BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: November 2007 (page 4 of 9)

November 19, 2007

I Didn’t Like The Question

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

A few weeks ago I was part of a “Surviving In This Market” panel. I have been a part of this sort of thing many times, locally and nationally. A few minutes into questionthe program I found myself irritated at the question being asked. I usually don’t even read the questions provided beforehand as I prefer my responses to be completely unscripted. I think I may have surprised everybody (even myself a little) with my answer to the question asked. There were four other panelists and I was seated at the end of the table, closest to the moderator. The other four panelists had answered the question and I said, “I’m not going to answer the question because I think the question is stupid.” The moderator was a bit shocked. Perhaps you can guess that I seldom concern myself with such concepts as, “If I say this will I be invited back?”. I’m a bit proud of the fact that no one will ever be able to accuse me of being hard to read.

I believe that asking the right question can lead to a correct and useful answer. I also believe that asking the wrong question can be destructive. Just asking a question can cause damage? Absolutely. For example, the question, “What is wrong with me” or any of it’s thousands of variations is never a good question. Never. That doesn’t stop millions of people from walking around and asking this of themselves on a daily basis. They may have varied the question but it is nevertheless that question in one of it’s many guises. How can I improve this situation? How can I make this area better? are not the same sort of question and I hope you can discern the difference. The problem of “What’s wrong with me?” (or any variation) is that one tends to start a list of possible items. Then they can indicate these various items to themselves. They may even “get help” from others who can also indicate their various wrongness to them. Just based on how much this “improvement technique” is practiced in the Read more

November 18, 2007

BloodhoundBlog.TV debuts: NAR Convention survivors hold forth on Web 2.0 marketing in a scripted, refrigerator-magnet world

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Clearly, this is a star-crossed enterprise. The audio worked fine tonight, so the video started capturing out of phase about 17 minutes in. The video is short, but the accompanying audio podcast contains our full discussion.

Ignore all that. I fixed it. The video shown below is complete, and it is also linked as the first video at BloodhoundBlog.TV. Dan Green’s audio is a little weak, mine is a little strong, Jay Thompson is a little out of focus, but we’ve gotten to a place we’ve never been before, a do-it-yourself multi-camera remote interview segment. Many more to come — with steadily increasing quality.

This is Daniel Rothamel, Dan Green and Jay Thompson discussing their experiences at the NAR Convention, carrying forth from there to a broad discussion about how the benefits of Web 2.0-style marketing might be communicated to the 1.3 million members of the NAR.

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November 18, 2007

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Eighteen nominees this week. I had a bunch of posts from Active Rain, and, while I didn’t pick any this week for the short list, I’d like to encourage y’all to continue to enter. There is some good stuff over there that I would not see otherwise.

Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Michael Wurzer -- Distorted advertising Moving From Distorted Advertising to Useful Information in the MLS”,
“Michael Wurzer — Data portability Data Portability Ain’t Just A Real Estate Problem“,
“Joel Burslem — NAR Reflections on NAR“,
“Robert Ashby — YSP Is Yield Spread Premium Good or Bad for Consumers?“,
“Steve and Kris Berg — Six months The Six Month Solution – Our New Deal“,
“Morgan Brown — Credit mess Top 10 Ways to Navigate the Credit Mess“,
“Brian Brady — Compensation How to Pay Real Estate and Mortgage Professionals For Their Advice“,
“Todd Carpenter — Keyword SEO Key word SEO is at best, a hedged bet.“,
“Doug Quance — Stay home We Can Just Stay Home And Go Broke“,
“Jay Thompson — Short sale The Short Sale From Hell“,
“Justin Smith — Active Rain How I Sold My ActiveRain Profile for $6,750.00“,
“Todd Carpenter — YSP Forget YSP, let’s just do away with Mortgage Brokers“,
“Tim Kane — YSP Let Brokers charge what they want. Do away with YSP.“,
“Kris Berg — Vista A New Operating Environment“,
“Geno Petro — Feng Shui Feng Shui… It’s All Chinese Math To Me“,
“Jeff Kempe — Bossy visionaries Bossy Visionaries, Portland, and how to ram “Green” down the throat of an uncooperative market“,
“Brian Brady — Federal banks HR 3915: Why Federally-Chartered Banks Get The Pass“,
“Jim Duncan — NAR Working from within the NAR”
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    Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.

