Category: Real Estate (page 212 of 266)

by Allen Butler

Realtor, Audio Engineer

Author website

Hello Folks!

It’s been a very interesting few days. First, I must say that you people are just a total class act; you couldn’t ask for a better-hearted group of people. You guys are going places, maybe even to heaven.

Well, as it happens, I have some experience with professional audio engineering, and offered to help by cleaning up some audio files so that they could post them on the site as pod-casts. First, I did one for Kris Berg in SoCal when she interviewed the CEO of Redfin, Inc. You can listen here.

Next, I “scrubbed” some audio for a seminar on web potency for Realtors that was conducted by Dustin Luther from Move.com & Realtor.com. You will find these pod-casts at BloodhoundBlog soon, I’m sure.

I’m very excited to help these guys out, as audio engineering is actually rather relaxing for me. It’s a really fun hobby (although extremely expensive), and gives me a chance to exercise the other side of my brain. One of the things I would like to offer to the world at large, is just a bit of advice on how to go about setting up a very affordable and professional sounding portable audio rig to do some recording. For the purposes of this brief treatise, I will assume an absolute ignorance of all things audio, so if you’re a know-it-all, just indulge me for a moment.

I have come up with a plan that includes 3 or 4 very small and inexpensive pieces of audio gadgetry that together would cost less than $400, and would capture audio for both interviews and seminars (or anything else, for that matter) with aplomb. Now, these items that I am about to list are readily available, and are cheap. (Note to Audio Geeks: I know that there are much better tools for this job, and you’re foaming at the mouth to make a recommendation. Let me just preemptively state that I am aware that this job can also be done admirably for around $12,000. Just go back to your corner.)

The first scenario that I envision is that you’ll want to interview Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

I had a chance to talk to Mark Sennott, President of Home Gift, this week. Home Gift is an affinity marketer much like MBNA. MBNA started as a credit card marketing division of the old Maryland National Bank. Their model was to offer credit cards to alumni association members that were “branded” as the official card. MBNA then rebated a portion of their income to the alumni association. Joe College felt good about racking up the old debt because he was supporting State U.

It was a wildly successful idea. It was so successful that MBNA spun-off from Maryland National Bank in 1991 in a public offering.. They grew to a 12% market share of all credit card customers before being bought by Bank of America in 2005.

Enter Mark Sennott. His company offers a consumer access to a network of real estate agents and mortgage companies who are willing to “rebate” a portion of their fee to the consumer. Portions of that “rebate” are earmarked for a certain charity. Home Gift takes an administrative fee. It’s relocation company meets Redfin wrapped up in the warm and fuzzy blanket of philanthropy. Check out Mark at his web log. He’s passionate, engaging, and claims to be an avid reader of Bloodhound Blog (so he can’t be all that bad).

I found out about Home Gift some two months ago. I was trying to help a little Carmelite Monastery in Massachusetts make American Tower Company honor a contract. ATC found out that the land the monks bought for their monastery was the perfect location for a wind farm and pulled out of the sale. The monks are suing the cell tower behemoth for specific performance. I posted “Don’t Mess with My Monks” on Active Rain and was referred to Mark by the Prior of the Monastery.

Mark’s doing what so many real estate professionals deplore. He’s rebating fees to the consumer and charging a toll for access to the customer. Customers, however, like the idea. They deal Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

Have you ever analyzed the business model your broker has? Try to run the numbers sometime and see just how much profit the owners(s) of your real estate brokerage really earn. I learned a lot about running a mortgage brokerage and real estate brokerage from 1999-2002. I’ve owned both and was successful with the former and a walking disaster with the latter.

Here is the deep, dark truth about traditional real estate brokerage as a business; it’s just not that profitable in its purest sense of practice unless (a) the broker produces (which brings up a whole host of issues) or (b) the brokerage is really HUGE. Let’s analyze the typical medium-sized brokerage (25 producers) in a typical American city ($250,000 median value).

There are A, B, and C agents. There will be five “A” agents who close 20 transactions per year or $5,000,000. Assume they average a fee of $7,500 per transaction. Each producer closes $150,000 in gross commission income (GCI). These producers generally command a commission split of 90%. This means that their gross contribution to the brokerage is $750 per transaction or $15,000 per agent annually. This translates to an aggregate GCI for “A” agents of $75,000.

There will be five “B” agents who close 10 transactions per year or $2,500,000. The average GCI per producer is $75,000. Now, they might command as little as a 80% commission split so the aggregate GCI translates to $75,500. We’re up to $150,000.

The rest are “C” agents who close an average of just 3 transactions per year. They will receive a commission split of 50%. So the aggregate GCI to the company is $168,750. Now we have total revenues to the brokerage of $318,750.

Let’s analyze the annual expenses. Receptionist, operations assistant, and sales manager salaries will total $130,000. We gross that number up 115% to include payroll taxes and benefits for a total of $149,500. This is a traditional model so you should figure on $12,000 for advertising. Throw in the rent and facilities charges of $75,000 for a 2000 sq. ft. office, $12,000 for supplies and $12,000 for Read more

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

I just received this in an email from a friend. I liked it so much I wanted to pass it along here on the blog.

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What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

Dustin Luther’s seminar was an excellent primer for the real estate professional who is contemplating web logging as a business tool. Mary McKnight from RSS Pieces, wrote that you should have already established your web log by January, 2007. However, if you’re the type that puts off the book report until the night before it was due, here are the Cliff Notes to Dustin’s Seminar.

The full podcast of the seminar is hosted by Rudy over at Sellsius. I believe he has broken it up into three parts.

The “4C’s” of the RE.net evolution:
1- Change: The “techies” decided that there was inefficiency in the pricing of real estate brokerage and attempted to disinter mediate; they found that more than “raw data” access was needed bu the consumer.
2- Communication: Real estate 1.0 was all about publishing, 2.0 is about communication with the consumer. RSS feeds, weblogs, and sticky websites are the solution.
3- Community: social networking sites and web logs are creating communities where you, as a real estate professional, want to be known as an “expert”.
4- Consumers: This movement is about the consumer and inviting them to a conversation online.

The way to invite the consumer to a conversation and create your online expert reputation is to:
1- Create a weblog
2- Post interesting content
3- Link to other sites
4- Leave lots of comments

He further outlined the steps to creating a web log, the steps to writing a blog post (along with an excellent analogy to composing an e-mail message), how to comment on other’s web logs, and how to create a link.

The second half was dedicated to more advanced ideas for creating communities. It was agreed (as it was in Phoenix at the Webloggers Roundtable) that Active Rain is an excellent place to learn how to create and write a blog post. If you are in the profession, and haven’t joined The Active Rain Real Estate network, do so right now. It’s free and you can click this link to join.

Dustin also showed us how to effectively use a feed reader. He demonstrated Google Feed Read more