BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: November 2007 (page 3 of 9)

November 23, 2007

Quarrying metaphors to name the BloodhoundBlog Conference

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We have a name, and we have the birth of a look:

We went through zillions of ideas — Brian and Cathy and I, our contributors, some commenters here, but mainly marketing guru Richard Riccelli. Richard came up with fantastic names — not just words but their graphic expression — but we went off and did things our own way anyway.

All of us were looking for a defining metaphor, an idea that encapsulates everything we are trying to communicate. Richard, to his credit, was much more benign toward our attendees. My position was that we built this place on attitude, and we need for people to understand that that attitude will be on the program — in essence will be the program.

The graphic look falls out from the metaphor, and, if the idea is the right one, everything falls out from the metaphor. Integrity is the state when every disparate thing is all one thing, when every different way of communicating ideas comes together to communicate the same one idea. I don’t know if we’ve achieved that here, but that’s the goal we’re aiming for.

We have an idea for a conference exploring a radically different kind of real estate marketing. You can learn more about it by clicking here.

We have an interest list that you can join so that we can keep you up to date with our plans by email. Append yourself to that list by clicking here.

We have dates: May 18th and 19th, 2008, with some advance fun on the evening of May 17th.

We have an insatiable lust for the most killingly perfect venue, but we don’t know yet if we can get it.

We are having preliminary conversations with the most killingly perfect keynote speaker, the progenitor of many of the ideas we champion.

And we have a name and a look and a big, bold, bad-ass attitude.

And there is much more to come…

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November 23, 2007

Consumers to Realtors: “Don’t push me, I’ll pull you instead — and if you push too hard, I’ll pull away”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic. Not by coincidence, I’m talking about the curriculum of our forthcoming marketing conference.

 
Consumers to Realtors: “Don’t push me, I’ll pull you instead — and if you push too hard, I’ll pull away”

There is a quiet revolution going on in the world of real estate marketing — in the world of marketing in general. We are gradually changing from a push-based kind of selling to something that is much more pull-oriented.

What do I mean? Picture me pushing my business card into your hand. Or pushing a flyer at you. Pushing an ad in front of your eyes in the newspaper — or a commercial on television. Since marketing began, it has always been about pushing things, with the effort being led by the pushy salesperson.

As with everything else, the internet is changing this. Your own pursuit of information — not just marketing information but putatively disinterested facts — is becoming more and more pull-oriented.

Interested in wide-screen TVs? You might visit a store or two tomorrow, but tonight you’re going to research everything you can find on the internet. You might start with a Google search, then go to Wikipedia to learn all the arcane details. You might click on a few manufacturers’ or retailers’ pages, but you’re just as likely to read weblogs or discussion forums to find out what real people just like you love and hate about their new televisions.

By the time you show up at a store — or more likely an on-line store — you will know enough to make the right choice without any help.

And here’s the interesting thing: If some pushy salesperson tries to talk you into making the wrong choice — you’ll understand exactly what is going on.

Buying or selling a home is more complicated than shopping on-line, but more and more consumers are going through the same research process before they contact a Realtor.

What does it mean? In the long-run, push-based marketing is a diminishing return. Consumers are going to shop until they find a Realtor they know they can trust — and Read more

November 23, 2007

The Starbucks Virgin

by

Incipient Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m standing in line at Starbucks this morning, in dire need of an eggnog latte fix (sinfully delightful, and good for you!). It was readily apparent that the guy in front of me may be the only person left on the planet who has never before ordered a drink at Starbucks. He was the rare and elusive Starbucks Virgin.

And he looked mortified when the girl ahead of him fired off her order:

“I’ll have a venti half-caf triple shot four pump sugar-free vanilla caramel macchiato.”

The barista, full of typical Starbucks holiday cheer — nose ring and all — approaches Mr. New Customer who has been contemplating the menu for the last seven minutes and says, “What can I get for you?”

“Um, I think I just want a cup of coffee. Uh, maybe with some flavor in it??”

“We’ve got vanilla, hazlenut, Irish creme, almond, mint, Valencia, toffee…”

“Uhm, never mind. Can I just get plain old coffee?”

