A vigorous cross-examination of David G. from Zillow.com. The richer ore is in the comments, so be sure to keep scrolling.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Category: Real Estate (page 250 of 266)
This is from email I had earlier this week:
Jim Cronin from The Real Estate Tomato and I were just talking about real estate blogging being what real estate websites will begin to morph into. He sent me to your blog and I was wondering if that has been productive for you as a lead generator.
For the first point, I’m with Jim wall-to-wall. In every second of my spare time, I am preparing to repurpose all of our content to weblogs or weblog-like pages. Last weekend my son Cameron reformulated our content engines to make them site-independent (and therefore appearance-independent), and I want him to take a second pass at everything to build content that will look like an Ubertor site to people but will search like friendly old HTML 3.0 to Google. There are other weblog-like things we’re doing at the transaction-management level. It would be reasonable to say that in due course weblogging will be the defining metaphor of our internet presence.
For the second point — has weblogging been a productive lead generator? — I don’t know. A fuller answer is more complicated than that, but the whole issue is trumped by an even larger point: I don’t care.
I want to approach business as a vendor in the same way I approach it as a customer. In other words, I don’t want people treating me as a lead, as a link in their food chain. As soon as I start to feel like a salesman’s prey, I get creeped out. I don’t have to feel that way for very long to get gone. On the other hand, if I feel that you are looking out for my interests, offering me the sage counsel I have sought — and perhaps the advice I hadn’t known to ask for — then we have a sound basis for going ahead with a transaction.
There’s a lot of mercenary weblogging advice out there right now, and much of it strikes me as being doubly-dysfunctional. Yes, weblogging has huge SEO advantages, but if you go out of your way to write SEO-attractive copy, you will have Read more
Here is a good example of why short-term real estate numbers are so useless.
In Arizona, the foreclosure rate leapt nearly 27 percent in August compared to July.
Wow! Twenty-seven percent! That’s huge… right? Wrong.
Foreclosures in August were down nearly 12 percent from the same month last year[.]
Last August, there were almost no foreclosures. We were in the midst of an unprecedented housing boom.
So what does “leapt nearly 27 percent” mean? It means about as much as a four-year-old leaping 27 percent higher than a three-year-old. Tell the Chicken Little Brigade to stand down — and belay that call to the Olympic Committee…
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
Marlow Harris has a fascinating post on the barriers faced by Muslim buyers and real estate agents. Not to get too philosophical, but this actually ties in with Pope Benedict’s remarks earlier this week: Where Judaism and Christianity each represent measured compromises with Greek culture, Islam is in certain respects an anti-Hellenistic counter-revolution. (I can do this at a much more fundamental level, but you have to buy me beer.)
The Real Estate Bloggers address The new real estate paradigm — for real estate agents, citing the Mike’s Corner post I mentioned the other day. On the point, if you haven’t read it, take a look at my own entry on this topic, Seven essential skills of the 21st century real estate agent.
And The Phoenix Real Estate Guy posts a very funny rant on completely useless MLS listings:
I should probably cut the listing agent some slack about the photos. This is a new construction home after all. It was listed 569 days ago but was just completed in July. So the listing agent has only had 19 months to download a photo of the lot, the view, the home under construction or some sort of visual. Maybe a floor plan? And since it’s only been complete for 2 months, why should there be a photo of the never seen before pool design?
Indeed.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
This is me from today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). I wish I could deliver an SEO boost to the weblogs mentioned here, but I doubt that will happen. First, the paper didn’t create links for the web-based version of this story. And second, the Republic hides everything behind a for-pay wall within a few weeks.
Here are some blogs that stay on top of real estate
We publish a respected real estate weblog called BloodhoundBlog. In consequence, I am very aware of the goings-on in the real estate blogosphere.
A weblog, or blog, is a regularly updated Internet-based journal, in some ways akin to a diary. But a blog is also a conversation among the bloggers and their readers, who can comment on and discuss the blog entries.
