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Category: Real Estate (page 144 of 266)

December 26, 2007

Two changes to the About page to clarify BloodhoundBlog’s praxis

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I made two changes to our About page, both of them to clear up potential ambiguities.

The first grew out of a comment from Cheryl Johnson concerning the content of BloodhoundBlog and the possible consequences of Realtors or lenders emulating our outspokenness on their own weblogs:

Verbum sapienti: A word to the wise, that is. We are a real estate industry weblog, and much of our content concerns real estate marketing tools, technologies and techniques that real estate professionals might use in their own businesses. But: We are not appealing for business here. We are not selling real estate or loans or investments, and we are not walking on our tip-toes to avoid offending potential clients. If you are building or hope to build a lead-attracting real estate weblog, BloodhoundBlog is not a model for you to follow. Many of our contributors have client-focused weblogs, and those can be good models to work from. In addition, we wrote a book called Real Estate Weblogging 101 that explains how to build a successful real estate weblog. But BloodhoundBlog is written to be controversial, and we do not — and should not — care whose toes we might step on.

The second is an amendment to our comments policy to clarify what kind of conduct results in a comment being deleted or a commenter being banned from BloodhoundBlog. In this paragraph, the added language is underlined:

Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: Read more

December 26, 2007

Time of the signs: Let there be light

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for last week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). Since I wrote this, Cathleen found a solar-powered flood light solution, which we’re testing now. At some point — ideally when there is more sunlight and when electrons aren’t quite as sluggish outdoors — I’ll let you know how it’s working out.

 
Time of the signs: Let there be light

We’ve been playing with sign lights.

Signs matter. If you’re trying to sell your home, the yard sign just might swing the balance. A whopping 63% of home buyers discover homes they’re interested in seeing from yard signs, and the sign can be the first “salesman” for the home in one out of every six home sales.

Our signs are custom-made for each home we list, with big photos of the interior of the home. The idea is to swing the balance toward our sellers by whatever means we can think of.

But I cannot imagine a more profound enemy of custom real estate signs than darkness. During the day, you can spot the signs, see the photos, read the copy. At night, our signs, like all real estate signs, are silhouettes against the void.

So we’ve been looking for lighting systems that will extend the hours our signs are visible — from twilight to 9 pm at least, although all night would be ideal.

Our first swing at the ball is a device called the Listing Light. It uses six C-cell batteries to set two light-emitting diodes ablaze. It actually works in the sense that the signs seem to be aglow from a distance, and they are completely readable up close. But the effect is a lot like reading by flash-light — doable, but not to be preferred.

My friend Teri Lussier, a Realtor in Dayton, Ohio, has set her husband loose on the problem of lighting signs. His first invention builds the lights into the underside of the crossbar of the sign post. By now, he’s playing with the idea of building a box composed of two translucent signs with fluorescent tubes inside, much like a commercial sign.

I like what ground-mounted flood lights do Read more

December 25, 2007

More Predictions for 2008 (Bigger, Better, Newer, Sparkle-ier)

by

Real Estate Rainmaker

Author website

Miss Cleo tells the futchaToo bad Miss Cleo’s not famous anymore- predictions are left up to those with (as Jeff says) a “cracked crystal ball.” 

So who has the fortune telling skills this year?  Time shall tell!  Get a leg up on ’08 by reading the full articles in the links below:

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Jeff Brown’s predictions include foretelling that the DOW will exceed 15,000.  How’s that for ya? (Oh yeah, this is only his first Volume.  Volume II will include something rude about me, I’m hoping.)

Pat Kitano brought us Economist’s predictions including widespread Open ID and bandwith slowdown.

Adam Ostrow notes that Facebook will go mainstream and newspapers won’t die but will creep into the blogiverse.

Drama 2.0 predicts that there won’t be much new innovation or new faces on the scene.  Huh?

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subscribe to authorsDON’T FORGET- if people like Jeff and I turn you off of reading Bloodhound Blog, don’t leave!  Simply subscribe only to your favorite authors in the sidebar!

