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Category: Real Estate (page 228 of 266)

November 28, 2006

One more hound on the trail . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding one more contributor to our roster today:

Ronan Doyle lives in Boston and works as an advertising agency creative executive. He loves distinctive homes and is building his wealth house by house: Search, buy, improve, enjoy, sell — then repeat the process.

Ronan know more about houses — about what makes a house work — than anyone I’ve ever met. Between Restoration Hardware and the two-year capital gains income tax exclusion, he is a one-man urban renewal project.

Jim Duncan at Real Central VA wonders if I might be wrong about the audience for real estate weblogs. In fact I could be. There may be more real estate consumers out there than I suppose, and they may be more persistent in their reading than I surmise.

For my own part, I don’t see them — very much the contrary. As I argued a week-and-a-half ago:

If you’re writing a real estate weblog, you’re blogging for people who are fanatical about real estate. Who would that be? Realtors, lenders and the vendors who live off their business. Bubbleheads and people on the bubble about bubbleheadedness. Real estate investors. That’s it. There might be some peeking-in/checking-up traffic from past clients, and perhaps some dedicated fans. There will be drop-ins from people shopping for Realtors, but they will not become dedicated readers. How do I know this? Because they don’t care. You can tell who cares about your weblog by looking at your Technorati links. There are 55 million weblogs out there, but the only ones linking to you are produced by other real estate fanatics. That’s not a wave. That’s the water…

Even so, the simple fact is that we are focused the way we are because this is what is interesting to us. I don’t tell other people what to do, and I may be completely wrong about locally-focused, consumer-oriented real estate weblogs. We actually have a nascent weblog devoted to those kinds of ideas, but we don’t give it any time.

In any case, it may turn out that Ronan Doyle is our brave initiative to straddle the line. Ronan is truly a real estate fanatic, Read more

November 27, 2006

The historical preservation movement deploys a veiled theivery to create compulsory museums

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

Richard Riccelli asks

Historic districts: Good for buyers? Sellers? Realtors? This guy??

I say: depends on what the buyer wants; maybe but maybe not; neutral; that guy was robbed!

Buyers of any property, real or personal, get to celebrate their own personal tastes by buying what they like and can afford. So are historic districts good for buyers? It depends on whether that’s important to the buyer. Some of my buying clients like HOAs, others loathe them. Some like brand-new builds, others want rambling ranches circa 1970. That’s their business. My business is to help them find whatever they want.

I happen to prefer older homes to newer ones. But I don’t believe older homes are physically better than newer ones. Better architecture and craftsmanship come at a price… then and now. A house built for the middle class buyer of 1935 is probably of similar quality to a house built for today’s middle class buyer. Similar quality but less appropriate for today’s lifestyle. Yet the historic middle class home, particularly in an historic district, is more expensive for today’s buyer than the middle class home in the suburbs. Why? Because the historic home is more rare, and in a free market that makes it more precious.

Right now there is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house listed on 124 W Coronado Rd in Phoenix’s Willo district. It’s a plain 2,277 square foot brick ranch with stained concrete floors and a single car garage that’s been converted to a storage facility. Because of the age, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of closets or kitchen storage. When the house was new, it would have been smaller — the second bath and master bedroom walk-in closet described in the listing would have been added later — and built for the working class. The asking price on this listing is $675,000.

In Peoria, that $675,000 will buy you a 3 bedroom, 3.25 bath 3,045 square foot house with casita (separate guest quarters) and 3-car garage on a golf course lot. This house has a highly upgraded gourmet kitchen — stainless, granite, maple — with a wine room, among Read more

November 27, 2006

Baby, you can drive my sale

by

Marketing Provocateur

Author website

Discovered in my morning paper that the parking spot behind my house is worth more than the house. (Click quick before the item goes into the paper’s gated community of unread articles).

Average cost per square foot of condo in Boston to park yourself: $561.07.

Average cost per square foot of open air pavement in Boston to park your car: $1,736.11.

Priceless. No wonder my neighbor describes our block as parking spaces with attached row houses (or in the parlance, “townhouses”).

I see it as a marketing lesson in real estate. Good advertising is not about what you are dying to sell. But about what clients are hot to buy. And how your listings solve their problems. More about that — and how it can help you write better sales copy that attracts more buyers — in a future post.