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    • November 18, 2007

    NAR Convention convocation: We live in a small world — for now

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    There are 1.3 million members of the National Association of Realtors. Of those, 30,000 descended on Las Vegas for last week’s NAR Convention.

    How many of those people, either the larger group or the smaller, know about our world, the world of Web 2.0, real estate weblogging, social networking — the world we think of as being “the conversation”?

    Almost none.

    BloodhoundBlog is big as real estate weblogs go, and we’re arguably the biggest of the blogs focused on real estate industry issues. We get around 1,200 unique visitors a day on weekdays, a steadily rising number. Many of those “hard clicks” are not Realtors, of course, but we have a large and growing population of RSS and email subscribers. I have no numbers for RSS subscriptions, but the email server demands kicked us from a shared-server account to a quarter-server to a full dual-core server in a little over a year. It would not seem unfair to me to estimate that we are talking to at least 1,200 dues-paying Realtors a day.

    It pays to do that math, doesn’t it. We are well-known, highly regarded, deemed influential — and we are talking to fewer than one in 1,000 members of the NAR on any given day. Not everyone reads everything on any given day, but, on the other hand, things get passed around. We might be seen by as many as 50,000 Realtors a month, perhaps as many as a quarter-million in a year’s time.

    But even then, for all but a few hundred Realtors, we are noise in the background. The others see what they see, with Debunking Zillow.com and What’s Wrong with zipRealty? being by far the two most popular hard clicks into the weblog.

    There is a over-arching message here and in other places we frequent, a message about our world, the world of Web 2.0, real estate weblogging, social networking — the world we think of as being “the conversation.” But who among the attendees of the NAR Convention — much less the NAR membership as a whole — knows anything about it?

    This was one of the points Jeff Turner raised in Read more

    November 16, 2007

    Wanna Go North? Stop Heading South.

    by

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

    Author website

    Leave it to Todd Carpenter.

    I was on Rain City Guide, wishing Jilayne a happy birthday, today. I scrolled through the posts to see the typical “Do Away With YSP post” that dominates the internet today. It’s another example of heading South to eventually go North.

    Todd has the answer (comment #1):

    I have another idea. If YSP’s supposedly stress everyone out at the closing table, just stop making brokers disclose it. Then the consumer would start focusing on the true cost of the loan.

    Brilliant ! I’m actually giddy.  Todd may not realize it but he just fired the shot heard round the world.

    November 16, 2007

    The mother of invention: Greg’s IDX

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Our IDX bill came due today. A boatload of money for the next twelve months, even though the system is going to break itself in eight months, when the new sheriff comes to town.

    So: I said kill it. The leads we get from it have stunk, and the free ARMLS solution is adequate for now.

    I hate every choice that’s available to us. About fifteen months ago, I wrote a spec for a map-based search system that would appeal to me. Since then, the art has improved, with Estately.com being my current favorite.

    Here’s the real deal, though: I should build a decent IDX system for Phoenix. Not me personally. I don’t have the database chops. But I should put together a start-up to build an IDX system that really delivers, instead of the stultifyingly crappy options we have now.

    In the Web 2.0 world, we are all pioneers, and I am accidentally wired into a community of like minds who can help me get what I want. Plus which, like my own personal Jesus, Steve Jobs, I know what I love, I know what I hate, and I know why I hate things that don’t work.

    And, face it, there is money to be made selling tools to Realtors. I am parsimonious enough in my own practice to be a good steward with a customer’s money, but I know I can deliver a better product for the money. I can build something that can go anywhere FlexMLS goes, and probably anywhere RETS goes.

    Who salutes? This wants funding, and that I ain’t got. If you’re interested in putting your money where my mouth is, speak up.

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    November 16, 2007

    BloodhoundBlog.TV an inch at a time: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    So: I have good news, bad news and worse news.

    The good news is, the video linked below, an interview with Jeff Turner of RealEstateShows.com about his experiences at the NAR Convention, is a full representation of the BloodhoundBlog.TV idea as I envision it. Video captured to the size of the image window on an Apple iPhone with a decent level of audio quality.

