BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Real Estate (page 59 of 266)

February 22, 2010

I like dual agency so much that I’m writing a commercial for it — and you can help!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, I don’t like dual agency. The more I’ve thought about it, over the years, the more I see that it cannot possibly done in a manner that it is actually fair to both parties. And that ignores the perceptions of the principals.

The one little bit of glue holding the Rube Goldberg machine of dual agency together is the fact that very few consumers even know what it is. Many times, I have had to explain dual agency to people who were either going through it or had in the past. Not surprisingly, none of them had been fully-informed by their agent about the risks of dual representation — although many of them suddenly understood what had smelled fishy to them.

My argument would be that no fully-informed consumer would embrace dual agency, but there are exceptions: People who want to take unfair advantage of the other party. There is a name for the role you would play in that scenario, as the Realtor: Shill.

Not only is dual agency exceptionally good for cheating one of your clients — normally the buyer — it’s also excellent for leaving the impression in the minds of both buyers and sellers that you yourself are a cheater, a liar and a person of egregiously low character. That’s some first-rate marketing, Jasper!

Here’s my take: As a very easy baby-step on the road to raising your own standards for the benefit of your clients, swearing off dual agency can’t be beaten. There’s a lot more you can and should do, and BloodhoundBlog is full of ideas for raising your standards. But there is nothing else you can do that will communicate to your clients your commitment to putting their interests first as compelling as renouncing dual agency. And no matter what else you might do, if you do not renounce it, you’re still going to look like a snake to anyone who actually understands dual agency.

So as a step toward informing consumers about what is really going on in a dual agency transaction, I thought I would make a commercial about it. The spot would feature a bunch Read more

February 19, 2010

Eric On MicroHoo vs Google

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

With the announcement today of the fact that the Department of Justice has approved the deal inked last summer between Microsoft and Yahoo, came a flood of e-mail into my inbox this afternoon.

“What does this mean for search?”

“What does it change?”

“Do we need to focus our organic search efforts more on Bing now that they are poised to power the results of Yahoo?”

” Will they be a REAL competitor of Google?”

“How will Google respond…or have they already?”

“How might this play out in the long run?”

Well, the truth of the matter is that I have been studying this on and off since last summer. Ironically, the Microhoo deal was announced while I was on my way to British Columbia to speak at the Real Estate Webmasters conference. The topic continued to be the buzz while I flew on to San Francisco to speak at Home Gain Live Nation. Why is that ironic? Well…I am just now finishing up the details of going to speak at the second HomeGain Nation Live event as well as going to speak on SEO at the RE/MAX convention. Gonna make for some fun times on the panel at HomeGain in the afternoon and some fun conversations at RE/MAX as well. I am stoked for both. But I know that interest will be there and questions will be asked by a lot of folks in the hallways… 😉

So while I have a lot to say about the merger (after all, I am the nerdy “read the patent applications, hiring patterns and etc sort of a search engine enthusiast…hehe), I am going to embargo most all of it until I speak at these events. I will say the following:

1. Competition is good. It inspires innovation and spurs creativity if it is TRULY competitive.
2. Bing has some MAJOR relevance issues with their search results that need to get cleared up.
3. Google has a whopping lead in market share currently will the combination of two non competitors automagically transform them into a competitor?
4. How much leverage does Microsoft’s vast market presence in the PC market give them? Do you Read more

February 18, 2010

Dual Agency Smack-Down: Real estate in real life . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kicking this back up to the top. I wrote this on November 19th, 2006, but nothing has changed since then. But, as it happens, our friends at Agent Shortbus have taken up the topic of dual agency, albeit without reference to anything rigorous or dispositive. We have a whole category devoted to dual agency, and some very interesting Bloodhounds have weighed in on the topic, over the years. I think I’ve written more on the subject than anyone — possibly more than anyone, ever — but this one post is the giant-killer on dual agency.

So: While our #RTBar-buddies are telling are telling you that dual agency feels just as good to them as a healthy bowel movement, this post explains — in painstaking detail — why disclosed dual agency cannot possibly be effected without persistent, repeated, egregious agency violations against both principals to the transaction.

Don’t doubt my gratitude, though. I love the #RTB marketing message: A “professional” Realtor won’t do open houses, but he will take a double dip when the opportunity presents itself. I cannot think of a better way of selling our own high standards than for our competitors to be so forthcoming about their self-serving “professionalism.” Very nice.

Anyway, even though every bit of this is painfully obvious, here is why even a properly disclosed dual agency is unethical.

–GSS

 
Addressing Jeff Brown’s claim that Dual Agency is more about perception than reality, and Russell Shaw’s contention that clients do what they intend to do, rather than what their agents advise them to do, let’s go buy a house and see what happens.