For now it’s a lesson that I, too, need to learn.

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November 27, 2006

New tricks: Just how much noise can a pack of big dogs can make . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

With this post, this little puppy is making sounds like a grown-up hound dog…

BloodhoundBlog began five months ago as a Phoenix-area brokerage-oriented real estate weblog. We became a sort of hybrid group-blog when we added mega-producing Phoenix-area Realtor Russell Shaw. We stuck another paw in the water when we invited San Diego-based investment broker Jeff Brown to come play with us in the Dual Agency Smack-Down. And that went so well that we decided to grow BloodhoundBlog into a true group-blog.

We’ve always been national in the scope of our interests, but now we are truly national (or at least bi-coastal) in our reach. Moreover, the webloggers we are adding will continue the BloodhoundBlog tradition of rigorous real estate analysis — thoughtful without being dour, informative without being pedantic, disagreeing, where we must, without being disagreeable.

These are our contributors:

Jeff Brown is a San Diego-based real estate investments broker. He makes millionaires of his ordinary-investor clients. If that’s not enough to make you smile, his sage, folksy wit should do the job.

Cathleen Collins is a Phoenix-area Realtor. With a background in hi-tech project-management and a deft hand in customer service, she is building a respectable listing practice in the Historic Districts of Downtown Phoenix.

Tony Fredericks is a San Francisco-area roofing contractor who is using his surplus income to build a real estate investment empire. Tony is a wine aficionado who brings a fine discrimination to everything he does.

Richard Riccelli is a Boston-based direct marketing guru. His advertising agency specializes in magazine circulation, but here Richard will deploy his vast expertise and rapier wit to real estate marketing issues.

Russell Shaw is a mega-producing Realtor working in Metropolitan Phoenix. He and his team close approximately 400 transactions a year, consistently putting Russell among the top 30 Realtors nationwide.

Greg Swann is a Phoenix-area Realtor and real estate broker. The most prolific of our contributors, Greg is not completely happy with anything until he has picked it apart and put it back together in his own way.

Room for one more? We are interested, now and always, in considering new contributors. If you can write with style, grace Read more

November 27, 2006

Jay Reifert Is Tired Of NAR Hiding The Truth

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Good news, Jay, I’ll take this one for $200.00. I doubt that Laurie Janik is going to respond to you (as – per you – they have “something to hide”):

You’re a riot, Steve. My contract is a proprietary document, built out of years worth of my research, experience and fine tuning. Why don’t you ask Coca Cola to post their secret recipe here? I have no intention of putting it out here for you, and your kind, to copy.

Why don’t you call Laurie Janik, General Counsel of the National Association of Realtors? over at NAR headquarters in Chicago and ask Laurie to do something about me? I am just spoiling to
get this fight into the public eye, so that the abuses endemic with Procuring Cause, the silent theft of home buyer rights,will come to the forefront of consumer consciousness.

I have no qualms, whatsoever, about the truth of this situation getting out. Unlike NAR…I have nothing to hide.

The buyer agent document you use is a SECRET that you won’t share with other agents? And you think that you are being ignored by Laurie Janik because “NAR has something to hide”? What a self-important gas bag you are. Please allow me to let a little of the air out. And to answer your burning question, yes Jay, I did Google “procuring cause””reifert”. Anyone who cares to can just hit the hyperlink.

I found your views and attitudes so self centered and oblivious of how the world works (the one everybody else lives in) that – before I reply – I am including your comments on Bloodhound Blog here in their entirety.

Thank you for the kind words, Trevor. The Procuring Cause that is of importance, here, is Realtor? Procuring Cause, hereafter–in this post–PC. Although there is a legal doctrine of procuring cause, that isn’t the breed of which any of us speak, when talking about PC. NAR hands down the guidelines on PC arbitrations, but it is up to each panel–very often composed of hard core PC trappers–to interpret the events which will determine who is actually PC in any given transaction.When Read more

November 26, 2006

Sunday real estate news: There may, in fact, truly be a day beyond tomorrow . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Arizona Republic is positively ripe with real estate stories today.

