Category: Real Estate (page 78 of 266)

April 16, 2009

Introducing HeyCentralPa.Com (MMBB Part 2 of 365)

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Ok…In my last post I set today as my personal deadline for posting part 2 of 365 in my Mega Monster Broker Blog Experiment….

So here we go.

But first things first.

Nobody reached out and volunteered to pay me the big bucks….

Ruby Clementine Hartman

Bummer. But don’t cry for me. Rejection has forced the establishment of a model for this thing that might actually allow for the accomplishment of the holy grail in Real Estate blogging.

Yep. I think I may have actually figured out a way to get a large group of agents consistently blogging! And of course, the local broker pimp is nowhere to be found in this wicked little piece of innovation…

Fun Digression

I realize that my warnings that this would be a costly venture probably scared a lot of BHB readers from getting in touch with me, but I was surprised that none of these York Pa Area brokerages even responded to my emailed offers to talk to them about proceeding with this project locally. Even those recruiting fiends at KW didn’t respond to try to land me as an agent. (Ouch!)

My response? A Well Meaning “You Still Check Your Email Guys?”

And a…

(Self-Censored, Click At Your Own Risk)

if you didn’t respond because you don’t see the value in the idea…

🙂

Proceeding Without A Broker…

Here’s the thinking: Since I haven’t been picked up by one brokerage, I’m free to recruit agent contributor’s from amongst any of the thousands currently practicing in the CentralPa region, right? And with no interloping brokers there will be more left on the table for the agent contributor’s, right? I think so…

So HeyCentralPa.Com will be exactly what I said it would be a few days ago – A monster online publication written and sustained by a cooperative group of real estate agents looking to farm individual neighborhoods or niches by blowing the local chunks. The only difference – these agents won’t all come from the same office, and no one broker will benefit from the blood sweat and tears of their content contributions. Instead, HeyCentralPa.Com will run as a cooperative, with all agent partners receiving their fair share Read more

April 16, 2009

Bringing it. And sharing it.

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

It is just before 7am as I write this.

Our large office is dark and quiet this time of day, waiting another couple of hours before truly springing to life. But I am not alone. Seems there is always at least one of our 110 agents here getting some business done. That’s a good thing. But I really do enjoy this quiet time to reflect and plan. And write.

I have been trading e-mails since last night with someone coming to BHBU. She is not the first. Another attendee contacted me with his “homework” questions a few days ago. I think I caught her off guard by offering a small modicum of blog help before we get together in Phoenix next week.

As I sit here this morning, I thought it might be good for me to share with you why I am taking the time off and coming to BHBU. The guy who built our brokerage calls it sharing ideas. Harrell explains it this way. “If I have a dollar and you have a dollar and we give our dollars to each other, then we each still only have a dollar. If we do that with ideas, we each then have two.” (Addendum: It is often far more than two because of the stimulated thoughts from the original ideas) He is far from a typical broker and this is far from a typical brokerage. Harrell Tague is THE reason for that.

Greg refers to the synergy of shared genius as a scenius.

Call it whatever you will, I see it as a true principle. It has worked for me every time it has been implemented.

That’s why I have taken the time last year to go to the RealEstateWebmasters conference. And BHB Orlando. And now BHBU and soon to RealEstateWebmasters2009 and HomeGain Nation live.

The pay I get for these conferences is the synergy of shared genius (scenius) plus relationships with each of the people involved. The ideas and relationships that come from that are huge. It’s the kind of compensation that could keep one of our 110 agents in business Read more

April 14, 2009

If you want to learn what we know — and to learn what we are learning — you’re coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Okay, this is my last pitch for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. If you can’t figure out which side of the bread has the butter on it, you’re just going to have to wear a bib.

Here’s the deal: What we’re going to teach you, nobody teaches. We’re going to go hands-ons, step-by-step through the things you need to be doing to create a state-of-the-art marketing profile. By the time you leave Phoenix, punch-drunk and exhausted, you will have built yourself a brand new marketing profile — just in time for the real estate market to make its rebound.

