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Category: Real Estate (page 201 of 266)

March 30, 2007

Independence Day – It’s Your Business

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

It finally dawned on me. I have been grappling with the idea of single-property websites for some time. Should I? Shouldn’t I? Would a single-property website for a listing enhance the exposure of the home and therefore hasten a sale or would it simply serve to impress the seller? Would a single-property URL be detrimental in that it would cause brand confusion with our widely-promoted and established website which already provides all of the property information in what I consider a very comprehensive and compelling format? I could create a distinct site or blog for the home, but wouldn’t that drive traffic from my site? Conversely, I could create a domain forward and point the URL to the existing page in my site, but wouldn’t that in fact be redundant?

Yahoo! Today I’m on board with the concept of the single-property site, and I have Yahoo! and my real estate company to thank for my sudden clarity of thought.

Let’s Call Them “Prudential”

I happen to be affiliated with a company (who shall remain nameless) who negotiated an exclusive agreement with Yahoo! Real Estate. Without going into specifics, I will be the first to admit that there is great benefit to the agents of this partnership, but it comes with a cost. Agents pay to be included in the program but, more importantly, I fear that as many leads are being driven from me as they are to me.

We Want to Help You (Help Us)

Participating agents can assign a unique Yahoo! Search ID to their listings which, when entered in the Yahoo! search bar, will bring up the full property page. This page is branded with the agent’s information which, at first blush, sounds like a hell of a deal. Further, if a consumer happens upon the property during a search, they will be directed to this same branded page.

Let’s start with the obvious. This is a company branding effort in agent-branding sheep’s clothing. As an example, a client of ours who was relocating back to San Diego was using the Yahoo! site to search for homes. She innocently saved her search and within Read more

March 30, 2007

Skilled Realtor bargain of lifetime

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Skilled Realtor bargain of lifetime

We own 65 Internet domains so far. Of those, 29 are actually hosted on the Internet, sites you can visit with your Web browser. The others are “pointed” at the hosted sites.

If you forget that I work for BloodhoundRealty.com but remember my name, GregSwann.com will take you to our main Web site.

We build custom sites for our higher-priced listings, which accounts for many of the hosted sites. We also have sites for our Weblogs and a site we use to test new versions of our software to make sure it’s ready to deploy.

We are a high-tech real estate brokerage trying to stay ahead of the curve in a high-tech era.

Looking over one shoulder, we compete against traditional Realtors. But looking over the other, the Realty.bots — venture-capital-funded Internet real estate start-ups — make the traditional real estate marketing message harder and harder to deliver.

Is Zillow.com, or another automated valuation method, a useful tool for pricing homes? No, but I have to be prepared to show why, perhaps first overcoming my client’s skepticism.

Is a $199 Internet listing as effective as the full-service marketing package we bring to the table?

My view is that a skilled, experienced Realtor is the bargain of a lifetime. Under one hat, you get pricing and sales expertise, advice about staging and repairs, an expertly executed marketing campaign, a professional negotiator, thoughtful and knowledgeable hand-holding through the escrow process — and more.

Unlike a Realty.bot, your Realtor has actually bought and sold houses — dozens or hundreds of times. With expertise that stretches from little things, like hiring a landscaper, to topics as big as the Internet itself, the professional advice you will get from a good Realtor cannot be matched by canned Realty.bots, no matter how much fun they are to play with.

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March 29, 2007

Predatory Coaching For Realtors and Loan Originators

by

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

Author website

Are you a victim of predatory coaching?
There are many advice gurus available to Realtors and loan originators. I watch our industry grow and am amazed at the cottage industries that have hatched from that growth. It reminds me that the only people really making money in multi-level marketing sell the books and tapes on how to succeed in MLM. I can think of three or four gurus who offer real content and provide “how-to-do-the-business” knowledge that comes from personal experience…

…but…….THERE ARE PREDATORY COACHES

There is a vacuum in the real estate and mortgage brokerage industry when it comes to training. A new licensee signs up with a brokerage and the broker says “Get to work!” Many have figured out how to make an above-average income doing just that. Hustlers love vacuums, though. They “prey” upon the weak and their booty is an annuity of fees extracted from an unsuspecting and well-meaning Realtor or originator.

