BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Real Estate (page 54 of 266)

July 14, 2010

Ashley Dupre, Manhattan Real Estate Broker ?

by

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

Author website

Remember Ashley Dupre?  We visited her two years ago, when her tryst with New York’s #1 John hit the front page:

Who is Ashley Dupree and why do we care about her? Ashley is a budding songwriter and singer with a compelling story. She was cast into the limelight as Eliot Spitzer’s paramour; taking a few large a month for companionship. Now I don’t want to comment on the morality of prostitution; in 49 states, it’s illegal. Whether you’re an Emporer’s Club “provider” or a sex worker trolling Grand Central, the State of New York considers prostitution a crime. The allegations against Ashley have not been proven in a court of law and frankly, I don’t care if she did it or not. Why?

I said then that she could reinvent herself:

Memo to Ashley Alexandra Dupree: America is the land of “reinventing yourself”. Ask Sidney Biddle Barrows, Vanessa Williams, Donald Trump, or even Daryl Strawberry how forgiving the American public is. Americans crave drama, revere celebrity, and have a sense of justice about them.

Ashley followed the”fifteen minutes of fame” plan.  She moved to LA, posed for a centerfold, and stayed away from jail.  She moved back to Manhattan and is pondering a career in…real estate brokerage!

The Post’s sultry sex columnist has moved back to town from the West Coast and immediately decided to enroll in a real estate course at NYU. The course is required to apply for a New York broker’s license — but Dupre said she isn’t quite ready to become a full-time real estate dealmaker yet.

She told us, “I recently moved back to New York from Los Angeles. Since being home, I took and passed the accelerated Real Estate Salesperson Course at NYU.

Only in New York.   Her future colleagues seem to think she fits in quite well:

Sources told us Dupre fit in well at NYU and “made a ton of friends. She dressed very cute to class, hung out with Read more

July 13, 2010

So what if lenders are lousy at judging character? Who can’t identify fat people when they’re sitting on the other side of your desk?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Who says all academics are mindless time-wasters? A pair of brave scholars have demonstrated a correlation between obesity and mortgage defaults. A bad credit report is good evidence of insufficient thrift, but a good credit report is evidence of nothing dispositive. A bulging waistline, on the other hand…

We show that obesity is an economically significant predictor of mortgage delinquencies at the county level. In practice, however, loan contracts do not incorporate easily verifiable health risk factors such as obesity. The discrepancy between theory and practice suggests the existence of substantial cross-subsidization and misallocation of funds in the loan market. The potential for business opportunities and policy implications warrants further investigation of our results with more detailed, albeit costly data.

This is pretty dumb, practically speaking, but it’s nice to see that the idea of pre-existing conditions might have a future, now that it’s been outlawed where it actually makes sense, in the health insurance business.

As an aside, our own Tom Vanderwell makes a cameo appearance in this “study.”

July 9, 2010

Re-Entering the Real World of Real Estate Brokerage

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

As many of you know, I stopped doin’ business in my local market, San Diego, at the end of 2003. Since then I’ve done two transactions here, both as listing agent — both gettin’ the sellers Outa Dodge, so to speak. I haven’t bothered to market here cuz, well cuz I thought the prices were gonna keep falling, which they did, big time. Since I avoid short sales and REO’s like the plague, that pretty much ensured I’d not be doin’ any San Diego business. How dumb is it to buy income property in San Diego even now? You can see an example — where I present my answer to those whose only reason for holding on to the crappola they call income property there, is “I gotta be able to drive by my investment properties”. For the record, that example uses the lowest priced duplex in the neighborhood, and I used high projected rents.

My response to local real estate investors when they’ve called or emailed objecting to my stance, is to ask them, “Well now, how’s that whole ‘drivin’ by’ thing been workin’ our for ya lately?” The ongoing market correction, and there’s more to come IMHO, has reduced well located duplexes that sold in late 2005 in the neighborhood of $550-600,000 to hoping to find a buyer while now asking $300-400,000.

