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Category: Real Estate (page 158 of 266)

October 27, 2007

The disintermediation of Torquemada the Inquisitor: Do we dare interrogate ourselves about the future of real estate representation? And: What fate awaits all dinosaurs?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In 1991, I was approached by Garry Fairbairn (he must have been a beautiful baby) of the Western Producer in Saskatoon (or maybe it was Regina), Saskatchewan, Canada to write a simple batch global search and replace utility that the paper could use to translate American wire service copy to King’s English spellings — color to colour, favor to favour, etc.

That was the birth of Torquemada the Inquisitor. Ultimately it came to be much more powerful, but, in the beginning, it did nothing but search for and replace string literals. I was developing a reputation as a Macintosh software developer who was interested in big text-processing problems. There was a good reason for this: I had big text-processing problems and I wrote software to solve them. Torquemada used the then-new drag-‘n’-drop technology in the Mac OS to permit users to run an unlimited number of pre-saved search sets on an unlimited number of text files. If you could write well-defined, error-trapped searches, you could automate a big chunk of your workflow.

Subsequent versions added wildcard searches, type-casting, wild strings, case-conversion, etc. Torquemada was pattern matching along the lines of the Unix GREP utility, but it was optimized for repetitive tasks common to text-processing, word-processing and typography. It was very useful in the early days of web-page creation, as well.

I named it Torquemada because I had already written a utility called XP8 (expiate, get it?). This was built to correct a huge number of defects common to word processing files in those days. In addition, it would pre-code text to be imported into QuarkXPress — then and now high-end Macintosh desktop publishing software — with many typographic refinements coded into the text on the fly. XP8 would remove the excess white space from around the numeral “1,” for instance, intelligently ignoring the lining figures in tables. It did quote-conversion better than any software before or since.

These two utilities had fairly similar objectives, and both were built expecting to do huge batch jobs by drag-‘n’-drop. XP8 was a brute-force front-end to Quark, though, where Torquemada was a general purpose text revisionist. In practice, for Read more

October 26, 2007

NAR BloggerCon: I am like so there…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Daniel Rothamel has managed to set up an event called NAR BloggerCon. I can’t figure out who’s getting conned, but I’m eager to find out.

Cathy and I are flying in and out for the event — my favorite way of going anywhere.

Date and Time: Monday, November 12th, 2007 @ 5:30pm.

Place: The NAR Bloggers’ Lounge – Venetian Hotel, 4th Floor, Room 4605

Be there if you can. If not, I predict there will be video…

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October 26, 2007

San Diego Fire Update: I… Wanna Hear… From a Chargers Fan

by

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

Author website

Nick Canepa, of the San Diego Union Tribune, wrote that the game must go on this weekend and that it must be held at Qualcomm Stadium:

San Diego deserves this football game. It needs it. The event may not house or clothe anybody or do much to dramatically change even one life, but Chargers-Texans is this city’s game, and if it can be played here – and it can be – it should be. It belongs where it was intended.

I’m going to agree with him on this.  Anyone who doubts the healing power of Sport wasn’t at Game 1 of the 2001 World Series.  I stood in Bank One Ballpark, with tears streaming down my face, and sang “God Bless America” with NYC firefighters and EMS workers.  We hugged, bought each other beer, jeered each other’s teams, and celebrated the fact that our country was not only standing but ready to rise from the rubble.

I knew the damn game was meaningless.  I secretly wanted the Yanks to win so that The Big Apple would have a shot in the arm but they lost the Series in what could be described as on of the top five World Series in history.  The Diamondbacks won the only way it could be won; in seven games, right through the best team in baseball.

For 10-12 days, America healed.  We threw our arms around each other and diverted our eyes from that obscene smoking hole in Lower Manhattan.  We vowed to build higher, dream bigger, and soar like our national bird.

The Knights of Columbus in Solana Beach is holding its annual Spooky Knights party for the kids, as planned, on Saturday evening.  We’ll pray for the families affected, talk about how to help each other, and try to start the healing process.  If you’re anywhere near Solana Beach, stop in on Saturday; the first cold one is on me.

Qualcomm Stadium, the preferred Brady address last Monday, is clearing out.  We are going to have this football game…HERE...in San Diego.  This game is meaningless but this event is monumental.

