BloodhoundBlog

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Month: January 2007 (page 3 of 9)

January 25, 2007

Podcast with Russell Shaw, Part One: “Be cause over it rather than effect of it”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is the first of three podcasts we have made with mega-producing Realtor and BloodhoundBlog contributor Russell Shaw. Cathleen and I talked with Russell for around four hours, recording about two hours and forty minutes of that conversation. This particular segment starts with a discussion of Russell’s real estate career and ends with Russell discussing an effective goal setting strategy. He cites the film The Secret as an aid to understanding the issues.

Why Russell Shaw? Because he sells 400 houses a year — and plans to sell 2,000 houses a year. We all of us spend so much time looking for hi-tech magic bullets that we lose sight of the fact that real estate sales is face-to-face, belly-to-belly, door-to-door. Russell is nobody’s Luddite, but he is very proudly a champion of shoe-leather real estate. I think he has a lot more to teach us than pre-IPO poindexters who have never actually sold a house.

As a warning, Russell has a salty tongue. Children and people with delicate sensibilities are duly advised.

The Russell Shaw podcasts: Parts I, II and III

January 25, 2007

Anonymous Posters Can Be A Destructive Influence, or How Communication Is The Difference Between Good PR and Bad PR

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

657 MLS Closed Listing Sheet

Sometimes, the difference between good PR and bad PR is communication.

In October 2006, I blogged about a condo building in Chicago that was more than 19 months late on delivery. To me, the story wasn’t that the building was delayed; that happens all the time. What was most interesting to me was that the contracted buyers actually started a blog to share information with each other about their experiences.

Because the developer’s team was not disseminating information as fast as the building’s buyers wanted, a blog looked the perfect choice to disseminate information quickly and efficiently. I can’t think of a better use of a community-like blog that this.

I also found it nice that the blog host including the following text:

Thoughtful comments and respectful opinions on the status of 657 Fulton are welcome. Off-topic, slanderous, disrespectful or abusive posts will be removed at the host’s discretion.

What I didn’t find nice? The host’s not-so-subtle decision to allow anonymous posting.

At the start, the blog behaved quite well, providing a community-like atmosphere for scores of buyers just wanting information about their building. The developer and his team chimed in, too, with updates and notes about permits and progress.

Slowly, though, the tide began to turn. As the delays grew longer, communication from the developer’s team grew more sporadic. Buyers visiting the blog were clamoring for information but all they found was each other.

Before long, with anonymous-like names like “657 Fulton”, “Angry Buyer on the 4th Floor” and “Frustrated on Fulton”, buyers in the building began to voice their anger and unrest. They wrote whatever they wanted and knew that there was no recourse. Who would ever find out the name of the real author? Libel and slander? Why not — it couldn’t be traced anyway? As I think back, even the blog’s host was never publicly named on the site.

The 657 Fulton blog then became a breeding ground for nasty remarks, rumor and conjecture about the developer, and his team. One derogatory remark led to another and led to another and led to another. Sarcasm and mean-spiritedness ruled. And, given the choice Read more

January 24, 2007

Catch your kid doing something right: Our son Cameron and the upgrade path of SlideShowMarge

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been building web pages and web sites for clients since I started as a Realtor. In the dark days of the early millennium, email services — especially AOL’s — were unreliable. Plus which, who wants to receive four megabytes of photos by email?

And while building a one-off web site to show off houses sounds like a lot of work, it really isn’t. If I had previewed ten houses, I would end up with a folder on my hard disk containing ten subfolders, each with the photos I had taken of a particular house.

In the Mac world, to get a list of files, you just Select All in the folder and Copy. When you Paste in a text file, you get the filenames in the order you had them sorted, one to a line.

From there it was easy to run two Search and Replace operations to recode the filenames as HTML img calls. Chop and drop that code into a standing dummy web page, type a headline and any needed body copy, and save the edited file under the name “index.html” in the same folder as the photos.

