Category: Real Estate (page 82 of 266)

February 26, 2009

The Twitter Experiment: SWRake Seeks Companion for Possible LTR

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Alright. I talked about posting my results on this post.

Today’s pay pal of $575.00 allowed me to cross the finish line, early. I have blogs to build, SEO to SEO, copy to write, PHP to PHP and more work than I can possibly do. And way more than that, to channel Yogi. Lawyers, a local News Station…Realtors®…and others have contracted with me to do everything from setting up social networking profiles (boring), to trying to aggregate information on their competitors (fun). I have a pile of work to do. From Twitter. It’s an efficient clearing house when you’re ready to pick up the phone and be a catalyst and when you see phrases and words you dig at http://search.twitter.com.

I’m not highly skilled as a cold caller compared to many. But I make the calls. That’s most of it. And, I had one shitty response. Only one. But I pick up the phone, I say I’m enjoying your tweets. And, I now have money to pay 2008’s extortion taxes. I’ll probably have $14,000 after I pay my subs out. There’s money in twitter. Just lying around. If I’m a mortgage lender, EVERY Realtor® would get a phone call in EVERY state I could lend in. Why? Because being ON twitter is instant credibility & rapport.

I didn’t spend hours doing this, really. I spent probably about 70-75 minutes a day initially calling, and then I did follow up, scheduled through ACT 6.0 now that I have my PC working on my MAC. (Act 6.0 was the pinnacle of single user CRMs) . I also asked the Twitterers for referrals that WEREN’T on Twitter. That was $8,000 of my $25,150. I have probably another $4,000-8,000 in business I could extract if I’d follow up with zeal and vigor.

And there’s the rub. See, I need someone to manage and do the work. I’ve sold it, gotten project requirements, I’ve found people with real needs to be helped. And I’m looking for someone to help grind out the work so I can honor my clients, and keep the pace up. I want someone that Read more

February 25, 2009

“Appliance” is not a verb!

by John Rowles

IDX Search Entrepreneur

As a purveyor of Real Estate Search Engines that function best when they have text to work with, and as a guy who holds both a journalism degree and the English language in high regard, I often find myself wincing in pain when I read the descriptions that end up on Property Detail pages.

Lately, I have noticed two new “words” creeping into the bastard child of English that is the Real Estate lexicon: “applianced” and “fireplaced”.

Both of these nouns that have been horribly mutated into past-tense verbs are often accompanied by that harbinger of terrible writing, the adverb, as in “fully applianced” and “newly fireplaced”.

What the Hell does “fully applianced”” mean? If the dishwasher has been stolen out of a REO, does that make it “partly applianced”? If a foreclosure still has the pipes in the walls, is it “fully coppered”?

Not to get all Andy Rooney on you, but at a time when people are questioning both the need for and general quality of Real Estate professionals, you aren’t helping yourselves when your most potent marketing tool — the description of a listing you publish on the Web — sounds like it was written as a late homework assignment in the back seat of the short bus on the way to reform school.

Now I know that many people regard grammar books with the same level of enthusiasm normally reserved for a root canal, but there is one grammar book out there that makes the subject as painless as a nitrous-induced laughing fit. It is called The Elements of Style, also known as “Strunk and White” for the two men responsible for the original version.

William Strunk, who was EB White’s English professor at Cornell, wrote the original “little book” in the 1940’s. It was called the “little book” because the grammar part is just 14 pages, and it is written as a series of easy-to-remember commands, like “Omit Needless Words”.

(To which, if I were writing the Real Estate Description Edition, I would add “Don’t make shit up.”)

EB White was asked to update his old professor’s grammar book, and he added a section Read more

February 25, 2009

Getting Paid to be Motivated

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I love marketing. I love figuring out a theme and creating the copy and running a campaign. What I have a lot more difficulty with is prospecting. The daily grind of converting people who haven’t met me into people who want to elect me mayor. I read posts by Jeff Brown and Chris Johnson and I get all fired up like when I was a stock broker: 200 calls a day and all the throat lozengers you can swallow. Then I’ll read something by Greg Swann or Brian Brady and I’m speeding down the 2.0 path toward Social Media Marketing Mecca. But at the end of the day (actually the beginning of the day for me), I still need to do the basics: phone calls, emails, letters and so on. I’ve got HEAP running some of that for me and I use Facebook and I’m usually bleeding somewhere from all my efforts to skin cats! It’s a whole lot to digest on the salary we’re paid… Oh yeah, we’re not paid a salary. We’ve got to keep all those balls in the air AND wait for the big pay days when an escrow finally does close. Come on… admit it: sometimes a little daily motivation would help.