First up, the amazingly ugly Chateaux on Central condominium development is being forced into bankruptcy. The homes were to sell for $2- to $4-million for apartments as many as six-stories tall — not a misprint. Freddy Krueger and Damien from The Omen took a pass on choice units, thus exhausting the entire market for this giant gargoyle of a structure.

In that same column, ace real estate reporter Catherine Reagor suggests that there might be a connection between lower interest rates and increased buyer activity. Jeepers! Who’d ‘a thunk it?!

Economist Elliott Pollack says nice things about the Valley’s growth prospects, so he must be making it all up. Cliff’s Notes: Fundamentals strong, new housing over-built, possibly still as long as two years to shake out.

One of the things I love about this place is that people are audacious. We all know about the giant fake lake in Tempe, but did you know that we have not one but two airstrip-based subdivisions? Garage in front, hangar in back with accessways leading to a private airstrip. In Gilbert, there is a boat-racing subdivision — a long, skinny lake surrounded by houses with docks. They run nationally-televised boat races there. Comes news today that we are about to get our own micro-winery. Modeled on the idea of a micro-brewery, a vintner plans to set up business in Downtown Tempe.

Finally, there is a fun story on the development problems posed by hundreds of old military bombing sites in Pinal County. The explosive charges used in the practice bombs were very small — but still plenty enough to burn down a house. The interesting thing is that we’re talking about Pinal County — too much, too soon, too often declared DOA in the housing downturn. It could be there are people in the real estate business who have heard there really was a day before yesterday, and there may, in fact, truly be a day beyond tomorrow…

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November 26, 2006

Furious fusillades of blistering BubbleHead flatulence: Foghorn Leghorn declares “WAR!”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Well.

That was even more lame than I expected. Foghorn Leghorn–er, Keith at HousingPanic has declared war by commanding his troops to… read.

And to read BloodhoundBlog of all things!

Yeah, that’ll work…

The specific marching orders are pretty stupid, but that’s hardly a surprise.

The troops are supposed to prove that the Phoenix housing market has crashed, which has proved to be a problem, given that it hasn’t.

They are supposed to “flame away, and hard,” with the objective of chasing away future clients. Do your best, boys. Anyone who will listen to you — I don’t want.

This one I love:

Dig up postings, articles and quotes from Greg Swann for all to see. Where he admits having unlicensed or out of work realtors working for him.

The specific post cited says nothing of the sort, but, of course, Keith can’t read. But most BubbleHeads are much smarter than their “leader,” so do please read all you can here. This is one of the most serious real estate weblogs on the net. If you open your minds, you’ll learn a lot.

There is more — for example, a repetition of the false charge that I have posted comments at HP — but the whole call to action is pretty pitiful.

How’s the war going? I think this comment says it all:

What a pile of excrement is here in this blog.

It’s a waste of time to try to read blood whatever.

You better go anywhere else on the web.

This site is brain dead.

In other words, the poster is fighting out of his class and he knows it.

To our BubbleHead visitors: Even if you can’t stand on your own, surely you can do better than this moron you follow so slavishly…

And to our regular readers: This will be all heat, no substance. You do not have to respond to every comment — nor to any of them. They are not paying you for your time. I tend to choose comments by people who are better-behaved and who are raising points I want to talk about.

Ultimately, this has nothing to do with real estate. This is about the wounded vanity of a vile, ignorant Read more

November 25, 2006

NAR Got It Right & Greg is Correct Too

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

I stand corrected – what I wrote was wrong. I said,

“Some interesting stats (that NAR should have evaluated but doesn’t dare – as it would look like they favored “traditional brokers” over the current crop of leeches)”

2006 NAR President, Tom Stevens did correctly evaluate that data and NAR did a wonderful job of it too. You can see it all here, in an article by Blanche Evans – who is, by far, the most well informed and relevant estate columnist around.

Greg Swann wrote about the extremely nutty Keith at Housing Panic and I laughed out loud when I read it. Greg – in a different post – wrote about Ace Reporter, Catherine Reagor – protesting her lack of relevant data analysis. He closed that post with:

Why are newspapers dying? How about because they refuse to tell the whole truth…?