And their numbers still suck like a turbo-charged Dyson.

In spite of these empirical facts of life, I’m makin’ my official return to the San Diego investment market next week. Office is set up, except for the internet connection which will go hot by Wednesday. Yet it didn’t feel real ’till I picked up my new cards and letterhead this afternoon. Haven’t had either for many years. There’s literally been no need. Everything I’ve done since 2004 has been out of California, and everything sans referrals since July of 2006 has come from my 2.0 efforts.

It’s a good thing, cuz I had no other choice, unless it was to return to selling local homes to owner users, something I’ve happily abstained from doing since Carter’s Read more

July 2, 2010

On Independence Day 2010, look around you and fill your heart: O’ What a Beautiful Morning!

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

There are songs that better describe America and patriotism, I suppose, but I can’t think of too many other songs that mean independence to me more than this song. I’m biased, of course, living as I do in the Great Midwest. Some people love the ocean or the mountains. They look out at miles of water or towering peaks and feel something. I’m not one of those people. I confess I love acres and acres of plowed or planted fields standing as a proud testament to someone’s hard work and tenacity. When “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye”, and “the cattle are standing like statues”, I find this magnificent, thrilling even. The earth itself is abundant and I see that most in evidence on farmland. On a quieter level though, sitting on my modest suburban patio on a sultry summer Ohio evening, I know that “the sounds of the earth are like music” because I hear that particular song in the thick, humid air alive with insects and birds, the crickets and toads operatically calling for a mate, or the delicious evening thunderstorms that bellow across the sky, and I’m here to tell you that this music is a love song. “O’ What a Beautiful Morning” is an American love song and I am enthralled with the ideas represented: being in love with a another person, in love with life, in love with the possibilities for independence that present themselves to you every single morning.

I leave a lot of musicals here, I know. I’ll not apologize. My heart often sings out and I’m compelled to share those songs, and our gracious host is obliging enough to humor me. Oklahoma though, is my favorite Broadway musical because it is so very American. Not only the cowboys and the ranchers, or the aw-shucks Americana. Oklahoma is wonderful because it freely shares that American idea of independence: The idea that simple people can own land and work and produce from that land, independent of the government. This is America, perhaps the one American thing I love most of all. This Read more

July 1, 2010

$5 Real Estate Marketing At Fiverr.Com!

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I’m giddy. Really giddy.

The other day a friend told me about Fiverr.Com.

The first thing I noticed on the site was that some dude would be willing to write my URL on his arm and sport it for a week…. for only $5.

So, I gave it a shot, and Here’s the result…

Real Estate Leads

Then, I noticed someone would actually write a jingle for my little company… for only $5. I wasn’t expecting much, but had to give it a try of course.

Here’s the little jingle that has me trip tripping right now:

LINK TO THE JINGLE I JUST PAID $5 FOR. [compliments of this guy.]

and I’ve got a Twitter background on the way for the same price…. $5!

Where Are You Going With This?

Yep, that’s the $5 question of the moment… where are you going to go with this? I can’t wait to see other ways that the Bloodhounds around here to promote (or get cheap labor for) their ventures using this awesome resource.

But in the meantime…the ability to find quick inspiration for fun goofy marketing ploys aside, here’s the biggest way that I can think of for Real Estate heads to benefit from Fiverr.Com on the quick:

Say you invest $20, and get 4 jobs done via Fiverr.Com.

Then say you’re happy with a few of the results… Could you see hiring the provider to do more stuff for you on an ongoing per-task basis within your practice. Not assuming it’ll always be $5, but at least you’ll have the opportunity to interview a few different folks with a few different skill sets quickly…re-utilizing the services you like, as you need them. Seems a much better alternative to hiring a full or part time assistant who you’ll have to train and manage?