But there is an even larger conversation going on, blog to blog, all of which are linking to each other and to the entire Internet. By following the links, you can explore an issue thoroughly.
There are dozens of excellent real estate blogs. Here are some I visit every day:
- Rain City Guide. Meta-brokerage mega-blog, a nice combination of very smart writers.
- The Real Estate Tomato. Color and zest, a savory combination concerned mainly with high-tech real estate issues.
- The Future of Real Estate Marketing. The daily bible of real estate technology.
- 360Digest. Marlow Harris is a serious mind. Not dour or joyless, but never frivolous or shallow. A voice commanding attention.
- Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog. If Daniel Rothamel is the future of real estate, we’re in safe hands.
- Sellsius° blog. This is light opera, rarely grand opera, but it is deft and delightful.
- Real Central VA. Jim Duncan walks a fine line between local and global interest, between real estate customers and real estate industry insiders.
- Searchlight Crusade. Dan Melson ranks with me as one of the most informative people on the Internet. When he’s done with a topic, there is nothing more to be said.
- MoCo Real Estate News. Run by Mohave County Realtor Todd Tarson, another young agent who fills me with for hope for the future. Mohave County is booming, and Todd also has great insights into state-level real estate politics.
Visiting weblogs Read more
This is an excellent question:
Do buyer’s agents have to disclose ALL compensation he receives from all sources to his client? It would be important to know who’s filling his lunch sack. Example: Builder pays a bonus above the commission listed in the MLS to the buyer’s agent if his client purchases.
What does a buyer’s agent have to disclose about his compensation? In Arizona, the answer is crystal clear:
It depends.
A buyer’s agent is not required by law to disclose the amount of the co-broke commission or finder’s fee offered by the real estate broker of the seller. On the other hand, both RESPA and state law require the disclosure of bonuses, rebates, referral fees or any other sort of non-commission compensation.
This is ARS R4-28-1101-G:
A salesperson or broker shall not accept any compensation, including rebate or other consideration, directly or indirectly, for any goods or services provided to a person if the goods or services are related to or result from a real estate transaction, without that person’s prior written acknowledgment of the compensation. This prohibition does not apply to compensation paid to a broker by a broker who represents a party in the transaction.
There are a lot of things that reek about this, in my professional opinion. First, a bonus is just an attempt to induce a buyer’s agent to betray his fiduciary duty to the buyer. But second, a lot of bonuses are being paid right now in the form of commission. If I take you out to buy a new home tomorrow, the builder will pay me at least 6% of the purchase price, all of it of your money — and I do not have to disclose this to you.
In fact, all commissions and fees paid will be disclosed on the HUD-1 form — which you will see for the very first time at Close of Escrow. Wonderful…
My take on the subject: Buyers need to learn the five little words that sellers mastered long ago: “How much do you charge?” The agent may not be required by law to disclose commissions, but you can condition your working with that Read more
We’ll see. But I count two hits in two at-bats, an excellent start. Similar features, but Zorro’s gone home to Madrid. Blogrolled.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Giving my prominent proboscis a good hard tweak, a certain pseudonymous Scarlet Pimpernelesque semi-retired real estate weblogger asks: “Are you trying to say that the MLS’ are not fascist dictatorships???” The question refers to a weblog entry I posted last night chastising Trulia Blog for hyperbole in its complaints about MLS exclusivity. I actually have a lot, lot, lot to say about MLS disintermediation — but not now. For now, I’d like to take a swing at the issue Trulia raises, treating it more seriously than they did.
Here is the relevant rule from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service’s IDX policies and procedures:
12. An IDX Broker may not modify, enhance or manipulate a Shared Listing. In addition, listing information from other sources may not be combined with IDX Listings. For instance, property listings from other multiple listing services, for sale by owner properties and properties not in the MLS may not be combined with the IDX Database.