Lately, I’ve been monetizing my efforts. Nothing ground breaking here; just some good old fashioned methods for spicing up the day. If you’re looking for a little more excitement, give this a try. (Warning: involves a little bit of math. If you don’t DO math, or you’re already sufficiently motivated by the repo guy outside the door… skip this post now and save yourself the headache.)

One for the Money
Know your dollar figures. There are two dollar figures I care about: What is my average Gross Commission Income (GCI) per transaction? and What monthly income do I expect? (This can be found in the business plan you create and update each year… right?) I live in San Diego and work with lots of investors, so my expected GCI is $7500 per transaction. I live in San Diego Read more

February 25, 2009

The three little pigs and the housing rescue plan, a modern fable

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Once upon a time there were three little pigs, and, although they were brothers and looked a lot a like, they could not have been more different.

The first little pig was hard-working and thrifty. He spent very little of his income, saving and investing as much money as he could. He lived with his mother well into adulthood, helping her with her expenses. He finally bought a home of his own when he could afford to pay for it all in cash. As you might expect, the thrifty little pig’s home wasn’t flashy, but it was all his, free and clear.

The second little pig didn’t save very much of his income, but he earned a lot of money as a rising executive, and he had an uncanny luck in the housing market. He bought a condominium on his 18th birthday, then traded up to his first single-family home before he was 21. By the time he was 30, the lucky little pig owned a very stately executive home — and he had been able to make a whopping 50% down-payment.

The third little pig wasn’t very good at working hard, and he had never kept a job long enough to get a raise. He wasn’t at all good at saving money, but he could borrow and spend it better than any little pig anywhere. Like the lucky little pig, he moved away from home early, but he just kept moving — from apartments to friends’ couches to rental homes and then to one girlfriend’s house after another.

If you are a liberal, you may be thinking of the third brother as the unfortunate little pig. If you are a conservative, you will want to call him the lazy little pig — or worse. To keep the peace, let’s just call him the puerile little pig — the little brother who never quite grew up.

The original version of this story was about construction quality as a metaphor for planning ahead, anticipating disasters so they don’t take you by surprise. But the world of real estate has changed a lot since then. The most important Read more

February 24, 2009

Quietly going about our business

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

We go about our business, most of us, very quietly, with an attempt at dignity. One foot in front of the other, moving forward, striving, reaching, yearning to be the best we can be. We want to provide for our families, do right and do well for our clients. We want to put our heads down on our pillows at night, satisfied with the day’s work, and wake up the following morning excited to do it all again.

We don’t, most of us, want to be rock stars in the blogiverse. We want, most of us, to be appreciated for what we can offer, allowed to give freely without grief, and left to go quietly about our business.

I don’t agree with everything written on real estate blogs, and I don’t much like some of it, but the people who read these national blogs, the people I meet at Unchained, and the real estate professionals who email me to share their own triumphs- these people are inspiring. They are just like me, quietly going about our business, picking up information like sponges, moving forward, learning, striving, laughing, loving- just people, just real estate agents (without big hair).

I’m disturbed by the idea of a NAR Social Media Director, when I think about it. But the thing is, I don’t think about it. I don’t care. I don’t wish the new SMD any ill will, I don’t wish them anything at all because it really doesn’t matter to me. By the way, I’m going to call this position The SMeD, just because it makes me giggle.

So The SMeD will have a job to do, but none of it matters to me because I have my job to do, and as Greg points out, “All we have to do is keep doing what we’ve been doing — and keep getting better at it — and the Boojum under the bed will be gone forever.”

I’ve always believed this, and it’s always proved true. Anything that we have given power to, in our own minds, can easily be dethroned, defrocked, destroyed, by doing exactly what we do so Read more

February 24, 2009

The Butcher, The Banker, The Candlestickmaker

by Thomas Hall

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but to think that it’s deja vu all over again. Is it really 1980 again? Congress appears to have stolen a page from the Conservative’s play book – but with a twist.