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December 24, 2007

Unchained melodies: Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the most successful of the many attempts to marry classical music to rock, with Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 being their breakthrough hit:

It ain’t Christmas without the Barenaked Ladies. This is their Christmas medley with Sarah MacLachlan:

Dan Fogelberg died on December 16th of this year. This is Same Auld Lang Syne, the all time best Christmas Eve song ever written:


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December 24, 2007

Florida First, Certainly California, Next Nevada,and Absolutely Arizona

by

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

Author website

Lenders don’t love us no’ mo’. Want a vacation crib in Miami? How about an investment property in Orlando? Show up with 40%, no seller carry-backs allowed, thankyouverymuch.

This e-mail came in this morning from IndyMac Bank :

Florida Guideline Restrictions

Transactions securing properties located in the state of Florida are subject to the following restrictions/limitations:


For all Loan Programs:

  • All loans are restricted to Full Documentation


  • Primary Residence transactions:


    • – The maximum LTV and CLTV otherwise available for the transaction type must be reduced by 5%.
    – The Borrower’s current primary residence must be sold and closed prior to,
    or concurrently with Indymac’s funding.
    – If the to-be-secured property is a single family residence, condominium or planned unit development, it must be located within an established project. An established project is one in which 90% of the total project units have been sold, and the subject property has been previously occupied / owned by someone other than the developer.

  • Second Home and Investment Property transactions are limited to a maximum 60% LTV / CLTV.

Remember I said, back on April 1, 2007 that IndyMac was conservative? Every other lender followed suit. Today it’s Florida; the other three states will be next. This is why my outlook for housing in 2008 is bleak.

Do not despair, though. While this will virtually halt activity it will “right-price” (that’s my new phrase) the market…QUICKLY. Expect Florida prices to drop like a ball off a table, in February, when the rest of the lenders pucker.

…and then there will be buyers. Oh, there will be buyers.

PS: If I sound giddy it’s because the “muddy waters keep getting clearer” and I can see the bottom.

December 24, 2007

Gifts of the Real Estate Magi, circa 2007

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Thank you, Russell, for the gold you so generously share.

Was Brian the mortgage industry’s Clarence this year?

I think the difference between frankincense and myrrh is appropriate to this metaphor: Compilation and organization of the holy oil of Real Estate Weblogging came to us by way of the prickly shrub.

Merry Christmas to all!

See you next year…

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December 23, 2007

Spoiler alert: Yet another post about you-know-what

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Been ruminating my little arse off this week. How about you?

I’m a hyper-local blogger. I’m on the Bloodhound Blog because of a contest Greg and I teamed up to compete in- my being here is kind of a fluke, and frankly the only reason I’m still here is because this is such a great pack of dogs with which to run, at this point I can’t imagine giving up this gig. I have no desire for fame or fortune in the RE.net, best evidenced by the infrequency that I post here. My focus is to build a fantastic and profitable hyper-local weblog. Does hyper-local weblogging work? As someone once said: That’s another post for another day. 

What I do is blog to a very specific group of people. I don’t blog for the RE.net, and if you check your MyBlogLog widget you can confirm that I rarely visit your blog. In my limited time, I visit blogs in Dayton Ohio. Those are the blogs that matter most to me and my local blog. 

I do Twitter though, and from that I’ve met quite a few RE.net bloggers, and I have completely enjoyed making Twitterfriends with each and every one of them. One of my favorites (yeah I got favorites, don’t you?) is Daniel Rothamel. There are very few RE.net bloggers I respect more than Daniel. We’ve had several offline conversations, and that is a RE.net relationship that I value. Earlier last week when he tweeted that he just posted a video, I didn’t hesitate to take a look. I like Daniel’s video. I did then, and I do now. I thought it went well as a link to a post on my home blog, so I added it without hesitation. Then Jeff Brown posted about it and fast forward to all hell breaking loose.

As I said, I don’t spend much time in the RE.net. I had no idea how much hell could actually break loose. At first I simply sat back and watched, taking my place among the elusive ninety and nine. Daniel and I even shared a gentle joke over the fuss. But then, (apparently true to form) I did begin to ruminate and Read more

December 23, 2007

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That’s a ton, but, even so, it’s less than half of what we started with. Given that it’s a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and Kris Berg hit home runs at the top of the week. 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 wasn’t warned.