“Do you want short, tall, grande or venti? With or without room?”

“I just want a cup of coffee.”

As I watched this exchange take place, I saw an overwhelmed customer being “helped” by an experienced worker bee. One too busy to truly help this guy through the process of getting what he walked in for.

Granted, the line behind Mr. New Customer was building rapidly. I’m sure Ms. Nose Ring felt compelled to speed this guy through the line and help waiting customers, most of whom probably knew exactly what they wanted.

Mr. New Customer finally got his coffee, and he walked out mumbling and shaking his head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never sets foot in a Starbucks again.

And so my warped, caffeine deprived brain began to do what it often does — attempt to associate what I’m witnessing to the real estate business.

Connect ordering at Starbucks to buying a home? Are you nuts?

Not really, and it’s not that big a stretch.

Ms. Nose Ring Barista seemed oblivious to the fact that Mr. New Customer was exactly that — a Starbucks virgin. The guy was overwhelmed with everything happening around him. He was afraid of making a mistake and looking Read more

November 23, 2007

A proud day for proud Bloodhounds: Jay Thompson joins the pack

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Everything’s all right until something goes wrong. You child takes a bad fall and broken bone tears through the flesh and skin. A jet engine on your vacation flight flames out. You took the wrong road in a driving rain and now you’re up to your hubcaps in mud.

Jay Thompson is a man out of Kipling, and I can imagine him in each one of those stories. Calmly setting and splinting a bone, then racing to the hospital. Exuding quiet confidence as he explains why the plane can fly safely on three jets. The man owns a Jeep, and I’d bet a large dollar he knows how to extract your sedan from the mud.

Jay is a man possessed of an unprepossessing competence, a man’s man who just gets in there and gets the job done. I’ve worked with him on half-a-dozen projects, and it has always made me proud to set my shoulder beside his.

And so I am very proud to announce that Jay is joining us today as a contributor to BloodhoundBlog:

Want to find Jay Thompson? Just Google for “Phoenix real estate” — he’s above the fold. Jay is a legend among real estate webloggers, but he’s also an incipient broker, a confirmed desert rat and a committed family man.

Make him feel welcome, if you would. He won’t even have to try to make you feel safe.

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November 23, 2007

California Sub-Prime Bailout: Rewarding the Feckless

by

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

Author website

Governor Schwarzenneger brokered a bailout for California sub-prime borrowers with four major servicers:

Countrywide, GMAC, Litton and HomeEq – which collectively service more than one quarter of subprime loans to people with poor credit – agreed to maintain the initial, lower interest rate for some subprime borrowers whose rates are scheduled to jump significantly higher. To qualify, borrowers must occupy their homes, have made their payments on time and prove they cannot afford payments with the higher interest rate.

You had to see it coming. California is a mess right now with foreclosures. An argument could be made that sub-prime borrowers weren’t charged enough for the risk lenders took on them. Did the Governor, in fact, reward the feckless few who blindly bought into an inflated market? Does the measure penalize the responsible who waited for realistic prices and saved their sheckles for a down payment?

Two stipulations of the bailout are:

(a)- the borrower must be making timely payments, and

(b) the borrower must demonstrate an inability to service the higher payment.

While sub-prime loans are traditionally earmarked for the credit challenged, lenders extended these loans to good credit borrowers. Those borrowers bought a home that they couldn’t afford, with no money down. This program may very well reward people who lied to get a “smokin’ deal” and who now cry foul when that subsidized deal is taken away. The only exit strategy these borrowers had was to refinance out of the loan. That strategy was predicated upon a continual rise in property values. I know this; I work in the eye of the hurricane.

So, does Gena Reide. She’s a real estate broker in Sacramento, a community that has been hit hard by the meteoric rise in prices and subsequent drop back down to reality. Her ebullient report about this measure suggests that it is an idea that is long overdue.

Many have said that the homeowners in foreclosure should take responsibility and not receive any bail-out help Federally. It’s time that everyone realize that this doesn’t just effect those homeowners losing their homes, it effects Read more

November 21, 2007

Dancing With Who Brung Me

by

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

Author website

The first rule of organizations; he who speaks, volunteers. Actually, that’s the first rule of small, nimble organizations…guerilla units…we read Sun-Tzu and pounce on opportunities.

I’m jazzed, stoked, amped-up and psyched about the Guerilla Web Marketing Conference in May. We’re talking about Web 2.0 or for real estate agents and mortgage originators. Now, how do I promote it so that this place looks like this, in 2010?

First Campaign: Facebook.

Viral. That’s the gal who brung me to the dance.

November 21, 2007

Click the button one more time as an expression of Thanksgiving

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s Thanksgiving, a fact of the calendar that sneaks up on me every year. By Friday, the Salvation Army Santas will be setting up their buckets outside stores, since no one has told the Salvation Army that Americans switched to debit cards in 1995. It’s all one to me. Cathy loves to give money away, but I despise indiscriminate charity. I’m all but certain we’re subsidizing vice, and I have zero doubt that we’re dulling the edge of husbandry. Of all the problems we might name in the modern world, a shortage of indolence is not one of them.

But I do believe in putting out fires, pulling drowning kids out of the drink, even rescuing trapped kittens. Life is a beautiful rose festooned with a few thorns, and stanching the flow of blood, when someone gets stung, is a job we each need to do for each other.

In a week or a month, all of the buttons we put up for Aaron Anglin’s family will come down.

Before they do, we should hit that “donate” button one more time. It’s not enough. There will never be enough we can do. They’ve lost more than we can ever imagine, and, in the long-run, they’ll have to get along without our help. Life goes on. This is but the first Christmas Aleisha and her girls will have to live without Aaron. But if, as an expression of our own productivity and prosperity, we can help to make their Christmas a little easier, that seems like a good way of expressing thanks for all we have.

November 20, 2007

Ex Post Facto

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

“I purposely did not go to law school because I purposely did not want to become a lawyer.” I say this a lot to people, usually when they ask me if I’m an attorney, which is more often than you might think. I actually had to mutter those very words last Sunday but I’ll address that particular exchange in a moment.

Don’t be misled by the mug shot in the sidebar. Beneath the Kangol and behind the shades (a vacation shot in Cannes btw, and not my everyday accoutre) exists a living, if not waning, example of the state college system of Pennsylvania; Slippery Rock to be precise. And I can safely go on record to state (since most of them have probably passed on by now) that some of the very brightest alcoholic, if not academic, minds were tenured there during my own concurrent, seven year run; Over 60% of our department’s predominantly male faculty had Ivy League credentials, most of whoms wives could drink the average shore leave sailor under the table. And much like a sanctimonious nonsmoker exiting a smoke filled room, the residual, if not secondary animus, still lingers–even decades later. That, and a knee jerk tendency to counter-respond with a quip when the right moment calls for it.

That era, if you recall, was a big, political, mid-1970s mess and the fact that Nixon was out, the Vietnam War had just ended, and the GI Bill was in full swing, only deepened the already exisitng social chasm on campus. Having not been in the military myself, I had never, up to that point in time, even imagined what it might take (mentally) to annihilate an entire village, (which sadly wasn’t the case with a few of the gentlemen I shared a house with) much less be awarded an all expense paid, four year educational ride, with a VA housing rider to boot. (This however, was the case with everyone in the joint but me.)

And by the way, that is how my veteran housemates all referred to our ramshackle residence; ‘The Joint.’ One frat boy’s Animal House is but another Viet Vet’s joint and we proved as much by renting the basement out to the TKEs for a barrel of beer a month until the town eventually condemned the joint and padlocked the front Read more

November 20, 2007

BloodhoundBlog Marketing Conference interest list

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve build an interest-list sign-up form for the BloodhoundBlog Marketing Conference I wrote about this morning.

Here are two things you can do:

  1. If you’re interested in coming to or teaching at or sponsoring the conference, fill out the form so we can keep you updated by email.
  2. While you’re there, give this dog a name. Clearly we love the Bloodhound idea. I’m also enamored of the idea of the guerrilla — the little warrior in Spanish. Tell us the overarching metaphor that encapsulates everything we’re talking about.