I’m going to split my personality in thirds (I have plenty to go around). Realtor Gregory is going to represent the buyers. Realtor Stephen is going to represent the sellers. Then we’re going to reexamine events from the point of view of Dual Agency, with Realtor Swann representing both parties in a Disclosed Dual Agency.

So: Realtor Gregory is out showing homes with his party and they settle on one they like, listed by Realtor Stephen. Because it’s a buyer’s market, and because the buyers aren’t very well-prepared, they don’t Read more

February 15, 2010

Res ipsa loquitur — wirelessly: Mobile phone use soars.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Via LiveScience.com:

Separate reports out last week show that mobile phone use is soaring in the United States and globally, and data moving across mobile networks is expected to grow dramatically over the next four years.

One report by comScoreMobiLens shows that Americans want to do more than talk on their phones, and they’re willing to pay for it. A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009. In the past year, smartphone ownership increased from 11 percent to 17 percent of mobile users, while 3G phone ownership increased from 32 percent to 43 percent and unlimited data plan subscriptions rose from 16 percent to 21 percent.

Every month, comScore measures how often people use their phones to send text messages, access the Internet, play games, use downloaded applications, or “apps,” check their Facebook profile, watch videos and listen to music.

In the latest comScore report, all of these activities showed an increase from the previous report period. Though most of the increases are modest because the survey was conducted over a short 90-day period, texting and visiting a social networking site or blog increased more than 2 percent.

The report also reveals users are shifting from the more utilitarian phone operating systems toward more media-focused operating systems that have more functionality. While RIM, the operating system for BlackBerry devices, remained the leading mobile smartphone operating system in the U.S at 41.6 percent, it saw its market share drop slightly along with Microsoft and Palm.

Meanwhile, Apple, which owns a quarter of the mobile market and is ranked second, saw a gain in popularity for its media friendly iPhone platform. Likewise, Google’s Android operating system surged in popularity with the launch of Motorola’s Droid in November, allowing the company to double its market share in just three months. Like the iPhone, the Droid is built for multimedia content.

Separate research released by Cisco estimates that global mobile data traffic has increased by 160 percent over the past year to 90 petabytes per month, or the equivalent of 23 million DVDs. The company projects that this figure will increase Read more

February 12, 2010

Google and the artifacts of inefficiency

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

The interwebs are BUZZING about Google Buzz and how benevolent Google co-opted everyone’s contact lists from their Gmail accounts. I wonder how many million valid email addresses Google captured in the first 30 minutes of Buzz going live? I try to remember that Google is the same benevolent company that assisted the Chinese communists in censoring the internet for the billlions imprisoned in the PRC. More recently Google has gotten a Federal bailout in the form of assistance from the NSA to secure Google’s servers from the same ChiCom hackers they used to happily work with ‘doing no evil’, except for entrenching the folks who invented the involuntary liver donation.

The point is this: be aware of the cost of “free stuff”, no matter how cool. The price may be more than you are willing to pay in terms of your professional reputation. I would suggest that a cost benefit analysis is in order. What is the cost in professional reputation for all your social media efforts? Are your friend lists, contact lists and customer rosters available for any non-#RTB data scraper to start spamming with listing flyers? It is surely something to think about.

I don’t care if Google renders a contextual ad in my gmail account. I do care if my clients start getting real estate spam from competitors. Below is a relevant video.

Related articles
February 12, 2010

#RTB (raising the bar) is #ROT (restraint of trade). If you want to do something that will actually benefit consumers and will run the bums out of the real estate business, #STFU (stop being a tweetard) and #DTFG (deliver the frolicking goods) already!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’d have more to say about this, but everything I have to say is encapsulated in a single URL: BloodhoundBlog.com.

I was mildly interested in this #RTB (raising the bar) nonsense until I figured out that it’s just more Rotarian Socialism: Make it harder for punters to get a real estate license so that the few who make the cut can make more money with less competition. Nice.

Meanwhile, an email correspondent sent me to Twitter to search on a particular #hashmark. There were more than 30 tweets in a span of 20 minutes, from perhaps a dozen tweetards — all of them theoretically real estate professionals.

Why theoretically? Because if you’re pissing away your day on Twitter, you’re not selling real estate, underwriting loans or doing anything else productive.

And all of those clients you claim to have cultivated via social media? They can see what a goof-off you are, just as much as I can. If I were steaming by the phone, waiting for you to return my call, I would just love to watch you kibitzing with your butt-buddies around the virtual water cooler. Now that’s service!

Here’s the only standard of value that matters to consumers: #DTFG (deliver the frolicking goods)! Your clients want for you to treat them the same way you yourself would want to be treated, were you in their place.