Why would ARMLS have such a rule? I can offer some reasonable conjectures, but before I do, I should like to make a meta argument: Whether or not you agree with anything I might say, it remains that MLS systems have every right to make their own rules however they choose. If the rules make sense to the membership, they don’t have to make sense to you. In other words, quibbling with me, here, gets you nowhere.
So why might an MLS IDX system forbid commingling with listings from other sources?
How about to protect the MLS brand? Or to avoid confusion between fully-cooperating listings and de facto exclusive listings? How about to preserve the cooperative system that is the sine qua non of MLS listing?
Here’s an even better reason: To maintain the quality level of displayed listings. We make fun of MLS listing quality, but egregious listings are funny precisely because they stand out (which is what egregious means). MLS listings are amazingly detailed compared to FSBO or RealtyBot listings. The simplified ARMLS feed, which any agent can download on-line, contains 213 unique fields — and it excludes the photos, their captions, the virtual-tour link and Read more
Christine gives a nice run-down of seller-only agency as it is practiced in New York State. This is not very far from the way things used to be done in Arizona, except that, because of Article 26 to the state constitution, lawyers are not required to effect the transfer of real property.
Sellsius° whispers a plan for Zillowing Redfin.
Daniel is swinging for the fences, and he plans to look at at least one more pitch. The topic: NAR, MLS, IDX, VOW, DOJ (wasn’t that a song in Hair?). I think this is a classic example where doing nothing would have resolved the whole problem within a few months: NAR implements VOW policy as planned with opt-out provision. Dinosaurs opt-out. Young turks counter-market: “Why are they hiding your listing?” Dinosaurs opt-in. What we’ll get, eventually, will be years late and much worse.
Joel kicks the tires on the Windermere map mash-up: Windermere’s Property Point hits a home run.
We began this day with a thoroughgoing article from The Realty Bloggers about Real Estate 2.0 that happened to say nice things about BloodhoundRealty.com. We’ll end the day the same way, with a rigorous call to arms from Mike Price at Mike’s Corner that also says some nice things about BloodhoundRealty.com. Saying nice things about us is incidental. Saying true things memorably — this is irreplaceable…
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, disintermediation, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
Dustin at Rain City Guide is pointing to this new Windermere MLS map mash-up.
“Ho hum,” you say. “Been there. Done that. Gave the tee-shirt to my kid.” Maybe so. My take is that this is the best map-based MLS search that I have seen so far, but I am not confident that I have seen it all.
Things I like:
- Almost no wasted screen real estate
- A super-accurate zoom feature
- Excellent Ajaxification without waiting between every change in settings
- Details are exhibited in a tabbed section using about 25% of the browser
The sliders at ShackYack.com are very cool, but they’re painful to use because everything refreshes in real time — plus ShackYack wastes huge portions of the screen, as do Trulia.com and PropSmart.com. Are there any other players in this same league?
Windermere has MLS feeds from wherever it has franchisees — 35 systems so far, mainly in the Western United States.
Go play with it. My take: Totally rocks…
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Displeased, perhaps, that outfits like Redfin.com draw all the negative attention, Trulia Blog asks:
Does the MLS continue to believe that fascist dictatorships work?
Inasmuch as an MLS system is a mutually-voluntary membership organization composed of self-selected volunteers, each of whom voluntarily agrees to abide by a set of rules voluntarily established by the membership as a whole, it easy is to understand how Trulia Blog would mistake MLS systems for the second-most murderous branch of Totalitarian Socialism in history. They’re like twins!
An MLS system is a club. Whatever bad things we might think to say about a club, a club is still far more benign than even the most benign of governments. Why? Because you can quit a club, where quitting a government is difficult at best, impossible at worst — and almost always fatal under Totalitarian Socialism. If you haven’t seen a huge pile of bodies stacked up behind the local MLS office — there’s a reason for that.
There are three things you can do about a club you don’t like: 1. You can try to change it from within. 2. You can try to change it from without. 3. You can turn your back on it and up your own organization.