Voila! Instant web page. Do that in each of the ten folders of photos, then do it with those folders in the top level folder. In about twenty minutes’ time, I could build a web site full of photos.

Okayfine. But I can write all kinds of elaborate code from scratch. And, perhaps more importantly, I can catch my own mistakes. What about normal people, born into this world without a propeller beanie?

About fifteen months ago, I wrote a piece of software in PHP called SlideShowBob (I named it after Side Show Bob, Krusty the Clown’s sidekick on The Simpsons, and I am very far from being the first dink to think up this dumb joke).

Here is what the original SlideShowBob did: It took a folder full of photos already stored on the file server and built a web page from them, prompting for the headline and body text. We could do ten folders of photos in ten minutes or fewer. But SlideShowBob couldn’t handle Read more

January 24, 2007

A Different View of Diversification

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

Greg brought me on with the quote, “I think you would be a good counterpoint to Jeff Brown.” Well, I guess its time for me to start earning my keep. I fall on the opposite side of this diversification issue. The benefits of diversification outside and inside of real estate clearly outweigh the incremental positive returns because of the volatility. Additionally, I feel like Jeff and some readers make a mistake when they reflect on the past to judge whether diversification is a benefit or a negative. Hindsight is always 20/20. The purpose of diversification is to limit risk, while maximizing the return for that risk. To look at any one specific past example is not to look at diversification, but to look at one point along a timeline of investing. Diversified investments over time have proven to be better because of the elimination (or minimization) of specific market/property risk.

Here is a quick example. If you own two apartment buildings in similar areas but different location you have the same risk for each location. However, when considered together the investments are far less risky than one building of their same size. The same principles apply in stock investing. Thinking about the Sharpe Ratio, it is very easy to see why this is the case.

As an investor I have always specialized in one asset class, residential (mostly apartments). Recently, however, in the search for Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and diversification I have considered changing course. With so many investment alternatives in the market, I would like to briefly talk about the positives and negatives of asset class specialization. I want to say in advance that I am certainly not an expert in this subject, so I welcome any comments or rebuttals to any statements made here.

First, I decided to specialize in one asset class because I wanted to build an expertise. While I certainly don’t know all there is to know about buying commercial residential properties, I do know exactly what to look for when evaluating an investment. Additionally, I have a lot of experience dealing with tenants, particularly low income Read more

January 24, 2007

Podcast: Local results in real estate weblogging will come from making local connections, not SEO results

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Cathy and I spent about four hours with the incomparable Russell Shaw last night. We recorded around two hours of our discussions for podcasts I will be putting together in the coming days.

I have been planning for a week to do a podcast on the movement toward local content among real estate websites, but I hadn’t gotten the job done.

Fortuitously, Brian Brady phoned yesterday afternoon, and one of the things we talked about is an idea he has for generating locally-focused content. In the course of talking to him, I addressed almost everything I had wanted to cover, so I’ve chopped out a chunk of our phone call. Brian is very quiet in that section of the call, but it’s okay because I barely let him get a word in anyway.

A signal defect of audio and video, in the weblogged world, is the lack of links, so if you want to click through to the sites and pages discussed as you follow along, these are those:

I haven’t even begun to sort out the recording we made with Russell last night, but I think it might break out into three chapters: I. The Horatio Alger Story, rags to riches. II. Why anyone committed to success in real estate can achieve it. III. A colloquy with Russell on hi- and lo-tech real estate marketing.

In the latter section, we’re going to come back to this same point: There is nothing you can do with passive marketing that will repay your efforts as well as active, person-to-person marketing.
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January 24, 2007

Lessons Learned While Watching American Idol

by

Real Estate Marketing Executive

Author website

Teresa Boardman helped me understand why I sit through all of the excruciatingly bad performances on the first few episodes of American Idol.