Show me your lightning bolt!

 

More updates on the San Diego County Read more

October 26, 2007

Phoenix has it’s problems, but they’re small compared to those in other cities

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link). I’m not grave-robbing San Diego, but every big-news disaster turns out to be good news in the long run for the Phoenix real estate market. This was written on Tuesday, so the specific details are a little dated.

 
Phoenix has it’s problems, but they’re small compared to those in other cities

At BloodhoundBlog.com, we’re tracking the fires in San Diego County. Business is business, but a world-class disaster commands attention. Three of our fifteen contributors are in the fire zone. Two of the three have already been evacuated as I write this. Our hearts and prayers and donations go out to the victims of the blaze, even as we know that whatever we can do can never be enough.

But at the same time, we in the Valley of the Sun should take a moment to count our blessings.

As you approach Phoenix from California, you see them, one after another, vast warehouses, acres in extent. The space should really be measured in cubic feet, but the numbers would quickly become astronomical.

Why are they there? Because Phoenix is the perfect place in North America to build trans-shipment warehouses. No winter, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no mudslides, no uncontrolled fires. We do have a brutal summer heat, but that’s just so much hot air.

For these same reasons, Phoenix is an increasingly popular destination for server farms and colocation facilities. Critical commercial data must be stored or mirrored in places where it won’t be lost to acts of god or other freak events. Phoenix has a talented workforce, great air and ground transportation, a first-rate communications infrastructure and a tremendous surplus of electrical power. Major companies and major airlines park their data and their airplanes here because they know they’ll be safe.

Plus which, Phoenix is sunny all the time and it’s a great place to raise kids. We don’t necessarily think about everything when picking a place to live, but, as life expectancies increase, what we might call the marginal futility of death by accident soars. Your kids could live a lot longer than you Read more

October 25, 2007

The soul of a bigger Bloodhound: Anticipating BloodhoundBlog.TV

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re about to grow to be a much bigger dog. We’re a media play to begin with — news and views, not sales and service. People lecture us all the time that we don’t get real estate weblogging, a point we might dispute. Weblogging about the real estate business, on the other hand, we do better than anyone.

What we have coming is a new idea on a new domain, BloodhoundBlog.TV. (There’s nothing there yet; we’re too busy building the underlying technology.)

Yawn! Yet another claque of clamorous real estate videos?

Not on your life.

We’re going at this BloodhoundBlog way, as webloggers: Serious about important ideas, always, but never stuffy or stilted — and never in anyone’s thrall. We’re going to do the same kinds of things we do here — in streaming, iPod-ready video.

Here are some kinds of content we might take on:

  • The Talking Head, like Andy Rooney or Bill O’Reilly. This is akin to a weblog post, but it’s harder to do well than to imagine having done well. It works best from a well-rehearsed script, but some of the best YouTube videos we have linked to fall into this category.
  • How-To/Spot News/Actuality. This is like HGTV or a news broadcast. Plenty of room for creativity here: multiple locations, multiple interviews, music, still images or film clips.
  • Interviews. This is what we think of right now when we think of a general interest real estate video podcast. With a camcorder or a decent webcam, we can do this anywhere. Connecting through the Studio BHB set-up (about which more below), we can make a fairly tightly edited two-shot remote interview on the fly.
  • Group Discussions. This depends on Studio BHB. A group of us, contributors or guests, can come together in a video-conference, which we can store as a video. I’ve worked out a way to edit this kind of conference to make a visually compelling presentation on the fly.

We are planning to do a weekly BloodhoundBlog.TV broadcast, combining the first three types of segments with a group discussion about those segments, about the real estate news of the week and about our particular favorites among Read more

October 25, 2007

HR 3915: Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007

by

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

Author website

Congressman Banker…err…Barney Frank co-authored legislation to “reform” the mortgage business on Monday.  You can view the 66-page text here.

Bullet Points of the bill include:

1- Prohibition of “yield spread premium” as compensation to originators.

2- Mandatory licensing of mortgage originators by a Federal registry or state regulator.  This Bill does direct the Office of Thrift Supervision to establish a registry for bank employees who originate loans.

