There’s always something to howl about.
This image was sent directly from my phone and should post automatically to
BloodhoundBlog via flickr and a secret posting email address.
If you’re attending Unchained and would like the opportunity to post drunken
pics of your fellow attendees directly to BHB, let me know. I’ll be happy
to share the top secret address.
Thx!
(I have a feeling Greg could end up regretting consenting to this…)
-Ryan Hartman
(Sent From My Fancy Phone…)
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Okay, here’s are homework assignments for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix.
First, until this week I had no idea how deprived folks in the Windows world are. Just about everything I do is built around the idea of truly robust FTP software, and it turns out that this does not even exist for Windows users. Y’all are stuck behind the Iron Curtain and you don’t even know it.
The vast suckage that is Windows FTP drastically affects my plans, but I’ll work it out.
Meanwhile:
If you don’t have one, download and install a decent FTP client. Core FTP LE isn’t awful, and it’s free.
You’ll also need a decent text editor. Komodo edit is actually quite good, and it’s also free.
I’m going to be helping Mark Green talk about CRM and automated database solutions. If you want to play along with some of those ideas, sign up for the free demo of Heap CRM.
Heap is not all the way there as a real estate CRM, but it is adequate for the ideas we’ll be discussing, and a 31-day demo is free. Note that the link above goes to my Heap affiliate account, the vast proceeds from which my wife spends on food for stray animals.
But wait. There’s more.
I upgraded engenu today with the mapping software I talked about here.
You will need to download and install engenu on your file server.
If you have previously installed engenu, you won’t need to install a new copy of engenuPageDex.bin (your password file). (Likewise, if you have a customized “skin,” don’t install engenuComponents.) Even if you don’t want the mapping software, you should install the new version of engenu. First, there have been dozens of small bug fixes since the last official release. And second, I want you to get comfortable with your FTP client.
Do you need some remedial help with engenu? Cheryl Johnson is the world’s most unlikely super-hero, but you can see her heroic efforts at making engenu more understandable here.
And: We’re ready to rock. Class schedules are up.
Students are split into two groups, Alpha and Omega, and you can discern whether you are the aboriginal specimen or the Read more
Per my earlier post regarding the evolution of technology driven real estate solutions, I believe the next generation of buyers and sellers will be more empowered to search, purchase and sell real estate themselves, without the services of a real estate professional.
At the highest level, the success of an entirely virtual solution rests in its ability to clearly and confidently shepherd a potential buyer or seller through the process of buying and or selling. Very few sites provide a path to success. The irony for me was what I found while reviewing do-it-yourself real estate sites/services. In my opinion, www.helpusell.com provides decent content regarding the “how’s and what’s” of buying and selling. I am not holding Help-U-Sell as a beacon of light, but merely a site which provides far more content regarding the “how” of buying than the “what” to buy.
The focus of technology solutions has been too highly skewed towards the data and not the content nor the process.
Clients are not looking for listings – they are looking for homes. Do not underestimate the connotation or meaning of home. Data is not the answer – it is part of the solution. The solution is achieved by execution. Execution requires clearly defined, repeating steps – a process.
There is a lot of chatter regarding how to keep potential prospects “stuck” on your site. Many believe that IDX property search is critical. Important? Maybe – but if you are relying on search capability as your differentiator, you’re wrong. I argue spending a majority of your time and effort building content around the process – mapping out the steps – one by one – specifically what needs to be done to get from beginning to close will get them stuck – FIRMLY – on your site. Everything else is secondary to the process.
So what does a completely virtual solution look like?
First and foremost, it assumes that there is no real estate professional involved with managing the process – or providing “services”. If you’re recoiling from that last statement, I merely ask, have you mapped out the process step-by-step and defined what you do at Read more
301 Time — I’ve Found A Guinea Pig! What a relief… I think I’ll take the daily updates over to HouseYourMom.Com, posting only a high quality weekly update here, and sparing everyone the daily gory detail midnight rants…It just feels a little awkward hogging up everyone’s feed readers with this stuff. Seems more appropriate to do it on my own dime I guess…
🙂
So anyway.
Here’s Walt Wensel, RE/MAX Patriots (York Pa) responding to my pitch earlier today:
I like it, with some reservations. Can we effectively create what you want without alienating my customer base? Pictures of you and the orangutan taking a dump are cute, but not who I’m going to trust to make a $400K deal. I think we need fun and edgy, but we need York edgy, not Philly edgy.
Can you believe a guy with a pic like this sent me a response like that?
I’m just busting Walt’s chops. He’s exactly right, and I have no problem with a tone down now that I’ve got what I was looking for. A tech-literate open minded team leader with an eye toward creating value that will result in organic, sustainable expansion.