We’re going to be together for 72 hours, and out of that you might sleep 15 hours. The rest of the time we’re going to be working — in eight three-hour hands-on labs and in between-class and after-class sessions where we can learn, think and grow together.

The goal is to build a scenius, a shared genius among the bunch of us, so that we all come away smarter and better-equipped to take on the wired world of real estate.

What are you going to get for your money?

State-of-the-art weblogging techniques, photography and graphic arts expertise, social media marketing acumen and the salesmanship skills necessary to make belly-to-belly conversions. (Excuse me: To Skin cats.)

On my side of the quad, you’ll learn search engine optimization and search-engine marketing, lead generation and management techniques, landing pages and a whole lot more.

Taken together, we’ll be covering every step of the real estate marketing process from the customer’s first tenuous investigations through first contact, incubation, the sales cycle and conversion.

And these classes will be taught by actual working real estate professionals who are actually doing this work in their own practices.

Like who? Mister Ubiquitous, Brian Brady, is the Dean of Marketing. He’ll be leading Linda Davis, Kristal Kraft and Sean Purcell on the content side of the campus. I’ll be serving as the Dean of Geeks, working with Eric Blackwell, Kelly Kohler and the inmimicable Ryan Hartman.

There will be other people speaking, including Mark Green giving a presentation on CRM marketing. And there will be a support staff of experts to Read more

April 14, 2009

California Proposes to Regulate REALTORS Alongside Pawn Shops, and Lenders, and Banks…Oh MY!

by Brian Brady

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

Assemblyman Pedro Nava sponsored a bill (CA-AB33) to reorganize our state’s financial services’ regulators to be under one umbrella, the newly created Department of Financial Services. The idea is to save a bunch of money for the State.

Of course, CAR is going nuts. Amy Steele reports via ActiveRain.com:

AB 33 (Nava), which C.A.R. opposes, was approved yesterday in the Assembly Banking Committee. This bill would abolish the Department of Real Estate, the Department of Corporations, the Department of Financial Institutions, and the Office of Real Estate Appraisers. AB 33 proposes to transfer the powers, duties, purposes, jurisdiction and responsibilities those departments to the Department of Financial Services, which would be a newly created overarching department. C.A.R. opposes AB 33 because the function of a real estate licensee is not to provide financial services, but to list and show houses for sale, sell or manage investment properties and raw land, and manage and oversee residential rental properties. Real estate licensees, regulated by the DRE, should not be blended in with the banks, credit unions, consumer finance lenders, residential mortgage lenders and pawnbrokers because, unlike these other licensees, real estate licensees are individually licensed agents that have a fiduciary agency relationship with their clients.

Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY! Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY! Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY!

What CAR (and Amy) conveniently left out is the subsequent bill (also sponsored by Nava); AB 34- Licensing of Individual Loan Originators:

Requires all mortgage loan originators to be individually licensed. Also requires all loan originators to register with a national database and submit criminal history background checks.

CAR has been calling for a bill like AB34 for a number of years but only if it fell under the Department of Real Estate. California was one of the first states to license individual originators, under the California Department of Real Estate. Let me re-highlight a key phrase to the opposition of AB 33:

Real estate licensees, regulated by the DRE, should not be blended in with the banks, credit unions, consumer finance lenders, residential mortgage lenders and pawnbrokers because, unlike these Read more

April 14, 2009

With San Francisco’s tenants rights the way they are, it’s always a tough fight .. but still: Peeking back through the looking-glass

by Brad Coy

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Mark’s post as well as Sean’s got me thinking. It’s certainly not unusual these days to ‘friend someone up’ on a social platform such as Facebook these days and learn just a little bit more than you wanted to know, but how would you deal with the situation of finding out a bit TOO much.

Then came along this hot story could be a guide in how to help with property management. Even with heavy handed tenants rights keeping a choke hold on you as a property owner, at least you might know what to do next about a bad tenant.