Let me give you a real life example. In 1999, a good friend of mine opted for a career in real estate brokerage over her corporate recruiting career. She approached me to secure a line of credit for her so she would have ample reserves to meet expenses in an irregular income environment. The predators started circling like hungry buzzards on a hot desert day.

1-She was encouraged by her broker to “invest” in training. (What the hell does the broker do?).

2-She was encouraged to take out full-color ads borrowing other people’s listings. (Good for the brokerage; free advertising.)

3-She enrolled in coaching programs at $500/month.

The best marketing advice she received was from SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives). The cost was $79.00 for the six-week consultation.

We have a new vacuum and that vacuum is in marketing. Realtors and loan originators are having increasing difficulty learning how to market themselves. The new buzzards are circling. They come disguised as “online marketing experts”. They sell and resell “online leads” to us. They hold seminars and follow-up with pushy sales people who try to make Read more

March 29, 2007

Nine months on the trail: Whither BloodhoundBlog?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t like mission statements, but I’ll give you one for BloodhoundBlog:

Everything you wish were in Realtor magazine but isn’t.

That’s pithy but inadequate, because there’s more here already than Realtor magazine — or the Specialist — would ever take on. We have three lenders to take us inside the mortgage industry. We have two investment experts to brings us hard-core, hands-on advice. We have some of the best writers in the RE.net — who produce some of the best reading in real estate writing, period, weblogged or printed.

And we are nine months old today.

Our traffic grows month-by-month. In addition to the folks who see our work by RSS feed, we are routinely attracting more than 1,000 unique visitors a day on weekdays. We’re slower on weekends, but we’re right on the verge of hitting 30,000 visitors a month. Our readers take in just short of two pages each, on average, so a lot of what we write is getting read. We throw off at least 500 outbound clicks every day, which means that the sites we link to are seeing quite a few Bloodhounds in their kennels.

This is all great, but I want more. We’re building the Russell Shaw Sales Success curriculum, and, by the time we’re done with it, we should have something that will provide tremendous value to Realtors and other sales professionals for a long time to come. I have no expectation that Teri Lussier and I will win the Project Blogger contest, but I plan to make the course material I’m developing available via ebook to any Realtors who hope to join the burgeoning RE.net. Our contributors are becoming steadily better known, and this cannot but produce interesting opportunities for them in the long run.

Even so, I want more. I am very proud of everything we have done so far — and a week’s worth of BloodhoundBlog content is an over-scale pound of meaty reading — but I want to come to the place where a day’s work is of that weighty scale. I know we can do this. There are days when we do it already. Read more

March 29, 2007

Second Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar scheduled for Tuesday, April 17

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Mega-producing Realtor and BloodhoundBlog contributor Russell Shaw is is hosting the second in his series of Sales Success symposia for striving Realtors. The first event was a huge success.

The purpose of the seminars is to establish the most vitally-important points to be covered in a sales training curriculum, to be produced in the coming months in audio and video podcasts. Russell will address larger meta-topics and then entertain questions from the audience to unearth smaller but still important sub-topics to be addressed in the podcasts.

The second of these events will be held on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at the offices of North American Title, 3200 East Camelback Road, Suite #150, Phoenix, AZ 85018. The event will run from 6:30 PM to approximately 9:30 PM, and refreshments will be served. There is no charge to attend. Russell will handle two meta-topics, followed by question and answer sessions, with a short break between. North American Title and Worldwide Credit Corporation are sponsoring the event and will make short presentations.

Who should come? A striving Realtor is one who has learned how to stay afloat in this business but wants to learn how to build a bigger, more profitable business. In other words, if you’re a brand new agent or if you’re happy with your current level of production or if you’re already a top-producer, these symposia are not for you. Because Russell is building the curriculum for a full-blown Sales Success training course, his goal is to hear from the Realtors who want most to learn the lessons he has mastered in his career.

Click here for a poster you can hang up in your office to let other agents know about the seminar. All the details plus driving directions.

