BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Technology (page 53 of 60)

May 3, 2007

If you were the cutest dog at the dog show, would you work for world peace, or would you just go for the contact info?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Give Shaun McLane of EKDAY.com credit for self-promotional skills, anyway. He has started a new site called Posh’d, which is — I kid you not — a beauty contest for real estate web site.

Say that again: He is finding the least ugly of — let’s face it — the ugliest stuff on the web, and featuring it on a one-page gallery site, which links back to the designated beauty queens. I can’t but think that this will win Shaun the Mister Congeniality award, but the idea is still kind of a stretch.

For example: BlueRoof.com is featured first and should be. It is a stunning site. But right next door is Realtor.com, looking as dowdy and dated as the Yellow Pages.

(For younger readers, the Yellow Pages is a big, useless book perfect for exhausting landfills. The Council of Residential Specialists publishes its own version, which is even stoopider.)

The rest of the dog show, including BloodhoundBlog, is not awful. But it’s not great, either. Better than average, maybe, but that’s hardly an accomplishment. I know there are some sightly sites among the Realty.bots. For example, Eppraisal.com has the coolest Web 2.0-like Weebils. My guess is that there is more and better to be found in The Undiscovered Country, the world beyond weblogs.

So: Here’s for everyone except BlueRoof getting kicked out of the dog show by ever-prettier dogs. Even better: Here’s to clinging by claws to our vaunted status by revising our sites into something useful and beautiful — with no movies, no MIDIs and an absolute maximum of 937 links on the home page. Who ever heard of anything like that in real estate?

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May 2, 2007

Got back-up? Entire issue of Business 2.0 lost two weeks before press time

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From TechCrunch:

The June issue of Business 2.0 magazine was inadvertently deleted from the editorial server on April 23, according to a number of sources. And the backup server wasn’t working properly. The result? An entire issue down the drain just two weeks before press time.

[….]

A 2003 article in Business 2.0 likened backups to flossing – “everyone knows it’s important, but few devote enough thought or energy to it.” I guess Business 2.0 forgot to floss.

Ouch!

One can only hope that the Chief Technology Officer’s resume was on another computer. It seems likely he’ll be needing it…

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May 1, 2007

“Here’s a better idea: How about abolishing the state Board of Appraisal?”

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from the Tucson Daily Citizen:

Zillow.com offers online estimates of home values. There is now plenty of public data available for computers to crunch to make the estimates pretty good.

According to Zillow’s Web site, in the Phoenix metro area its estimates are within 6 percent of the actual selling price 50 percent of the time, and 72 percent of the time they are within 10 percent.

Although Zillow states on its Web site that its estimates aren’t appraisals, the state Board of Appraisal has ordered it to stop offering them in Arizona.

Here’s a better idea: How about abolishing the state Board of Appraisal? Any property is actually worth whatever a willing buyer is willing to pay to a willing seller.

Lenders might want appraisers in whom they have confidence to ensure that the property will cover their principal in the event of default. However, lenders are big boys. They can set up their own certification process to obtain the expertise they want. There’s no need for government to do it for them.

I find this logic unassailable. But it does make me yearn to live in a town with a newspaper…
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April 30, 2007

Arizona appraisal bill, amended to allow web sites like Zillow.com to operate, passes House, returned to Senate

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Arizona State Senate Bill 1291, as amended to assure the legality of consumer-oriented Automated Valuation Models such as that used by Zillow.com, passed the Arizona House today by a vote of 52-3, with five members not voting. The bill will be transmitted back to the Arizona Senate for reconsideration there.

The amendments, proposed last Monday by Scottsdale Republican Representative Michele Reagan, include language that will exempt AVMs from appraisal licensing requirements with the stipulation that home valuations are provided at no cost and are not called “appraisals.”

The Arizona Board of Appraisal had issued two cease and desist letters to Zillow.com — but to no other free AVMs — demanding that the Seattle-based internet real estate start-up stop issuing home valuations in Arizona until it obtained an Arizona appraisal license. The Attorney General of Arizona had issued a similar letter to Zillow.com.

If the amended version of SB 1291 passes the Senate and is signed by the governor, free consumer-oriented AVMs will be able to operate without impediments in Arizona.
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April 29, 2007

The Zillow.com persecution: Why it matters to all of us

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, clued me in to an email he got yesterday, which I was supposed to get as well. Mine didn’t come because the email address was wrong. Jay deals with the substance of the email in the post linked above, but here’s the meat of the matter:

Why are Jay and I, and other principled Realtors, rising to Zillow.com’s defense in response to the attempts at persecution of the net-based real-estate start-up by the Arizona Board of Appraisal?