So check it out: HeyCentralPa.Com now 301’s to CentralPaLiving.Com [I spent an hour or so last night in CSS heaven cloning Walt’s soon to be delivered IDX portal being provided by Terabitz. Sorry again Dwellicious. I tried…(again…)]
So thanks everyone for bearing with my nuttiness over the past week or so…If you’re actually interested in the nitty gritty day by day posts and screencast chronicling how this thing is taking shape, please feel free to use the form on my subscribe page to receive the HouseYourMom.Com daily email updates.
Really. Google “me” in your search bar or Google home page and see what happens.
I was going to post about this yesterday and I’m glad I didn’t, because as of today, searchers who enter only the word “me” in the search box will be given an opportunity to set up or edit their Google Profile.
The personal profiles are not new. I did share some of my thoughts on this in Unchained in Seattle. They’ve been around for a while now, it just seems that every time I take a look at them they add more features. First with a curious name verification process, then just last week with custom URLs. They now support a pretty good amount of info on someone depending on your settings. Numerous links to sites, an ‘about me’, contacts, and a Flickr or Picassa feed for photos.
None of this might be relevant except for the fact that Googling you is what people do. Even my wife (against my personal preference) told someone to just look me up on Google the other day. That person found me in a heart beat.
Profiles are already showing up at the bottom of page 1 search results and for those with common names there G will sport 4 profiles per page. I suppose the more you share on you profile the better your results. So far, there’s only one of “me“.
While the big G says they are not having a run at Facebook’s social network action, google profiles still would be a good place to stake your claim. Especially if you like using any of their other services, such as Maps or anywhere else your profile will be linked to…
Now if all that’s for nothing, then consider this. I reviewed my first message via my profile that simply read “Loved looking through your material. When I decide to move back to SF, I’ll give you a call.”
Update: For promotion, Google is giving away 10,000 sets of 25 business cards to go with your new profile page. Get em’ while they last.
The best leads I get at PropertunityKnocks.Com are direct inquiries in response to my vids. And now on HeyCentralPa I’m going to take a stab at not measuring a real estate internet marketing campaign’s success by the daily number of “Mickey Mouse” and “Heywood Jablome” registrations.
In tomorrow’s episode, I’ll hedge my bets by begging for e-newsletter subscribers via AWEBER, but for today, I’ve grabbed a 30 day Dwellicious Pro trial and integrated it into the Hey Central Pa Property Search Page.
What’s everyone think? If our content is plentiful, dynamic, and populated with not so salesy lead capture elements, can we forgo an IDX integration? Can we get them to hang around just because they like us?
Is this Real Estate Tech Blasphemy?
I don’t know, but the Dwellicious integration could be interesting. I mean, the content better be darn good, right… because we’re telling people to go search elsewhere?
Will I be able to get agent contributors on board with this strategy?
Might I have a squabble with fee seeking local MLS boards on my hands? (Have there been any MLS v. Dwellicious run-in’s nationwide?) Or has the real estate search + social bookmarking experiment not yielded enough adopters to even be seen as any kind of threat?
Several recent posts have had me thinking about just how technology isn’t addressing the needs of cats. Needless to say, there are many different types of cats – cats that roam alleys picking through the remnants of fish bones versus the ones that eat Fancy Feast and sit on the laps of chauffeur driven owners who may, on occasion, stop at a traffic light seeking Grey Poupon. It could happen.
I suspect the cat population is quite diverse – many having different likes and dislikes, perhaps differing motivations as well. Given that some cats roam alleys versus sit in the lap of luxury, perhaps the roamers may be more self reliant- the “fat” cat perhaps in need of greater doting, relying on others to take care of their needs. Needless to say, there’s a larger, even more diverse range of cats beyond the alley cat and the fat cat.
I reckon there’s a parallel between cats and consumers.
When it comes to measuring the success of a broker and/or agent, furry walls are often designated as a sign of success. Jeff recently commented that his hirsute success is based on results. I have absolutely no doubt that his superior service would make him the Rockefeller of fur trading. He knows his cats – but more importantly, his cats know him. Perhaps not all his cats are “fat”, but they have a taste for Grey Poupon.
On the flip side, Greg’s recent post highlighted the self reliant cat’s approach to selling a home. From Greg’s picture, it may be a good thing that cats have nine lives, because this cat is dead.
How are current technology solutions really addressing the differing needs of cats … er… consumers?
I found Glenn Kelman’s recent survey results enlightening.