It seems trickle-down economics applies as much to government spending as do tax cuts to the rich, yet with the latest infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the most powerful corporations – America’s largest banks and insurance companies, we have yet to see much of a trickle – less a drop.

TARP did in fact keep the economy dry.

Perhaps the irony of it all – to me at least – is that the so-called “Socialists” also see virtue in starting at the top – fork over billions to the most powerful to get the engine running again – the proof is not quite in the pudding pie, Georgie.

From my perspective, the deluge is starting at the bottom. My email has been flooded with comments from my condo association regarding the complications my neighbors are facing in the sale of their condo. Economic circumstances are hitting very close to home – my neighbors, one of whom is a fellow Realtor – directly below me in my building – is in dire need of selling their home. Our association has a first right of refusal clause which deems FHA financing impossible. My neighbor has been soliciting the board and fellow owners that an amendment in our bylaws is required to make the sale of their home possible to more buyers.

I was amazed at some of the comments from fellow neighbors concerned about the “quality” of potential buyers who only qualify for 3.5% down – I could only chuckle thinking that some existing owners were able to buy with 0% down 3 years ago. Where’s there equity now?

One neighbor argued that we want to prevent a short sale – moreover a foreclosure – from impacting the values of existing homeowners. I’m pretty sure he didn’t read The Chicago Tribune on Sunday – there was an article about the substantial increase of foreclosures Read more

February 24, 2009

The participatory internet is a singularity, not a trend

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Referring back to the Boojum under the bed, this is me in email to a Realtor Association executive:

Not to be flip, but I don’t want any group of any sort to do anything at all with social media. The first totally disintermediated business in the history of business is communication. Social media will not work for groups because there are no groups — only individuals. If you approach Web 2.0 as a new way of doing the same old things, you will miss out on everything that is amazing and wonderful and liberating about our world.

This is not a trend. This is a singularity. The old models no longer apply.

Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology

February 24, 2009

Podcast: Wrapping your mind around dynamic web pages

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

This is the third and final installment from my conversation Saturday night with Scott Cowan.

In the podcast linked here, Scott and I talk about using PHP to create dynamic web pages.

Why would you want to do this? Mainly you wouldn’t. But working with PHP and a data set, you can manage you ignorance in such a way that you make some pretty smart web pages.

For reference, you might work with the BloodhoundBlog posts headed “Speaking in tongues.”

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, Starpower

February 23, 2009

Taking little teeny steps toward single-property web sites on little teeny mobile web browsers on little teeny mobile phones

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Little Teeny Eyes by Tom Digby

Oh we got a new computer but it’s quite a disappointment
‘Cause it always gave this same insane advice:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So we re-read the instruction book that came with the computer
But it kept on printing crazy stuff that reads
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY SHOES FOR CENTIPEDES.”

So we got an expert genius and he rewrote all the programs
But we always got results that looked like these:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY LICENSE PLATES FOR BEES.”

Then we tested each resistor, every diode and transistor,
But our electronic brain just raves and rants:
“OH YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE BRANDING IRONS FOR BRANDING ANTS.”

Now we’re looking for a buyer for a crazy mad computer
That will only give out crazy mad advice
Like: “YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY EYES FOR READING LITTLE TEENY PRINT
LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE TEENY HANDS FOR MILKING MICE.”

So I got spammed yesterday for yet another piece of vendorslut crap. TextMyMLS.com will send a SMS text message containing details about your listing to a mobile phone-using prospect who requests information from you. The text message can also include photos if the prospect’s phone supports them.

What do the text messages look like. Look up and you will see a demo screen, as seen on my iPhone. That’s 100% to scale, y’all, and, no, you’re not getting old. These message might look good on other devices, but on the iPhone they’re useless.

There’s more, of course. TextMyMLS.com is a stealth lead-capture system. When the prospect “texts” for more information, the TextMyMLS system pages the Realtor with the prospects phone number — which is transmitted without the prospect’s knowledge or consent. In addition to the text about the home, possibly unreadable, the prospect also gets spammed with information about the Realtor. And then, of course, the poor punter is stuck having to fend off sales calls for the next 90 days — Read more

February 23, 2009

Tweet Us Better Mr. Liniger! — When In The World Is RE/MAX International?