I speak only for myself, but I can always speak at length about the positions I take. First, it’s important to understand what this is not about, in my opinion:

  • It’s not about Zillow.com.
  • It’s not about real estate.
  • It’s not about appraisals.
  • It’s not about job-protection, although this seems to me to be the objective behind the persecution.
  • It’s not even about Arizona.

I think what is really going on here is the first campaign in a long war to determine whether internet-based commerce will be suffered to grow as it has until now, without restrictions or impediments. Or: Whether the combined forces of power-mad “statesmen,” progress-hating “progressives” and hand-out-hungry “businesses” will be able to break the net to the saddle they have strapped onto every other enterprise in America.

In a sense, I’m not defending Zillow.com’s business, I’m defending my own. I’m about principle before everything, so that doesn’t matter to me, although I do admire the necessary integrity of rectitude: The moral is the practical. But this is so much larger than Zillow that the instant matter blends into the background.

Many of the pioneers of internet technology are hard-line Capitalists, stout defenders of the idea of free enterprise. That’s not universal, but there is also a very strong gut-level libertarianism among entrepreneurs generally.

In fact, the internet has grown so quickly, and so unpredictably, that the reactionary forces determined to tax, regulate or forbid everything have been stymied. A few very far-sighted people have successfully argued against regulating the net, and, meanwhile, the would-be arbiters-of-everything have been held in check by their own monolithic ignorance of technology. People who see the net as Read more

April 27, 2007

East Valley Tribune slams Board of Appraisal over Zillow.com censorship, endorses Reagan amendments to SB 1291

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In general, newspapers influence people who are paying attention, a small but inordinately important minority. Today the East Valley Tribune, clarion of the populous suburbs east of Phoenix, came out strong for Zillow.com and other consumer-oriented Automated Valuation Models:

Arizona home buyers and property speculators are fortunate the state Board of Appraisers did something against their interests while the Legislature is still in session, so lawmakers can act immediately to put a stop to it.

The Board of Appraisers is going after Zillow.com, a year-old Web site that offers free estimates of market values for an estimated 70 million houses across the country. The state agency contends the site is offering property appraisals without an Arizona license, and has ordered it to remove these “zestimates” or face formal sanctions and a possible lawsuit.

But Zillow.com makes no claim that its estimates are based on actual visits to individual properties or research of their histories. Instead, the Web site gathers sale details about other homes in the same neighborhood that have recently changed hands, government tax valuations and other publicly available information, and then provides a rough prediction about a house’s value under current market conditions.

More:

Given recent reports about widespread mortgage fraud and foreclosures resulting from inflated purchase appraisals, the state Board of Appraisers should be working to increase the amount of information available to consumers rather than shuttering potential sources of knowledge.

At least the Legislature appears to see the wisdom of this. On Monday, Rep. Michele Reagan, R-Scottsdale, introduced an amendment to SB1291 that was endorsed by her House colleagues to protect free opinions about property values as long as the provider doesn’t claim or imply that they are formal appraisals.

Putting Reagan’s amendment into law would be a nice endorsement of free speech and the consumer’s right to multiple sources of information.

None of this is news to people following the story here, and, in fact, the most-recent events are not covered. But this is the kind of public outcry that can swing the balance against this silly stunt by the Board of Appraisal.
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April 27, 2007

Sailing the Red Oceans: Real estate start-ups, weblog shut-downs and getting Google to trust your site in advance

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have news, but some of it is getting a little stale. My apologies. I have been buried, not that this is unusual.

As Kris Berg reports in her inimitable way, Redfin has relaunched, rebranded and all but reinvented itself, establishing a beachhead in Boston in the process. As far as I can tell, the big news is the company’s new logo, which features an image of Eve acting on the bad advice of a snake. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

Sellsius has also launched its product offering, a kind of searchable, semi-permanent, for-pay Craigslist. This looks to me like a Red Ocean, but what do I know?

That much has been reported elsewhere. This hasn’t: Territory Real Estate has launched its flat-fee buyer-brokerage in Boston and greater Massachusetts. Proving the appeal if not the merit of the Red Ocean strategy (first explained to me by Zillow.com’s David Gibbons), Territory immediately goes on the attack — against Redfin.

But: Screw all that. There are matters of greater moment.

For instance, is weblogging headed for an icy, entropic death? TransparentRE says not, at least not for real estate weblogs. This much is obvious: Weblogging is a fad, like CB radio in the seventies. Anyone who didn’t expect it to fall off dramatically was self-deluded. But there are two important differences between weblogging and the ordinary Rubik’s Cube style of fad: First, viral blogging is a new communications medium, the backbone of the alternative media. And second, owners of commercially-motivated weblogs have an enduring interest in persistence beyond fad appeal. The number of weblogs doesn’t really matter, nor does the number of putatively “active” weblogs. Sites that draw a decent number of evanescent eyes from search traffic may generate income for their owners. But, in the long run, the only weblogs that matter are the ones that can attract a stable population of repeat visitors.