If you want to attend, we’d love to have you, but space is limited. This is an opportunity to learn a whole lot even as you help other Realtors learn a whole lot — for years to come. Plus which, it should be a lot of fun…

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March 29, 2007

Late-night random notes . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I finished moving the last of our 29 hosted web sites today, and, so far, I am 98% delighted with the choice me made. The pages just snap, including BloodhoundBlog — which is one fat, data-sodden dog. We have some kind of DNS problem that is intermittently affecting some of our PHP programming. Until now, I have been prepared to write this off to slow or flaky DNS servers out in the world. As of today, I’m thinking we have a problem in-house. By Friday, I’ll have it worked out, and then I expect to be 100% happy.

I’ve had poor Cameron working for two days to solve a problem that may not even be his problem. It is biologically ordained, I think, that fathers and manling sons must quarrel, but Cameron and I spar not about cars or curfews but about software — right now about Unix environment variables. Tonight’s South Park was aimed right at both of us — family togetherness in the form of rude comedy peppered with net.references.

Todd Tarson’s MOCO Real News celebrated its first anniversary yesterday. Todd deserves accolades every which way. The depth of responsibility he feels for other Realtors is without parallel. Because he’s in Arizona, Cathy and I will get to watch him as he becomes one of the Grand Old Men of the Arizona Association of Realtors.

We’re at StarPower tomorrow, so I have a couple of entries set up in advance, to be posted by the scrupulously punctual WordPress bot. Because of all the work I did to keep the foul-mouthed flamers out, quite a few comments are being captured by the moderation bot, or even the spam bot. I won’t be around to deal with those until late in the day. My apologies.

I have many more thoughts on the subject of local real estate weblogging for dollars. Now that I have this hosting issue (mostly) off my plate, I can begin to implement some of them, as well as talk about them.

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March 28, 2007

Resource recourse: For the budding real estate weblogger, opportunities for self-improvement are everywhere — and every where is right here

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth says to write an ebook, and I think this is a fine idea. When we start to look like we’re done with the Weblogging 101 curriculum, I’ll go back and whip together something that can work on dead-tree media. This would not be the ideal way to work with it, though, since an ebook can be rich in links — including a “check for the latest edition link.”

One thing I would want to do with something like this is make it link out to richer resources. I can gloss topics, but there’s a lot of deep-think stuff that is much better handled by other people. At the ante-penultimate stage of revision, I’ll put it out for link suggestions. Real Estate Weblogging 101 could end up being an iterative resource, the half-way point between a legacy-style book and a piece of software: Work through the big print first, then pursue the links, then work through the arcane but massively edifying sidebar links. That could be very cool.

On the subject of resources, or perhaps the unexpected serendipity ensuing from web-based resources: Two nights ago before bedtime, I wrote How to make Google your weblog’s best friend. It was a small idea that I had been wanting to hit. I had the time to take care of it, and I wanted for there to be something new on the weblog. I don’t ever do anything half-way, but if ever there was a just-knock-it-out post, that was it. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and it took me no time to to compose and post it.

Serendipity came in the form of Mike Levin of HitTail.com. HitTail is a web site/weblog stats service that will monitor your incoming traffic and tell you what keywords are bringing people in. You can use this information to SEO optimize your site, to plan AdWords campaigns, etc. Anyway, Mike Levin coming here was cool, but what was even cooler was that he cited my post and its comments thread on StumbleUpon, a social bookmarking site similar to Digg or Del.icio.us.

Hundreds of people came to read that post. Read more

March 28, 2007

Reality-Based Success

by

Mortgage Banker

Author website

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.” — Anthony de Mello

For my first at-bat in the big leagues, and taking a queue from the kind introduction from Greg, I wanted to talk about a concept that we use with great success in providing our customers with a sense of stability in the current turbulent marketplace. If you think that this market is “not bad,” “just going through a rough patch,” or similar, please keep reading. The concept is called “framing reality” and it intentionally puts us in our customers’ shoes so that we can provide solutions that impact and make sense in their reality rather than just in our own.

The concept stems from the quote above, and is based on the premise that everyone, us included, has varying degrees of ego-centrism that distorts our worldview in one way or another. We each have a lens that we view the world through, and whether it’s rose-colored or other, it skews our world view — our perceived reality. When we as consultants, guides, Sherpas, whatever you want to call us (just please not hucksters and thieves) are able to align our view of reality with the customer’s, both of us stand to gain much more than if we provide a solution that is based solely on our frame.

An example of what “framing reality” is not are the new Realtor&174; ads that feature the tag “now is a great time to buy”. While it may be true in various parts of the country and in specific circumstances, it’s a tough sell to Joe Public right now. It rings a bit hollow if you’ve spent any amount of time talking with home owners, seekers, sellers. The prevailing mood is not one of “great time” it’s a bit more angst filled. The ad doesn’t do a good job of framing the reality as its perceived by many in the target audience and so it misses the mark. It’s a poor ad.

Another example of what the concept is not is “selling fear.” Selling fear is a despicable tactic, illegal, and definitely Read more

March 27, 2007

Egoism in action: How you can grow and prosper, at work and everywhere, even in the face of hostile criticism

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is email I had from Corey Hague, one of the founders of BuyerHunt.com. This is important to the philosophical issues I’ve tried to raise, and Corey agreed to let me talk about this in the weblog:

Well Greg, I am out of ideas, slowly becoming “zestless” and looking for some inspiration. A couple of months ago a friend and I created a website, www.buyerhunt.com. As agents ourselves, we designed the site with (progressive) agents in mind. Despite our best efforts, to date, most of the agent-derived response we get is negative and is often personal and unrelated in nature. And these agents aren’t giving the site a shot. They visit the homepage, make a quick decision and write scathing responses (usually in regards to the fact that we give joe schmoe buyer and seller access). All this after we got the “stamp of approval” from Inman News, who named us one of the best new web ideas for 2007. It just doesn’t seem right. I am a big fan of your blog, and am awe-struck by the manner in which you are able to hold your own in the face of often ludicrous and nonsensical banter.

Though I pride myself on being a young (25), determined, forward-thinking individual with plenty of family-infused and “real time” real estate experience, I am for the first time finding it difficult to brush off the aforementioned criticisms and personal attacks. I guess my question is simply this… How do you do it? You lay your heart, soul and ideas on the line and so often have them thrown right back in your face. And yet everyday, I wake up and see that you have written again, unscathed and unabashed. I want to continue to be a progressive, trailblazing agent… but am starting to see a side of the business that I would rather not be privy to.

Without intending to be flippant, I don’t notice things like that. In any sort of reaction to anything — positive or negative — all I am listening for is the resonance of reason.

There’s this first: The reaction, whatever it is, Read more

March 27, 2007

Going local? Why not go hyper-local?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Todd Carpenter at Inman News Blog:

A real estate agent’s idea of local my not be local enough. I mean really local. Not a state, not a metro area, not even a single city. Go hyper-local. Every real estate agent should have a prospect farm. You mail out newsletters to just these people. You focus much of your market analysis on the neighborhood. You might even walk each block, introducing yourself door to door. But hardly any agents bother to put that commitment online. Why? Doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve personally reviewed over 400 real estate blogs over the last couple months. Only a handful of them attempt to do this. I look at most real estate sites and see an all inclusive catch all net for Internet fishing. Thats a strategy that works for now, but why not take advantage of the unused Web hosting bandwidth you are renting to build a separate, hyper-local Web site or blog for your marketing area? The alternative is to let people from out of town, who know more about html code than real estate, set up as your competition.

I have at least three more killer ideas to explore on this subject, one good, one great and one insanely great. If you’re not playing along at home, there’s still plenty of time to get in the game.
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March 27, 2007

Rocking the boat for fun and profit: Introducing Morgan Brown

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding another contributor this morning: Morgan Brown, a lender from Orange County:

Morgan Brown is a mortgage banker and broker in Irvine, CA. He enjoys reading and blogging, and he is on a personal mission to change the public perception of the mortgage industry through honesty — even if it kills him.

