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Category: Real Estate (page 150 of 266)

December 1, 2007

Becoming My Father: Tainting the Army-Navy Game

by

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

Author website

I’m turning into my father. I just finished my annual tradition of watching the Army-Navy game. Two things annoyed me:

1- The game wasn’t played in Philadelphia (they experiment with New Jersey, Pasadena, and now Baltimore). The game is hosted by a neutral city; Philly is 130 miles from both Academies and is the default home to this rivalry.

2- They sold a sponsorship to the game. I get the big picture. Sponsorships are win-win for both schools. I just think that this game should transcend commercial interests.

At least I can enjoy the DaltonsAZHomes Territorial Cup this afternoon. Fork ’em Devils.

December 1, 2007

BloodhoundRealty after dark: Illuminating our yard signs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The trouble with trade shows is the shopportunities. I can restrain myself, by Cathy can be suggestible. Jeff Brown had been talking to me about after-dark lights for our yard signs, but it wasn’t until StarPower, when Cathy saw the product offered by ListingLight.com, that we bought into the idea:

That’s flash photography. The light emitted by the ListingLight is adequate for reading at night, but taking a useful picture would require a tri-pod. Even so, they do the job. Where every other sign on the street is an unreadable silhouette, ours pop out at a distance.

Is it enough to sell the house? Perhaps not, but every little thing helps. There’s no telling when the buyer is coming by, and, even in Arizona, evenings are dark in Winter.

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November 30, 2007

A Seesmic disturbance: Twitter goes video

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

By way of Teri Lussier, Brad Coy hooked me up with an invitation to Seesmic, a video-based social-media start-up.

I’m interested for all of the foregoing reasons. I want something that can do to TV news what weblogging has done to print journalism.

This is my first Seesmic disturbance:


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November 30, 2007

Unchained melodies: Born to run

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here is a selection from Brian Brady for the theme for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, Bruce Springsteen doing Born to run.

Opening line in the video:

“Remember, in the end, nobody wins, ‘less everybody wins”

and the last stanza of the song:

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight, but there’s no place left to hide
Together, Wendy, we’ll live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday, girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go, and we’ll walk in the sun
But ’til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run

I grew up in Jersey so it biases my selection. If you’re 17, driving down Route 9 to Avalon, and Born to Run comes on the FM, you feel completely Unchained.

Got a different take? Assert yourself by email.

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November 29, 2007

Sex and Real Estate Brokerage

by

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

Author website

Shaun Mc Lane sells real estate in Orlando. No, strike that. Today, Shaun does not sell real estate in Orlando; he will be opening his own real estate brokerage in December.

Tuesday, Shaun experimented with a racy Web 2.0 offering. He posted a video asking if sex sells. The video was a short slide show of bikini-clad women, in various poses. Should you click through, you’ll see that it isn’t “Betty Grable in a cheesecake” pose. It is a more prurient collection of photographs typically seen on MySpace.

Wednesday, Shaun’s broker laughed about it and asked him to remove the post from his website. Shaun called her bluff and was handed a pink slip. Shaun is claiming independent contractor status, because he pays his own marketing costs, and is visibly irritated with the decision. He’ll be “going it alone” which may have been his intention all along.

Similar controversy gained national attention when Wendy Heath posed with her bulldog, in a bikini, on a billboard in Long Beach, CA. Wendy’s strategy:

“I wanted to set myself apart and kind of shock the shore, and, you know, drive people to my website and increase my business,” Heath told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. “There’s many, many real-estate agents in our area, and it’s hard to break through and set yourself apart. … I am absolutely amazed that one billboard could cause so much attention, but I am absolutely elated.”

Competing female REALTORs dissented:

Well, as a fellow realtor, but also someone with the body to do exactly what she did, I think she took the blonde-bimbo way out. If we, as professional real-estate agents, have to result to using our scantily clad bodies to gain clients, maybe we need to look inside ourselves at what we are lacking professionally. There are many tough real-estate markets nationwide, but when we tear down the image we are struggling so hard to display (which is that every real-estate transaction benefits from the experience and knowledge that only a professional realtor can provide), we essentially lose all that we have worked to achieve. Read more

November 28, 2007

ARRGGHHH! I would love it if the PAR/AAR/NAR would stop taking my money, but, if they won’t do that, could they at least manage to get the hell out of my way?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So someone, somewhere in the alphabet soup of Realtor associations is selling my email address — or perhaps just giving it away. Realtors all over Phoenix are watching an idiot’s spam-fest, as one clueless victim after another tries to escape the spam spiral started by an agent who seems not to know that we discover properties for sale in the MLS system — that this is what the MLS system is for.