Two more and I’m out of time: A WordPress Theme Generator, so you can express yourself with unborrowed tastes. And the irrepressible, irreplaceable Dave Smith with a strategy to suss the Google Sandbox with a Trustbox instead.

To close, here’s a quote for Read more

April 27, 2007

State vs. Zillow.com will be a lengthy bout

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). This goofy little column often “breaks news” in the sense that I cover facts that have not yet been reported by the Republic‘s real estate reporters. Normally I keep this to myself, because I don’t want to frighten the people who were kind enough to give me the column. This week I told my editor that were were “scooping” the newspaper, and gave him resources for vetting the facts presented below. The consequence? At the top of the story is says, “Special to the Republic.” Top that, Hildy Johnson.

(Just between us, I’m pretty sure I’m mangling the citation of the standing law. It’s Chapter 32, not 36, but even then I don’t know how it should be properly cited. Newspapers have style books for stuff like this. This will do: ARS 32-3601 et seq.)

State vs. Zillow.com will be a lengthy bout

The ongoing saga of Arizona vs. Zillow.com will not end.

When the state Board of Appraisal recently revealed that it had sent cease-and-desist letters to the Seattle Web-based real estate start-up in July and November, it failed to disclose that it had language pending in the Arizona Legislature that would have conclusively outlawed Zillow.com and other consumer-oriented Automated Valuation Methods.

That legislation, Senate Bill 1291, seemed to be on an under-the-radar track to easy passage until its existence was discovered by the LittlePinkHouses.com real estate blog.

The proposed language would have substantially revised Arizona Revised Statutes Chapter 36, among other things defining an appraisal as “an opinion of value.”

Does that mean that two neighbors, talking about the price of the house for sale up the street, would be in violation of appraisal law?

What Zillow.com and other AVMs do is so far removed from what an appraiser does that in order to outlaw Zillow, the drafters of the legislation apparently found it necessary to outlaw ordinary free speech altogether.

Importantly, there have been no consumer lawsuits or Board of Appraisal complaints in Arizona against Zillow.com, nor has the Board of Appraisal moved against other consumer-oriented AVMs operating in the state.

A compromise was sought by Rep. Michele Read more

April 25, 2007

What this state needs is more public ridicule! Arizona House to reconsider Zillow.com-proofed bill on Monday

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The news is simple enough: “Representative Stump moved that the House reconsider SB 1291 on Monday, March 30, 2007. Motion passed v/v.” That last little bit says the motion passed on a voice vote.

This again would be the Third Reading. If the amended bill passes by a two-thirds majority, it would have to go back to the State Senate for reconsideration, where it would also have to pass by a two-thirds majority.

Of course, Arizona has always drawn huge guffaws in the monologues of late-night talk show hosts, so we may just want to wait for Leno or Letterman to pick up the story…
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April 25, 2007

Arizona appraisal bill, amended to permit AVMs such as Zillow.com to operate in state, fails to pass

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Arizona SB 1291 failed to pass Tuesday afternoon in the Arizona House. The bill would have required a two-thirds majority and passed by less than that. I’ll post further when I know more.

Further notice: Here’s what it all means:

To have passed, the bill would have had to have passed by a two-thirds majority. Then it would have gone back to the Senate, where is also would have had to pass by a two-thirds majority. This is a Constitutional bias in the Arizona legislature against new laws of any sort — generally a good thing.

Since the bill did not pass the House, this means the old version of ARS Chapter 36 is still in effect. It is this version of the law that Zillow.com is alleged to be violating by the Arizona Board of Appraisal.

That allegation has not been tested in court, nor have any of Zillow.com’s direct competitors been alleged to have violated ARS Chapter 36.

As another wrinkle, the amendments made yesterday to AZ SB 1291 that would have clarified that offering the output from an Automated Valuation Model at no cost is not an appraisal, subject to regulatory oversight, could be appended onto another bill. In other words, the existing language of ARS Chapter 36 could be revised to achieve the same effect as yesterday’s amendments.

This is a statement released by Zillow.com this afternoon:

From Lloyd Frink, Zillow co-founder and President:

The issues that Arizona Senate bill 1291 sought to address went far beyond questions about automated valuation models for real estate. The fact is we are still extremely pleased that the Arizona House of Representatives decided to amend SB1291 to recognize the value that sites like Zillow bring to consumers in providing free and easy online access to real estate data and home valuations. We remain confident that any future reviews will similarly recognize the importance that sites like Zillow deliver in creating better informed and educated real estate consumers. Nothing has changed and we will continue to make Arizona Zestimates available for free to all Zillow users.

