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Category: Real Estate (page 52 of 266)

August 20, 2010

How to succeed at failure . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I wrote this in the Summer of 2001, also. At the time, my friend Richard Riccelli convinced me to sit on it because it’s pretty arch. Even so, this is the counterpoint to Shyly’s delight.

 
How to succeed at failure

I work in sales, and while I don’t have many role models for success at my job, I am lucky enough to have an immense number of role models for failure. My co-workers fail all day, every day, and they are gracious enough to share ideas with each other about how to fail even more. Watching them and listening to them, I’ve been able to abstract the principles of a whole new self-help discipline: How to succeed at failure.

There is no better field in which to succeed at failure than straight commission sales. If you succeed at failure in education, they make you the principal. If you succeed at failure in politics, they elect you president. But if you succeed at failure in straight commission sales, you slowly starve to death… Top that!

And succeeding at failure in straight commission sales is easier than you think!

Here are a few simple rules:

First, start late and leave early. Some people try to make failure an endurance contest. This is a mistake. If you spend too much time in the office, sooner or later someone is going to buy your product from you just because no one else is around.

In the same way, when you do get to work, immediately do something useless, irrelevant and unproductive. The newspaper is a good bet. So is the restroom. The two together make for a perfect combination. Take your time. The point is to establish to yourself, to your co-workers and to the world that doing business is the last thing on your mind.

Once you get to the office — stay there. Don’t go out looking for business, make the business come to you. Show the customer who’s boss. That way you’ll have plenty of time to complain to your co-workers that customers just don’t appreciate all you’re doing for them.

Find innovative ways to waste your work-day. Do research about Read more

August 20, 2010

If you are a working Realtor — if you list and sell residential real estate for a living — the time you spend on social media sites is almost certainly anti-marketing, doing you more financial harm than good.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Chris Johnson pulled this out of our phone conversation the other night, quoting me on Twitter:

People don’t want a relationship with you. They just want your damn services.

We were talking about real estate weblogging, but the principle applies even more firmly to the world of social media — Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The notion that strangers are seeking out Realtors in order to befriend them is absurd. For a Realtor to get invited on a getaway weekend with three people who are not old school chums would require that all the undertakers and life insurance salespeople they know are already engaged. We all know what to expect from Realtors in any sort of social setting — which is why there is an entire mini-industry of RE(education)Camps to train Realtors to resist their smarmy, deal-probing impulses on-line.

That’s point number one, neatly Tweeted by Chris — who is, don’t forget, a vendor: You are the means to your clients’ ends, not an end in yourself. Even though you might sometimes hit it off just right with a client and forge a serious friendship, in virtually all cases — including those where you make a friend — it’s the mission-critical job that matters, not your sweet personality.

And that friendship? It will seem serious to you alone. If you are any good as a Realtor, your deep, deep friendship will be invisible to everyone else. You should be much too busy to be anyone’s friend. If you make a stout effort, you can hold up your end with your spouse and kids, but, beyond that, you should expect to hear this from the people you think of as being your friends: “The only time we ever get to see you is when we’re buying or selling a house!” That is real estate in real life.

Here’s point number two: “Marketing” by social media is a huge waste of time. Selling is one-on-one, focused, time-consuming and goal-directed. Marketing, done properly, is broadcast, diffuse, time-efficient and passive and long-term in its goal-pursuit. Even if you are really doing your best to market your services on-line, if you are doing it Read more

August 19, 2010

A weblogging strategy for non-writerly Realtors. Or: How you can learn to stop worrying and love your blog.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I was on the phone yesterday with Chris Johnson, talking with him about Realtor weblogs. He mentioned that some of the buyers of his real estate weblogs are having trouble coming up with regular content.

I have a solution for them.

What should they do? Stop worrying about it — and solve the real marketing problem instead.

Instead of building a blogsite around a regularly-updated weblog, it would make more sense to me for reluctant writers to build the blogsite around the mission-critical content instead.

Here’s the deal: There are a finite number of topics that you absolutely, positively need to cover. Whatever target-marketed niche the blog is concerned with, you need to document that niche in a fairly comprehensive way.

How many articles would that take? Five? Ten? Surely not twenty. If you’ve done what you need to do, you can ignore the blog except when you’re burning up with something to say.

A WordPress theme like Equilibrium would give your weblog a magazine-like look and feel. The “featured” section could highlight the three or six or nine posts that are mission-critical for your niche. And the “latest post” section can document your more-recent musings. If you write something crucial later on, you can rotate it into the “featured” section.

Here’s the thing: Everything so-called weblogging experts (including me) have told you about real estate weblogging is probably wrong.

You are not trying to build long-term relationships with regular visitors who will wait for your latest pronouncements with bated breath. Instead, the objective of your blogsite should be to provide mission-critical information to people who will find you by Google when they need you and who will be happy to forget you just as soon as they no longer need you. The magazine-style blogsite fits that approach perfectly.

The purpose of your weblog is not to be available for lonely people looking for friends. It is not to make you one of the cool kids, so that Realtors from all over the world can show up at your place to grouse about how awful the real estate market is. The purpose of your blog is certainly not to make Read more

August 18, 2010

Lucha Libre Mortgage Reform

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

Last week there was some discussion about what was to have happened today in Washington. This discussion centered around whether the government would or would not take certain steps to protect the housing market through a mandated deficit funded mortgage bailout.

Today, we have some new information on what Tim Geitner and a host of invited banking executives chit chatted about.

Seems that much of the talk in a few of the posts here centered on whether we could expect the Obama administration and industry executives to continue along socialistic lines, (Wall Street still knows better than Main Street), or whether lightning would strike and we’d decide to take our lumps now.

The answer’s in.

Obama administration invited banking executives Tuesday to offer advice on changing the government’s role in the mortgage market. Their response: stay big.

While the executives disagreed on the exact level of support needed, the group overwhelmingly advocated the government should maintain a large role propping up the nearly $11 trillion market.

Bill Gross, managing director of bond giant Pimco, said the economic recovery required more government stimulus, particularly in the housing market. He suggested the administration push for the automatic refinancing of millions homes backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac.

Refinancing those homes at the lowest mortgage rates in decades would give Americans more money each month. That would boost consumer spending by $50 billion to $60 billion and lift housing prices by as much as 10 percent, he said.

Without such stimulus in the next six months, Gross said, the economy will move at a “snails pace.”

Treasury officials have said they have no plans to enact such a plan, which has been the subject of intense rumors on Wall Street in recent weeks.

So it was just a rumor after all????? But wait….there was more…

Geithner did not offer a specific exit strategy for Fannie and Freddie. He agreed that the government could remain involved in the mortgage system by guaranteeing investors in mortgage-backed securities get paid, even when borrowers default.

There is a “strong case to be made” for such an arrangement, Geithner said.’

This is just like a professional Read more

August 17, 2010

Master Seller-Financing To Beat The Mortgage Market Freeze of 2011

by

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

Author website

I’m not so sure I want to play hockey against Bryant Tutas.  He thinks like Wayne Gretsky.

I cautioned about the coming mortgage freeze and asked what agents might do to prepare for it.  I’m a mortgage guy so I think in terms of institutional financing.  I completely forgot about seller-financing.  Bryant Tutas answered:

I’m ready for it. I just listed my 3rd property this month where the seller is offering financing. Seller financing is going to be very popular over the next few years. I’ve also been marketing to foreign investors with cash to spend. Once they purchase a home we turn right around and offer it for sale with financing. It’s a win all the way around.

Are you kidding me?  It’s so time-tested but underutilized it’s brilliant.  I forgot all about it!

What do you know about seller-financing?

First, you have to have a seller with some equity but…. ain’t nobody got no equity no mo’.  What’s a hustler to do?

Foreigners are looking to pay cash for U.S. homes and are finding great bargains at auction.  In San Diego, we see investors buy properties at auction and sell them for 20-35% higher, 60-90 days later.  The problem with some of those properties is that they aren’t appraising.  Seller financing doesn’t require an appraisal nor does it have  those pesky underwriting guidelines.  Bryant Tutas mentioned that he is prospecting foreign investors, to buy properties and sell them with financing terms.

This is the ultimate form of private financing.  Before you embark on this strategy, you might advise your sellers to require the following when considering offers:

  • a tri-merged credit report– you definitely want to check for tax liens, judgments, and large charge-offs.  All of those can become liens on title
  • It’s a good idea to require some income documentation– if your buyer’s housing expense doesn’t exceed 50%, you’re kosher in California but it’s probably a good idea to make sure that all of his/her debts don’t exceed 50% of gross monthly income
  • A down payment is going to assure your buyer has something to lose if the deal goes sour.  I might suggest Read more
August 16, 2010

NAR and ALTA further attempt to stifle private enterprise on Private Transfer Fees

by

Realtor, Media Mogul

Author website

When the National Association of Realtors and the American Land Title Association claim to be doing something to benefit consumers, those same consumers can expect to be fleeced once again.  Currently, they are trying to ban private transfer fees by getting the Federal Housing Finance Agency to amend rules so that almost defunct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can no longer back properties that have private transfer fees covenants recorded against them.

I’ve written about private transfer fees on Bloodhound before. At the time, I promised to do more work with them and report back.  Since then I have looked at them, and received proposals from Freehold Capital, on implementing them on two of my own projects.  I haven’t recorded their instruments on my projects even though I do like the concept.  As a developer, private transfer fees would be great if they could be securitized so the money was available up front to pay for infrastructure costs.  My issues with the Freehold proposal is they currently do not have a securities market for the instruments and I believe their cut of the action is too rich for what they are providing.  So, I have made a private decision that I do not see enough value in their proposal.

That does not mean that I think Private Transfer Fees should be banned.  It does not mean that a competitor, or Freehold themselves, might not have a proposal in the future I would like to be able to do.  The concept, used as I described it, could be fantastic and help create more valuable properties we can all sell!

Jeremy Yohe, spokesman for the American Land Title Association, claims that “The casual homebuyer would have no clue that these fees are even attached to the property that they’re going to purchase” as his reason that these fees should be banned.  He forgets to mention that the members of his association have the job or providing accurate title information for things recorded on the title, like covenants.  I just love it when people argue their own incompetence is a reason that something should not be allowed.

There Read more

August 15, 2010

Me and Claudia and PHP: Using internet real estate marketing to — you know — sell real estate…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So, the Arizona Republic ran an article yesterday on on-line real estate marketing and you will never in a million years guess who they did not call. I never get called for any of those kinds of things — the RaiseTheBarTab kinds of events — even though we’re doing cooler stuff than anyone I know of. I’m not weeping. I’m always very forthcoming with everything I know, but if there is going to be a cadre of Realtors dead set against learning how to do the work I do, I’m more than happy to have them working in my own market.

And I’m not bragging, either. We’re going to have a banner year, for us, in terms of volume of transactions, and we’re kicking the asses of all the canned-software Twitter-fidgets named in the article. But we are digging our way out of a deep hole, and we’re a long way from where I want us to be. I like to brag that we spend almost nothing on marketing, but the fact is that we almost never have any money to spend on marketing. I will put every Realtor in Phoenix on notice: When we have money and staff, we are going to be a force to contend with.

So, even though I don’t issue any Twitter spasms, at least not non-robotically, of late I am putting paid to a lot of new and interesting real estate marketing ideas.

What’s changed? Cathleen is giving me some Claudia time. Claudia Couts is the housekeeper I made Cathleen hire last year. She’s with us for two hours a day, six days a week. She keeps the house down to a manageable level of chaos and takes care of all the pet-maintenance duties. The idea was to open up the time that Cathleen was spending on those chores, and this has been a win-win all around.

Lately I’ve been buried in paperwork, at which I’m horrible, and I had marketing ideas that required small amounts of rote labor — at which I’m also horrible. I thought we might hire a virtual assistant, but Cathleen suggested giving Claudia a Read more

August 14, 2010

Innovation now: I’ve stopped taking buyer’s checks for earnest money, but now I want to stop worrying about wire transfers, too.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m living much of my time right now with my nose pressed right up against one tool or another — listings, DocuSign, the steering wheel, et endlessly cetera. That’s cool, we need the dough, and we can’t make it rain hard enough, fast enough. But by this point I have no idea if something I’m doing is an innovation or not. I’m just dancing as fast as I can.

This topic just came up, and I’m passing it along because I haven’t done that here yet. I know this because I hadn’t done it with my wife and business partner until just now.

Here’s the scoop: I’ve all but stopped taking earnest checks. I’m having almost all of my buyers wire their earnest money deposits directly into title. I never touch anyone’s else’s money — the only known way a real estate broker can be assured of escaping imprisonment.

But that’s not my reason for coming to do things this way. I used to take the check, made out to Chicago or Fidelity or whatever, then schlep it around while I waited for the contract to be executed. Not fun but not onerous — just inefficient.

By now, I do a lot of REOs as rental home investments for out-of-state buyers. I don’t know the name of the title company when we write the contract, and the buyer is back home by the time we need to deposit the funds.

I don’t even talk about checks any longer. I tell the buyer how things work and that I will have title email wiring instructions when we’re ready to rock. Totally transparent, totally arm’s-length, and no one involved in the process says boo.

If the lister is a little too adamant about receiving a PDF of a fax of a scan of a photocopy of a useless check, I will add language like this: “Seller is aware that Buyer will deposit Earnest Money by wire transfer into Title Company, to be determined by Seller, within one business day after Seller’s final acceptance of this Purchase Contract and any incorporated addenda.” (Reminder: I am not your broker.)

It’s the perfect Read more

August 13, 2010

“…I knocked that transaction right on it’s…”

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

The Real Estate Ideal?

Sometimes the best part about being a real estate agent is the time it affords you to be with your family.  Of course, other times the best thing about being a real estate agent is the excuses it provides for doing exactly the opposite: “What’s that dear?  Your mother is going to be in town this Sunday and you want to spend the morning down at Begonias, Begonias and Tulips, then do a little shoe shopping?  Gosh darn it all, I’ve got an Open House that Sunday.”  You get the idea.  But if you really think about it, the best part about being a real estate agent is the opportunity to knock someone else right on their derriere – metaphorically speaking, of course.

Last week our local football team (the San Diego Super Chargers!) held an open practice at the stadium where they play their home games.  I took my two boys down there and we made an evening of it.  (Mostly because I wanted my boys to see what the inside of a professional football stadium looks like without having to drop a cool $500 on parking, tickets, popcorn and a great big Styrofoam finger that implies we’re #1 at something… I’m guessing it’s separating fools from their money, but I can’t be sure.)  Anyway, being there gave us an opportunity to watch Kris Dielman in action.  Man I like watching this guy play the offensive line.  Having been a defensive lineman myself, that’s saying something.  The difference in mind-set between the two is staggering, but that’s exactly why I enjoy watching him so much: he plays offensive line like a defensive lineman… and he plays football the way we should practice real estate.

He’ll often knock his guy 2, 3 even 5 yards back; sometimes he puts the guy right on his backside.  Now that’s what you call getting the job done.  Even more than that: it’s what you call getting the job done very, very well.  You might say he’s a Top Producer at what he does.  But here’s the thing: after he knocks that guy back one yard and two cheeks, do you Read more

August 13, 2010

TMI …and it’s application to Real Estate Photos

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

My latest couple of projects have involved a pretty intense look at the state of real estate listing photos. I have been working on some hyperlocal stuff in my brokerage where the listing photos have been a PRIMARY component of the site. I have also been working on a fun site with some friends that celebrates the best and worst of real estate listing photos. (Note to Athol Kay – not sure where your blog went, buddy…but I enjoyed it so much back in the day that I had to get some friends together and do something similar)

Ahh…back to TMI. Have you ever noticed that REALTORS often find that the most difficult picture to take is the bathroom? If you have a listing with a KILLER commode (and a professional photographer) like Christi Dennison (a REALTOR in our brokerage..) you can get results like this:

But for most of us, a) the “John” is nowhere NEAR that nice and b) the camera we use merely captures the top of the toilet tank and a sliver of the side of the shower. 😉

So WHY take the photo? Our listing photos are what attracts folks to see our listings, not unlike Match.com, Chemistry.com and eHarmony.com. Would you get a picture of your LEAST appealling ass-et and put it up there? Did not think so. 😉

I am seeing so many folks take listing photos like they are more of a disclosure of property condition than the “come hither” invite that they should be.

The bottom line?

So I have come to the conclusion that it takes a REALLY GOOD bathroom shot to beat NO bathroom shot at all. It is simply TMI.

Thoughts?

August 12, 2010

If You Were This Guy, What Would You Do?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Had a nice conversation with an agent on the east coast recently who’s a world class buyer’s agent. He has his own site that sending roughly 7-8,000 leads his way each year. From those he picks the cherriest of the cherry, giving the rest to his assistant. He sells anything from a $100k place to cool houses whose price tags require a couple commas. I got the impression most of his stuff is $400k and above, though not much above, at least as an average.

Anyway, the guy’s wicked smart, knows what he’s doin’ backwards and forwards, and does very, very well. He expected to be at roughly 70 closed sides by the end of the year. Again, his website spits out leads like Grandma used to make muffins.

Talking with agents like him is a treat, mainly cuz they’re not only good, and work hard, but they get it. Big time smart.