This by itself is nothing. I get at least a thousand spam emails every day. Moreover, I know that a lot of people in my profession get painfully flustered when they sit down at a computer — so worried they’ll make a mistake that they cause a disaster instead.

But I am sick to death of being “led” by morons.

Witness:

  • ZipForms does not work. It is crap software written by crap minds, with its bugs exceeded only by its omission of rational options. It was rammed down our throats by idiots at the AAR who obviously do not themselves use it. And yet, come the start of the year, we will have no choice but to use this piece of garbage — a fate which includes the vast legions of the flustered and the flummoxed.
  • And because ZipForms has not been a big enough disaster, the AAR is now preparing to ram a piece of transaction-processing software down our throats — which will almost certainly also be a piece of buggy Windows-centric crap.
  • The idiotic gateway software in our idiotic MLS system has never worked in Safari for the Macintosh. We’re getting rid of that crap vendor, thank god, but it is of a piece with the way the chefs of the alphabet soup have operated, that nothing they have promoted, until now, worked properly on the Macintosh.
  • They spam me, and they sell or give my email address to spammers — and they charge me hundreds of dollars a year to deliver my inbox up to this rape.

I don’t care that other people don’t thrive at my wavelength. That’s understood. But I do care that they use power I never ceded to them to Read more

November 28, 2007

Weblogging without chains: A BloodhoundBlog Unchained introductory podcast to viral, hyper-specific real estate weblogging

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The podcast linked below is a piece of a conversation Brian Brady and I had today about styles of real estate weblogging that make sense in the onrushing world of social media marketing.

Brian cites a post of mine from the first of this year, Think globally, blog locally: If you want local leads from your real estate weblog, pursue local interests. I wrote about this because I had mentioned it in the first-ever Phoenix-area weblogging salon that Brian had organized the day before. The ideas discussed in that post formed the skeleton for Real Estate Weblogging 101.

What you’re getting here is just a small taste of the material we will cover at BloodhoundBlog Unchained. I think people have pretty low expectations for trade shows and business conferences. I know I do. What we want for you to understand is that we intend to deliver a rich curriculum, rooted in a deep conceptual framework, that will help you break free of the chains of competitive pressure. But just for now, if you’ll give us 38 minutes of your time, we’ll show you snapshots of a whole new world of marketing.

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November 28, 2007

What If We All Just Gave It Away For Free

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Now I Know Why Nice Guys Finish Last

This isn’t the first time this has happened…

A potential listing client called me up several months ago to come out and talk to her about her property. She grilled me about what I would do to sell her property and how much I would charge her.

To be perfectly honest – I left there hoping I wouldn’t get the listing.

And I didn’t. Well, for the most part I didn’t.

For the last several months, I have received a call at least once a month from her – asking for my take on a variety of issues regarding the sale of her home. I finally had to ask her, “If you value my opinion so much – why didn’t you list with me?”

“Because [insert agent’s name here] is only charging me $500,” she blurted out.

And then it dawned on me. While I was thinking that maybe this potential client might have thought she made a mistake… and that she might become a real client… I was wrong. She was getting her home listed for practically nothing – and getting the advice of myself (and probably others) FOR FREE.

I could kick myself. Count another lesson learned.

The following video of writer Harlan Ellison pretty much sums up my rant. There is a great deal of similarity if you think about it. (Warning – Some Strong Language)

November 27, 2007

Unchained melodies: I won’t back down

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my choice for the theme for BloodhoundBlog Unchained. Teri Lussier has a different idea, which I’ll share with you tomorrow. If you think both of us are all wet, say so by email, telling me what you think our theme should be. Be assured that there will be music. It it’s too loud, you’re too old.

This is Tom Petty again, covered by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. The song is I won’t back down — in many respects the theme song of my own life. Petty has hundreds of letters from people who turned to this simple little shit-kicker song for strength when they were confronted, by threats or temptations, with the prospect of betraying their own souls. I can’t think of a more important job for art to do than to lend people the courage to be who they are, damn the consequences.


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November 27, 2007

BOHICA…and this time it is Trulia

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

BOHICA

I received an email from a friend this morning…the essence of it was that Trulia is now “offering” us REALTORS the opportunity to enhance our listings for a modest fee…and I started preparing to post almost immediately. Then I noticed Bramlett had beaten me to the punch.
As Bramlett correctly pointed out, we saw it coming. (That’s nothing to brag on…Heck, Ray Charles could have seen it coming.) They (Trulia) are a business after all and sooner or later, we REALTORS who have given Trulia those listings were destined to become Russell’s pencil sharpener. I even commented on his post about it. I am actually sad to be right.

Mind you, I am not mad at Trulia. They are in business to make money and God bless them for it. I DO have an issue with a real estate community that turns a blind eye or simply doesn’t see the same pitch coming that it got hit with a few years back. What’s the saying about fool me once?
Same stuff different day.

Bend over. Here it comes again. BOHICA.
Another way to lighten your wallet as REALTORS. Another interloper doing what we can and should do for ourselves. In my opinion, people in the end do not care whether the real estate site they are searching on is national or local. They want it complete. As many local listings as possible and as much information and photos as possible are the ticket. We are providing that as REALTORS in spades in most locations. IDX does provide that, especially in the hands of skilled webmasters who do not require registration to view listings. We can do everything that they can do and do it with local relevance and intimate knowledge of our markets…When combined with microfocused niche blogs (or hyperlocals…) we can provide AMAZING amounts of information to potential clients. With an ever expanding internet mindshare, that’s more important than ever.
Can we at least on a local level (and it CAN IMO vary from location to location) agree to only provide listings where it is well and truly warranted by true market presence.

Everytime we provide our Read more

November 27, 2007

Countrywide Bankruptcy Likely? Not While the Feds Are Bailing Them Out

by

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

Author website

I’m a Countrywide watcher. It’s size and reach in mortgage loan origination is worthy of any mortgage originator’s respect and admiration. I had a lot of confidence in Countrywide as it marched to becoming America’s largest originator of home loans. I liked ’em so much that I had a piece of the joint, in my IRA, until April 1, 2007.

It was no April Fool’s Day joke when I announced that they were in trouble because of the Pay Option ARM product. For the Series 7 types, I went from long to cash within 24 hours of writing that post, then short ( not in my IRA) 24 hours later. I was nervously wondering when Wall Street would catch on to the problems and decimate the stock; I felt it would be worth less than ten bucks a share. Alas, I chickened out and closed the short position to raise cash during the liquidity crunch of 2007; I figured that profit would pay my daughter’s tuition when the market slowed.

Wall Street still thinks Countrywide is a twenty dollar stock, even as it trades below nine bucks a share. Are they being fooled, like the Enron debacle, or do they know something that we don’t? While Wall Street fiddles the Mozilo tune, pundits think CFC could file any day now. I don’t think a Countrywide bankruptcy is likely. I thought it made sense for the Feds to bail out Countrywide; two days later they opened the discount window.

How are the Feds bailing out Countrywide today?

1- Certainly, as Countrywide has moved it’s fundings to its federally-chartered bank, any Fed market activity benefits them.

2- I said that they way out of the mess was for Countrywide to originate new loans in less risky programs. CFC has rolled out a major reverse mortgage program and is compensating brokers to refer those loans to them. While some people believe its actions violate the spirit of HUD laws, there are no HUD guidelines specifically forbidding this practice. Reverse mortgages are three times Read more

November 27, 2007

Serendipity, straight up

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

Upon self-examination I’ve concluded; were it not for a dash of serendipity on all the right occasions, sprinkled at just the proper times, I wouldn’t amount to very much in this world. The fact that I was born here in America and not under a bridge in Lagos is, in itself, a divine intervention of sorts. And if you don’t know of that particular Nigerian slum then let me just add that not being born at all would be a a more desirable volition in this writer’s mind.

what I could have received… 

lagos2lagos3lagos4lagos5 lagos6

what I got instead…

what I ammy wifeminibmwx3Elvishome 

And still, it’s not enough. In comparison to the Bill Gateses, the Mark Cubans and even the Flavor Flavs of this world…I am but a speck. Dust doesn’t even know I exist. Okay, maybe I’ve got more going on than perennial homeboy Flav…

flav

…but I’m sure there are many in this world who would argue agin. (On my own behalf though, if the ‘picture’s worth…’  cliche holds any water at all, I just saved the Recycle Bins 15,000 words.) I’m trying to be a greener man, thus the whole self-examination exercise in the first place. I’m just not a big fan of the color, I guess.

I calculated the amount of trees I saved by not succumbing to print advertising or mass mailings this year–and to honest, it wasn’t that much. In fact, I probably saved more of the rain forest by simply making half of what I made last year but even I can’t put enough spin on that reality to feel that I’m a better man for it. It kind of makes me sick, actually….

Until I hear about a place like Lagos, Nigeria and learn of the pure misery there. Now without getting into personal idealogical bents I will simply say that I listen to National Public Radio all the time, if for no other reason than to get my blood pumping and to know I have an opinion on a thing or two in this world, all specks of dust aside. Politically, I don’t like anybody and since, (according to those who profess their love for me), I’m wrong almost half the time anyway, I can safely go on record to say that there’s always a 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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