Well last March we surveyed 1,058 people who were using our site about what they wanted in a real estate agent. Some of the answers were gratifying for us to see — transparency was tops on the list — but one that stood out was the answer as to why people who had already chosen a traditional agent had decided against using Redfin: 47% Read more
Even with as much grief as I lay on practitioners, I feel myself obliged to confess: I do not believe that any so-called professional real estate salesperson could come with with a marketing strategy quite as repellent as this:
Tipped by Barry Bevis: “Drove by this yesterday while showing clients homes in the same neighborhood. Average house in this neighborhood is $175,000. Nothing the age of the FSBO home selling for $200K. My clients laughed. We just put their house on the market ‘Bloodhound Style” and had it under contract in four days. I wonder how long the FSBO will be for sale!”
(PS: Our friendly visitors from the cute little yellow school bus have taught me that one cannot possibly be too obvious, so it is incumbent upon me to point out that the phone number and email address are not obscured on the original sign.)
A Screencast on HeyCentralPa.Com’s theme choice and a bonus cast on ditching BHB style ugly permalinks are up over at HouseYourMom….
I’m going to go ahead and give the very young and probably buggy P2 WordPress theme a shot I think. It touts a twitter like interface that will allow visitors to interact with eachother, or hopefully the agent contributors on the site. In the coming days I’ll tweak it up so that the “Hey Watcha Up To” reads something more target keyword and audience appropriate, but otherwise, I think this might have been a great find.
Why? Well I mentioned in the comments of my post yesterday that I plan to do a lot of belly to belly promotion of this thing all around the Central Pa area. So my conversation with local business owners might go something like this:
“Hi I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind me taking a quick video of your establishment and posting it on HeyCentralPa.Com, the new web magazine I’ve created. I’ll also be happy to post a link back to your website alongside the video. Oh yeah…and if you’d like to freely plug yourself or your business on the site, I’ll be happy to email you login info so that you can freely self plug on our home page.”
What’s everyone think?
Blammo Right! Will I need to cold call expireds or sit open houses with a networking hook like that?
Teri helped me realize in the comments of that post that the ad revenue generating, get-agents-to-blog-for-greed’s-sake approach could be flawed. This thing is pretty much meant to be a “take the juicy agent content back from localism” play, so I’ve happily begun to rethink agent involvement piece of the puzzle. But I’m still Redfinning my gameplan to a certain extent…
Any suggestions out there other than:
“Ryan…Suck it up! Ditch the mom jokes and the freelancing real estate tech guy charade and build this MMBB thing for YoSelf!” Stop trying to find an enlightened broker so far from a major metro! Quit dreaming about building an selling a Read more
I hate to admit it — I so often have to — but Greg Swann was right. A few months ago,we got into a debate about whether venture-funded technology companies were squashing little brokers. I told Greg the little brokers had no brains — why aren’t they all trying to build a great search site? And Greg said we had no heart — which comes in handy when you’re trying to connect with a client as a human being.
Well last March we surveyed 1,058 people who were using our site about what they wanted in a real estate agent. Some of the answers were gratifying for us to see — transparency was tops on the list — but one that stood out was the answer as to why people who had already chosen a traditional agent had decided against using Redfin: 47% cited a pre-existing personal relationship and 33% talked about “just clicking with someone.”
Translation: Greg was right. It’s probably why our partner business — which allows people using our site in the Inland Empire or the California wine country to meet a partner agent right off the bat — converts better than our direct business.
Meanwhile, with our own agents, Redfin will keep trying to strike a new balance. My movie script for Redfin’s place in real estate has always been “Revenge of the Nerds.” Greg’s has always been something written by Aeschylus. In fact, Redfin’s story is more like one of those crazy Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books written for 12 year-olds, which is only to say that we’re still finding out way.
Of course, it’s telling that our guide on this journey is a big pile of data. We didn’t believe Greg until we ran a survey with 1,000 data points soI guess that proves Greg’s point right there!
I am an international tax lawyer. I handle lots of real estate transactions with foreign sellers and buyers. I don’t have a real estate license, and I don’t ask for a piece of the commission. Got that out of the way for ya, didn’t I? Here are a few things to keep you sane when you handle a deal like that
“When Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.” And in a real estate deal with foreign players, you have two mothers. Keep them both happy and you’re likely to close your deal on time.
Mama number one is your title officer. Ask a simple question. Demand a yes/no answer. “Have you handled a real estate transaction with a foreign seller/foreign buyer in it before?”
Don’t say “Can you handle one of these transactions?” Because of course they CAN. Right? And they will.
Right up until 5 days before closing and they figure out that the seller is a Bahamas corporation and they start insisting that you register the corporation with the Secretary of State and get a certificate of good standing from Sacramento and the Bahamas and oh, who are these people who claim to be the officers?