If you visit Morgan’s personal weblog, you’ll see that he is a man in deep earnest about reform in the mortgage lending industry. I’m a believer, and yet I know from first-hand experience that bearding the lions of the old guard is very effective as a marketing strategy. Plus which, it’s fun.

Realtors are not immune from the charge of being Pollyannas, so for quite some time I’ve been interested in entertaining a voice from The Dark Side, as it were. I’m not accusing Morgan of being dour — very much the countrary — but he will certainly bring us a take on the news you won’t hear from our other contributors.

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March 27, 2007

What Do I Want In a Loan Officer?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Todd Carpenter wrote:

Hey Greg,

Now that REMBEX is working the way I want it to, I’m resurrecting my other pet project. It’s an all free training web site for new loan officers. Details are here. http://blog.mariah.com/2007/03/open-source-mortgage-training-manual.html

I would really like to get a real estate agent’s perspective on what they think a new LO needs to know in reviewing the contract and purchase process. I know you are busy moving your web site and training your protege, but maybe you know of someone else who can write an article for the project if you don’t have time. Even a word about it on your blog would be appreciated. I’m accepting volunteers for the other sections as well.

BTW, I know you are a Mac guy. I just upgraded to a 24″ iMac and am self-learning to use Keynote & Garage Band to make training videos for some of the key topics. The finished product should be pretty cool (I hope)!


Thank You!


Todd Carpenter
mariah.com

First, a disclosure; I am not an expert in loans, lenders or what they “ought to know”. But I am very comfortable in answering the question I used for the title of this post: What Do I Want In a Loan Officer? I’m not looking for one just now, because I have one who perfectly fits the description I’m about to write. How did I get her? Almost by accident, one of my Buyer Agents, Therese – who was making the transition into being one of my Listing Agents – said she had several good experiences with Kathy Rhubottom with O’Dowd Mortgage. Several “good experiences” consisted of the loans closing when they were supposed to and here is the “big one”: she was only told things that happened to be true. In the almost three years we have done business with Kathy, every deal – with two exceptions – closed on time. Both of those exceptions were title company errors, not the lenders. When Kathy said a deal was a makable deal, guess what? It actually closed.

Do I think Kathy is remarkable in her knowledge? No. I didn’t even meet her Read more

March 26, 2007

Scale your locally-focused real estate weblog down to the size of a good time. Why? Because there’s no place like home . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Teri has a weblog. It’s just a prototype for now. She’s shopping for theme so that we can make something truly unique and Daytonacious. I am by now at the point where I can set up a WordPress weblog in my sleep, which is lucky because, with 23 hosting accounts still to be moved, that on top of the normal crush, I’m not sleeping very much.

Teri already owned the domain, so all I had to do was redirect the nameservers to our new semi-dedicated file server. I keep a standing folder of WordPress-the-way-I-like-it on my desktop, so I copied that in, created the database, plugged the files into the database and — Eureka! Done.

A lot easier to say it than to do it, for most of us. My experience this weekend taught me a new trick, and this is strictly for the propeller-beanie set: If you have a certain way of setting up WordPress weblogs, you can save yourself the effort of setting your preferences with each new installation. Here’s how: Get a prototypical weblog set up the way you like ’em — settings, plug-ins, the works — then save a back-up of that set-up to your hard disk along with all your set-up files. When you make a new clean installation, inherit that backup into your new database. The new install will be a mirror of your prototype, fully-formed and fully-armed.

If you’re a propeller-wanna-beanie, Dave Smith of The Real Estate Blog Lab has prepared a step-by-step tutorial on setting up a WordPress weblog from scratch.

But: That’s really the easy part. In my view, the hard part of setting up a locally-oriented real estate weblog is scaling things down to what Robert Mosescalled “the size of a good time.” Moses built Jones Beach, among many other enormous masterpieces, but he was always aware of the small touches that would make people feel at home within his immense vision.

So what are we looking for? Hmmm… There’s no place like it, and, when you go there, they have to take you in…

We’re looking for home, of course. If I could lay one blanket 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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