Voting this week will run through to 12 Noon MST Wednesday to leave time between all the Christmas stuff. 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 ( "Dan Green -- Consumer confidence Showing How Consumer Confidence Surveys Lead Economists Astray”,
“Jeff Brown — Market correction The Truth — ‘They’ Don’t Have A Clue When This Correction Will End“,
“Teri Lussier — Selling vacant How to sell a vacant home this winter: Make like a Boy Scout“,
“Geno Petro — Bumper stickers How do I really feel about that, I wonder?“,
“Kris Berg — Prop 91 I’ve got a proposition for you.“,
“Jeff Brown — Bernanke Bernanke Goes To The Statue of Liberty Play — Bank System Scores“,
“Dan Melson — New Fed rules New Proposed Federal Reserve Rules: Is This Supposed to Be Helpful Regulation?“,
“Chris Lengquist — Credit problems Why We As A Nation Have Credit Problems“,
“Kris Berg — Next time There’s always a next time.“,
“Chris McKeever — Your way Your way, isn’t always the best way…“,
“Mike Farmer — Zillow Zillow — Microcosm of A Bigger Problem“,
“Trevor Smith — New Fed rules The One Law to Rule them All“,
“Morgan Brown — Struggling in quicksand Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem“,
“Doug Quance — Musical chairs Musical Chairs With Brokerage Signs“,
“Glenn Kelman — TV tips Eyewitness “Today” Account + Twelve Live TV Tips“,
“Brian Boero — Redfin The school of Redfin, Part II“,
“Andrew Mattie Read more

December 23, 2007

Haiku (is for) for thumbsuckers

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

Big eyes
Chubby thighs
Cute as a spoon
Carol Boone

The above little mind spill was my first and only critically acclaimed poem (if you consider scribbling on a 6th grade blackboard a literary forum, and being suspended from school the first week back from summer vacation, critical). I quickly chalked the ditty while ninety-and-eight of my classmates went scrambling into the cafeteria for their lunchtime milk and porridge, those teeming, hopeless non-romantics. The unenlightened are so…well, sixth grade.

The words popped into my head like a thumb snap and I felt at once, an uncontainable resolve to share with the world, my self-proclaimed perfect rhyme. She was the most social of all the pre-teen butterflies that term and had, with near lightspeed and between Harvest moons almost, evolved from her caterpillar larval state into the colorful and elusive Carolboonemus Papillionus. I hated her. I loved her. I would eventually do the elementary school equivilant of hard time because of her.

Actually, it was the cigarettes in my knapsack that got me sent away that day but the poem on the chalkboard didn’t help–the Administration wasn’t thrilled with the word thighs, or that I noticed they were in fact, a little chubby, or that I erased the first two (pretty important, apparently) letters of Pythagorean’s Theorem from the afternoon lesson of a higher grade.  And thinking about it now, it’s probably the only reason I even remember that darn postulate with all those right angles and square roots at all.

It was pretty clear from that juncture foward in life that I would never really be corporate (or political) material, no matter well I cleaned up.  My record was blighted early on. Perhaps I should have just begun working on my real estate career right then and there (it was after all, one of the easier tests I’ve ever taken). That, or started honing my free lance jingle writing chops for the likes of Leo Burnett, et al. Either way, one thing would soon become evident to this perennial independent contractor; no matter which way I turned in life, there stood I…straddling that always present line that was drawn by someone else–real, imaginary, or otherwise.

Let me point out that in the vast universe of the written word, Haiku (5-7-5, so what?), limericks and elementary school poetry rank only slightly above the Nursery Rhyme. Maybe below. You can argue if you wish but I stand pretty firm on this point. You Tube, in my opinion, also has to hover somewhere Read more

December 22, 2007

A golden rule for Teri Lussier — and for you

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My eighth grade civics teacher was a big bear of a man named Russell Hazelton. He was a part-time preacher for a hard-line fundamentalist sect, and he was as dapper a dresser as a big man can get to be on two small salaries. The very first day of class he was deliberately about 90 seconds late. He wanted for everyone to be in the room and settled down so he could stalk into the classroom, turn, look us all over with the two ablative lasers he had for eyes and then bellow, “First impressions… are lasting!”

Was he wrong?

I remember every detail of my first impression of Mr. Hazelton to this very day, 35 years later. He knew exactly what he had to do to start his relationship right with our class, to put everyone on notice that he was in charge. He turned out to be a great teacher, smart, funny, engaging. But no one ever even thought about challenging him for dominance. First impressions are lasting.

Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist. One of his most popular arguments concerns the seen and the unseen. It is easy, of course, to notice what is seen, but you have to train your mind to take note of what could be seen, but isn’t.