Tenants evicted after “Skins-style parties” at her home on Facebook

Carolyn Lorimer couldn’t resist a quick look at the latest snaps on Facebook of her old friend enjoying a party.

It seemed like quite a bash. Revelers rolled about clutching bottles of beer amid scenes of ripped wallpaper and smashed TVs.

There was even a picture of three girls wiggling their thonged bottoms as they danced on a table.

Not a very wise thing to do, trashing your flat and then having friends blow it up on Facebook with pics to prove how you throw a serious rager.

How about just pissing off your neighbors?

New media civil war on Rotten Neighbor.com

Drug addicts. They fight outside in the middle of the night over drugs, kick in people’s cars, and cant afford to clothe their children. Pretty much the scum of the earth. They like to leave garbage all over the place, spray-painted “#### Pigs” on their house, set fire to their own shed for fun

Wow! Looking out for your investment is getting easier, no? As a landlord or a property manager I wouldn’t waste too much time monitoring this, but I could think of a few easy ways to keep my ear to the ground. 🙂

eviction-letter

image courtesy of magerleagues on Flickr

April 14, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen….Lower Your Prices By Making things Products…

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

I’ve been a freelancer, mostly, since November of 2007. (I closed about 4mm in loans in 2008, mostly 1st quarter). I’ve built websites, blogs, I’ve set up CRMS, and I’ve created landing pages, and sold a variety of e-books. I created an ill fated subscription service, (got it up to 30 members, then remembered the things I hate about loan officers) and I’ve built a ton of websites, done a ton of writing, and had an utter blast. I’ve delivered sometimes, f’d it up sometimes, and learned more faster than I ever have at any period of my life.

One of the things I learned…and that Dan Kennedy would freak out about is that lowering your prices means more profit, more relaxation, and better, happier clients with a chance to succeed. I used to charge people about $2,000 per blog. And I’d do a reasonable job with the blogs. I’d spend time training people in what WordPress does, I’d train them in how to post, I’d share my analytics with them, and I’d go through it. But for $2,000, you gotta have value. So people would continue to call. The service I offered wasn’t worth $2,000 to them, they felt like something MORE was needed. And honestly, they were right.

I had more time sunk into support and followup than the stuff that I was charging for. So, I thought some more about it.

And decided to lower all of my prices on everything I do. Because if you’re only charging $700 or $800 it’s a far different situation than $2,000. People can afford it, and it’s easier to meet that expectation. They have a level of indifference about the outcome because, honestly, $700 bucks isn’t going to make or break most months for most people. You can increase value by adding more information (videos etc) and it’s a BONUS and not an ENTITLEMENT.

To do that, though, ya need a defined process. The blue ocean thing: everyone was using the Thesis framework for blogs, why not make ’em look cool? I mean really cool? Take away the option from the customer, sell a Read more

April 13, 2009

Facebook Advice… Straight From the Buck’s Mouth

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

One of the interesting things about reading cutting edge, real estate thinkers here and elsewhere is how, every now and then, we miss the forest for all the trees. I think you know what I’m saying: someone will post about a new technology or share an idea or reveal a new twist or just plain inspire and the conversation will take off. Pretty soon, an ol’ balloon-popper like Jeff Brown will wander by and yell through the ivory-framed window: “Hey! Skinned any cats lately?” Then he’ll pick up his pelt bag and head down to the bank.

I saw this last week on a great post by Mark Green, who wrote a piece called Please Get Out of My Face(book) that touched on some good rules of thumb for the best use of social media tools like Facebook. There were some pretty interesting comments and the conversation expanded on some of the ideas in Mark’s post. Then, a couple days after the comments ended, a new comment went up. It was late and it was overlooked and it reminded me how often we resemble less a cat skinner and more Elmer Fudd in the cartoon where he’s so busy getting ready to go deer hunting – talking about how great it’s going to be with Porky Pig and sharing his newest, shiniest gizmo – that he doesn’t notice the 12 point buck meander right past the cabin.

