stone:

    Writers write. You’ll get better by writing, not by doubting yourself. We all miss perfection. It’s the aiming for it that makes us better.

    It only looks easy…

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    January 10, 2008

    Unchained melodies: Is that all there is?

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Lieber and Stoller wrote it, Randy Newman arranged it, Peggy Lee sang it with an affectless perfection. This cover by Bette Midler has its charms, but by trying to backspin the lyrics, she inadvertently shows how much better was Peggy Lee’s understanding of the material.

    Tune in Saturday. I’ll show you something cool.

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    January 9, 2008

    Zillow.com cultivates its garden with ten million new database records, improved home valuation algorithms and the adoption, with Trulia.com and other Realty.bots, of a RETS-compatible listings standard

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    First the news on horseback. We’ll come back and gloss it again, but you’re likely to learn more by listening to the podcast linked below with Zillow.com’s David Gibbons.

    The news, from Zillow’s press release:

    Real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced a major expansion and upgrade to its database of nearly all homes in the country — increasing data coverage from 70 million to 80 million U.S. homes in 48 states, or 88 percent of all homes in the country. Zestimate values are now available on three out of four U.S. homes, or 67 million, up 68 percent from when Zillow launched in 2006. New areas with Zestimates include the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, West Virginia and New Hampshire.  

    Zillow today also announced it has dramatically expanded and improved its Zestimate algorithm, incorporating 20 times the number of statistical models than before that factor in more local and home-type variables and now integrate homeowner-edited home facts — such as the number of bedrooms, bathrooms or square footage. More than one million homes have been claimed and updated by their owners to date, contributing to improved Zestimate accuracy on many of these homes. Incorporating these changes along with continued algorithm upgrades have resulted in a 12 percent improvement in Zestimate accuracy nationwide. Many larger metropolitan markets, such as the greater San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta areas, have some of the most significant accuracy gains at 18 percent, 21 percent, 22 percent and 28 percent respectively.

    There’s more. This was leaked earlier this evening by TechCrunch.com:

    The other big news is that Zillow is joining Yahoo Real Estate, Trulia, Oodle, Homes.com, Realestate.com, Vast.com and others in adopting a standard way for brokers and multiple listings services (MLSs) to send in their real estate listings in a feed format. That way brokers can use the same data format for all the different real estate search engines and Websites. It is called the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS). That should make it easier for brokers to propagate their listings everywhere. [*See clarification from Zillow’s David Gibbons in the comments Read more

    January 9, 2008

    Finally – I Have Something To Blog About Zillow

    by

    Associate Broker

    Author website

    On Hiatus From A Two-Year Zillow Blogging Embargo

    I have never blogged about Zillow… or Redfin, for that matter. I’ve always felt that they got more free press than they deserved – not that they don’t deserve some free press, ’cause they do – and as such, there wasn’t anything else I needed to add to the conversation. After all – I only blog if I have something to say.

    Well today I have ended my embargo on Zillow… not only because what I am about to reveal is noteworthy – but because to me – it’s local.

    Network Communications, Inc (NCI) and Zillow.com have announced today that NCI will join the Zillow Listings Feed program to feed 500,000 of its residential listings to Zillow.com daily.

    “NCI is continually looking to expand the opportunity for consumers to interact with our advertiser’s listings when they are shopping for a home,” says Cy Caine, Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, Network Communications, Inc. “As one of the most visited real estate sites on the Web, Zillow.com allows us to offer our advertisers exposure to millions of additional consumers while enhancing the search experience for homebuyers.”

    Zillow Listings Feeds allow brokerages and other listing publishers to post for-sale listings directly to the site in a bulk feed, giving the homes a virtual “for sale” sign for free on Zillow.com. For additional exposure, individual agents can create a free profile page with photos, contact info, and more details about the individual agent – linked directly from each listing.

    Network Communications is in my backyard. They publish several different real estate books, such as “The Real Estate Book”; “Apartment Finder”; “Mature Living Choices”; “Black’s Guide”; “New Home Gardens”; “Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles”; “Enclave”; “Unique Homes”; “Kansas City Homes”; “Atlanta Home Improvement”; “At Home in Arkansas”; “Relocating to Las Vegas”; “Colorado Homes & Lifestyles”; “St. Louis Homes & Lifestyles”; “Seattle Homes & Lifestyles”; and “Mountain Living”. They also provide their online magazine content through LivingChoices.com.

    This is actually good news for agents who advertise in any of these publications, as not only will they have the advertising edge of reaching potential sellers through 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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