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Woe is me. I’m feeling rejected, ignored, and well, sorta “LOST.” Where and “When” the heck In the World is RE/MAX International?….

Denver?

1977?

Here’s the thing. I’ve controlled “Twitter.Com/remax” for over a year now and I still haven’t received one email from somebody at International asking me to forfeit the identity. I expected they’d shut me down due to a corporate policy that stipulates I’m not allowed to use the RE/MAX name online.

I remember that when I grabbed the handle on a lark I was thinking, “well with the popularity of this Twitter thing (whatever it is) I’m sure mother RE/MAX will be in touch soon to snag or perhaps even buy it away by grandfathering me in as a 100 percenter or something”. Wishful thinking. Nothing happened and I forgot I even owned the identity.

So when I recently noticed I’d been picking up “followers” out of the blue, I decided to lob a few tweets as an experiment of sorts to see what the reaction might be. I posted mostly recruiting and company website plugs for the RE/MAX I’m currently at, and picked up 70 or so more followers over the span of a few weeks. But still, no response from the Big Balloon.

The only thanks I got for my effort was my new broker calling a few weeks ago to ask why I had porn on the site. I guess I’d accidentally followed or reciprocated on a follow request from a Philly area escort service, and a colleague of ours pointed it out to him. I apologized and zapped the pretty lady off of the profile, and that was that. (At least I think…)

Anyway, I don’t know why, but this Twitter.com/remax thing has really been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. Isn’t Twitter a big enough deal that someone at RE/MAX, maybe even one of my recent RE/MAX colleague followers would have dimed me out to the appropriate department in Denver? I mean, I think I sorta deserve something for my efforts. Maybe at least rebuke from International for using the corporate name in vain?

You see, I want Read more

February 23, 2009

Adding a new hound to the pound: Introducing Ryan Hartman

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Ryan Hartman has been a fun and fascinating voice in our comments for a long time. My error was that I was too stupid to invite him to join us as a contributor. I corrected this defect yesterday, and Ryan joins us today.

His biographical sketch is simply incomparable, so I will quote it in its entirety:

Ryan dropped out of a Philly college and started selling real estate at age 19 in 1998. He invested pretty much all of the GCI he earned in his early 20’s on beer, mushrooms, and florida. Then a wife and some kids showed up, so he figured out a way to “settle down” by replacing 7 day Realtor work weeks with lead-generation/blogging/tech-type gigs at a few local RE/MAX offices.

The man is wicked smart and a very fun read. We’re lucky to have him among us.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

February 23, 2009

Podcast: Building your own custom engenu skins

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

This is the second installment from my conversation Saturday night with Scott Cowan.

In the podcast linked below, we discuss the procedure to be followed in order to build your own custom engenu skin.

What’s a “skin”? It’s simply the visual theme for a particular engenu installation. If you work with the default engenu skin, your sites will look like this one. But here is that same site on our weblog devoted to historic and architecturally distinctive Phoenix homes. And here it is on our main Phoenix real estate web site. The same HTML code is used at each site. The difference in the way the pages appear is inherited from the skin.

In the course of the discussion, I reference a BloodhoundBlog post on page geometry. It might be worth you while revisiting that page during the podcast.

If we get very lucky, Cheryl Johnson will listen to this podcast and translate it into more-helpful instructions.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology

February 22, 2009

As the NAR makes its first forays into the participatory internet, wired Realtors must get a handle on a very difficult question: How do you get rid of the Boojum under the bed?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Okay, so the National Association of Realtors has made a big deal out of its search for a “Social Media Director.” Apparently I’m the only person who finds the terms “social media” and “director” to be inherently self-contradictory, but that doesn’t matter anyway.

Why? Because the NAR is interested in social media for two reasons only, neither of which will resonate with anyone in our world.

Their two objectives are these:

First — and primarily — they want to clamp down on and control everything associated with real estate in the participatory internet. Dinosaur organizations are censorious by their nature, but the NAR is very much like the Mafia in its need to control its message, silencing dissenters and whistle-blowers.

Second, the NAR wants to turn the Web 2.0 world into yet another distribution channel for treacly, sleazy sales propaganda.

I never thought of Pinocchio as a wise-guy before, but it comes to the same thing. You can’t get too near The Boys without becoming one of them, and if you lend any part of your credibility — your reputation for moral probity — to the NAR, it will turn you into yet another insipid, perpetually-smiling marionette. Dance, puppet, dance!