My wife and I watch American Idol religiously. It’s one of our guilty pleasures. I know we’re probably going to hell for it, but we’re obviously not alone in our sin. We’ll have some company. The ratings for the Idol are ridiculous. The premiere episode drew 37.4 million viewers last week, a 15.8 rating/36 share in the adults 18-49 demo. The second night was just as big for Fox. But if you’re a saint and don’t watch American Idol, then you have no point of reference for what I’m about to say. So, I’ll explain briefly.

The first episodes feature a laughable string of truly pathetic “performers” trying to make it big in an industry that they are clearly NOT cut out for. Some of the performances are so hideous I literally have to cover my eyes. I want to watch, but it’s just too painful. At one point this evening, my wife said to me, “No! Uncover your eyes. This one is dancing.” OK? No! See, this isn’t “So You Think You Can Dance.”

This is American Idol. It’s a singing competition. If you have to dance, then you probably can’t sing. In fact, if you have to dance, you probably can’t dance either. This is proven over and over again in the first few episodes, before the chosen few “make it to Hollywood.” And one thing is fact – if you have to tell me how great you are… you aren’t.

I don’t watch these first few episodes of American Idol because I like watching people make complete fools of themselves on national television. While I admit there is that morbid fascination, the real joy comes from being able to guess, purely from their self-styled introductions, if a performer is going to be a singer that truly has that special something that distinguishes those who really belong in Hollywood from those who can only tell me that they should be.

Now, here’s where Teresa Boardman comes in. Teresa invited me Read more

January 23, 2007

Ask The Broker: Is There Any Diversifying Alternative To Real Estate Investing?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Nick writes:

Hi. I often scan your site and you seem to have collected a group of savvy and knowledgeable contributors. Here’s my question for you and them: What is the opposite of real estate? I know diversification is a smart strategy and many investors limit their risk by investing in something that flourishes when their main investment founders. Is there any sector or type of investment that traditionally performs well when real estate investments do poorly?

I disagree with your foundational premise. Diversification is for those who don’t know enough about what they’re doing. They fear loss of investment capital so they ‘balance’ each part of their portfolio with something that will generally perform better if their opposite does badly.

It’s called Playing Not To Lose.

Diversification is centered on risk and its reduction. I submit that your risk is greater or lesser based upon the degree to which you absolutely know what you’re doing in real estate. Let’s take an example.

If a few years ago the investment choices in your local market were becoming less appealing, and you took the equity in your properties to Phoenix, how would your net worth look now? In 2003 in San Diego my clients were hard pressed to find units that still made sense on a month to month basis, and could be acquired with low down payments. They knew it would only get worse as prices continued to rise. (which they did of course)

They didn’t look for something to balance this move. Phoenix now is in the middle of a correction and my clients are still doing just fine. They’ve increased their net worth significantly, and later this year or early in ’08, will take their increased equity and trade some of it to yet another growth region.

The difference between those who stayed ‘safe’ in SD and those who took some or all of their SD equity to Phoenix is, in anyone’s judgment, staggering.

Knowing what you are doing reduces risk. Having generous cash reserves is what I’d recommend instead of putting a governor on your growth via diversification. I’ve included a link below which talks about Read more

January 23, 2007

Just incredible: IncredibleAgent.com steals images and content from prominent real estate webloggers to sell “free” weblogs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Wanna hear something incredible? Odysseus the TV Spokesmodel Bloodhound, unbeknownst to anyone, has been serving as the Spokesmodel for an internet vendor’s site. Involuntarily. Without compensation. Without permission.

Forgive me for the following enormous image:

Who doesn’t love those eyes staring out at you, looking for you through the mail slot. But what you are seeing are BloodhoundBlog, Pittsburgh Homes Daily and Mike’s Corner, all pimping for the “free” weblogs offered by Incredible Agent.

Incredible chutzpah, in any case. I’m sure they would want to argue that they are using these three weblogs to illustrate the idea of a real estate weblog. Why wouldn’t they use some of their own weblogs as illustrations? You answer that one. What matters is that they cannot use the work product — and likenesses! — of the contributors to BloodhoundBlog to sell their product without our permission.

We have asked them to cease and desist, informing the other offended parties.

I am told — I have not checked myself — that their “free” weblogs are not even free weblogs in the sense that you can get a free weblog from Blogger.com or WordPress.com — sign up and you’re on your way. Instead, the Incredible Agent “free” weblog offer seems to be a lead gathering form. I don’t care. I cannot imagine a worse way to advertise their business that inciting three prominent real estate webloggers to publicly express our anger at their sleazy sales tactics.

Smart…

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January 23, 2007

Addressing what matters about Mortgage Matters

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a certain affection for the Mortgage Matters weblog by Holden Lewis at Bankrate.com. It’s a little bit enbubbulated, but that’s to be expected from what is, in fact, a mainstream media outlet. That notwithstanding, the site is very informative, and a lot of fun to read. I get the impression that Lewis doesn’t like BloodoundBlog all that much, but that’s okay: The link-love he sends our way is abundant and unconditional.

Because I like it, and because I have no idea how to send an email to Lewis, here are some things I would like to see changed about the site:

  • I think Bankrate.com should invest in WordPress Multi-User. They have multiple weblogs already, and, without doubt, they will be adding more. It’s time to jump to a real weblogging platform.
  • Once that move is made, Lewis should start working in contemporary weblogging style, one topic to a post, each one permanently linkable. For now, he is writing in journal-like entries, multiple topics in, at most, one post per day. This harkens back to the posting style of Andrew Sullivan’s old Blogger.com weblog, but he didn’t know what he was doing. He has since learned better.
  • Each of the Bankrate.cm weblogs should have its own RSS feed — easily done with WP MU. Right now, there is one feed for all of Bankrate.com, news, blogs, the works.
  • Enable comments. I don’t agree with the notion that a weblog is not a weblog without comments, but, certainly, conversation builds community. Enable trackbacks and pingbacks, too.
  • Provide a way to email Lewis. Right now, you can use a little contact box that will email Lewis (or possibly anyone) provided you already know what email address to use. I love things that are this perfectly broken, but, even so: It’s broken.

Switching platforms now will be a hardship, surely, but switching platforms later will be worse. Mortgage Matters is a good weblog. It deserves more exposure.

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January 23, 2007

Introducing Jeff Turner: Father, poet, entrepreneur

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

And today we introduce still another new contributor:

Jeff Turner is the founder, president and COO of Real Estate Shows, which produces internet commercials from Realtor-supplied photos. A life-long successful entrepreneur, Jeff is also the proud father of six children.

Readers here may be familiar with Jeff’s blog on ActiveRain. He also runs Rain for Change, a sort of direct-action community assistance weblog.

Jeff is a vendor, and I will tell you that we have been very careful in our relationships with vendors. “Everybody sells something,” which is a speech I think everyone should give at their next Toastmasters meeting. But there are two perils a weblog like ours confronts, should it become too engaged with vendors.

First is the charge of having sold out. I’d like to think we’re insulated from that, first by our sheer quantity of opinion-makers, and second by the raging diversity of those opinions.

The second peril is simply the cacophony of very polite clamoring from other vendors: “Why not us, too?”

We’re making an exception for Jeff. We trust him not to go all promotional on us, and he is simply too fine a writer to be missed. He even writes poetry…

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January 23, 2007

Out of State Investing: All Sizzle, no Steak

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

As I prepare to go down to Greensboro this Thursday to make my first out of state investment, I thought I should talk briefly about what it takes to do out of market investing. Based on my experience too many people jump into a real estate market because it is hot and not because they have in-depth market knowledge or ties to that area. Real estate will always be a relationship business. Going into a market where you have no relationships and minimal knowledge is like playing the lottery. Some times you win, but most times you lose.

Here is a brief example from my past. Living in Detroit, my wife and I bought our first investment property about 15 minutes away from our home. Having developed a few good relationships, we were able to get a lot of work done on the property at a discount and we were able to sell quickly because we had a great agent. Eventually we sold this house to an investor in San Francisco, who was looking for a low risk investment. On the outside, this seemed like a great opportunity for her because the tenants showed consistent on time rent payments and the monthly repairs were minimal.