3- Ability to repay the loan must be established.  Limits on cash-out refinances and a determination of a net tangible benefit to the borrower will apply.

4- Mandatory “pre-funding counseling” for certain “high-cost” loans by a certified HUD counselor.

You really must read this bill in its entirety.  Hidden among the bowels of the bill is language specifically limiting interest rates to 1.75% over the “published market rate” for conforming loans.  How can you determine a “market rate” if there are limits?  That’s just a paradox.

All of these proposed measures will be more costly to the consumer and is a prime example of “Big Momma” acting as YOUR financial planner. 

Yield spread premium is a very effective way to defray the up-front costs of a loan. 

Mandatory licensing will cause consumers to place undue trust in the “government-approved” originator.  While I philosophically oppose any form of occupational licensing, I would support this mandatory licensing if it were unilaterally applied with testing of expertise.  If the government is going to create a class of “loan agents”, they had better be qualified to effectively counsel consumers about how to use their mortgage as a financial planning tool.

Government regulated underwriting guidelines will contract the real estate market.

Financial planning tips from a government agent?  Seriously, does anyone else notice the irony in this?
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October 24, 2007

San Diego Fire Update: Email from Jeff Brown

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

On 10/24/07 10:44 AM, “Greg Swann” wrote:

Are you okay? Talked to Brian and he indicated the danger now confronts you.

Thanks — we’re not in danger, but the air quality sucks.  The fire is about 15 minutes or so mostly east and a bit south from us.

It’s so bad, the Fire Captain said they were confident they could successfully have it surrounded on or before NOVEMBER 4TH!

Not good.

The fires in the north, as I said earlier, are now working, much of the time, in concert with each other.

The wild card is the now fickle winds. We’re apparently transitioning from Santa Ana to normal weather. It makes it far more dangerous for the firefighters. An example in the last few minutes was a fire engine that had to back up at emergency speed from a home’s driveway, as several firemen jumped literally into a small brushfire threatening to trap and destroy the engine.

The winds’ velocity has slowed, but are now unpredictable. Again, not good.

Bottom line — looks like we won’t gain the upper hand on this thing for another week maybe.
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October 24, 2007

Socratic Dialogue, Deductive Reasoning, BHB and the State of Real Estate.

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

[I was just finishing this up when I read Greg’s terrific post.  Timing in life and all that…]

My first jaunt into online polemics was in the early nineties, the topic animal rights.  The Animal Liberation Front was active in the Northwest – burning fur farms and research labs to prove the efficacy of their argument – and my (then) wife was involved with the breeding and showing of dogs, the kind of thing that worked a True Believer into lather.

Then, of course, it wasn’t blogs, but  newsgroups – talk.politics.animals, as I recall – and it should come as no surprise that conversations tended to get a little, well, testy.  I actually took a moderator position for a short time, part of my job to write, every third post or so, a plea of the “Can’t we all just get along?” variety, which would settle things down, but never for much longer than twenty minutes.

[One can tolerate only so much. A reader had logged in to pour out his heart: He was a teacher in a middle school that, for a fundraiser, had staged a pig kissing contest.  The kids loved it, but the teacher was traumatized by the humiliation caused the pigs; he’d gone home and cried himself to sleep.  What could he do to make others understand?  I was asked to step down due to the insensitivity of my reply.]

Turning someone already steeped in the dogma is impossible, but there are tools available to convince the fence sitters:  The first thing I did was read the literature, then I downloaded and printed out – I still have the somewhat yellowed copy within arm’s length of where I type – a list of forty three logical fallacies.

Dialogue requires order.

====

Unfortunately, the web and blogs have managed to define discourse down even further.   And – who’d have thought? – it’s even beginning to infect RE blogs.  I think that’s why Rain City Guide’s Dustin Luther issued his preemptive admonition,  brilliant in its brevity:  Attack ideas, not people; no personal promotion. All’s well, and RCG continues to be one of the best in quality dialogue.

Then Read more

October 24, 2007

When all you have is a hammer — disintermediate the bums!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I live in an amazing world, which is to say a world by which I am continuously amazed, without boundary or graduation.

Here’s an example: I cannot for the life of me understand why National Association of Realtors President Pat Combs has not called me personally to ask me to come to Las Vegas for the convention to tell the NAR what it’s getting wrong.