I have had nothing but good things to say about Trulia.com so far, but after this stunt, I have this much to add: Trulia, up yours!
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Interesting notes from John L. Wake’s Arizona Real Estate Notebook:
Dr. Jay Butler, the head of the Arizona Real Estate Center at ASU, made a presentation yesterday at the Industry Partners Conference, an annual meeting of real estate industry folks – agents, escrow officers, mortgage brokers and many others.
Looking at listings for sale as a percentage of the total number of homes in the Valley (the housing stock), Dr. Butler said the normal number of listings today would be 32,000 to 35,000. I found the actual number this morning to be 41,014 (all home types) in Maricopa county. So, listings are high right now… but not super high.
Given that we have added an enormous number of houses to our inventory over the last three years, I had wondered what our baseline normal should be by now. It will be a couple of years from now before we know if Dr. Butler is right (yes, those words did emerge from my fingers!), but his projection seems to correspond to the observed data: Our surfeit of available homes is not so large as to induce fire-sale pricing.
John has a very rich weblog, including excellent city-by-city graphing of Dr. Butler’s median home price numbers.
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato waxes philosophical, wondering, Is Big Brother Dead? A stray thought to the contrary: Panem et circenses?
The Realty Bloggers have a smart reflection on the slow but on-going ramping up of on-line real estate vendors.
There are two fun developments in our friend Richard Riccelli’s trial-by-FSBO-fire. First, he was approached by John Keith, an enterprising Boston Realtor and weblogger, who, having read about Richard here, offered to help him with a limited-service MLS listing. And second, Richard has a Strange New Respect for the idea of pushing the whole job of marketing a house off onto a professional. It’s not something he could actually do, of course. He’s too much a perfectionist — and the work product he produces for his home should be very instructive. But he understands now why someone else would delegate all that work, happily paying the fee.
Jim Duncan at Real Central VA asks Should buyers forego inspection in a hot market? His answer: “Hell. No.” I agree wall-to-wall, but there is a middle ground here: Inspect, retaining the right to cancel upon inspection, but specify that the home will be purchased with no seller-supplied repairs. In the Arizona Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Contract, we have seller warranties for all the major systems, so the buyer’s exposure is relatively minimal. (The AAR produced an “as-is” addendum that waives these warranties, making it entirely useless.) None of this matters in Arizona right now, where smart sellers repair absolutely everything before they list their homes for sale. But it’s a way of doing an “as-is” transaction without giving up everything.
Three from Sellsius°: The Future of Residential Appraisers links to an article discussing the further encroachment of Automated Valuation Methods on the appraisal industry. If I were building an AVM (ahem), I would hire the best available appraisers to point out the bone-headed mistakes in the software, then keep them working as an on-going Quality Control effort. As it happens, we are refinancing our home right now. I comped it for the lender, then Zillowed it to see how far off-base Zillow.com would be. Read more
A lot of the searches that land on this weblog take the form of general real estate questions. “What is an earnest deposit?” “How long is a typical escrow?” “What is dual agency?” But search engines don’t answer answer questions, they simply shuffle up web pages that have have a high degree of keyword correspondence. Those pages may answer the question — or they may be totally off base.
So: It occurred to me that I could make asking questions easy. If those questions happen to be blogable, so much the better. If you ask a question about a confidential matter, I will answer it privately — and I will keep your name and email address confidential in any case. But if you have a real estate question of general interest, I would be honored to answer it here on the weblog, so we can all kick it around. In the long run, I might build a FAQ out of the questions — a monument more lasting than bronze.
Got a real estate question? Click on the button in the sidebar to the right and ask away. I’ll get to your question as quickly as I can.
Caveats: I am not an attorney, an accountant or a trust, financial or tax adviser, and my body of real estate knowledge is in many ways limited by my real estate experience, all of it in Arizona. But there are a lot of people who visit here who can help me fill in the gaps, and, together, we can pursue a fuller understanding of the art, the science, the business and the passion that is real estate…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing