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Category: Real Estate (page 92 of 266)

November 17, 2008

The just-exactly-how-clever-are-you marketing-spam of the morning: SuperCuts shows you how to cut your database marketing costs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is pure spam, as far as I know, completely unsolicited. I read it and loved and now I’m sharing it with you:

Here’s a web-based version, if you’re having trouble reading it.

I read this as Harrah’s-style database marketing at its best: I’m offering you an incentive to sign up to be touched at your natural buying points. That’s a mutually-reinforcing loyalty, with the merchant, of course, taking care of the up-keep for the relationship.

The issue: How to translate it to real estate. It’s not enough to have an offer. Free moving boxes are a one-off freemium, and what you want are regular reasons to touch your people.

Richard Riccelli has a great idea for synergistic offers, but you’ll have to use your imagination to retool it for real estate. He suggests giving a free magazine subscription as a freemium. For us, it might be Dwell or Cottages. In your market, it might be your local city mag. The challenge is turning the offer into natural, organic touch points. One solution might be to feature something from the magazine in your monthly newsletter. Another might be simply to call your subscriber clients to talk about issues raised in the latest issue.

A comps search is a way to stay in touch with past buyers. These were a lot more fun when prices were going up, but it’s still a nice way to stay in contact. I’m assuming everyone knows what this is: An MLS-based search of stone comps to the buyer’s home, with email alerts going to them and to you every time something changes. They get to see what’s going on in their hyper-hyper-hyper-local market, and you get a golden opportunity to talk them every time a comp is listed or sold.

What else? I wish we could have a couponable event every four to six weeks, like SuperCuts, but what other things can we do to create pull-based relationships that give us natural, organic opportunities to stay in front of our clients?

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November 17, 2008

Unchained Notes: It’s a Greek Thing

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts sharing some of the gold I found at the Unchained Orlando Conference on Social Media Marketing for Real Estate.  In the first post: An Outsider’s View from Inside the Hound Pound,  I talked a little about the theme that emerged through all the speakers.  In this, the second post, the theme reveals its philosophy.

Imagine someone handing you a list with ten actions you could use right now to improve your marketing.  Now imagine not only being given the list, but an understanding of the “why” behind the actions on the list.  You would go from an agent that is hungry, to an agent eating a fish, to an agent who knows how to fish in rapid order.  That is what Greg Swann, our first speaker, accomplished when he shared his Unchained Epiphany.

Greg pointed out that most civilizations will do just what is needed to survive and no more.  When faced with a new problem they will do just enough to overcome it but again, no more.  He did not come right out and say it, but I couldn’t help myself thinking of us as a civilization.  All of us involved in the real estate business.  We have our own language, our own goals, our own methods for determining hierarchy and possibly most important, we have our own culture.  We also suffer from the same problems Greg was describing: often doing just what is needed to get by; just enough to solve a problem, pay the bills and move on to the next thing.  Not all cultures operate this way.

The Greeks, as Mr. Swann pointed out, were the first culture to come along and reach for more than just surviving; to become, as Greg said: “a doer for the sake of having done, a thinker for the sake of having thought, a poet for poetry’s own sake.”  We, each and every one of us, has that opportunity.  We are free to succeed and we are free to fail.  We are free to control our business and we are free to believe others Read more

November 16, 2008

Thus does Big Mother make gonophs of us all: How to keep your house by taking taxpayers for a ride

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is choice, from the San Francisco Chronicle:

To qualify, you must be at least 90 days delinquent and live in the home as your primary residence. You must owe at least 90 percent of the home’s value. It’s fine if you owe more than it’s worth.

Your mortgage must be owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or held by one of the participating loan companies.

If you meet these requirements and can document your income, your servicer will reduce your monthly mortgage payment – including property taxes, insurance and association dues – to 38 percent of your gross income.

The reduction can be accomplished in one or more ways:

— Reducing the interest rate, but not below 3 percent. (The new rate, if below market, goes back to a market rate after five years.)

— Extending the term of the loan up to 40 years.

— Reducing the principal on which monthly payments are calculated. Unpaid principal is added to the loan balance and due when the homeowner sells or refinances. The reduced interest payments never have to be repaid.

If you owe more than the home is worth, the plan will only reduce principal down to 100 percent of market value, according to an official for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which supervises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If all three of these maneuvers can’t reduce your payments to 38 percent of income, you won’t get a fast-track modification but could still request a customized deal, says the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The streamlined process looks only at income, not assets. If you refinanced your home to buy a Mercedes or own another home, you won’t be expected to sell them to pay your mortgage.