It’s easy to figure out what to do, harder to get the job done — harder still to get it done well. But that is all that matters. And if you’re not going to deliver the goods, then you, too, are one of the bums I want to see pushed out of this business.

Whether you’re a dinosaur pissing and moaning in the bullpen down at the brokerage office or a shiny new dino.bot giggling on-line with all the other shiny new dino.bots — you are the problem.

Until you are prepared to put your clients first — all the time — you have nothing to say about raising anything. Raise your frolicking standards! And if you don’t — if you won’t — hard-working dogs like me are going to help Read more

February 11, 2010

We are all on welfare now: “The government’s assistance in the housing market now is less about giving us a soft landing than it is about having us furiously flap our arms to stay aloft.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Washington Examiner:

The unspoken, bottom line: The federal government has already nationalized the housing industry. We’re not just talking about Uncle Sam providing a few subsidies, or even taking over a few of the big players, as they have in the auto industry. This is a complete takeover. Every new mortgage today is a government mortgage.

Over the last two years, government mortgage and mortgage-backed holdings have grown on net by nearly $1 trillion. Private investors and institutions have shed more than $1.5 trillion — through foreclosure losses, pay downs, and by selling to government.

The effective result is a government-run housing market. Barofsky reports that right now, the government is responsible for about 100 percent of all new mortgage activity. You read that correctly. To put it in his own words:

“According to Federal Reserve net borrowings data, the federal government and the organizations it backs now guarantee or issue almost all net new borrowings for mortgages and MBS.”

February 11, 2010

What if Twitter and Facebook go Away – Do you have an Exit Strategy?

by

Mortgage Systems Samurai

Author website

Chris Pearson is a pretty smart dood.  He’s the developer of the Thesis theme that I use on all of my blogs.  It’s a pretty cool premium theme…but I’m not here to pitch WordPress themes.

Yesterday I received and email announcing some proposed changes in the next version of Thesis and in this email it included a link to a Video interview with Chris Pearson.

For the first 3 minutes, most of the talk is about changes to the Thesis theme….and then it gets interesting.

He starts to talk about the future of Twitter and Facebook and poses some very interesting hypotheses.

Here’s the video (can’t embed the vid for some reason, so check it out and come back) – go ahead and jump to about 3:08 to get to the good stuff.  Then, let’s talk about it.

Chris Pearson Interview - The future of Twitter and Facebook

Ok, so Chris brings up some pretty interesting points right?  I mean, think about how massive of a push there is for the RE.net to jump into the almighty Facebook Fan Page and Twitter stream life rafts to float safely to the shores through turbulent real estate seas.

Do you think that Facebook and Twitter care how or why you contribute content?  No, they could care less.  These are popularity contests to see who can get the most groupies.  Once these communities gain celebrity status, they are finally in a position to execute on their end game…..find an investor.

What is an investor going to do?  Use the traffic to the community as leverage to sell advertising or sell subscriptions to generate revenue.  Do you think either of these sites will ask you first if it’s ok if they use their platform for this reason?

Remember when Facebook tried to change their terms of service to say that all of the content on the site was 100% owned by them and could be used any way they see fit?  Do you really think that just by changing the verbiage in the terms of service that it changes the way they view your content?

I know there are hundreds of Twitter and Facebook snake oil salesmen out there crafting the next great real Read more

February 10, 2010

Real Estate Broker Sued for secondhand smoke

by

Realtor, Guerilla Technologist

Author website

Alyssa Burrage was smoked out of her $405,000 condominium.

Burrage has a history of asthma and has smelled smoke since she first viewed the unit on the south end of Boston in 2006 with her real estate broker.  The broker assured Burrage the smoke she smelled was from a previous owner and the stench would disappear.

After Burrage moved in she discovered the smoke was coming from a smoker in the unit below her’s.  The condo association refused to fix the problem as did the lower unit where the secondhand smoke was coming from.  Burrage moved out and leased the condo in May of 2008.  She states, “I’m certainly not a person who’s on a soapbox saying people shouldn’t smoke.  But when it affects somebody else, that’s where the line needs to be drawn. It’s an awful thing to not be able to escape from something that’s hurting your health.’’

Neither the real estate broker, Joseph DeAngelo, nor his lawyer would comment on the case. In a joint court filing summarizing the case, DeAngelo and his employer, Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty, deny that Burrage questioned him about smoke in the condo.

“DeAngelo never made any misrepresentations, or any representations at all, concerning the source of the alleged smoke smell,’’ the broker’s lawyer, Jay S. Gregory of Boston, said in the filing.

Burrage also sued the condo unit below her, and later settled out of court, because the lower unit condo owner stated that it was cheaper just to settle out of court.