I don’t believe that Catherine Reagor is refusing to tell the whole truth – I believe that she can not correctly evaluate relative importances or has an editor who has gone WAY out of his or her way (for years) to always make her look bad. Has she ever written anything that you (“you” here would be anyone reading this) thought, thinking to yourself, “Damn, that was good!”. Compare any random droppings from Blanche Evans to Catherine Reagor’s work and you will notice that Blanche tends to compare statistics so that after you read what she wrote, you are better informed – and now know more about the subject. But the quality of their real estate writing really isn’t true for everyone at the Arizona Republic, I’ve enjoyed reading Bob Golfen’s car columns for years – and even if I didn’t like the car he was writing about, I liked reading what he had to say about it. A couple of really bright and decent people in the editorial area there are Richard de Uriate and Doug MacEachern. Also, I don’t believe that the Arizona Republic would have anything to gain by intentionally withholding “the truth” – about any subject.

Giving any statistic without comparing it to SOMETHING RELEVANT tends to make the statement Read more

November 25, 2006

Keith at Housing Panic is for sale . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Who didn’t know?

Here is Keith from Housing Panic volunteering to “go easy on me”, to “pull his punches” — essentially to “take a dive”.

Why? Because he can’t bear up to the ridicule his ridiculous behavior incites.

Responding to this post, days late, Keith sent me this email (click here for full source — provided to prevent the wanker from trying to deny it):

From: housingpanic@yahoo.com
Subject: your choice
Date: November 25, 2006 11:18:34 AM MST
To: GregSwann@BloodhoundRealty.com

I’ll give you a choice.

1) A war with the thousands of HP’ers so harsh and loud your practice and reputation in Arizona likely wouldn’t survive (beyond the damage you’re doing yourself)

2) A truce

Here’s your post that is way beyond the pale, and made you look like some unprofessional weirdo. I’d suggest this be pulled by the weekend.

Your choice

Keith

Here is the specific language Keith is objecting to:

Finally, it might be nice if everyone would chip in to buy Keith at Housing Panic some lubricant. The poor sod has been Masturbating to Armageddon for months now, to no discernible result. It’s gotta chafe…

Here is a post, one of hundreds, in which you can witness Keith Masturbating to Armageddon.

It’s easy to make jokes about him, because the man is such an outsized fool, but, in fact, he is completely beyond parody. I used to think he might be dangerous, not so much anymore. Months ago, someone asked me to write a few words about him, and this is what I came up with:

We speak of trolls casually, but the Norse idea of the troll is a much more serious thing. A troll seeks chaos, another fine word ruined by overuse. I wrote once that a troll is “a spark of hell’s fire seeking ready tinder on the earth.”

This is what Keith is, a true troll. He has the gift of finding the evil bone in men with no will to evil. He tickles it until they become their worst possible selves.

The only true capital is human capital, which is not just mental but also moral power — not just the skill but also the will to do Read more

November 25, 2006

Be careful what you sign with broker . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
Be careful what you sign with broker

When you sign a buyer-broker agreement with a Realtor, is there some law that says you must thereafter include that Realtor in the purchase of any home he or she showed you? Once you’ve “married” your agent, are you ever really “divorced”?

No such law.

Feeling relieved? You can stop that right now.

While there is no law binding you to your someday-to-be-former buyer’s agent, you may well have signed a contract that says that someday never comes. Or at least not soon.

Consider this, from the Arizona Association of Realtors Buyer Broker Agreement:

“e. Buyer agrees to pay such compensation if Buyer, within ____ calendar days after the termination of this Agreement, enters into an agreement to purchase, exchange, option or lease any Property shown to or negotiated on behalf of the Buyer by Broker during the term of this Agreement, unless Buyer enters into a subsequent buyer-broker exclusive employment agreement with another broker.”

The blank is filled in with a number, often 30, sometimes 90, although it could be anything. If you and your agent mutually agreed to 1,001 days, it would be two and three-quarter years before you are divorced.

Unless you sign another buyer-broker agreement.

This kind of holdover language is common in real estate employment contracts. It’s there to frustrate betrayal. If you make a whispering deal with the listing agent to cut your buyer’s agent out of the deal, that language cuts him right back in.

So how long is long enough to protect the buyer’s agent without unduly hamstringing the buyer? How about 15 days?

Or how about zero?

My attitude is, if you’re done with me, I’m done with you. Whatever you do after we’re divorced is your business.