    The bad news is, this is probably as good as things will get for a while. We have something truly cool, and truly novel, but the level of quality we can achieve with existing tools is limited. A year from now we’ll be doing much better. Two years from now the flap-jaws on the Tee Vee News will be pontificating about the dangers of unfettered TV news. In other words, this is the world of desktop publishing or weblogging brought to the world of the multi-camera remote television interview. But: For now, this is as good as it gets.

    The worst news is that I hit yet another audio glitch about a third of the way into my conversation with Jeff, with the result that we lost more than we retained. This is truly tragic, because Jeff covered a lot of interesting ground.

    But: We’re getting there. Sunday night we’ll do a group interview with NAR Convention survivors, and this will be an even better test of this technology.

    In the meantime, we console ourselves with Tennyson:

    Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    BloodhoundBlog.TV is that much closer to being a reality.

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    November 16, 2007

    Call it by its right name: It’s Friday-afternoon real estate gossip

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Glenn Kelman wonders a little too self-revealing about the hype motivating serial entrepreneurs. Guy Kawasaki jumps to exactly the wrong conclusion, asserting that VC funds are wasted if a start-up’s founders have conquered their acne. And Marlow Harris wonders if the whole thing is simply Kelman campaigning for his next job.

    Loren Nason asks an excellent question: Why the hell isn’t Apple pushing product at the NAR Convention? At a minimum, the smart folks from the Apple Store at the Fashion Show Mall could be selling iPhones by the dozens.

    The New York Times notes that TV is losing viewership to on-line alternatives. Ya think? Everything that exists exists in finite quantity. The more of my leisure time I spent on the nets, the less I will have to spend on other pursuits. The more my work time and leisure time blend together, the more everything looks like a nail. If you’re not selling nails, precisely what do you think you have to sell me?

    Finally, in more jobs news, Vanessa we hardly knew ye. I didn’t think this was big news on the way in, so I’m less that whelmed on the way out. Much more interesting, a little bug in my ear intimates, is this:

    But Fox isn’t the only one who has departed the heavily-funded company in recent months. She said there have been a few people who have left to pursue early-stage opportunities, while one Zillow employee recently set sail for Facebook. Still, she said there is by no means a “revolving door” at the company.

    However, some former Zillow engineers — Logan Bowers, Sameer Rayachoti and Greg Whelan — left to create a Seattle startup called Fridge Door. I have been tracking the stealthy startup for the past few days, but have yet to uncover a Web site or contact details. (Shoot me an e-mail if you know it or if you work at the company and are reading this.) I am told that others have left, though not sure if the churn rate is unusually high for a company of that size.

    I know nothing about the world of start-up companies, Read more

    November 15, 2007

    What REALLY Caused the Lender Meltdown and Other Important Stuff

    by

    Mega-Producing Realtor

    Author website

    The Wall Street high finance folks who contrived a system to endlessly send money to lenders and reward them for making fraudulent loans got what they rewarded. Here are a few Letters to the Editor from Businessweek:

    The Heat On Angelo Mozilo

    Maria Bartiromo’s interview of Angelo Mozilo (“The heat on Countrywide,” News & Insights, Sept. 10) was tough and insightful. Clearly, Mozilo worked hard for years to build Countrywide Financial. It is sad to see many of his customers suffering under pending or potential future home loss through foreclosure. It also is an unfortunate coincidence that Mozilo has received $100 million by exercising options while many shareholders and customers suffer.This presents Mozilo with a unique opportunity: He could use some of his new riches to set up a fund to help families of customers facing home loss. Think of the suffering he could alleviate for just one child who gets to stay in his or her home. Multiply that by the tens or hundreds of families he could help by setting aside 10% or 20% of his windfall. Hopefully he will seize this opportunity.

    Ed Dziadzio
    Lexington, Mass.

    __

    It was difficult to read Angelo Mozilo’s interview because of the blinding light of his halo. In his “mission to lower the barriers of entry for…homeownership” he developed “184 programs” designed, in essence, to circumvent the historically proven risk-evaluation standards and reap huge, though temporary, profits for the corporation. The permanent benefit has been the obscene salaries and bonuses for him. The only reason Countrywide is “modifying” loans is to keep a lid on the disasters, not out of altruism. His claims are beyond absurd. Does his company not advertise as well as promote itself within the industry? Mozilo points out that “it’s important to understand that everybody has experienced substantial losses.” Not quite, Mr. Mozilo.