Laura Evans wrote the comment. For purposes of full disclosure: I’ve known Laura in the real world for some time. Here’s her comment (I’ve edited for length & the emphasis is mine):

Mark makes some great points about how to use Social Networking tools. I’m not in the Facebook game for marketing purposes, purely social for me. However if I were, I think my strategy for this powerful tool would be slightly different.

First, I would establish a goal. In your world, I presume it would be to build your sphere of influence to sell. So, if the majority of your FB “friends” are in your industry (isn’t LinkedIn a better tool for Read more

April 11, 2009

Wanna Piss Off The RE.net? Succeed with Online Sales Letters

by Brian Brady

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

I forgot how much I love Copyblogger. Greg Swann is echoing its posts on a scene in the sidebar. I just clicked over to the one which explains that the death of ugly long-copy is overexaggerated. That article links to an article that asks “Is Your Tribe Holding You Down?” When you read about “the Cool Kids”, does it remind you of the RE.net? A few wealthy tech guys and a whole lotta bloggers with a real estate license, pontificating about how consumers “might” behave.

Then there’s the “IM crowd” who remind me a whole bunch of the BHBU grads. Speaking of which, where are all the BHBU graduates lately? I think I know the answer to that because I’ve talked to a lot of them on the phone. The BHBU grads are JUST like the “IM” crowd Copyblogger talks about; they’re hella busy.

If you’re all worked up, you can skip the rest of this rant and yell at me. Otherwise, keep reading

THIS burns my ass- agents and originators marketing the way the “cool kids” tell them to rather than doing what they KNOW works.

Take a look at this.

“EEEEWWWWWWWW” says the RE.net (usually over on ActiveRain).

Okay…but what about this? This agent is using long copy techniques in a her video. Is what she is doing much different than this?

Check this! This Unchained graduate is inviting people to register for free homebuyer education courses (and building a HUGE opt-in database). If you think he’s a genius, he’s not. He ripped a page from the Dan Kennedy playbook. (Scott will admit that, too- ask him in a few weeks at Unchained)

Here’s another example of ugly marketing. I don’t know how many agents have told me that they have inventory problems. Could you turn to CraigsList to find properties, that aren’t listed, for your buyers? Before you criticize the messenger, consider the message. Few agents reverse prospect for home buyers. While we talk about single property websites, nobody is discussing single-buyer websites. Think old-school cover letters, accompanied with offers, to tug at the heartstrings of hard-hearted sellers…on the internet.

Which is more important to Read more

April 11, 2009

The Traffic Magnet Mega Monster Multi Agent Niche Focused Broker Blog Recruiting & Retention Market Domination Tool = A Huge Company Asset [Part 1 of 365]

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Dear Large Broker/Owners,

Are you ready to enter the web publishing business? You should be. Because the required investment is relatively low, the potential returns are staggering, and you’ve got a huge team of columnists who will help build your asset, pretty much free of charge, if you play it right.

Huh?

In other words – If you build yourself a company blog and properly incentivise contribution from your agent partners, you will slash advertising expenses, recruit cream o’ the crop producers, –(even would be Mom & Pop Publishers) — and quite possibly dominate your marketplace … all while substantially increasing the resale value of your business.

Or, maybe this is a better way to put it: If you start viewing your company website as an online newspaper whose potential subscriber base is as large as your entire service area, a lot of good things will follow.

Grab Those Orphaned Newspaper Subscribers!

We all know the newspapers are dying–especially the small local rags providing info about local events, trash pickup schedules, and the obituary of ole Mr. Babbit. And I think that large Real Estate Brokerages and their agents are in a unique position to pick up where these joints are leaving off. Whether they already live in the neighborhood or they’re relocating from accross the country, people really do care that there’s an easter egg hunt at the local park tomorrow. They always will!

So why Real Estate Agents? Well, to put it simply, real estate agents are everywhere, sorta like roaches. Take exception to this if you want, but really, we’re like walking talking RAID evaders and though we’re being forced to evolve, we’re never going to go away. Why? Because we existentially gather, digest, and verbal diarrhea hyper local info. We just can’t help busy body-ing around and opening our mouths whenever possible, because our very livelihood depends on it..