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, predicts that many homeowners who have little or no equity will stop paying their mortgage and then reduce their income to get the biggest payment cut possible. They could stop working overtime or, if two spouses work, one could quit. After the modification, they could try to boost their income again.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Schiff says. “People are going to Read more

November 16, 2008

The House of Atreus

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I watch him, through the French terrace doors in the living room, as he ambles across the sidewalk and up the limestone steps of my still unsold 1.5 million dollar McMansion. He double parked his Escalade next to my X3 without bothering to put on his flashers, its mere shadow swallowing my embarrassingly sensible Bimmer. He’s wearing an Urlacher jersey, number 54, size XXL would be my guess. It’s tight. Squirrels scatter and birds empty the barren trees into the charcoal, cloudless drape that’s been hanging for a year over this soon to be expired listing. For some reason I immediately re-calculate my own net worth like I always do when this guy shows up. It only takes a few seconds.

“Still got this Moose?” he asks, smiling. Our inside joke. The ‘Talking Moose,’ my unsold 6 bedroom Behemoth jammed shoulder to shoulder into a block of Chicago brick bungalows.

“Last day,” I tell him. “If Jesus Christ doesn’t walk through the door in the next half hour the Builder is moving his family and all his in-laws in.”

He looks at me as if to ask ‘hey, what am I, chopped…?’ I’ve written about this guy before, a derivatives trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He calls me Dino. He thinks I’m Greek. He knows a lot of Greeks down at the Merc, he tells me again although I’m quite certain he’s probably never read one.

“So,” I begin. “A lot has gone apeshit since the last time we spoke.” And it has. In the past month the whole world economy has been thrown off its axis. This we all know.

“Body bags, dude,” he says. “Go long on body bags.” I know he’s kidding but I still ponder the notion as I imagine turning my Wachovia water into wildcat wine in one frenzied trading session. I think back over the last 500 days on this Open House assignment and wonder if he hasn’t been leaving me obtuse investment tips all along.

“I’m just a sniper,” he continues. “I’m a sniper in a grassy knoll…”

“Nice ride,” I say, motioning to his Escalade, changing the Read more

November 16, 2008

Can California cultivate anything better than the seeds of its own destruction? Urbanologist Joel Kotkin tallies the state’s ills

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Joel Kotkin on the rise and fall of the Golden State:

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described “California’s rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy.”

As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future.

But much has changed in recent years. And today our Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity.

Since 2000, California’s job growth rate— which in the late 1970s surged at many times the national average—has lagged behind the national average by almost 20 percent. Rapid population growth, once synonymous with the state, has slowed dramatically. Most troubling of all, domestic out-migration, about even in 2001, swelled to over 260,000 in 2007 and now surpasses international immigration. Texas has replaced California as the leading growth center for Hispanics.

Out-migration is a key factor, along with a weak economy, for the collapse of the housing market. Simply put, the population growth expected for many areas has not materialized, nor the new jobs that might attract newcomers. In the past year, four of the top six housing markets in terms of price decline have been in California, including Sacramento, San Diego, Riverside, and Los Angeles. The Central Valley towns of Stockton, Merced, and Modesto have all been awarded the dubious honors of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation during the past year.

Even with prices down, many of the most desirable places in California are also among the most unaffordable in the nation. Less than 15 percent of households earning the local median income can afford a home in L.A. or San Francisco. In Santa Barbara, San Diego, Oxnard, Santa Cruz, or San Jose, it’s less than a third. That’s about half the number who can buy in the big Texas or North Carolina markets. Moreover, state officials warned in October that they might have to seek Read more

November 15, 2008

A workout loan can be a win-win solution to avoiding foreclosure

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
A workout loan can be a win-win solution to avoiding foreclosure

We talked last week about lender “workout” loans — a scheme lenders have come up to keep homes from falling into foreclosure. The premise is simple: If you can’t pay your mortgage, the lender will write you a new loan that anyone could pay.

I’m not kidding. Let’s say you bought a house in 2005 for $300,000. If you put nothing down, your payment might be $1,500 a month — not counting taxes and insurance. But the market value of the home is now $150,000 — a $750 mortgage payment.

