BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: November 2007 (page 5 of 9)

November 14, 2007

Zillow.com enables listing agents to pee on the tree perpetually

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There has been a ton of Zillow.com “news” lately, but mainly I’ve been ignoring it. News is news when it is something other than PR — free advertising for the company pushing the press release. In other words, what’s-in-it-for-me? — or for you or for anyone other than the owners of the company.

So:

  • Zillow announces new listings from Big Bob’s Bait and Realty
  • Zillow discovers newspapers don’t know what was planned for Hansel and Gretel
  • After months of announcements, Zillow finally takes listings feeds
  • Zillow announces even more new listings from multiple miscellaneous sources
  • Zillow rapidly approaches a one-percent listings penetration; if you’re looking for a home, almost one out of hundred are now on-line!

Okayfine. I don’t care. The feed is a happening thing, but I said a long time ago they would have to have one, at which time they demurred. If they celebrate with a cupcake for each new brokerage they sign up, they may someday have to go to Costco once a week to buy more cupcakes. Good news for them. Not very interesting otherwise.

But then there’s this:

In addition, today Zillow is announcing its revolutionary Zillow Virtual Sold Sign program (VSS), to be added to Zillow Listings Feeds in the coming months. The VSS program allows a broker’s branding and contact information to permanently become part of a sold home’s Web page on Zillow, where four million people visit every month, 70 percent of whom are buying or selling in the next two years. The VSS functionality is free to all brokerages and Web vendors with Zillow Listings Feeds.

“Imagine having a permanent ‘sold by’ sign in front of every home a brokerage has ever sold — giving buyers and sellers a critical piece of information on who is selling homes in a neighborhood — today and over time,” said Rich Barton, Zillow co-founder and CEO. “Given Zillow’s focus on all homes — more than 70 million of them — and not just those on the market today, we are in a unique position to provide this historical sales information to buyers, sellers and homeowners.”

Now that’s interesting. If you list well in Read more

November 14, 2007

Irony Can Be So Ironic (Massachusetts Edition)

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

Massachusetts was one of the first states to put anti-predatory lending laws on its books, ratifying in November 2004. The law includes provisions for borrower counseling, prepayment penalties, and financing of fees.

Presumably, somebody thought the law had a positive impact on homeowners because, recently, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank authored HR 3915, The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007. Currently in debate, HR 3915 is the first national anti-predatory lending program proposed by Congress.

And then comes the heavy dose of irony.

Today, RealtyTrac released its foreclosure data from Q3 2007. Check out five of the six cities leading the nation in year-over-year foreclosure growth:

  1. Bethesda/Frederick/Gaithersburg, MD (1,640%)
  2. Cambridge/Newton/Framingham, MA (1,552%)
  3. Boston/Quincy, MA (1,274%)
  4. Springfield, MA (1,169%)
  5. Essex, MA (993%)
  6. Worcester, MA (895%)

It appears that three years after its anti-predatory lending laws went into effect, Massachusetts homes are foreclosing faster than in any other state in the country.

Irony can be so ironic.

November 13, 2007

Bossy Visionaries, Portland, and how to ram “Green” down the throat of an uncooperative market

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

The Bossy Visionary guide to power:

1. Sell a crisis.  It can be real, it can be almost real, it can be imaginary, but sell it apocalyptically.  Over-population/global famine has been an especially popular one, Paul Erlich having predicted it every five years since 1968 (but this time he’s serious!), following in the footsteps of Thomas Malthus, who first predicted the population would outstrip the food supply in 1798. [Now, of course, we have global warming, global cooling having proved a disappointment.]

2. Set yourself up as the one person/group/coalition/association that can solve the crisis, if only people will give you enough money and behave exactly as you instruct. 

3. Demand sacrifice, open a bank account, and wait for the marketplace to work.

4. When it doesn’t, legislate. 

The Bossy Visionary confidently knows what’s better for people than people.

Portland, Oregon is fertile breeding ground for Bossy Visionaries.

Portland doesn’t wear the progressive label; it wallows in it.  The County Commission and the City Council cattily compete with each other for the ‘most like San Francisco’ award, often to the exclusion of proposing anything actually, well, sane.  Thus the county a few years ago began unilaterally issuing gay marriage licenses, notwithstanding the fact that it wasn’t legal, wasn’t popular, and there’s nothing worse than giving someone something only to have it taken away, which the Supreme Court predictably did.  Thus the City Council is in the process of changing the name of a major thoroughfare in North Portland from ‘Interstate Ave.’ to ‘Caesar Chavez’ Ave., notwithstanding the fact the neighborhoods through which Interstate runs are an olio of Polish, Indian, African American, old, young, hip and not, but less than 8% Latino; and notwithstanding the fact that those neighborhoods, especially the businesses, are overwhelmingly opposed to the change.  [To the petulant mayor – he did the perfect ‘terrible twos’ impression and stomped out of a Council meeting when it looked like one of the key votes had changed – all that matters is the du jour grievance group, the fawning press that will be generated in the process, and one more notch in the totem erected to the politically gooey.]

So this didn’t Read more

November 13, 2007

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” — Howard Aiken

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The quote comes from WorkHappy.net this morning. Yesterday — plane-bound, casino-bound, Twitter-bound — unable to post — I reflected upon why it’s all just so much waxed fruit — for now:

Rusting in irony. I really, really want to post and I have 140 chars to work with.

That’s Jeff Turner and a newly-shorn Dustin Luther checking out Jeff’s camera at last night’s BloggerCon event at the NAR Convention in Las Vegas. The event was a lot of fun for me, much more fun than I had anticipated, but we were just so much waxed fruit to the NAR, a minor constituency to be placated.

So be it. A year ago, there was nothing of our world at the NAR Convention. This year, amidst the pageantry for MS FrontPage and MS Publisher, Dustin Luther spoke on “Understanding Your Online Competition.” Seth Godin is speaking, too, although I think he might go over like The Great Gazoo.

And: So be it. What I was ruminating on, unable to post, was Jim Duncan’s optimistic take on working within the NAR. My thoughts run in the other direction — working without the NAR — and my honest belief is that the NAR is destined to go the way of the Typographer’s Union — marching stoutly and steadfastly into an unlamented irrelevance. Sic semper tyrannosauris — thus, ever, to dinosaurs.

Organizations don’t change because they should. They don’t change because the world has changed on them. The don’t change because glib ideologues like me persuade them to embrace their better angels. Organizations change — if they do — when they have to: When a sufficient power-bloc within the group forces a change or when a force from outside the group proves irresistible. Most dinosaurs change — to a state of perpetual demise — when they get hit by a meteor.

Are we — the RE.net, the Web 2.0 world — are we that outside force for the NAR? Are we that meteor? Don’t kid yourself. We’re waxed fruit for now, up from barely negligible a year ago. But a year from now…?

I live in a very long-term world, but I live Read more

November 13, 2007

HR 3915: Why Federally-Chartered Banks Get The Pass

by

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

Author website

Big banks have a HUGE advantage over mortgage brokerage firms; they have the money. Federally-chartered banks also are regulated differently than mortgage brokers; they are overseen by the Office of Thrift Supervision, a successor regulator to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Federally-chartered banks also subscribe to FDIC insurance which imposes another layer of oversight to them. In the interest of simplification, the OTS regulates banking activity while the FDIC monitors the bank’s investments.

Big banks have a lot to lose if they have a rogue originator among their ranks. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen; rogue originators infest every business model, including the big banks. What is apparent, however, is that the big banks have greater systems in place to supervise the actions of their employees than do mortgage brokerage and correspondent lending firms. They also have more stake in the origination process- the authority to borrow and lend money with the legislated blanket of a government guarantee (FDIC insurance).

Banks have exploited this unfair advantage, too. They systematically engaged in a scheme to inflate profits by using mortgage brokers and correspondent lenders to do the dirty work for them. Internal policies at the big banks limit how much “overage” (the bank term for yield spread premium) a bank-employed originator can charge under the guise of “responsible lending”. Their wholesale business channels were able to “bribe” the brokers to originate higher rate product with the temptation of obscene yield spread premiums. They removed themselves from the “dirty retail” work to claim plausible deniability when the shit hit the fan. Today, we have a feces-covered fan. The mortgage brokers have dirty, smelly hands and the big bankers are emerging from the washroom looking like a smartly starched altar boy.

Big banks are always going to have an unfair advantage with regulators because they know the golden rule of finance. A watered-down version of HR 3915 will eventually become law. The political pressures of an election year make it virtually impossible for ambitious politicians to ignore a chance to enable Read more

November 12, 2007

Day of the delay of The Odysseus Medal . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m getting ready for the BloggerCon event at the NAR Convention and I’ve run myself out of time. I’ll post the judging for The Odysseus Medal tomorrow morning. I’ll leave the voting open for The People’s Choice Award until I’m ready to post.

In the mean time, although I’ve shown this before, Cathy thought I should post it again. This is going on all around you, and, if, like certain hide-bound centenarians, you want to pretend you can avoid this fate — think again.


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November 12, 2007

Working from within the NAR

by

Realtor, Real Estate Ethicist

Author website

There are two premises to this post:

1. We accept that the National Association of Realtors is going to exist for the foreseeable future.
2. They have an existing infrastructure, including its 1.4 million members, that could potentially be leveraged to do great things.

First, we need much more than a “massive media campaign,” as stated by Dale Stinton, CEO of NAR. Not once does he mention improving the product (the Realtors) – all the technology in the world will not improve the competence of the professional.