And love us or hate us, we exist because people really do want the nitty gritty local info (real estate related and otherwise) that’s in our heads. So…for you Dead Dinosaurs Walking out there…think about it. Your fear of that 25 year old Read more

April 9, 2009

Battle Back With Your Posse

by Brian Brady

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

Seth Godin calls it a “tribe”, I call it a “posse” but they are both slang words for network. If you’ve heard me speak at any of the Unchained events, you learned about my “deliberate posse creation” using social networks.

Seth describes that we belong to many sub-groups within our network:

If you think about the tribes you belong to, most of them are side effects of experiences you had doing something slightly unrelated. We have friends from that summer we worked together on the fishing boat, or a network of people from college or sunday school. There’s also that circle of people we connected with on a killer project at work a few years ago.

Hold that thought if you’re coming to Unchained.

Look at the Government’s response to the housing mess. Rather than accept the fact the we can’t trust everyone with a house (we tried and it failed), we’re trying to fix an amputation with a bandage. TARP and HARP are bandages, soon to be blood-soaked and soggy. We need to cauterize the wound.

Our industries are still TARP-ing and HARP-ing about who’s to blame for the financial crisis. What a colossal waste of time. I can’t find one REALTOR nor one originator who can reverse the losses the banks, investors, and homeowners suffered…BUT…if we all start doing our jobs, we can turn this thing around. Call it a grassroots effort to “battle back” from this mess.

Direct counseling with no bullshit. Keepin’ it real. Advising folks who will never be able to afford the property to rethink their priorities and filling those houses with willing and able homeowners…THAT’S how we’re gonna “battle back”.

Okay, if you’re coming to Unchained, keep that message in mind and go back to the Seth quote. You have a network and we want to get the message out. You’re not going to be alone in this endeavor. Read what else Seth said today:

What would happen if trade shows devoted half a day to ‘projects’? Put multi-disciplinary teams of ten people together and give them three hours to create something of value. The esprit de corps created by a bunch Read more

April 9, 2009

The failed listing revisted: What the hell do sellers need you for…?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I keep meaning to come back to Barry Bevis and his discussion about what to do about “stale” listings, but I’ve got too much on my plate right now. In the mean time, let’s talk about this house:

Killer, huh? I mean, it’s a totally breathtaking expression of what modern architecture can be. Here it is looking back the other way:

The view is Camelback Mountain. It’s not just an incredible house, it sits on almost an acre of some of the priciest land in Phoenix.

A house to die for, not? Well, not to die for, but certainly to live for, to scrimp and save for, to dream that, one day, you might be able to own this home.

But look closely at those photos… They seem a little… schmutzy… Don’t they?

The listing for this home expired yesterday. There were a total of six photos for the listing — I’m not making this up. And all six of the photos were like the three I’m showing here.

That’s not quite true: The other three were worse.

What’s wrong with them? They’re scans… At some time or another, some magazine wrote up this home — easy to understand why. And then the listing agent made the photos for this listing by scanning from the magazine. That’s why they’re schmutzy — it’s dust on the scanner surface or perhaps damage to the paper on which the images were printed. That’s why there are moires in the images, as well. It’s the scanner’s grid of pixels creating an interference pattern with the half-tone dots of the printed images.

But wait. There’s more. This is the descriptive copy from the listing — on my honor absolutely sic:

Remarks: cHECK OUT THIS AWESOME CONTEMORARY LOCATED IN THE HEART OF ARCADIA WITH THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE VIEWS OF CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN. THIS SUPER CONTEMPORARY WITH SURLY IMPRESS YOUR CLIENTS. VERY FEW HOMES LIKE THIS ARE AROUND, AND WITH LOCATION, VIEWS, AND FINISHES. GATED COMMUNITY AND GATED FRONT DRIVE WILL ENSURE YOUR CLIENTS PRIVACY REAR DRIVE OFFERS ACCESS TO GARAGE AND MULTI-CAR PARKING. AWESOME KITCHEN, KILLER MASTER SUITE, AND 3 ADDITIONAL SUITES THAT OFFER BATH AND PRIVATE Read more

April 8, 2009

Do Clients Spell Service R-E-S-U-L-T-S? Bet They Do

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Lately I’ve wondered if some of you have noticed the same thing I have. I’m talking about the how the concept of service has been elevated to somewhat of a deified state. Giving superior service is always part of an excellent business plan, but it seems to me it’s reached critical mass as it relates to the profitable use of our time.