[Please do send me a copy of your jingle once you have it made 🙂 ]

And here’s mine again… something about the douche in me can’t help but post this link everywhere I can right now 🙂 –> LINK TO THE JINGLE I JUST PAID $5 FOR.

June 29, 2010

Yogi Berra Wishes He Could Be This Good

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

From the Associated Press – This just in.

WASHINGTON — Homebuyers would get an extra three months to complete their purchases and qualify for a generous tax credit under a bill overwhelmingly passed by the House on Tuesday. The bill would give buyers until Sept. 30 to complete their purchases. The extended deadline only applies to people who signed purchase agreements by April 30. The National Association of Realtors estimates that about 180,000 homebuyers who already signed purchase agreements are likely to miss the Wednesday deadline.

“We owe this to the people who have essentially followed the rules who are caught by a closing date,” said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Realtors group says the tax credit has generated 1 million new home sales that wouldn’t have happened otherwise………..

Really?

Of course none of this comes as any real surprise for us.  But as Greg celebrates the inception and blossoming of Bloodhound Blog, and as I consider the many faceted Yogi Berra and what he would say concerning this about face in policy, I can only share the following video.  It’s a microcosm of Congress and NAR, much funnier, and certainly something Yogi would like.

June 25, 2010

FNMA Lends a Helping Hand (to Our Moral Backside)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Two days ago, FNMA announced their new policy regarding strategic defaults; it’s a mortgage death penalty: seven years before the offender is eligible for another FNMA loan.  Finally, they got one right.  Yes, you read that correctly; if you make your profession in the business of real estate, Wednesday’s announcement is cause for celebration on more than one level.  I’ll explain why in a moment, but first let’s dispense with the two primary arguments in favor of strategic foreclosure we see over and over again from the bubble-heads on the left:

Already we’ve got Shahien Nasiripour on The Huffington Post (I know, that’s an easy target – but it’s usually wise to start slow and thoroughly warm-up one’s disdain muscles) trotting out the tired argument about how the average homeowner should be allowed to default because the corporations that hold mortgages do it themselves.  Mr. Nasiripour would apparently like to see individuals and large corporations share the same default outlook.  I wonder if he would also prefer that homeowners negotiate their own individual, custom loan contracts; pay much higher commercial insurance premiums; price home loans on the specific risk of the homeowner rather than a pooled risk; and so on.  Either he hasn’t thought this all the way through, or he’d actually like to see the cost of home ownership much higher than it is now.

The other misleading argument is neatly presented by Ezra Klein at The Washington Post.  Actually, kudos to Mr. Klein because he not only presents the other misleading argument, but he also manages to mislead us on the very definition of a strategic default.   The essence of the second argument, in his own words: “…a mortgage is a specific contract. It says that if the borrower stops paying, the bank forecloses on his or her house.”  Not quite.  The contract specifies foreclosure as one (and there may be more) remedy available to the bank if the borrower breaks the contract.  The point of the contract itself is a promise by the lender to loan money at a rate and term that will not vary from what’s specified in return for a promise by the borrower to repay the loan as specified.  That’s not such a Read more

June 23, 2010

There are Only Four Things Certain Since Social Progress Began

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

(alternatively entitled – with all due apologies)
Though I’ve Belted You and Flayed You, By the Livin’ Gawd That Made You;
You’ve Made a Worser Man of Me, Socialism

 

“And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”  (from The Betrothed).  I have loved Rudyard Kipling from the very first time I read Gunga Din.  His pace and pattern appeal to me, as does his archaic sense of manhood.  I have argued before, and dare say would do so again quite successfully, that his poem If  is among the finest pieces ever written in the English language.  Of all the inspirational articles I have written and the many orations I have given, much time could have been saved had I simply gone in, recited If and walked out.  If you have never read it, stop what you are doing now and do so.  The answer to just about every event you may encounter in your life is contained in that poem.