Should Brokers be REQUIRED to disclose ACCURATE information about smoking to prospective buyers?

February 8, 2010

Agents of Change

by

CEO, Redfin.com

Author website

Don Stewart posed an interesting question this morning about whether real estate is changing top-down from the broker or bottoms-up from the agent. In a post about how Redfin sees the real estate industry changing, Don suggested we had focused too much on the laws, the brokers, the MLS data sharing rules and the system by which sellers pay buyer’s agents:

I think that many agents are becoming more client focused, less afraid of discussing value for money, and are happy to be judged by their performance. They are not just trying to grab commissions, they want to build a professional practice. Real change happens from the ground up, not the top down and I see some very encouraging signs.

Don’s right. When I first got into this business, Redfin focused on structural ways we could make real estate better: by surveying customers and publishing responses, by paying agents at least in part based on survey results, by sharing as much data as possible with consumers.

But the most profound change has probably come from our agents. I’m not sure if we attracted the most progressive agents, or if those agents were in fact what made us progressive in the first place. But the longer I’m in this business, the more I’ve come to realize that what I think doesn’t matter as much as what our agents do every day.

What do you think? Is change coming via the agents or the brokers?

February 6, 2010

Can’t Find A Nut? Search In A Nut House

by

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

Author website

Mortgage squirrels, searching for some nuts, during what I believe could be a long winter, might consider this idea:

There should be a lot of listings hitting the market when the shadow inventory eventually gets released.  Banks are not very attentive sellers inasmuch as they care less about condition and price than expediency.  Rather than pump money into property improvements or work with HOA’s to get the financial statements in order, they reduce the price until a cash buyer comes along.  Zillow showed us that REOs tend to sell for 3/4 of the market price.

Equity sellers might be having a tough time moving condominiums because (a)- the REOs are priced lower and/or (b) the HOA hasn’t taken the time to secure an FHA and VA approval for the complex.  Mortgage squirrels can focus on (b) and add value to the sellers by broadening the market.  While assisting the HOA secure complex approvals will help the REO sellers, those sellers often prefer cash offers.

Consider targeting condominium owners who have had the property listed for more than 60 days.  Send a letter to the owner and carbon copy the listing agent and HOA President.  Highlight these points in the letter:

  • a complex approved for FHA or VA financing will open up the market and attract owner-occupants
  • more buyers means higher property values
  • gov’t loans are assumable which could translate to even higher values when rates are higher

It is possible that listing agents will be upset with you.  When you explain that you are not an agent and you are trying to help them and their customer to sell the property, they will be open to your proposal.  HOA Presidents may have no clue about this because property management companies (that manage HOAs) typically don’t want to address this with the HOA boards.  The sellers may be skeptical but will offer you a chance to present your proposal.

You have a chance to be a hero with (a) someone who intends to buy another home (b) a selling professional who could be a great referral source for future business. and (c) an influential owner within the complex who might Read more

February 4, 2010

What’s Your Niche Biche! – Could Broker Pimps Just Mandate Agent Created Content?

by

Retechulous...

Author website

So, if a broker owner really wanted to build a mega monster traffic magnet lead generation machine, couldn’t he or she just mandate that team members create a regularly occurring piece of content around some theme?

Maybe the agent entrance interview would so something like this?:

Broker Pimp: So, what’s your niche biche.

Agent: I don’t really have one.

Broker Pimp: That’s ok, we’ll help you come up with one. Then we’ll help you work it In a way that generates copious lead flow for you.

Agent: Sounds great, so what do I have to do?

Broker:Well every agent here at Cosmodemonic Realty is required to contribute some form of content to our company blog on a weekly basis. All you have to do is create the content and email it in to our in house technomarketer Nick Burnsy editor guy. And we’ll take care of the rest: Syndication to your social profiles, some paid click advertising, seo… All you do is create that juicy content on the regular then wait for the phone to start ringing. Our weekly E-Newsletter goes out every Saturday morning and most of our agents generatlly get some kind of healthy interaction based on the content they’ve recently contributed.

Agent:But I’m not really that great of a writer.

Broker PimpThat’s ok… Can you take a picture or a video from your fancy phone?

Agent:Sure.

Broker Pimp:Cool. We’ll set you up with a secret email address that you can use to send area photos to. What town do you live in? Could you see emailing in a “Yourtown” Business of the Week” on a regular basis? Maybe with a quick sentence or 2 about the business? Or perhaps you’ve got the stones to just stop a neighbor on the street and ask them what they like about where they live?

Agent: Sure I guess, but I don’t want to limit myself so narrowly to one area.

Broker Pimp: That’s great! You’ll never be asked to only work within your designated niche focus, you’ll be free to contribute as much extra stuff as you want. In fact, most of the 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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