Now you may think that’s an amazing hubris on my part, but in fact I am the obvious candidate for the job. Redfin.com’s Glenn Kelman is the only plausible alternative, but he is too much at odds with traditional real estate to qualify. I, on the other hand, am — on paper at least — the pot-bellied poster-child of the NAR — GRI, ABR, CRS the hard way. Add to that that I have spent many hundreds of hours detailing what’s wrong with the NAR, and have built a national platform from with to promulgate those arguments and, from my point of view — from Planet Cluetrain — the invitation should have been forthcoming months ago.

But there my amazement does not end. For, upon receipt of such an invitation, I would have to decide what to do about it. It wouldn’t be an easy choice. I think I might love to do it — on my birthday, no less — particularly if the audience were very hostile. But I don’t see that there could be any enduring benefit to it. If Pat Combs had ever even heard of the Cluetrain, she wouldn’t have any need to hear from me.

A nicer way, and I could do this easily enough, would be to go in and talk about the exciting world of Web 2.0 — and it seems likely to me that someone will be doing just that at some breakout session or another. And this will be just as stupid and pointless as the Inman BloggerDoggles, where earnest, well-intentioned people try to talk about community while a horde of congenital note-takers scribbles down tips on how to fake sincerity to snag more leads.

“The world sorts itself out” is what Read more

October 24, 2007

Increasing Loan Limits for VA

by

Commercial Real Estate Broker

Author website

First off.. Well done to Brian, Kris and Jeff (good stuff).. I can only stand so much of the ‘canned’ news coverage of the situation in So Cal.. I used to work 2 1/2 yrs in San Juan Capistrano (yes, while commuting from Northern Cal) as the “real estate guy” for an East Coast Tower company.. I know the Fallbrook area very well and hope everyone will continue to stay safe..

I heard from my Broker (a close friend and honest lender) @ Pride Lending Group that select banks are raising their current maximum loan amount on VA loans as a result of Ginnie Mae eliminating the restriction on the size of mortgage loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Oct. 24th. The increased VA loan limits are expected to expand the availability of $0 Down loans to Veterans (with valid certificates of eligibility) by raising their current maximum loan amount to $1,000,000 plus the VA Funding Fee (for a maximum total of $1,033,000).

I know that there are a couple of experts on the panel in this field (I haven’t been involved in the retail lending side of the business since the early 90’s), can we confirm this? Does the VA still comprise a relatively small percentage of the available buyers? I would assume that this is another attempt (albeit a good start) to get the government involved in addressing the ‘credit crunch’ and move this market in a positive direction. One of my calls today involved a private builder looking to offload hundreds of finished lots at any price. Any attempt (by the gov’t) to address market perception has to be positive at this point, doesn’t it?

October 23, 2007

San Diego Fire Update: Podcast with Brian Brady — Big Mother? Who needs her?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I heard from Brian Brady, who also seems to have escaped harm in the fires. His home came closest to being singed, and, while he has not yet been back to see it, he thinks it should be okay.

The podcast linked below is a free-ranging discussion of the fires, the response by individual citizens, and the kinds of structures that might replace those that were destroyed by the fires.
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October 23, 2007

San Diego Fire Update: Podcast with Kris Berg — staring down disaster with a lithe sense of humor and a glass of Chardonay

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As you might expect, Kris Berg’s take on the San Diego fires is phlegmatic and funny. She phoned just as I was posting the podcast with Jeff Brown.

Cliff’s Notes: Life is mostly back to normal in Scripps Ranch except that the air is grey with smoke and ash and the kids are off from school. Kris is as funny on the phone as she is in person.
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October 23, 2007

San Diego Fire Update: Podcast with Jeff Brown discussing today’s events

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I was able to connect with Jeff Brown, and we spent a few minutes on the phone talking about today’s events in battling the fires in San Diego.

I was unable to get through to either Kris Berg or Brian Brady, but I’m hoping this simply means their cell phone batteries are dead.

Jeff spoke with Brian earlier today and wrote about it here.

Lani Anglin was able to talk to Kris, which you can read about here.

From Jeff’s point of view, they’re over the hump, and we can only hope he’s right.
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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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