This post, however, is not about Kipling’s great work If.  (If it were, I would certainly link to my own, real estate based homage to wisdom, and I’ve done no such thing.)  No, this post is about another poem Kipling wrote, one I am chagrined to admit I only recently discovered.  More mortifying still, I discovered it only because Glenn Beck is using a couple of lines from this poem to plug a new book of his.  (I’m not denigrating Mr. Beck, only lamenting the discovery of fine art through it’s crass commercialization.)

The poem refers to Copybook Headings and I was unsure what those were.  For the one or two of you out there as simple as I am, copybooks were primers used by school children to perfect their penmanship.  Across the top of each page was written a Biblical passage or similar lesson of moral imperative.  The children would copy the line over and over on the page below, thus improving their cursive and at the same internalizing certain truths.  Truths that, according to Mr. Kipling, are forgotten at our own peril.

Printed below in its entirety, this poem was written almost 100 years ago.  But you’d be amazed Read more

June 22, 2010

The Spartan Approach to Real Estate Brokerage

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

As I was admitting to Sean Purcell this morning, a few times a year I get the idea to duplicate the brokerage model Dad used so effectively in the 1960’s to early 1970’s. When this happens, I quickly grab a couch and nap ’till the idea dies a solitary, friendless death. Although surely enough of his AH genes found their way through to his first born, puttin’ up with the day to day management of a firm doing that much business with that many meat eaters would be a challenge of the first degree.

His model was built on bedrock. Know in your heart of hearts the odds are better I’ll be the Padres’ opening day pitcher next year than they are for me starting a house brokerage — but if I ever succumbed to the periodic urge, this is how I’d do it — which is the same way he did it.

1. He didn’t hire pantywaists. Put another way, he hired carnivores. Frankly, I always thought if you emerged, cajones intact, after a job interview with him, you were easily tough enough for the business itself.

2. He hired adults. Don’t just slide by that statement. Take a mental inventory of the agents you’ve known awhile and the percentage who’re adolescents at best when it comes to their job and actually, you know, working. I rest my case.

3. He filtered for strong character and profound integrity. A hint of a whiff of anything less and you were shown the door. He could smell a guy’s fear in the parking lot as he drove up.

4. All agents had three options when it came to generating/conducting business — A) His way B) His way C) All the above.

5. Non-producers were not coddled. It meant you weren’t working — period. There’s the door.

To be fair, 1 & 2 really go together, don’t they? Those afraid of their own shadows should never be real estate agents, yet they comprise a huge minority, if not the majority of the agent population, always have. Being on the front lines in real estate is somewhat analogous to Read more

June 22, 2010

First time home-buyers tax credit, the morning after: “The government’s ‘gift’ to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the National Review Online:

Things are looking worse on the housing front, with a severe drop-off in existing home sales following the expiration of the home-buyer tax credit. It’s hard to overstate how stupid this policy was. The government marketed it as a measure to boost residential real-estate prices by providing new home-buyers with a tax credit in the neighborhood of $8,000. Did you see the ubiquitous ads featuring the couple that gets an envelope full of cash from Uncle Sam? The idea was to convince potential home-buyers that they were the ones who would benefit from the subsidy, when in fact the opposite was true. The tax credit was a subsidy for sellers, not buyers, allowing them to increase their asking price (or avoid decreasing it) by $8,000.

The government’s “gift” to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it, and falling fast thanks to the sharp drop-off in demand that accompanied the expiration of the tax credit. Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam! I’m not sure the “predatory lenders” Obama likes to talk about ever did anything that sketchy.

This is good, but it’s still wide of the mark. As everyone here knows, the purpose of the tax credit was to churn transactions, so that realtors and their brokers could get paid. You’ll see more evidence of this later this week, as the NAR pushes you to lean on your congresscreep to support Harry Reid’s extension of the expiration deadline for the credit. There are still 180,000 unclosed transactions out there, and that means 180,000 commission checks held hostage by the demons of time. We can’t have that…

June 21, 2010

The Mirror Effect

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Do you ever wonder how to deal with someone else’s opinion of you – especially if it’s negative?  Not how to handle a negative or even rude opinion; early on you should have learned that politeness is how we handle almost any situation.  No, I’m asking if you have a mechanism or coping skill for those times when you discover what someone else thinks about you and it’s painful in some way?  This is not an uncommon experience and might be especially common for real estate agents!  (I’ll leave you to find your own context on that one.)  Personally, I’ve heard a number of answers to this question and they are usually similar to the one found in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.  While not completely representative of everyone’s answer, it’s close enough. This solution seems to lie in finding ways to ignore, become indifferent to, or otherwise devalue the offending expression.  (Mr. Ruiz, for example, points out that when someone says something about us, we should remember they are limited by their own view of the world – their own prism – and realize what they say, says a lot more about them, than us.)  This is both obvious and oblivious.  May I suggest something a little different?

The Mirror Effect
Of course other people see things through their own prism; so what?  Their opinions can not – and do not – hurt me in the least. How could they?  They are only words and, depending on your philosophical bent, the person saying them may or may not even exist!  If I feel hurt or pain (or happiness for that matter), you can be sure I am the sole cause.  I hear the words, I interpret them (through my own prism Mr. Ruiz) and I create feelings in reaction to my interpretation.  I create…  That’s where the wonderful opportunity lies.  The negative or painful (or happy) feelings are created from within.  That’s not just a difference regarding who is in control (per Mr. Ruiz and the rest, I am to develop some ability that will counter the hurt caused by the words or expressions of Read more

June 18, 2010

Harvesting the Redfin green: Learning how to work with web-based prospects who may not have known they were contacting a Realtor.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I built our first real estate web site in June of 2001. I had just gotten my license that May, parking it with an apartment locating service called The Apartment Store. The folks Jeff Brown calls “house agents” like to laugh at niche players in the real estate world, but I passed on three residential brokerages to do rentals. Why? Because I knew I would starve to death — as 85+% of all new licensees do — waiting for my first home buyer or seller. Instead, I took a job where I stood a chance of getting belly-to-belly with five or six motivated people a day.

But: I built the web site because I wasn’t in love with the people I was meeting. Jack English, the broker, had built his business around serving extremely marginal clients — apartment seekers with bad credit, past judgements, felony convictions, etc. Everyone deserves a second chance in life, but, for the most part, I turned out to be a poor fit for the targeted clientele. I moved some interesting people I was delighted to help — for example, two recovered heroin addicts and the sweetest paroled murderer one could ever hope to meet — but I also met a lot of people to whom no one should ever have extended credit.

Even so, the experience was great. I got to talk to a lot of people, showing a lot of apartments and rental homes, and I got to learn, very quickly, what makes the frog jump. That’s why I built the web site: I realized that Jack’s business model was missing a better segment of the rental market. Less-than-ideally-qualified tenants needed help because they didn’t know who would take them and who would turn them down. But there was a much larger, much juicier, much better-qualified pool of prospects out there: People with plenty of money but no time.

That first site, TheApartmentStore.org, was a killer lead generator. No one was doing anything using forms in those days, and GoTo.com was still selling pay-per-click for as little as a penny a click. I was hauling in four and Read more

June 16, 2010

Success In Real Estate Brokerage — Branding — What the Public Really Wants

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Daniel Pink has put out a video with some interesting facts learned by those in science studying human behavior in the workplace. It’s relatively short, chock-full of information, much of which goes against what we’ve all ‘known’ for quite awhile. Watch it or not, I’ve included it to allow you to understand how I’m relating its content to the real estate industry.

In a nutshell, credible studies tend to show that money isn’t the predictable motivator we thought it was when it comes to doing things requiring, you know, thought and stuff. In fact, they learned that when it comes to tasks requiring real thought, that the more reward promised, the bigger the failure. Hhmm

Supposedly if management in large real estate firms would allow greater autonomy, create an atmosphere fostering mastery, and give purpose to their agents, they’d crush the competition.