    David Horn
    Oakland, Calif.

    __

    The problems in the subprime lending market are due to low underwriting standards and then overvaluation of these portfolios. A key question that needs to be asked is how these mortgage originators are compensated. Many times the originator is compensated based on production of loans, which includes the good, bad, Read more

    November 15, 2007

    Social Networking, the pork chop and my Cuban accounting professor

    by

    The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

    Author website

    In my undergrad days, I had an accounting professor. He was a great guy actually. He was from Cuba, (pronounced Coo-bah) with a thick, middle aged Ricky Ricardo accent.

    He used to tell us all of the time:

    “What you are giving! What you are getting! That is important!’

    He would then hold his cupped hands out in front of himself like a balance scale to weigh the two. Funny the things that stick with you through life…Nestor Ruiz–wherever you are, thanks. That lesson has been invaluable.

    I have been quietly watching and considering some things lately…I see many of the RE.net’s social networking sites get lobbied heavily by bots and their employees who proclaim to be different from the others and yet in the end, they look very much the same. They all look for creative ways to tie the pork chop around their neck just hoping for this result:

    istock_000000361635xsmall.jpg
    They want the REALTOR community to like them. Why would they want to do that? When they say it isn’t about the Benjamin’s, that IMHO is exactly what it is about. Obviously these social networks that they are lobbying are full of influence on REALTORS. The pork chops dull the REALTOR’s  (read: dog’s) senses as he prepares to enjoy a nice little exposure snack.
    But the cost of the snack may well affect the REALTORS livelihood long after the savory snack has passed. If I follow my accounting professor’s sage advice, I realize that recouping the X million smackers that founded some of these companies HAS to come from somewhere. And a big somewhere at that, IMO.
    Logic indicates that advertising models on the web do not do it alone. It also indicates that free (often less than accurate) Automated Valuations are not enticement enough (in many locations throughout the country). Since these bots don’t enjoy universal search engine presence, there are many consumers they are NOT reaching. The clock is ticking and they need revenue. To get it, could it be that they need listings to create relevance? And once relevance and internet dominance are assured, will they will charge the REALTOR, whether via referral fee Read more

    November 15, 2007

    Video podcast with Daniel Rothamel from the NAR Convention

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    I am too much chagrined. In building BloodhoundBlog.TV, I know what I want, but I keep running into technical glitches that leave me short of where I want to be. We are that close to getting a launch-quality product, but I’m not there yet.

    But: The video linked below is a big step in the right direction. Daniel Rothamel of The Real Estate Zebra joined us to talk about his experiences so far at the NAR Convention, notably Seth Godin’s presentation and yesterday’s news from Zillow.com’s Rich Barton.

    Jeff Turner is running a NAR Updates site that gives a peripatetic commentary on events at the show.

    We will try to take another stab at BHB.TV content from the Convention before the Conventioneers are ground to a pulp by the irrepressible machine that is Las Vegas.

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    November 15, 2007

    Not to take anything away from the NAR Convention in Las Vegas, but this seems like the better takeaway . . .

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    This requires reasoning by analogy, never a welcome exercise. Even so, there’s a clue here if anyone cares to catch it:

    “We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.” — Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music

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    November 14, 2007

    Cribfinder and Facebook: Showcasing Listings

    by

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

    Author website

    I’m a newbie to the world of Facebook but an old salt at social networking sites. I’ve been on LinkedIn since 2004, MySpace since 2005, and Active Rain since 2006. Facebook is my network du l’an for 2007.

    It all started with my need to meet people in the San Diego area. I moved here as a mortgage sales executive in 2003 to be RIF’d after a merger in early 2005. Faced with the prospect of earning a living for my family, I turned to my first love; originating loans. In many respects, I’m only a third year originator.

    My goal: to build a phat Rolodex, and fast.