A boatload of interest so far, including happy noises from folks who want to sponsor and exhibit. And Brian is trying hard to take us all to a Diamondbacks game. There ain’t nothing like a Corona Bomber and a couple of Diamond Dogs. Plus which, we can check out the facilities for the 2010 Conference. 😉

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November 20, 2007

Transparency – Too Much Is Too Much

by

CEO of Real Estate Shows

Author website

Where is it written that video is the only media capable of telling the unvarnished truth?

To listen to the techie-babblers, video has arrived to save us all from the seductive slime of deceptive sales presentations. Video, they argue, is the best and by some accounts the only way to present a home in sufficient detail to show viewers the flaws along with the features. Video can give a viewer sooo much information that the viewer can say, “Wow, I’ve learned so much about that home that I’m no longer interested in it. I don’t need or want to see it. Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me all that time.” And because video can do that, it must do that. It’s a sacred calling. All hail.

Not so fast.

In their zealous rush to saviordom, the video geeks have conveniently ignored most of the spectrum of human behavior: the role of emotions in decision making; the normal process of how people want and need to connect, be attracted to, interact and form relationships with other people and with significant possessions (like homes).

In the TB (techie-babbler) world, information (visual, audio, written, whatever) is all that matters. Context means nothing. Holistic models and processes are rubbish. Emotions are to be ignored or suppressed. And some genius found the perfect gift-wrapping to convey this TB notion to the world in one magic word – transparency. God I wish I’d thought of that.

I don’t categorically favor any one medium over all others. They all have their place and time. I’m for competence. I’m against ineptitude. Good still photography used in a compelling presentation is far better than a mediocre video or virtual tour. Well-written, evocative titles and descriptive content beats bad voice-overs. And all media are equally capable of delivering transparency. It’s up to the creators.

Transparency for the sake of transparency, without regard to the setting and purpose of the message, without giving consideration to how people want and need to be communicated with and without taking into account where you are in the relationship and how it will continue to develop – is Read more

November 20, 2007

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding another Bloodhound to the pound today, and this one is a real treat, Bill Leider of Real Estate Shows:

Bill Leider is the CEO of Real Estate Shows, a hosted virtual-tour solution. His background is in corporate and business management in publicly-traded and privately-owned mid-size companies.

Bill has won The Odysseus Medal and The People’s Choice Award, and Jeff Turner told me why when we met at the NAR Convention: The man simply will not stop trying to perfect his message.

I tell the contributors that there are no rules at BloodhoundBlog, but there actually is one rule: We’re not selling our products here. We throw off a lot of traffic to contributor’s sites, and I think that great thing. I want for people to prosper as a result of their work here. But the work we do here is about improving our minds — yours, ours, everyone’s.

I’m saying this because Bill is in the business of selling virtual tours, and I know he has strong feelings on what does and does not work in real life. If he touches on these subjects — and I think he might with his first post — understand that he is writing from his experience, not trolling for your business.

More announcements to come, believe it or don’t.

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November 20, 2007

Want to stay ahead of the pack in your marketing? Come to Phoenix next May and master The Art of the Bloodhound

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are five current and former Bloodhounds — so far — on the faculty of Inman’s imminent Blogger’s Connect. That’s about fifteen Bloodhounds too few, but that’s not the only flaw I can think of. I told Joel Burslem when he was in Phoenix that the keynote address should be mine, but of course it won’t be. That would make entirely too much sense. Beyond that, the critical defect of the event is that the curriculum is established by people who aren’t doing this stuff. That’s why it’s a Blogger’s Connect, because it’s all about last year’s war.

Brian Brady had a better idea, a BloodhoundBlog Conference about truly contemporary guerrilla real estate marketing, the tactics real grunts on the ground are using right now in the jungles we find ourselves in. Two days in Phoenix, for a start, with intensive classes on how to make the stuff that really works really work for you right now.

David Gibbons, bless his eager mind, came up with this in a comment last week:

My primary takeaway from NAR was that the social media marketing opportunity in RE is misunderstood and largely ignored. Yet, I’m more convinced than ever that SMM can revolutionize real estate. I actually had a fleeting thought yesterday as I walked the expo floor that it would have been cool to have a booth dedicated to Real Estate Weblogging 101 and that “Bloodhound” might well become a premier REALTOR (or agent?) designation/qualification.