Many in real estate have compared large real estate brokerages to boutique brokerages using this template. The assumption is that boutiques draw agents wanting to be part of the mix, so to speak. Yet except for the large dinosaur operations, many if not most of the BIG firms are at least making valiant attempts at becoming agent-centric, in spirit if not in fact. This, in my opinion, is why the big firms won’t die out. They’re making the turn — it just takes carriers longer to achieve the actual directional change.

The discussion though, has now turned to how all this affects branding — in real estate. Let that sink in — but first install the three main words used by Pink’s video:

Mastery — Autonomy — Purpose

Before continuing, know I’m with you. Mastering what we do for a living is a good thing — as is sufficient autonomy and having a purpose important to the practicing agent. But seriously, real estate? Branding? Get outa here.

Look, I understand there are niches of price, location, property type, etc. Ultimately the buyer or seller has to choose a company. Whether your home is a million dollar showpiece or a $99,000 condo conversion in an iffy neighborhood, the bottom line reason thinking people use to Read more

June 16, 2010

Wayward Politician Generates Website Visits

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

You may have heard that Bob Etheridge, a politician from North Carolina, hugged, embraced, cuddled, shared a tender moment, or assaulted two men who were asking him some questions on video about his support for Barack Obama’s agenda as he walked down the street in DC.

Apparently, one of the major sites – www.newsbusters.org – that posted the video, also posted a link to my, dare I say, helpful discussion on North Carolina assault law (which was sort of odd since Etheridge, if he violated a law, violated DC’s assault laws).

This generated something like 6,000 visits yesterday, which is more than twice what I get in a month. But, as far as I can tell, no business from those visits.

All this reminds me that website visits are only very loosely correlated with business: visits don’t pay the bills. But, I suspect, they will help the website move marginally up the Google ladder.

Which is to also say: having comprehensive, well-written content can pay off in ways that I didn’t imagine when writing it, which is that I become the go-to source when a politician manhandles a constituent.

June 15, 2010

Killer Real Estate Videos That Won’t Kill Your Budget

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Yesterday I put up a post on Marketing Videos and Real Estate.  My plea was for more creativity and less facts.  My point? An agent who gets creative and starts using video wisely might just take down the Goliath agent in their neck of the woods.  The very first comment, from Tallahassee Realtor Barry Bevis, got me to thinking.  He said: “Quality at a price is the struggle…  Without going “Hartman” I can’t figure out how to make a good video at a reasonable cost.”  I quickly sat down and jotted out a half dozen video ideas, then put the pad down and walked away.  When working with creative ideas, I usually find it’s a good idea to let them breathe for a while and come back later.  Often times, after rereading them, you discover even fresher and better ideas.  No such luck today though… you get the original ideas and all their rough edges. 🙂

The goal here is to throw some ideas out and have the genius that is BHB add a lot more.  If we’re lucky, this could turn into a “mini-library” of video marketing ideas for real estate agents temporarily running low in the creativity tank and staring at an empty screen.  For me, it’s all about latching onto an aspect of the house and then running a little wild.  Oh, and I love to steal already well-established ideas from the big boys.

VISA Take-Off #1 – there are a number of ways to shoot this.  Show aspects of the house that shine and do the voice-over: “View of the mountains, $10,000; Jacuzzi tub in your masterbath, $3000; and so on.  Then come in with the conclusion everyone knows: “Owning your own home, priceless.”  The key is what you show during that line: Young husband carrying beautiful bride across threshold.  Or, husband painting vertical, purple stripes in the living room while the kids nod approvingly. Or, an exterior evening shot of the house with every window warmly lit while we see the sights and sounds of a fantastic party going on inside.  Single site web address appears at the bottom of the screen.

VISA Take-Off #2 – Same idea, but a child’s perspective (especially Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

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.

Media Contacts