But different agents will see this issue differently, and this is why buyers and sellers need to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the contracts they are asked to sign. Very probably, the form you are looking at is not filled out to your advantage.

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November 25, 2006

Amazingly low foreclosure rate at a two year high . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s Saturday, the Arizona Republic‘s favorite day to piss on the real estate market. Today ace reporter Catherine Reagor informs us that foreclosures are up. “By how much?” you ask. You don’t read the Republic much, do you?

Instead of actual numbers we get all manner of obfuscation, scary anecdotes, out-of-context statistics and quotations from authorities of dubious authority.

But if you wade your way to the eleventh paragraph, you get to the real numbers. How many foreclosure auctions last month? One-hundred-thirty-three. An additional 1,186 homeowners got trustee notices, which means that if they don’t sell, refinance or catch up on their payments quickly, their homes will be auctioned.

I cannot tell you with certainly how many owned domiciles there are in Maricopa County. A million, at least. I feel bad for the 133 families who lost their homes in foreclosure auction, but I expect more homes than that burned down last month.

In other words, the change in the rate of foreclosures is interesting only because our foreclosure rate has been outrageously low over the last two years.

Why are newspapers dying? How about because they refuse to tell the whole truth…?

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November 25, 2006

Content piracy on the RE.net . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

An aggregator weblog called Real Estate Chatter is resyndicating the feeds of these 25 real estate weblogs:

My presumption is that this is being done without permission — it was in the case of BloodhoundBlog. In other words, this seems to me to be a case of RSS feed piracy.

Good news: The site is run by an actual human being, Ian Holsman, who says he will remove feeds upon request — which he has done with BloodhoundBlog.

Why these dinks can’t just ask permission in the first place, I don’t know.

Lorelle on WordPress has much, much more on dealing with content theft — and her advice is not-for-WordPress-only.

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November 24, 2006

What IS Marketing Anyway?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

In early 2006, the former president of Realtor.com, Steve Ozonian was appointed Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Realty Information Systems, Inc. dba Help-U-Sell Real Estate. Just prior to this time, he was living in Laguna Niguel, California, where he had a home to sell. Would it have seemed “logical” or “right” for him to list his home with a Help U Sell agent? Probably, but that isn’t who he called. He first called, top selling Re/Max agent, Bob Wolff. Bob wouldn’t reduce his commission and Steve listed with someone else (I believe it was a Coldwell Banker agent who actually took and sold the listing). It was NOT a Help U Sell agent or a Help U Sell office. The closest Help U Sell office to Steve’s home was in Corona Del Mar, 21.8 miles away – a bit of distance, but not that far.

It says right there on that particular office’s landing page, “Full Service, BIG Savings! Licensed Professionals at a low set-fee” – and yet, Steve didn’t call them. Why? Was it the distance from Corona Del Mar to Dana Point? I don’t think so, I believe there was another more significant factor involved – marketing position.

What is successful marking? Is it “running an ad”? Is it sending a postcard? Wearing a nice suit and smiling? How about a “PR campaign”? Is that marketing?

Marketing is the “shelf space” you (or the product, or both) occupy in the mind of the prospect. Any product or person is thought of in “a certain way”. This may or may not be based on advertising – usually not. Think of someone you really trust. That person has a “position” in YOUR mind that says that they – and what they have to say – can be trusted. It can be depended upon. The most significant breakthrough on this subject (and still one of the most important books on this subject ever written) is “Positioning, The Battle For Your Mind” by Ries & Trout. The more recent, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout is Read more

November 23, 2006

How not to take it in the shorts . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had a confidential Ask the Broker question this morning, believe it or not. Glossing over the whole thing, the listing agent could have avoided the entire problem with this language in a counter-offer:

Buyer is aware that seller reserves the right to cancel this contract unilaterally and without recourse within ten days of acceptance, with earnest deposit refunded in full to the buyer, if the projected net proceeds to the seller from this transaction will not satisfy seller’s entire costs.

In other words, if it’s a short-sale, it’s a no-sale. I don’t know if this sort of contingency is common in other states. It’s not in Arizona, but it should be right now. Our contract is written with almost no outs for the seller, which I like, but it is entirely possible right now that sellers could be ham-strung by a deal they can’t afford to honor. Agency is looking out for the disasters no one else foresaw…

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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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