For the record, one of the most repeated observations we hear from prospects and new clients is how much time we spend with them answering questions, both asked and unasked. Or for how quickly they receive responses to emails or voice mails. How we take care of Murphy when he shows up. Though we do serve some damn fine coffee in our office, our clients understand where our real value resides. We get them from Point A to Point B — a lot easier said than done. They don’t waste our time, and we freely give them ours. They know we’re available to them without explanation, and it’s much appreciated. When there are problems, we don’t look for who to blame, we solve it. Then we locate the culprit. 🙂

Last week I wrote a quick post about The Eight Hour Day which generated comments taking the topic on a side trip — not an uncommon occurrence here. It was a worthy detour, as some Bloodhound contributors chimed in with their thoughts. The spinoff topic was time spent servicing ongoing clients. Tom Vanderwell asked this question — How do you balance the “maintenance” of clients with the need for marketing time?

Sean Purcell jumped in with this answer.

You don’t.

I know that sounds flippant, but the two do not balance. One is an absolute necessity, like breathing, and the other is something you do as part of your job — for now. They truly are that far apart in importance.

Marketing is the life blood of your business… (emphasis mine)

I don’t know how to say that any better. Truth is what it is.

But my gripe with all the talk about giving ‘world class’ service, or, ‘we spoil our clients’, is that in Read more

April 8, 2009

The Inman Prayer: “Deliver us not into deliberation and tempt us not into leadership, for ass-licking for lucre is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen…”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

You just can’t make this stuff up:

Inman News is launching a new feature: Real Estate Product Reviews.

Would you like to be part of a team of real estate professionals that reviews and rates new real estate technologies, tools and services?

We want to hear from you.

I’ll just bet you do…

I loved this bit of reptilian reciprocity:

Imagine if the digital/virtual book (Vook) knew at what point you stopped reading, and then starting sending you Tweets from characters in the story up until that point, or giving you a tease of what’s coming up next. I can riff a bunch of ideas off this but my head is going to explode!

Amazingly enough, this harshly critical review of vacuous vaporware comes from a vacuous vaporware vendor who has suffered equally harsh treatment from Inman “News” — call it quid pro lizard.

Our whole world is out of joint by now, so much has the word “supportive” come to mean “promotional.” Drew Meyers is a sweet, sweet man, but this article is nothing but vendor-pimping. The vendor might well deserve the accolades, but, if so, why bury the lead? The post is not about SEO nor about a well-optimized web site. It’s about the vendor who built that attestedly well-optimized site. Hiding that fact reeks, in my opinion.

And it wouldn’t do to forget the best little PR3 weblog in Texas. Agent Shortbus is not a whore, and don’t you dare say it is! It’s more like a big-hearted, big-haired, round-heeled gal who just happens to like a Prime Rib before and a Blue Agave Margarita after. What’s so bad about that?!?

Diogenes might as well be Cassandra, I do understand that. But we are too much at risk of becoming entirely enmired in bullshit, to the extent that we can’t even smell it any longer. When Inman News, the high temple of the vendorslut religion, can pretend to do product reviews — that seems like a good time to tune into Radio Cassandra.

We have this thing, and maybe none but few of us have understood from the first how unusual it is for real estate professionals to live Read more

April 6, 2009

Hello, Wisconsin! Introducing Jolenta Averill

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I went questing last week for a Realtor in Madison. I heard from precisely two people. One was a paranoid dinosaur who was convinced a free referral must be a scam. The other is a star in the making, I think.