    I turned to the budding social networks to meet REALTORs and key referring influencers. I think Jeff Corbett got me on Facebook. I see a few of you there now. Facebook is a unique social utility because it lets independent software developers offer applications. One of those applications is a listing bot called Cribfinders. From the Cribfinders home page on Facebook:

    Did you know?
    * Your properties appear on your profile after adding them to CribFinder
    * Updates appear on your newsfeed when you add or comment on photos (even your own!)
    * You can track how many times your properties are viewed
    * You can add your profile to our (searchable) realtor database
    * You can add as many properties as you want
    * You can get links to your “Cribs” and display them OFF of facebook

    I added that application on my Facebook page and started searching around, I came upon this listing and clicked through to the REALTOR. He and I led parallel lives (both lived in Phoenix and moved to San Diego). I called him and spoke to him for 10-15 minutes and we have a connection. I have always maintained that the loan originator with the most friends wins the game so I like to make friends.
    I noticed one hound using that application and wondered if others will. Comments about Cribfinders?

    November 14, 2007

    The Odysseus Medal: “Failure is a costly but cogent instructor”

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Here are the Odysseus Medal winners, finally. My apologies for being two days late, but my little hop to Las Vegas put me way behind on everything.

    I run with a fast crowd here, but I don’t cut them any slack. I am never nice for the sake of being nice, and I don’t ever hesitate to tell what I believe to be the complete truth. Even so, I don’t love it when one of our wins the Odysseus Medal, because I don’t want anyone to even suspect that I might be swayed by personal considerations. But great work is where you find it, even if you find it at home. So this week’s Odysseus Medal goes to BloodhoundBlog’s own Brian Brady for HR 3915: Open Letter to Senator Dodd from a Veteran Mortgage Originator:

    Dear Chairman Dodd:

    Soon, HR 3915 will be endorsed by the House of Representatives and most likely referred to the Senate. The committee you chair, will have an opportunity to read, discuss, debate, and amend this bill before recommending it to the general Senate for vote. I am a 20 year veteran of consumer financial services with the last 14 years in mortgage lending. I have helped over 700 families finance their homes and closed some 1700 loan transactions. I humbly submit my expert opinion to you for consideration.

    The Libertarian in me begs you to do absolutely nothing; it’s the borrowers’ cavalier attitude towards financial planning that caused this mess. While my statement is true, it is but a component of the underlying malaise in the residential real estate industry; we adopted an even more cavalier approach to loan approvals and that irresponsibility is being felt by the investors who trusted us to perform adequate due diligence. Failure is a costly but cogent instructor; to discourage failure on both the borrower and investing lender sides of the equation might be more costly in the long run.

    I oppose individual originator licensing in its proposed form. It doesn’t demonstrate true expertise and might induce a false sense of security to the consumer. Read more

    November 14, 2007

    Feng Shui… It’s All Chinese Math To Me

    by

    Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

    Author website

    I’ve been putting clients into my car and cruising the streets of Chicago for nearly a decade now; the first three years as a leasing agent, the remainder as an actual dues paying realtor. I estimate that I’ve personally shown over 10,000 properties to almost 2,000 different people; a few of whom were clinically certifiable and dozens more on top of that, just plain peculiar. I laugh and cringe out loud (which I suppose would be COL) when I think back on some of the screwy scenarios I’ve witnessed or been a party to. Such, as they say, is life in this big city.

    There was the lady who peed in the back seat of my car, the last cloth seat vehicle I’ll ever own. COL. There was the fairly well-dressed gentleman who came in just before the close of business one evening, adamant about seeing one of our rental listings (posted in the lobby window) on the far north side of Chicago.  A half hour later he bolted from my car as I was attempting to parallel park in front of the property–-a free ride home to the neighborhood being his sole intention all along.

    Then, there was the transvestite who couldn’t stop weeping because she had just been dumped by her lover–poor thing. I took her into a Starbucks to calm her down and everyone in the place ended up staring at me. And perhaps the most memorable of all was the woman and her ‘attorney’ who stormed into the lobby of our ‘Free Apartment Finding Service’ (or so read the sign on the awning), demanding the ‘free’ apartment.  But to be fair, most of the above episodes occurred in the earliest days of my career when I was known to befriend any man who happened through the door with a need for housing and the first month’s rent to back it up.

    My thoughts today, however, drift back to a middle-aged Mandarin couple I met earlier in this year and what they taught me about showing property to people more spiritual than myself. After several times out in the car we finally came up with a very short list of townhomes they could possibly live with (or even walk into, for that matter). They insisted we meet at sunrise to view all the listings in which they expressed any serious interest. Luckily for me and 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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