As an investment, your home isn’t performing all that well. You bought at the top of the market, and you probably can’t even sell at a loss.

Worse news: Your hours at work have just been cut back.

You’re not in foreclosure. You’re making your payments. But you are an excellent candidate for what lenders call “jingle mail” — mailing in your keys and your deed. This would wreck your credit — for a while — but you’re looking at wrecked credit anyway.

But wait. Your lender’s workout department wants to speak to you before you do anything rash. If you qualify — which means if you have income — they might suggest something like rolling both of your mortgages into a new interest-only third mortgage at a very low interest rate.

Your existing monthly obligation of $1,500 will accrue month-by-month as new debt by negative amortization. In two or three or five years, you will resume paying on your old debt while you continue to pay down the new debt accrued on the third mortgage.

If this sounds silly, it’s because it is. The lenders are doing everything they can to make bad debt look good — temporarily. But a workout could be a win-win for you. If the market rebounds strongly, you can refinance all three notes. And, if not, you will have lived almost rent-free for the next few years before you lose the home in foreclosure.

P.T. Barnum said there’s a sucker born Read more

November 13, 2008

Let’s Crash Some Markets

by

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

Author website

European Leaders lauded our free-market system when they were making money.  Today, their answer is more regulation of financial markets in an effort to move our system towards the Euro-Socialist model:

Leaders from the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies are being hosted on Friday night and on Saturday by a U.S. president who will be out of office in little more than two months and who is under pressure from Europe to agree to stricter market regulation than he prefers.

A lame duck President, George Bush has a chance to make a stand for free markets at this conference.  European leaders will most likely tolerate his stand while they lick their chops for January 20, 2009.  Europe’s favorite American President, Barack Obama, will face intense pressure from our ancestors to conform to their models next year.

President Bush:

“While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today’s problems is sustained economic growth,” Bush told a New York audience. He said critics were “equating the free enterprise system with greed, exploitation and failure” and objected to it.

“The answer is not to try to reinvent that system,” Bush said. “It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people around the world.”

Germany:

German officials said before the meeting that it will discuss “a new balance between market and state,” possibly a more ambitious aim than the Bush administration favors.

France:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy sounded an aggressive note on Thursday as he prepared to head for the summit.

“I am leaving for Washington to explain that the dollar, which after the Second World War was the only currency in the world, can no longer claim to be the only currency in the world,” he said. “What was true in 1945 cannot be true today.”

Great Britain:

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed on Wednesday there was growing support for increased fiscal measures globally to help weather the crisis and indicated he might press that theme at the summit.

Monday-morning quarterbacking is one thing but over-regulation is how the Read more

November 13, 2008

Podcast: Teri Lussier talks about using weblogs to build relationships at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the song Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple sings, “I’m good at being uncomfortable so I can’t stop changing all the time.” You might take a census of the Bloodhounds to see to whom that sentiment applies. I know it does to me. I think it does to Teri Lussier, too. She’s not cranky or irascible, but she has a keen awareness of how far from perfect things can be — how much better they could be if we were to work a little harder.

Teri spoke at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando on using weblogs to build and sustain relationships. Linked below is an MP3 podcast file of her presentation, but we’ll precede that with an Unchained Melody, a bootleg video of Fiona with Nickel Creek:


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November 13, 2008

REALTOR.com features FSBO listings- The Excrement hits the Oscillating Rotary Blades

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

Hat Tip to Jay Thompson

OK, here’s the Press Release

UPDATE: According to Mr. Brunner CEO of Virginia Association of REALTORS, he has talked with the general counsel of NAR and there is NO relationship between ForSaleByOwner.com and REALTOR.com. Ms Janick apparently as well told him that there are NO unlisted properties on REALTOR.com.

I want to make sure that we provide accurate information (which has been difficult in this case).

With that in mind and IF that is true then much of this post is now irrelevant.

We still have no official word from REALTOR.com saying that this press release was not accurate. (Would have made getting the truth out much easier.)

I am literally too P.O.’d for words. I have long considered REALTOR.com an enemy to the REALTOR. But this is a bridge too far. Whoever did this at REALTOR.com HAD to know what they were doing (IMO).

For them to allow FSBO’s onto REALTOR.com WITHOUT being on the local MLS shows CLEARLY who these @##%#$%’s are. They are no different than any other interloper.

My message to the folks at NAR on this one is short and sweet:

“You’d better come down HARD and FAST on this one… or this will make Bastille Day look like a picnic. And you know what? That might not be a bad thing.”