Yesterday I stirred up a hornets nest, and I told you in advance what you should expect to see in response:

Regardless of what I say here or elsewhere, the incestuously cliquish part of the RE.net will insist that it is talking only to itself.

There were exceptions, thank goodness, but in the main the clique of big-name real estate webloggers behaved exactly as I expected them to, even though I deliberately built them a graceful exit:

If you find you’ve stepped in shit, admit it at once, clean up what you can and move on.

This is what is seen. What is unseen?

That post got 350 hard clicks yesterday, this in addition to the hundreds of people who would have seen it by RSS and email subscription. Amazingly enough, no one wrote in to say, “I like to be talked down to.” “I Read more

December 21, 2007

Some of the Many Are Consumers

by

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

Author website

I went to a high school run by the Jesuits. Think “Dead Poets Society” with Roman collars. The teachers were a little bit Pope John Paul II, a whole lot of Vince Lombardi, and, as is necessary to the development of young men, a healthy amount of Thomas Jefferson. The Jesuits are often admired for their ability to develop the “whole man”: intellectual, athletic, social, and most importantly, moral.

We were encouraged to be irreverent in the reverence of our school. The very irreverent actions we engaged in were seen by the Jesuits as an exhibition of curiosity. Pranks performed, under the guise of “school spirit”, were not only tolerated but encouraged. When it was suggested that one of our rival’s star basketball players was being bribed to attend a certain college, we waved checks in the stands when he attempted his free throws. Brother John, the Prefect of Discipline, may have handed down the ceremonial J.U.G. that day but the practice of pranks was generally tolerated.

Rarely did our pranks elevate to the status of unconscious insult. I say “rarely” because it did happen, about once a year. When it happened, it was usually the product of a good intention with garnered support from the crowd. In short, we took it just a bit too far without the forethought of the consequences of our actions.

The consequence was much harsher than a JUG; it was a speech attacking our moral fiber by none other than the President of the school. That sage old priest, a modicum of morality, started off the admonishment with a request to “walk a mile in the victims’ moccassins” and ended with the horrendous revelation that we, in our ignorance, injured some (or many) of those without the benefits we had.

Ouch! That admonishment always resulted in a bevy of boys, walking around with humble and contrite hearts, wondering if we would ever amount to the “whole man” St. Ignatius Loyola envisioned.

I’m going to digress from the high school story but I’ll bring it Read more

December 21, 2007

Preliminary NAR Gateway Report released

by

Realtor, Real Estate Ethicist

Author website

Finally. Let the sun shine in.

It’s been talked about for some time, on and off-line.

– One place for Realtors and real estate professionals to search.
– All property information – and standardized data (RETS compliant)
– Offers of compensation may be offered, but will not be required.
– For Realtors, by Realtors (and therein the consumers).

The potential ramifications if this were to get implemented are far and wide.

In all honesty, I have been privileged to have been on this committee, and treasure the conversations I have had and knowledge and relationships I have gained.

Summarizing what we have done down into a three-page report is nearly impossible. There will certainly be questions; ask away.

Without further adieu – here’s the preliminary report (and in PDF format here)

Preliminary Report of the Gateway Presidential Advisory Group December 3, 2007

Vision of the Gateway: The Gateway is the preeminent source of real property information.

Defining principles and characteristics:

The Gateway provides access to a national database of real property information The Gateway gives real estate professionals the best access to real property information needed to serve their clients and customers. The scope of information is unprecedented. The Gateway is based on the collaborative efforts of REALTORS® and real estate industry partners, including MLSs. The Gateway drives development and implementation of data standards and definitions The Gateway’s collective purchasing power
benefits real estate professionals and MLSs. The Gateway expands the scope and content of information available to real estate professionals through MLSs. The Gateway is organic so it can evolve as industry needs change,

Services provided to real estate industry professionals

1.Current and historical data about all real property is immediately and easily available directly from the Gateway or through participants’ service provider of choice.

Properties available for purchase, lease or exchange will be “flagged” according to status (with the owner’s or principal’s consent). Properties listed with brokers are distinguished from unlisted properties on the market (“FSBOs”). The Gateway’s database will include information about all real property in the U.S. Ultimately the Gateway will provide information about real property worldwide. The Gateway facilitates multi-lingual access to real property information.

2.Information available to participants and subscribers is: comprehensive timely 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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