I don’t like it as a designation. Our world moves too fast. To say, “I have arrived,” is to announce that you have volunteered to be left behind. But an annual Bloodhound badge to put on your web site would be a potent testament to your valor as a guerrilla marketer.

We’re thinking Sunday, May 18, and Monday, May 19, 2008. After that, things get nebulous. But: All work and no play makes for a boring Bloodhound, so we’ll do something fun Saturday night, May 17, if you fly in early. Then maybe a networking/cocktail party Sunday night. There will be time for a round of golf on Monday morning. We might Read more

November 19, 2007

ActiveRain.com: Members Own Content But Can’t Profit From It

by

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

Author website

Do members REALLY own the content on Active Rain?

I asked that question some 13-14 months ago, wondering whether the hours I invested would be worthwhile. I was satisfied with the explanation that the content was, indeed, the members’ property.

Move.com attempted to buy Active Rain, it balked, and conversations about a future revenue model led the idea of syndicating the user content to the mainstream media. Again, the question of who owns the content arose- the answer was identical to the 2006 answer; the members own their content.

Justin Smith (aka Damion Foxworthy) wrote a satirical post, which won the People’s Choice Award, in the Odysseus Medal competition, about “selling” his Active Rain profile. Justin, through diligent weblogging and contribution to the community, has amassed some 100,000 points on Active Rain. The entry was cross-posted on Active Rain and generated an overwhelming response from the membership in the comments section. As usual, I “read too much into” this comment from Top Rainmaker, Jon Washburn:

Great post Justin,

I sat reading it thinking, “Great, how should I handle this. I probably have to zero out the points on this profile now. But man, whoever bought Justin’s blog is going to be pissed.”

I think you all are right and we need to think through this issue and put some type of formal policy in place.

Did you catch that? He said that he would “probably have to zero out the profile”. This means that while Justin has ownership of the points, he has no right to transfer them. The points were a by-product of the contributed content. Ergo, the content is not really “owned” by the members, in the purest definition of the word ownership (the content can’t be transferred).

The policy being considered strips the most important right of “ownership” from the members and releases it to the Company. While the Company can lease the content to a third-party news source, for the implied quid pro quo of SEO, the only profiting that will be done will be by the Company.

I’m okay with that, too. I’m Read more

November 19, 2007

The Odysseus Medal: “Small pieces loosely joined”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My thought is that Michael Wurzer of the FBS blog doesn’t do anything badly. Certainly his weblog is ripe with first-rate content. Michael is this week’s winner of The Odysseus Medal with Data Portability Ain’t Just A Real Estate Problem:

You see, whether it’s in an MLS or a social network, the value is in having the data together or aggregated. Yet, once you aggregate the data, in an MLS system or Facebook or wherever, the immediate question is how you can get it back out to be used elsewhere, by other applications, because choice is desired and the aggregation stifles choice.

This is a non-trivial problem. The ideal answer is in the web itself. As Tim O’Reilly puts it, “Small pieces loosely joined.” Yet the web, in its current form, doesn’t address all the concerns, because yet to be defined are permission or privacy or identity schemes. In other words, who owns the data, who can access it, and what can they do with it when they do access it? The answers to these questions so far have been defined by silos, like MLS systems and social networks, but we’re now seeing that isn’t the long-term answer, rather standards are.

In the real estate space, one part of the solution is to have a broad and deep agreement (standard) on the minimum data necessary to constitute a listing. This is close to reality with the RETS payloads. Equally necessary, however, is a standard for defining who can access the listing and the terms of use for doing so. The first attempts at some terms of use in the real estate space led to the lawsuit against the NAR by the DOJ, which necessarily but unfortunately has caused the conversation to grind to a halt as the status quo is sought to be preserved. But the work on these terms of use needs to continue, either to resolve the litigation or end-run it.

Ideally, the terms of use should be dictated by the owner of the data on an individual basis. Again, “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet the challenge is gaining broad enough Read more

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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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