Thoughts?

November 13, 2008

Think Your Taxes Are Going Down? Think Again

by

Associate Broker

Author website

In A Few Years We’ll Be Calling These Days The Good Ol’ Days

Some believe that in the coming administration, their taxes will be lowered. Some even believe that they won’t have to worry about buying gas… or paying their mortgage… as Obama will make sure that all is well.

Let me tell you how the cow will eat the cabbage.

As of this writing, the federal government has pumped $2 trillion into places of which – thus far – they will not even divulge where the money is going. Keep in mind that is $2 trillion during a so-called “conservative” administration. At this rate, we will soon see a big spike in inflation as our money loses even more of its value. Our dollar has lost 27% over the last eight years… and these bailouts are nothing more than the government printing money – therefore making the remaining money supply worth that much less.

One of the changes that will take place at the end of the year is the revision of the capital gains exclusion – a change that will not benefit the taxpayer. Current tax law provides a $250K exclusion ($500K for married couples) from capital gains taxes on a primary residence that the taxpayer lived in for two of the previous five years. The new law will prorate the exclusion based upon how many years the taxpayer actually lives in the home.

Meanwhile, the inflation from the printing presses at the Treasury is going to cause a rise in the prices of everything – food, commodities, wages, housing… you name it. Higher wages will result in higher taxes due to the phenomena of bracket creep… and although real estate will rise in real value, it’s value on paper will appear to be much greater due to this inflation.

As many have noticed over the last ten years, property taxes have gone up as a result of tax assessors using higher property values as a means to get more money for the government coffers… and now as property values are declining, those same assessors are not interested in lowering those taxes. In many cases, Read more

November 13, 2008

By making war on private property rights, the National Association of Realtors is making war on everything we are as Americans

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m responding here to a comment from Dave Phillips, who is to be commended in advance for bearing up to the strain.

I will invite President Gaylord to read and possibly respond if you promise to be a good doggy and engage in polite discussion (i.e., avoid inflamed rhetoric like “Rotarian Socialism” and “inane kleptomania”). It would serve no useful purpose to just piss him off. He is a reasonable man and would appreciate your sound reasoning.

Is he a reasonable man or a daffodil? Rotarian Socialism and kleptomania are exact and perfect descriptions of the way our country is run. If the man can’t bear to look at the world as it is, he needn’t bother talking to me.

“Everything the NAR does is anti-consumer.” I respectfully disagree. Defending mortgage interest deductibility (based on the current tax establishment) is very much in my favor as a consumer. Is it also self-serving? yes.

This is the seen and the unseen, classic Bastiat. You see a tax deduction and regard it as being to your immediate pecuniary advantage. You don’t see all the other taxes that are raised to make up for that deduction.

Worse, you don’t see that the NAR is not seeking your interests but its own: The deduction causes you to value housing above other investments, contrary to market forces, which results in your buying a home when you could and probably should be making more productive use of your surplus income. The goal? Commissions for NAR members, not your interests at all.

Still worse, you don’t see that the recession we are going into was caused, fundamentally, by overvaluing housing as a market good by means of tax deductions, credits, exclusions and deferrals. In five years you could be walking around shoeless, dining out of garbage dumpsters, but at least your mortgage interest will be tax-deductible.

In other words: You are a consumer in your every economic transaction, not just when you are paying your mortgage. Past lobbying by the NAR and CRA groups will result, at a minimum, in the pillaging of your retirement accounts. How is that “very much in [your] favor as Read more

November 13, 2008

Passion play: A working plan for working our brains until they explode at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I like Teri’s idea of an exploding brain. Or maybe we can think of the brain as a kernal of popcorn — hard and seemingly inflexible until just the right application of heat makes it explode into something eight times its original size. In addition to all the other things people might call me, I am most adamantly an evangelist for expanding minds, so here is the rough game plan I worked out for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix on the flight home from Orlando:


Click on the image to open a PDF version.
(Updated to reflect the actual dates of the event.)

Here’s the way this is going to work: If you come to Unchained, we want you staying at our hotel — even if you live in Phoenix. Why? Because the scenius we plan to build is going to look an awful lot like a boot camp. If you’re with us from 5 pm on Thursday to 5 pm on Sunday, you could end up working as much as 54 of those 72 hours. Some people need more sleep than others, but the harder you work at the work we plan to set before you, the greater the benefits you will reap.