Additional details RE: AZ Board of Appraisals:

We strongly believe that providing Zestimate home Read more

April 24, 2007

Me, on TV: Technical assistance needed

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Subject to the vagaries of the news business, I will be on Fox News Channel tomorrow morning at 10:20 am EDT, 7:20 am MST/PDT.

The topic: Banning Zillow.com in Arizona, of course.

But: I need technical help. I would love to turn the segment into a video podcast, but I have no idea how to capture televised video. If you do know how, speak up. If you can capture the content and throw it to me by FTP, I’ll make it available tomorrow when I get home.

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April 23, 2007

Zillow.com dodges bullet in Arizona: Amendment would permit consumer-oriented automated valuation models to operate without regulatory oversight

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From a press release from the office of Representative Michele Reagan:

Arizona homeowners can still access their “zestimates” with the preliminary approval Monday of a bill that bars the Arizona Board of Appraisal from torpedoing online businesses that provide property value estimates.

An amendment sponsored by Rep. Michele Reagan to SB1291 allows web sites to offer free opinions regarding the value of real estate if it is not an actual appraisal. The bill impacts most notably Zillow.com, which provides free estimates of a property’s value.

“Companies like Zillow.com provide an easy way to get an idea of the value of a home anywhere in the country,” said Reagan, R-Scottsdale. “Government should not put the kibosh on such an informative online tool.”

The Arizona Board of Appraisal sent two cease and desist letters ordering Zillow.com to stop offering its free service in the state. The board is also considering suing the Seattle-based company despite its wide popularity in Arizona and around the nation. In addition, the board asked the Arizona attorney general to prosecute Zillow.com for offering “zestimates.”

“Zillow.com provides a valuable resource for Arizonans and an unelected board’s desire to hamper consumers’ efforts to get as much information as possible makes no sense,” Reagan, chairwoman of the House Commerce Committee, said. “Instead of protecting Arizonans, the Board of Appraisal wants to stifle access to valuable market information.”

The bill received initial approval Monday and is expected to get a vote on the House floor this week. The bill then goes back to the Senate for final consideration.

This is not over yet, but it’s movement in the right direction. If I can lay hands on it, I’ll post the link to the revised bill and highlight the change.

Further notice: The amendments are here: one, two and three. In addition to allowing for consumer-oriented AVMs, Reagan seems to have restored the balance of civilian oversight of the Arizona Board of Appraisal. For comparison: The proposed legislation prior to these amendments.

There are two changes to the language that stand out:

Page 3, between lines 41 and 42, insert:

“9. AN INTERNET WEBSITE THAT GIVES A Read more

April 23, 2007

KTAR Radio on Arizona’s attempts to stifle Zillow.com

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I was interviewed by KTAR Talk Radio in Phoenix today about the State of Arizona’s attempts to shut down Zillow.com. We end up with a 37 second story, which actually turns out to be a fairly decent distillation of the whole story.

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April 21, 2007

Arizona Republic: Realtors side with Zillow.com

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Phoenix RE.net is heard from in a big way in an article that will appear in Sunday’s Arizona Republic about the State of Arizona’s attempts to stifle Zillow.com. Writes reporter Peter Corbett:

A state agency’s efforts to stop Zillow.com from offering property-value estimates in Arizona are drawing criticism from some Realtors who think regulators are overstepping their authority.

The critics also are targeting an Arizona Board of Appraisal reform bill they fear will muzzle anyone from offering an opinion about property values unless he or she is a licensed appraiser, Realtor or attorney.

Phoenix real estate broker Greg Swann said that the legislation, Senate Bill 1291, is narrowly written to block Zillow from offering its estimates.

It also could affect other online services from offering property-value estimates using what are called automated valuation models, he said.

“This is legislation to stop progress,” said Swann, adding that state regulators are being Luddites in trying to halt the advance of Internet commerce.

The Arizona House is expected to consider the bill on Monday, said Deborah Pearson, director of Arizona Board of Appraisal.

The legislation is not aimed at Zillow but rather is intended to update statutes that have not changed since 1991, Pearson said.

Realtor Swann of www.BloodhoundRealty.com, said that the bill is so tightly written that two neighbors talking to each other about a neighbor’s property technically would be in violation of the law.

Pearson said exemptions in the law would permit neighbors to talk about property values.

It may be that she thinks this to be the case, but the language of the legislation is very precise:

“Appraisal” or “real estate appraisal” means any of the following: (A) The act or process of developing an opinion of value. (B) An opinion of value. (C) Pertaining to appraising and related functions such as appraisal practice or appraisal services.

This is very clear. Any opinion of value brought forth by anyone not explicitly exempted by the law would be a violation of that law. To capture Zillow.com and other Automated Valuation Models, they had to write the law so broadly that it effectively outlaws all “unofficial” opinions of value.

Corbett continues:

The controversy about appraisals erupted Read more

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