I asked him why he’d never pursued being a dominant lister.

I asked cuz he’s such a natural, he’d kill. Agents like him can leverage the combination of their superior online skills and agent experience into a tremendous pay raise while keeping the hours level or even reducing them if preferred. For instance, my guess is Russell Shaw, who’ll probably do (my estimate, not his) 5-700 sides this year, works 30-50 hours weekly. Not sure how those sales fall into listing/buyer sides, but I’d wager more than a six pack of Dr. Pepper that 70% of ’em or more are listing sides. I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m mistaken. 🙂

Back to the east coast guy.

He’s been at this for a decade or so with stellar results. That’s a lotta sales. A buncha homeowners who’re in their homes due to his efforts. They like him, and view him as an experienced, knowledgeable pro. Geez, I dunno, given a built-in database of roughly 500-700 satisfied homeowners, one might wonder if marketing your equally cool listing prowess might have some traction.

Just sayin’.

Let’s say it’s just 500 or so. He already ‘touches’ them with emails once or twice yearly, though Read more

August 11, 2010

Sometimes ya just gotta say, “WTF-nutsville?”

by

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

Author website

The Obama Adminstration’s henchmen are whining about the proliferation of new media , in a Vanity Fair article and I just couldn’t resist poking some fun at the irony of their complaints and the foreshadowing of the “perfect business” in an economy they “design”

First, they bitch about the stamina required to work in the West Wing:

“There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis,” says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person can create an event so quickly from one computer terminal.”

The State hates the internet; we all know that.  Rather than ignore the brays of  pajama-wearing boys, blogging in their parents’ basements, they long for a more genial, controlled speech:

Emanuel calls it “F****nutsville,” and Valerie Jarrett says she looks back wistfully to a time when credible people could put a stamp of reliability on information and opinion: “Walter Cronkite would get on and say the truth, and people believed the media,” she says.

Maybe,  just maybe, these people in The West Wing are…old.

Not old  in chronological age but definitely in hipness.  Despite the hip-hoppity nature of the campaign and his addiction to Blackberry, the President thinks young people need to turn off their iPhones.   The President doesn’t sound so hip anymore.  He sounds like a humbug father of two tween daughters.

Maybe it’s just a philosophical desire to be in control of everything, including the choices consumers make.  Forget the health insurance hijack or the nationalization of the residential real estate finance industry, the West Wing Big Dawgs dream of a business suitable for any Soviet Republic:

It got so bad last December that President Obama and Emanuel would joke that, when it was all over, they were going to open a T-shirt stand on a beach in Hawaii. It would face the ocean and sell only one color and one size. “We didn’t want to make another decision, or choice, Read more

August 10, 2010

That Giant Slurping Sound is the Mortgage Market Drying Up

by

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

Author website

Ken Montville asked the nagging question about the future of the mortgage market:

Unfortunately, even Congress — that bastion of liberalism and home of the bailout — is tiring of pouring good money after bad into the two mortgage giants that have been sucking up all the mortgages — good and bad — that private industry is willing to create. To paraphrase one-time third party Presidential candidate, Ross Perot: That giant sucking sound you hear is taxpayer money subsidizing home mortgages.

Now, the big questions remains: What will happen next? If there is no Fannie and Freddie to buy up all the mortgages, who will do it? Will the lenders who originate the mortgages be forced to keep them on their books and won’t this further inhibit an already tight credit market?

I outlined, a year ago, how the government is retarding a private mortgage banking recovery but I said it again for Ken’s benefit:

“If there is no Fannie and Freddie to buy up all the mortgages, who will do it?”

Nobody will…or everyone will. I’m a “lowly retail mortgage originator” with some formal education (and lots of informal education) in economics so consider my opinion with that qualification.

To use a BawldGuy axiom, lenders lend. Unfortunately, the government, through TARP and artificially subsidized mortgage rates, is creating a situation where lenders prefer arbitrage to lending. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to borrow guaranteed money at 1% and lend it (with a guaranty) at 4.5%. This is the systemic problem that is distorting the market and arresting any chance of a recovery in lending.

If the GSEs were allowed to fail, and FHA disappeared, lending would halt…for about 3-4 months. The recovery would be robust, sustainable, and at rates somewhere in the high 5s or lower 6s. Wall Street is taking chances on 5.75%-6% non-guaranteed, mortgage yields right now; there is interest in betting on the American homeowner. Low down payment loans would most likely be gone for about a year. 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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