What benefits?

Recall that you’re going to be completely overhauling your marketing profile. Each one of those eight labs will be hands-on, step-by-step explorations of the course matter. You won’t be working on examples or dummy versions, you’ll be working on your own marketing materials, making them better and more effective in collaboration with your instructors and team-mates.

Moreover, you’ll be building scenius scenes at all levels of interaction. The whole conference will be a giant scenius, a chance for you to learn and to teach with some of the hardest-charging minds in modern real estate marketing. Your labs will form smaller scenes, and the work you do in ad hoc teams will be the smallest of scenius scenes — as small as two people working together by the hotel pool. This kind of intense interaction, if you dare to immerse yourself in it, will leave you drenched in new knowledge, new skills — Read more

November 12, 2008

Using Google Docs to Track Your Goals for 2008: Part 1 of 3, Maybe 4.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Greg and I have talked from time to time about CRMS.   We both like them in concept, but have a hard time using them.   He doesn’t use REST, and I don’t use HEAP.   I have been using my blackberry to track stuff, aweber, and that’s it.   But I needed a way to track GOALS. Pure numbers, how many/how much. I didn’t want a new account, and I wanted to be able to draw my own conclusions from the data, not have some goofy stats telling me I was on pace for 1291% of my goal.

Enter google forms. Not specifically designed for this purpose, but still a sweet way to easily input stuff. You can be set up in an hour, and that’s if you’re new to Gdocs.

I made a 3 part video on Google Docs.   Many of you will get the gist, take it & run after one part.  To you: Kudos.   Don’t wait for part’s 2 and 3.  You can refine your system after, but don’t wait.    For those of you who DON’T get it, just stick around, you’l get all the ratios you could ever want.

I’d start by tracking:

  • contacts made
  • leads generated
  • lead followup calls made

Those things you can sort of control.   Calls made, quotes/listing packages/GFEs sent, etc.

But it starts with a lightweight way to collect your numbers.  Made a 5 minute video to start this off.  You might get better results by going through to viddler, but i think you’ll be able to see everything here:

November 12, 2008

Social Media Marketing Conversion: You Are Permitted To Get Paid

by

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

Author website

“Screwing around on social networks is fun but it isn’t gonna get me paid !”

Say it ain’t so, Joe !  I addressed this topic in my “Ninja Social Media Marketing” session at Unchained Orlando.  I’ll lay it all out in Phoenix, this May.  The truth is that a disciplined plan for social media participation...WITH THE IDEA OF CONVERSION in mind, can be very profitable.

The best advice I can give participants is to treat the social media platforms like a wedding reception.  You would never push your business card on some unsuspecting schlub at your cousin’s wedding but you better be prepared to answer the question, “Where’s the market headed?” if asked.

What is your ultimate goal from your social media marketing?  Conversion. Jeff Turner gives us a nice starting point with this quote from his panel at the NAR Convention:

Your overall business goal of social networking should be to expand your sphere and move conversations offline, panelists said. “There’s always going to be need for face-to-face communication in real estate,” Turner said. “Find a way to marry the two worlds.”

I’ll take it one step farther…  I know the way to marry those two worlds.  Pick up the damned phone ! In this world of hi-tech toys, the single best device you own is a real-time voice interaction tool (READ: telephone).

If you connect with someone on a social platform, you’ve exercised the second pillar of social media marketing; declaration of identity.  While that can be beneficial as a standalone virtue, the hidden gold is not your new found social network contact, its buried in his contact list.  In a world dominated by legislation designed to prevent you from cold-calling people during dinner, you must think creatively to build up a potential client list.  Social media represents the single best way to operate within the current business unfriendly environment.  Jump from the second to the fifth pillar as quickly as possible.

Remembering the wedding reception analogy, your initial call should be designed to point out a common interest and give you a chance to introduce yourself and your business.  If someone has befriended you Read more

November 11, 2008

Podcast: Sherry Chris delivers the keynote address to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando, November 7th, 2008

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We had the honor of hosting Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate CEO Sherry Chris as the keynote speaker for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando. I can’t promise we’ll do this indefinitely, but this is twice now that we’ve featured executives in do-or-die situations — and who can deny that this makes for interesting speeches?

Here’s a short FlipCam clip I made of Chris while she was speaking:

Linked below is an MP3 podcast file of her complete address.

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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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