Category: Real Estate (page 222 of 266)

January 1, 2007

From my 14-year-old daughter, the very girl that brought you “Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution”, and the (unpublished) account of a local police chase which, according to Emily, resulted in the bad guy “varnishing a weapon”, we have her weather report: A chance of participation. We call her our little American Idiom.

So I am here with my New Year’s resolution: Participation. Ardell warned me, in response to my coming-out acceptance speech when asked to join the Bloodhound gang:

Welcome to “the juggling act”! Let’s see…my blog, their blog, my blog, their blog eenie meenie minie mo…

Oh, youthful exuberance! It has become clear that time management is becoming critical. Unlike Greg, I am not a Broker-Owner, just a Broker Associate. Unlike Russell, I don’t have a multi-level office support structure in place; my organizational chart includes Steve and myself. Unlike all of the other contributors (Cathleen excepted), I don’t have a wife. I am the CEO, COO, CFO, IT and Marketing and Business Development and Human Resources Departments, the wife, the mother, the orderer of the take out dinners, and the cleaner of the litter box. So Ardell’s prophetic juggling act has me, at present, precariously poised on a high wire without a net below.

Despite this, I, like Dan, am committed to more frequent posting of substance (the “of substance” part being the operative) and more consistent and meaningful commentary. Somehow, amidst all of this madness, Steve and I will continue to represent clients in 40 to 50 transactions a year – Pathetically modest by Russell’s standards, but as Greg would say, a respectable amount of Ramen.

Along those lines, I endeavor to accomplish the following in 2007:

Bring more structure to my work day. Being a notes-on-the-back-of-a-cocktail-napkin kind of girl, I have hit the glass ceiling of efficiency with this approach. I need to set times to work, times to play and times to blog. And I need to set some boundaries.
Produce those podcasts rattling around in my head. I vow to have a how-to library completed by year’s end for consumers, available on-line and on disk for potential clients. I am ever Read more

January 1, 2007

NAR dead pool . . . ?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

One of the things Cathy did yesterday between finishing her real estate work and popping the cork on the champagne (she makes me do that, of course), was paying our dues. Not figuratively — literally. Yesterday was the deadline to pay the following creditors:

Phoenix Association of Realtors
Arizona Association of Realtors
National Association of Realtors
Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council (ABR)
Council of Residential Specialists (CRS)

I don’t know what this cost us, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: How many people didn’t do it?

The first three are paid in one lump sum. You don’t have to belong to ReBAC or CRS, but you have to belong to the local, state and national Realtor’s associations to call yourself a Realtor. Taking account that we know that some significant number of Realtors didn’t do very well in 2006, how many, do you think, did not renew their membership?

The NAR Fact Sheet touts 1.3 million members for now. How many fewer will there be at the next reckoning…?

Technorati Tags: real estate marketing

January 1, 2007

LongTail.TV: Welcome to five-hundred-thousand-channel television . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I’ve written a lot about radio here, to the extent that you might get the idea that I really like radio. I do, and I think this might apply to a lot of people who habitually work very long hours.

One of my very favorite radio movies is Pump Up The Volume. It’s actually a teen angst film, I suppose, but the interesting wrinkle for me is pirate radio. In the end the protagonist calls upon his audience to set up their own pirate radio stations, to break the mainstream media monotony monopoly with thousands of new voices.

That much is impractical, of course: Pirate radio stations cost money and require technical expertise. But guess what? The there that could never be there turns out to be here, in weblogging. This is pirate radio made practical, 57 million alternatives to Dan Rather. Quality comes and goes, but — my goodness! — choice abounds.

Here’s a further development on the same theme: WatchItVegas.com. What is it? A net-based, on-demand TV station. The owner produces the videos used by the DiamondScan signs on Las Vegas Boulevard, so he has the technology and the content to set up his own TV station.

What does it mean? In the short-run, practically nothing. It’s net video, after all, small and crappy. But in the long-run…

I have an uncle who shoots trap and skeet. He’s good, maybe two or three rungs below the Olympic level of competition. The guys who do this are fanatics in the best web-based sense of the word. There aren’t many of them, but they are devoutly interested in what they do, and they are free-spending to the point of extravagance to get their hands on the absolute best of everything.

Can you say LongTail.TV? Sure you can!

We are graduating from five-hundred-channel television to five-hundred-thousand-channel television. If there is a niche, if there is content and if there are advertisers, there will be a net-based TV network. The advertisers are optional, actually. We don’t want them here, for example.

But: Advertisers want the biggest possible return for the smallest possible outlay. If an internet television network devoted to fanatical Read more

January 1, 2007

Real estate resolutions: Cough less, earn more . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

When I get sick, I get really sick. I’ve had full-blown pneumonia twice in recent years. I have always been able to blast through illness, but, sometime after my arms got too short to read without glasses, that privilege was revoked. In consequence, when I get a respiratory infection now, I try to take it very seriously. Not as seriously as Cathy and our doctor might like, but I do my best.

In consequence, I’ve been laid up through the span of time we might have spent on big-picture business planning. Our course is well set, so we didn’t have a lot to worry about. But today Bonnie Erickson goes us one better with an excellent list of real estate resolutions for the coming year. Here’s a sampling:

Narrow my marketing focus to a manageable farm or neighborhood where I can meet the people and become known personally.
Focus my existing marketing to the narrowed sphere.
Contact each person in my sphere of influence at least once a quarter.
Contribute more to my networking group possibly through technology.
Finalize a cold calling system and stick to it.
Continue to contact expired and unrepresented listings.
Restructure my blog to incorporate more consumer friendly resources.
Re-examine my websites for consumer friendliness and SEO.
Continue to "bird dog" for investment properties which will be purchased for rehab and sale, rehab and holding, or sale without rehab to other investors.
Learn from losses in the business.

One of the things we were going to do last year and didn’t get to was implementing Daylite, CRM software for Macintosh networks. The big hurdle is taking all of our existing contact management “solutions” and merging them into one database, cleaning that for duplicates and errors, and then systematically adding to it. The task is even more daunting by now, but many of Bonnie’s resolutions show why it is worthwhile.

Easy for me to say. It’s a chore for Cathy and her pack of teenage hound-puppies. But touch-management, even if it runs on a database as faulty as memory, is worth money…

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate marketing

December 31, 2006

LEREAH PUSHES IT EVEN FURTHER

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

NAR Chief Economist, David Lereah totally ignores his detractors by continuing to make predictions about the real estate market. Now he is officially in the dictionary (dictionary.com), listed under the word, “persuasive”.

Lereah persuasive

United States citizens not wanting to purchase a home have been powerless to resist Mr. Lereah’s announcements that “they should” purchase a home now.

Using a form of Mind Control known only to the initiated few, Lereah has run roughshod over anyone trying to not buy a home.

Now, even his detractors, previously intent on renting, are starting to “call a Realtor” – as Mr. Lereah has “suggested” they do. 2007 will be very interesting to watch, as this battle continues to unfold.

What is at stake in this fight is the freedom for individuals to think what they want to think. It seems the National Association of Realtors will stop at nothing short of World Domination and uses Lereah to force everyone to “see it their way”.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

December 31, 2006

Real Estate Blogging For Cash

by Doug Quance

Associate Broker

I am noticing a troubling trend.

Many real estate blogs are using text link ads and Google ads – and now some bloggers are even getting paid to post. Does anybody else feel like this is a fundamental mistake for most real estate professionals?

Don’t get me wrong – those bloggers whose blogs ARE their business need to be compensated for their time… I have no problem whatsoever with those guys.

It’s the Realtors that I question.

First of all, I think it’s fairly stupid to allow ads from competing Realtors to be shown on your website. I was on an agent’s site this morning and before you knew it – BAM – I’m on the competitor’s site. Needless to say, I forgot all about the original site I was on – and closed my browser window before returning to it.

Now there are a few companies out there that are paying bloggers to post about advertisers products or services. Although this practice is supposedly done with transparency, I can’t help but wonder…

“What business are you in? Real estate or blogging?”

I can’t believe that the public views it any differently.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before. Many times, in fact. Maybe I’m just an overly critical type of person.

I will be very interested to hearing YOUR thoughts on this phenomenon.

December 31, 2006

Fred Flintstone speaks: Sniffing around video podcasting . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

The link below will bring up a video we made in September of 2005. There’s much to apologize for: I do, beyond doubt, look like Fred Flintstone, no one went to the MTV school of interesting videography and my presentation is punctuated by too many um’s and random interrogatories (“right?”). Worst of all, this was near the apogee of the real estate boom in Phoenix, and my near-term and mid-term predictions have proved to be way off.

This was delivered to a college-level class of real estate pre-licensing students, so there is quite a bit of inside baseball. The file is huge, too, around 150MB, so you might want to give it a miss on that basis alone.

This video is called Real Estate in Real Life, Part I. Part II dealt with a four-sided, entirely-brokered transactions (that is, I introduced and represented all four sides). This was very intricate, and it’s a nice illustration of the Realtor’s art. I thought about posting that, instead, but good Realtors already know how to put complicated transactions together, and, of course, our BubbleHeaded friends have nothing to learn from anyone.

But: What I’m really doing is installing and testing the technology necessary for us to deliver audio and video podcasting content in the coming year. In the short run, I want to archive interviews with some of the amazing people we get to talk to. In the longer run, we may put together something more formal, like a podcasted real estate radio or television show.

For now: Watch it if you like. It’s informative and at least mildly inspiring. There will be more audio and video content to come in 2007.

December 31, 2006

The S & P Is Up Over 16% In 2006!

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Over the last half century or so the S & P has averaged, give or take, about 8% growth annually. Pretty impressive. A lot of folks are very impressed, especially those who’ve invested into vehicles tied to the S & P index. They did better than ok this year, don’t you think? Twice the average for the last half century ain’t bad by anyone’s calculations. As a matter of fact let’s say the S & P annual growth rate for the five year period) averaged 10% annually, which is still 25% better than the average since Eisenhower was president. For those already retired and receiving income from investment grade insurance vehicles, many of which are tied directly to that index, 2006 has been a banner year. If you’re wondering why the grandkids made out like bandits at Christmas this year, that could very well be the answer.

For the same period of time let’s have two investors, one in the S & P, the other in real estate. They both have a hundred grand to invest. The real estate guy is at a little disadvantage though because he’ll need to hold some of his cash back as reserves. The S & P investor can afford to put his entire hundred grand into his investment.

So the real estate guy finds three duplexes for $200k apiece. (Remember, even though it’s San Diego, it’s 2001.) He puts 10% down on each one. His total investment including closing costs was about $75k. He put the remaining $25k in the bank as a cash reserve account. The duplexes all provided about $100 monthly positive cash flow, though our investor was just hoping they’d at least break even.

Note: My office structured transactions like this a few times a month back then, month in and month out.

Even though the real estate appreciation rate was three times what we’re assigning to the S & P for these five years, we’re going to limit it for this example to 10% a year for the real estate also. This results in a value of roughly $254k half way through Read more

December 30, 2006

Real Estate: The Big Ballers’ Crap Shoot

by Brian Brady

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

My hands were sweaty as I nervously darted my eyes around the craps table . I was the pariah because I was “betting on the don’t line”. This particular strategy can be extraordinarily frustrating when a table gets hot. It requires a bettor to double up his stake each time he is incorrect. It takes incredible faith in the mathematical probability of a negative result.

“Seven Out!” yelled the croupier.

Victory, while inevitable, doesn’t really feel that sweet. I risked $2500 to win five bucks. I proved my strategy to the reckless gamblers betting the other way. I yelped exuberantly, not for my intellectual superiority, but in relief that my bet, the family vacation money, hadn’t disappeared. While I was yelping, the players at my table were pocketing pink and black chips and cheering raucously. Confused, I learned that they were collecting chips every time those dice hit various numbers on the way to making ten straight points .

Now craps may seem like a poor analogy to the real estate market. It really isn’t. I know that craps, a loaded game of chance, always favors the house no matter what strategy you employ. Real estate is a loaded game of chance; the best thing about it is that it is loaded in the owner’s favor. The “MySpace Generation” and the immigrant population are entering the housing market in the next 10 years. The demographics are astoundingly favorable, especially for the sunbelt states.

I think all the bubbleheads and doom pundits should yelp. You were absolutely correct this year. 2006, perhaps part of 2007, will be the year (s) of the bubbleheads. Gloat! Wipe your brow with confidence in your marked intelligence. I commend you for your prowess. You had to be correct one of these years; you had mathematics on your side.

Take a look around. Your neighbor sold that rental property in Anaheim and lost $30,000. So why, like the gamblers betting on the come line, is he Read more

December 29, 2006

Common Sense Office Policy

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Have you ever called an agent’s office and asked, “May I please speak with John?”, and find yourself sent directly to John’s voice mail? Does it irritate you? It is one of my pet peeves. Or how about email? How many times have you sent information by email, or a series of questions to someone during an escrow, only to have them call you with several questions which were answered in your initial message — Or answer only two of the five questions you asked.

Ever found yourself after lunch waiting for a response from an email you sent in the morning, only to find out they hadn’t even looked at their mail yet? Often these are the same people who fancy themselves as being part of a ‘hi-tech’ operation.

Faxes too have become a major headache in our business. By the time a document has done a few fax-laps it may resemble pages copied from the Red Sea scrolls. With the cost of scanners down these days to just above a case of Pepsi Vanilla, (Less that is unless you’re selling it to The Phoenix Real Estate Guy :-)) scanning signed docs for emailing makes a lot of sense. It also has saved hours of needless conversations between agents and escrow, lenders, and other agents. How many times would you have given serious money just to have a readable contract when time mattered? This is where scanning, and the use of pdf’s are simply a no-brainer.

All this can cost the agent money, and worse, clients. In the short run clients will accept the fact that others are slowing you down through poor performance. But eventually the failures of those upon whom you rely will be associated with you. And if the offender is you, your clients will not long think of you as a real pro.

I offer the solutions we’ve installed in our office. They’re surely not the only way to go, but they work for us.

With rare exception the phone will be answered before the third ring by a live voice.
If the person called is unavailable, a time for the returned Read more

December 29, 2006

BloodhoundBlog at six months: Getting our legs under us . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

BloodhoundBlog is six month’s old today. The first post, an accidental prophesy, was about the incipient disintermediation of for-pay content providers in the age of the internet:

If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?

I documented the birth of the blog soon thereafter, but it’s reasonable to argue that BloodhoundBlog is a natural progression in the erosion of the castle walls surrounding for-pay intellectual property. When Joseph Rago rails that weblogs are “written by fools to be read by imbeciles,” by what sum, precisely, is the Wall Street Journal enriched? Is it plausible that more wealth was “monetized” in the Rago-reaction than ever was realized by the original rant? If “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” who made more — Rago or the anti-Ragoons? And what persists, in the end, but another “free” opinion in an unmetered atmosphere of “free” opinions?

Their world is done. Ours is but begun. There may be a way to build a wall around original reporting, particularly where the information is time-sensitive, is difficult to obtain or is available only from an easily-restricted source. The obvious example is a real-time — as against time-delayed — stock ticker. What’s left after that? Habit? Status? Higher production quality — which may be a further expression of status? What argument can the vestigial Joseph Ragos make for the added value of “metered” air? It’s time for a deep breath, isn’t it? Why not? The air is “free.”

Do you want to argue for the superiority of your content? Good on ya! Produce superior content. Is it your goal to argue that your content is so much better that you deserve to be paid for it? Good luck with that plan. You may be able to draw enough eyes that you can dupe some advertisers into paying for the chance to try to hook a few — just like the endlessly preening broadcast news. If you see your future in a box office — a toll booth on the information superhighway — then do, please, take that deep breath. There’s a clue Read more

December 29, 2006

Information comes with experience

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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

Information comes with experience

Continuing from last week, let’s work together as Realtors and round out the purchase offer for our buyers.

What’s the best closing date? The buyers have never thought about it, but it’s our job to know. They’re in a lease until the end of January, and obviously they would want to limit the number of days they pay for two homes.

But mortgage interest is paid in arrears. If the buyers close very late in the month, they will pay a small amount for those few days of interest, and then their next payment will not come until March 1 — a nice breather.

Closing too late in the month is bad because things can spill over to the start of the month — which means almost a full month of interest payments in advance. Ideally, we want a Tuesday, seven to 10 days from the end of the month.

But wait: The buyers are taking 3 percent in closing costs. Who cares about pre-paid interest? The buyers might not know to care, but we get paid to care. Our costs are so low that we might be able to apply a big chunk of that 3 percent to buying down the interest rates, leaving the buyers with extra money in their pockets with every monthly payment.

How much in earnest? A thousand dollars, right now. It’s a buyer’s market.

Now this is not a hugely aggressive offer. Buyers are rarely willing to push things as hard as they might. But, the aggression in this offer was put there by us, not by the buyers. Most of the very subtle ideas the buyers will have known nothing about until we explained them.

That’s representation — real, not perceived. Truly, the buyers had no idea how to construct an offer for their home.

Every home is unique, and every real estate transaction is unique. There is no way that unrepresented buyers and sellers can do as well for themselves as they could with professional representation. The information that matters doesn’t come from the MLS, it comes from the Read more

December 29, 2006

LEREAH SAYS BUY NOW !!

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

It is official – David Lereah quoted on CNN – and everyone is doing just what he says!

Lereah Says Buy

December 28, 2006

Consumer Federation of America – Controlled by Big Banks?

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

A somewhat remarkable report has been released by the Consumer Federation of America. I first read about it on Inman News and wondered who they were. Was this just another front group (obviously bought and paid for by big banking) like the American Homeowners Grass Roots Alliance? I also first ran across that group on Inman – Inman will almost always find any letter written by Bruce Hahn, the President of the American Homeowners Grass Roots Alliance, worth publishing. As Hahn is so obviously getting funding from some organization with pretty deep pockets, it was easy to spot him and his organization as a front for someone with an agenda they would prefer be kept hidden. I don’t actually know it is Bank of America but, for sure, it is big banking that keeps Mr. Hahn’s “alliance” afloat.

So I am expecting to find something similar when I read about the report issued a couple of weeks ago by the Consumer Federation of America. Surprise, surprise – they really are a “federation” and they really do have lots of links that have nothing to do with real estate sales being regulated by the federal government. For anyone who would like to wade through the entire report from the CFA here is a PDF of it.

For anyone who would care to read excellent expert analysis of the report and the overall “flow” that is coming from the CFA – there are two articles by Blanche Evans that I think are well worth spending the time they will take to read. I read her most recent one first, it was first published December 12. Then the one she wrote on July 25 of this year.

I would also like to extend a warm welcome to our newest member, Brian Brady. I was surprised (and pleased) to see you on BloodhoundBlog, as I had just found you (on your blog) a couple of weeks ago and really liked what I saw. Also, I just have to commend our “Top Blogger” on BloodhoundBlog (she is the first one on the list). I vote that if any new Read more

December 26, 2006

A Realtor’s Guide to Alien Lenders

by Brian Brady

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

“First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the ….”

-Tony Montana in the movie, Scarface

The professional Realtor has always helped a would be homebuyer by referring her to a credible financing source. That paradigm has shifted much in the past few years as lenders have positioned themselves as the first stop on the home buying highway. Our marketing message has basically been the aforementioned Tony Montana quote. That message has caused a new phenomenon for Realtors that I call “Alien Mortgage Originators”. The point of my post here is to temper the xenophobia that exists in Realtors’ hearts when dealing with Alien Mortgage Originators. These five tips will help Realtors identify which Alien Originators are credible and which are just a voice on the phone looking to scalp your buyer.

1- The first question to ask an Alien Originator is one you hear down South a lot. “Just who are your people?” Southerners, wary of carpetbaggers, find that question an effective way of finding common bonds. The internet is an inexpensive way to let Alien Originators broadcast who “our people” are so google them. Maybe the connection is a college tie, an old job, an old hometown, etc. When you ask me that question, it humanizes both you and me. Now… we both cheer for the Arizona Cardinals, or both dated Julie from Joliet, or both went to Big East colleges. It’s not much to both cheer for the Arizona Cardinals but I’m less likely to let you down knowing that small fact about you.

2- The second question would be to ask for referrals, preferably from Realtors within your town or franchise. Why the Realtor rather than the client? Realtors have inside intelligence about originators that a client wouldn’t. I love when I’m funding a purchase with a Keller Williams agent because I know so many of them. I understand their Belief System and can recite it for them. I know “their” rules. An Alien Originator wants to show off his stuff to a new Realtor relationship. If the Alien Originator has no common referral sources for Read more

Category: Real Estate (page 222 of 266)

Today’s Forecast

by Kris Berg

NAR dead pool . . . ?

by Greg Swann

LongTail.TV: Welcome to five-hundred-thousand-channel television . . .

by Greg Swann

Real estate resolutions: Cough less, earn more . . .

by Greg Swann

LEREAH PUSHES IT EVEN FURTHER

by Russell Shaw

Real Estate Blogging For Cash

by Doug Quance

Fred Flintstone speaks: Sniffing around video podcasting . . .

by Greg Swann

The S & P Is Up Over 16% In 2006!

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate: The Big Ballers’ Crap Shoot

by Brian Brady

Common Sense Office Policy

by Jeff Brown

BloodhoundBlog at six months: Getting our legs under us . . .

by Greg Swann

Information comes with experience

by Greg Swann

LEREAH SAYS BUY NOW !!

by Russell Shaw

Consumer Federation of America – Controlled by Big Banks?

by Russell Shaw

A Realtor’s Guide to Alien Lenders

by Brian Brady

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