I think this might be a three princes fable. If it is, the first prince may well be Todd Carpenter, who for some insane reason actually wants this job. At least he had better want it, because he gave me as a character reference and I gave him a glowing review. If the NAR actually understands its world and ours, my recommendation should have worked the other way for Todd. But my impression was that they ate it up.

Prince number two is NAR CEO Dale Stinton, who has announced that the new Social Media Director has already been chosen, but who won’t reveal who is the poor benighted soul who will get to be torn to shreds by both the lady and the tiger, never knowing for sure which is which.

I don’t actually know who the third prince is, but for the moment I’m betting on me. I abhor the whole idea of leadership, but serving as Read more

February 22, 2009

Podcast: Installing engenu on multiple domains

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Linked below is a recording of a conversation Scott Cowan and I had last night about installing engenu on multiple domains.

Cliff’s Notes: Each domain needs its own copies of the engenu folder and the engenuComponents folder, including a separate copy of engenupageDex.bin. The advantage is that each different domain can have its own unique appearance, and each domain can have a separate password, so you can limit how much of your world you share with colleagues.

We also talked last night about how to build an engenu skin from a standing CSS style. I’ll upload that podcast tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology

February 21, 2009

Changing Your Own Hi-Tech Oil — Who Cares? — Is There A Skinned Cat Or Not?

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Greg’s post earlier today prompted me to respond via post rather than comment. He made some superb points, and one or two for which we’ll have to agree to disagree. He quoted me from my earlier post:

If you honestly believe your income is higher with you spending time changing your own hi-tech oil, then continue along that path — it’s obviously working for you. On the other hand, if you think putting yourself in front of 50 more serious prospects a year might be more productive for your bottom line, AND that would make you happy, you may want to modify your approach.

He said it was a false dichotomy.

It’s not a false dichotomy at all. We disagree on the basic satanic nature of vendors as a species. My car for example is easily more complex than most, and I don’t have a clue how to service it, including changing its oil. (Though I’ve changed oil on many of my previous cars.) I simply found the right guys to call. They service it while I drive one of their cars. I don’t have much down time. The same vendor has been servicing the car since summer of ’04 with spectacular results, and at a very fair price.

His second point is well taken, and we don’t disagree. As my post indicated, I’m a hi-tech marketing Kool-Aid drinker. Anything producing six figures annually has my full enthusiastic endorsement. But I compare it to the concept car. It’s cool, but it ain’t here yet, at least to the degree Greg and others predict. It’s not that I don’t think he’s correct, I do. It’s that it’s not producing the volume now that it surely will in the future.

Meanwhile, as Chris said so well in his comment, I’m using what works. And all debate aside, I’ll get belly2belly with more folks/year and do more deals 1.0 than most 2.0 practitioners do in three years. Are there some exceptions out there? Of course, there always are. Good on ’em because they’re demonstrating what’s possible. But current reality shows bottom lines aren’t being impacted in a Read more

Category: Real Estate (page 82 of 266)

“Appliance” is not a verb!

by John Rowles

Getting Paid to be Motivated

by Sean Purcell

The three little pigs and the housing rescue plan, a modern fable

by Greg Swann

Quietly going about our business

by Teri Lussier

The Butcher, The Banker, The Candlestickmaker

by Thomas Hall

The participatory internet is a singularity, not a trend

by Greg Swann

Podcast: Wrapping your mind around dynamic web pages

by Greg Swann

Taking little teeny steps toward single-property web sites on little teeny mobile web browsers on little teeny mobile phones

by Greg Swann

Tweet Us Better Mr. Liniger! — When In The World Is RE/MAX International?

by Ryan Hartman

Adding a new hound to the pound: Introducing Ryan Hartman

by Greg Swann

Podcast: Building your own custom engenu skins

by Greg Swann

As the NAR makes its first forays into the participatory internet, wired Realtors must get a handle on a very difficult question: How do you get rid of the Boojum under the bed?

by Greg Swann

Podcast: Installing engenu on multiple domains

by Greg Swann

Changing Your Own Hi-Tech Oil — Who Cares? — Is There A Skinned Cat Or Not?

by Jeff Brown

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