Greg and I disagree on this – rather than supplant the various associations, I argue that working from within, in tandem with efforts from outside (read: the RE.net), may prove to be an even more effective strategy. Many in the RE.net recognize the opportunity to effect change; there may be great value in working, not necessarily with, but on parallel paths with, some components of the NAR. I mentioned in the inaugural Bloodhound.TV effort that the NAR clearly does recognize the impact and influence that the RE.net has on the industry – by choosing to assist in the BloggerCon, the NAR is reaching out to the bloggers. From my experience, the leadership of the NAR and the local and state associations, wants to be led, but often don’t know where to begin.

To lead, sometimes you just need to ask – or be asked.

With some prodding by some people whom I respect greatly, I am going to put my money/time where my mouth is and try to gain a seat on the Professional Standards committee (requires login) within the NAR, which may be tasked with evaluating blogging. This is the committee’s charge:

To advise and make recommendations to the Board of Directors on matters relating to the Code of Ethics; upon request, the Committee advises member boards on interpretations on the Code; upon receiving notice of lack of enforcement thereof by member boards, the Committee inquires into the situation, seeks remedial action and, if necessary, brings to the attention of the Board of Directors or the proper official of the Association in case of failure or refusal to enforce the Read more

November 12, 2007

Stifle those yawns: CyberHomes is coming out of beta

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Q: Is there room in the Realty.bot business for a third major player?

A: What business?

Joel Burslem came to Phoenix last week, and I had a chance to spend a few hours with him before he flew back to Portland. Because I live and breathe real estate and because I’m casually cruel in a thoughtless kind of way, I punished him with real estate tour — major commercial developments with side trips into residential neighborhoods. Joel’s observation: “There sure are a lot of ranch houses.”

It’s one of my life’s goals to be a kinder, more thoughtful person, but dramatic differences may require a reincarnation or two. Even so, I didn’t just make Joel look at houses. We had plenty of opportunities to talk as we meandered. One of the topics I wanted to discuss was the profit potential for Realty.bots like Zillow.com and Trulia.com. Zillow has firmly embraced the Google.com business model of delivering advertising based on targeted search. Trulia had just moved to a business model pioneered by Realtor.com — milk the listers.

My question is this: Taking account that I myself am impervious to advertising, how is any of this going to play out in the long run? People will pay for clicks for a while, but sooner or later they’re going to try to account for those clicks in converted sales. If the impact of advertising is not demonstrably cost-efficient, then why do it? I’m not saying this will happen, but as media consumers become more and more like me, it seems to me to be more and more likely.

Into that steaming cow-pie steps CyberHomes, about to emerge from a year-long beta period:

That’s not auspicious, but who know what tomorrow will bring.

But, more importantly: Who cares?

For now, CyberHomes is Yet Another Map-Based Automated Valuation Model. Punch in your address and you get a wild-eyed pricing guess based on tax records and statistics and having no material connection to the actual house, which, as I have demonstrated in the past, may not actually even be there. So far: Big yawn.

CyberHomes hopes to dominate the hugely unprofitable free-AVM market by having access Read more

November 12, 2007

Dear Billion Dollar Agent,

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Yes, that is exactly the salutation Steve Kantor used to write to me. Steve is offering a free copy of the book he is about to release to anyone who will complete BDALogoThumba short survey. Here is the link to that survey. Below is the full text of that email.

__

From: Steve Kantor [mailto:steve.kantor@gmail.com]

Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 12:09 AM
To: Steve Kantor
Subject: Agent needs help – all of us in 2008 – share ideas for 2008 – Billion Dollar Agent

Dear Billion Dollar Agent,Time for another book – take 5 minutes to quickly reply on MONDAY – book published within a week. Highly valuable to you, all Billion Dollar Agents and hundreds of other agents already involved with this instant book project. I will be at NAR Las Vegas on Tue-Fri – if you are attending, please tell me so we can meet.

A group of 20 top agents have started an instant effort to gather hundreds of ideas from agents around the country of how to succeed in the coming 2008 market. If you reply to survey below and share ideas you will receive a free copy of the ebook PDF by Thanksgiving. This effort is being organized by Best Agent Business (www.bestagentbusiness), the publishers of Billion Dollar Agent:

Lessons Learned to help top agents.
Please take 5 minutes, complete survey below, and forward to fellow agents:
Survey link: http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2275H36JR5S

Thank you!
Keep in touch,
Steve
—

Steve Kantor
President
Best Agent Business
www.bestagentbusiness.comCell: 202-297-2393

Fax: 240-751-4247

November 11, 2007

BloodhoundBlog.TV — Not quite ready for prime time…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

So Jim Duncan, Dan Green and I took a very informative first swing at Studio BloodhoundBlog tonight, a multi-party video discussion show about real estate. Dan talked about lending and high finance. Jim talked about green real estate and real estate opportunities in a college town. We all talked about the upcoming NAR convention.