I don’t know yet if she’s a good fit for my budding real estate investor friend, but I was so knocked out by the seriousness of her commitment to real estate that I asked her to join us here.

So: Permit me to introduce Jolenta Averill, an independent real estate broker from Madison, Wisconsin:

Jolenta Averill is a Realtor and independent broker servicing South Central WI. With a background in trading floor technology and customer service, she’s building a boutique cyber brokerage in Madison WI to help free agents from the chains of big box brokers.

Jolenta is convinced we’re smart and amazingly great writers, so I hope y’all can let her down slowly. Meanwhile, make her feel welcome and we can all watch he star ascend into the heavens.

April 5, 2009

End of Daze

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

2542_54709363669_669028669_1333750_5640720_s2 As winters go, the current capricious season has been as tolerable as any I’ve experienced sober since being administratively abandoned here 14 years ago against my will. So what if I left a smarmy sales vice president waiting (with 45 life insurance presentation kits and a slide projector) in Baggage Claim 7 at O’ Hare International for an ‘inexcusable amount of hours’ on a cold March morning back in 1990-whatever. Big whoop. I figure the suited puppet is corporate milk toast by now anyway so I have no regrets in that regard. A year and a half later I had my real estate license and thirty days after that, I sold my first multi-unit building for condo conversion. ‘God forbid’ the ass clown would ever think to spring for a cab. Thinking back on it now, that’s what he most likely had to do. I just don’t recall it being mentioned in my Fed Exed severance package that so quickly followed.

And what I’ve concluded since that liberating (if not sentimental) six-figure parting of the ways is this: If ever there was a super-imposed bordered, semi-landlocked example of urban, bi-polar personality disorder just waiting to spit in the face of cabin fever, it exists in my fair city, Chicago, between the months of November and April, pick a year. And, as is the case of so many frost-bound salesmen who have come and gone before me, my own personal demons continue to appear in a variety of veneers (with mere weather and spirited drink being the least seductive of my temptresses anymore).

My final hours in corporate America began to un-tick in the following way one blustery weekend a millennium or so ago. I had been sitting on the same Viagra Triangle bar stool since Saturday morning when Last Call was finally announced. I allegedly paid another unwilling patron to help me locate my car and drive me home. When I hit the pillow and cold crashed on the bed hours later it was the break of daylight the following Sunday. I needed to be out the door in exactly 24 hours Read more

Category: Real Estate (page 78 of 266)

Introducing HeyCentralPa.Com (MMBB Part 2 of 365)

by Ryan Hartman

Fun Digression

Proceeding Without A Broker…

Bringing it. And sharing it.

by Eric Blackwell

If you want to learn what we know — and to learn what we are learning — you’re coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by Greg Swann

California Proposes to Regulate REALTORS Alongside Pawn Shops, and Lenders, and Banks…Oh MY!

by Brian Brady

With San Francisco’s tenants rights the way they are, it’s always a tough fight .. but still: Peeking back through the looking-glass

by Brad Coy

Ladies and Gentlemen….Lower Your Prices By Making things Products…

by Chris Johnson

Facebook Advice… Straight From the Buck’s Mouth

by Sean Purcell

Wanna Piss Off The RE.net? Succeed with Online Sales Letters

by Brian Brady

The Traffic Magnet Mega Monster Multi Agent Niche Focused Broker Blog Recruiting & Retention Market Domination Tool = A Huge Company Asset [Part 1 of 365]

by Ryan Hartman

Grab Those Orphaned Newspaper Subscribers!

Battle Back With Your Posse

by Brian Brady

The failed listing revisted: What the hell do sellers need you for…?

by Greg Swann

Do Clients Spell Service R-E-S-U-L-T-S? Bet They Do

by Jeff Brown

The Inman Prayer: “Deliver us not into deliberation and tempt us not into leadership, for ass-licking for lucre is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen…”

by Greg Swann

Hello, Wisconsin! Introducing Jolenta Averill

by Greg Swann

End of Daze

by Geno Petro

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