Here is the catch though. Many of those things happened because we were local and had great relationships. My wife personally drove by the tenants home to collect the rent. Additionally, she built such a great rapport with the tenants they would pay us instead of paying their other bills. Many of the repairs were done by a local contracting crew we had working on other properties, so we were able to get things done fairly cheap and quick. Most importantly, however, were the battles we had with the Detroit Water Company (grrr!). Being local we were able to go down there in person about once a week for two months to get everything straightened out.

While I knew this would be a very tough property to run from out of state, a sale was a sale. Unlike most sellers, we actually disclosed most of this during the sales Read more

January 22, 2007

INTERVIEW: The X Broker, Jeff Corbett

by

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

Author website

Jeff Corbett is one of the rising stars in Real Estate 2.0 . I interviewed Jeff last month in Laguna Beach, CA. Jeff is a remarkably shy person who bears little resemblance to the hard-hitting, on-line, pit bull who advocates transparency inxbroker mortgage brokerage and banking. He is unfailingly polite with a great sense of humor. Born in Buffalo, Jeff is afflicted with love for the Bills and Sabres. We won’t hold that against him here.

Jeff, let’s start off with you explaining what X broker is in 100 words.

On the surface, an insider’s tell-all account about how the real estate and mortgage industries really work. Underneath, the XBroker is evolving into a community based on transparency via a technology platform. Most businesses utilize technology to cut costs and/or increase reach; we’re simply giving that same power to the consumer.

Our value proposition will be a web-based interface that aggregates wholesale lender interest rates and pricing for redisplay to the consumer. There is no third party manipulation possible. It’s based on common and anonymous credit risk factors that automate today’s residential mortgage pre-qualification process. We are also working in the arena of property listings.

When do you think you’ll be up and running?

You will see changes in the next few weeks. We’re moving our site’s backend platform from Word Press to a more expandable architecture. This will allow us to integrate third-party data with greater ease so we can deliver our information to the consumer in a more “user-friendly” environment. After that, you’ll see a quick evolution toward the community and content I described above.

The XBroker Blog has drawn attention much sooner than I’d ever considered; it’s pleasant surprise. The question, “What ARE you doing?” was tough to answer at first.

Jeff, we met and did battle over on Active Rain this past fall. You wrote two groundbreaking posts. Readers should notice that I dismissed your ideas as kind of a gimmick in The Starbucks Post. I got down right defensive in the Civil Read more

January 22, 2007

WordPress 2.1 has been released, and it may be the perfect platform for real estate web sites as well as weblogs . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

WordPress 2.1 is out. More news from BloggingPro.

Standout among the new features:

You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.

What this means is that there is no need to distinguish between your real estate web site and your local real estate weblog. The two can both run on WordPress, reaping the SEO advantages in tandem.

Caveats: WordPress 2.1 wants MySQL 4.0 on the server side. If, like us, you’re hosted by GoDaddy.com, you’re all set.

Ten Things You should Know About WordPress 2.1. Best news: A lot of legacy code that was to have been killed is retained, albeit deprecated, so most 2.0.x plug-ins should still work.

BloodhoundBlog won’t be making the switch right away. I like to let other people find bugs in new software. But Cameron and I may start playing with it as a tool to use with single-property websites.

Further notice: Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing has already taken the plunge.

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January 22, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at Minneapolis Real Estate Market Update.

And the winner is… our own Kris Berg with The Plastic Pig (and How to Pick Your Agent).

Kris also wins The Carnival of BloodhoundBlog, a testament to her excellence amidst the stiff competition around here.

The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is up at Real Estate Investing For Real. We entered Jeff Brown’s Compounding, Return On Investment, & What Matters To Investors — Invest $1 Get $2 Back, but, alas, it didn’t win.

But: There is more to life than BloodhoundBlog. There are lots of great articles at both carnivals. Check ’em out…

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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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