Mama number two is escrow. Especially for a foreign seller. Call up your escrow officer and ask the same question: have you done one of these transactions before?
Loyalty matters. But business is business. You don’t want your deal to be the crash test dummy. Let them learn on someone else.
War story: two summers ago, I handled two very similar deals in Southern California at the same time. Different title companies. One inexperienced title officer, one experienced. The novice title officer cost the buyer an extra $5,000 in legal fees to get the deal done.
If your seller is a foreigner, here’s your checklist:
Tax ID number
The seller needs a U.S. tax identification number. More often than not they don’t have one. Go to the IRS website and pull down Form W-7 for a human seller. Get in Read more
Phil Hodgen has been a friend of BloodhoundBlog for a long time. He’s an international tax attorney working out of Pasadena, so why would he be reading the dawgs? Marketing and iconoclasm, the only two things we actually understand.
At Chris Johnson’s suggestion, he joins us today. Here’s his bio:
Phil is an international tax lawyer. Home is in Pasadena, CA. Clients are all over the world. Yes, he’s of those people you read about, setting up foreign trusts and other weird stuff in small palm-fronded countries. His clients like U.S. real estate, although at the moment they are just kicking tires. Phil makes complex tax stuff easy to understand.
Sounds like a giant killer to me. Let’s give him a big axe and see what he can do with it.
Did I really just say that? Sorry but it’s high time to call a spade a spade.
I recently decided to cut the apron strings so-to-speak with my old broker and go “indie”. After paying in about $200K in exchange for about $12K worth of business over a five year period, I had to evaluate whether the relationship with my broker was anything other than terribly one-sided. Since about Year 1.5 when I began working full-time from home, I’d managed to become pretty independent in terms of how I operated and procured business. I finally saw I wasn’t getting much of anything in return for those hefty commission splits and transactions (not counting the occasional pep talk, although at times it was much appreciated.) So I left at the start of the New Year. Since making the split official, I’ve had a chance to evaluate the cost of every aspect of my business compared to what it used to be. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that my overall costs are much lower. More surprisingly, however, I also discovered:
1. business cards were a profit center for the broker
2. sign installations were a profit center
3. color copies were a profit center
4. template sites (complete with crappy framed in MLS data) were a profit center that did not even generate leads
5. advertising was a profit center
6. leasing back office space to agents was a profit center
7. accounting services were a profit center (in the form of huge transaction fees)
8. sending closings through the broker’s joint venture with a local title company was a profit center
9. home warranty applications were a profit center (by skimming off the top of agents’ referral checks)
10. 100% tax deductible sales meetings were a profit center – vendors paid the broker to have their mediocre template sites etc shamelessly endorsed & pushed on agents
But wait, you may be thinking. Surely there were other ways your broker was adding value? Sadly, not really. Training beyond the basics was almost non-existent. Occasionally something would be offered gratis, eg a bank talking about changing lending standards, thus hoping to get some loan business. Or “training” Read more
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
How can an FHA mortgage or VA home loan sell a home faster? When mortgage rates are 10% and the 5% government loan is assumable.
I’ve taken a few pokes at the contributors on Active Rain; John MacArthur isn’t one of them. John is a Branch Manager with Long and Foster, in Olney, MD. John points out that agents and originators are failing to highlight one of the best features of government loans:
You see, no one is focusing on one of the sweetest features of an FHA loan. Oh, they talk about the modest down payment and ease of underwriting. They talk about a certain comfort level that the loan will close. We don’t hear many folks mentioning the biggest asset about FHA loans.
They are assumable!
Stop for a minute and think about 3 years or 5 years or 10 years from now. What do you think mortgage rates might be in 2012 or 2014 or 2019? Do you really believe that in the face of increased government spending, increased inflation, increased devaluation of the dollar that rates will hold around 5%?
This is really good advice. Professional agents can distinguish themselves from the also-rans through an understanding of mortgage financing. Nervous first-time home buyers will appreciate that an agent is thinking about an exit strategy for them. John does it here:
Oh, and why might the lad on the left sell sooner? His 5% mortgage rate is assumable. Now, the new buyer will have to get a “wrap around” mortage for the difference between what is still owned on the FHA loan and the sales price and yes, that loan will carry the going rate at that time. The seller on the left will have to try to move his home at time when money surely will cost a bit more. It doesn’t take an MIT grad to discern that 5% on the bulk of a loan is much more attractive and affordable than the 8%, 9% or 10% or more that will be the rate in five years.
I added a scenario, with hard numbers, on Mortgage Rates Report.
Here are a few Read more