There was only one problem. I reengineered our on-line audio solution without rethinking the means by which I was recording the audio.

The result? A fairly nice-looking 37 minute film with audio on my end only — and even that’s out of phase.

This is not tragic. We’re inventing something new, and it’s understood there will be kinks to be worked out. I understood my mistake while the film was still being written down to disk from RAM. I know what I did wrong and I know how to fix it.

But this was a very god first attempt, and I’m sorry we lost it. Moreover, I wanted for this episode to spark interest among folks going to the NAR convention. I want to talk to people all week by webcam when you get back to your rooms.

The short video attached is a salvaged portion of tonight’s failed effort making that appeal. If you’re going to the NAR convention, take your webcam — and send me an email. I’ll email instructions on how we can do video interviews — essentially video podcasts.

We’ll try Studio BHB again next week, but we can go ahead and build a whole lot of BHB.TV content this week.

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November 11, 2007

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Fifteen nominees this week, although ten are from BloodhoundBlog contributors, writing either at BHB or at their home weblogs. I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t think I’m being biased. The one thing I could suggest is that y’all nominate more posts from a broader range of sources.

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 ( "Dan Green -- Flux capacitor Happy Anniversary, Flux Capacitor”,
“Kris Berg — Boomerang Warning: Boomerang may cause injury to others“,
“Geno Petro — Big, hungry beast Big, Hungry Beast“,
“Kris Berg — Trulia Make checks payable to Trulia.com“,
“Jim Watkins — True equity True Equity – In the Real Estate Sense“,
“Joel Burslem — Facebook Advertising Your Real Estate Business on Facebook“,
“Jillayne Schlicke — HR 3915 Mortgage Brokers and Loan Originators Should Support HR3915“,
“Steve Leung — Reverse offer Considering the Reverse Offer“,
“Kevin Boer — Curbed Curbed.com = HomeGain Redux; Is History Repeating Itself? Will Curbed.com Start Selling Leads?“,
“Sean Broderick — Rubik’s Cube Reasons Come First“,
“Brian Brady — HR 3915 HR 3915: Open Letter to Senator Dodd from a Veteran Mortgage Originator“,
“Kris Berg — SEO Chasing My Long Tail – My Truth About SEO“,
“Geno Petro — First in, last out First In, Last Out“,
“Jim Duncan — Green building Green building will soon be invisible“,
“Kris Berg — Snowboarding I may see you on the way down”
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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 11, 2007

    A consumer’s guide to the divorced real estate commission: Undermining the arguments in support of the status quo

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Part V: Why arguments for the current method of compensating real estate agents and against divorcing the real estate commissions must fail

    As I write this, the National Association of Realtors is preparing for its annual convention, to be held this year in America’s playground, Las Vegas, Nevada. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NAR, so that milestone will be part of this year’s festivities. Can you guess what won’t be on the program?

    You guessed it. Not one session or event will be devoted to an earnest discussion of divorcing the real estate commissions, reconfiguring the way we account for funds at Close of Escrow so that sellers pay only their own agents and buyers pay for their own representation. I think it would be accurate to say that the NAR likes things the way they are, but it would probably be still more accurate to say that divorcing the commissions is not even on the NAR’s radar.

    Why not? That’s for you to decide, but the most common “yeah, but” objection you will hear to divorcing the commissions, among real estate professionals, is, “Yeah, but buyers don’t even care who pays the commission.”

    I wrote this series of essays so you would know why it is important for the real estate commissions to be divorced. But assuming I have failed in this objective, let me endeavor now to help you understand why this matters:

    In our current buyer’s market, some sellers are offering 4%, 5%, even 6% buyer’s agent’s commissions. Some new home builders are offering 8%, 12%, 16%. The highest buyer’s agent’s commission I have heard so far is 20%.

    You as the buyer bring or borrow every dollar that gets paid to anyone in a normal real estate transaction, so it is possible that you could end up writing a mortgage check every month with twenty cents of every dollar going to cover what you unwittingly paid for “your” agent. That’s twenty cents of every dollar of principal payment, but also twenty cents of every dollar of interest — and taxes, and insurance and private mortgage insurance.

    If buyer Read more

    November 10, 2007

    Agents Using the term “MLS” in Their URL

    by

    Mega-Producing Realtor

    Author website

    The following email was sent to me by Steve Westmark. I posted about Steve and the Minneapolis MLS back in April. Seems the Chicago MLS got the same Stupid Factoryidea but has now changed their mind. Or should that be “minds”? Or “numb skulls”?

    I really do not understand how any association that is supposed to have been formed for the benefit of Realtors can possibly come up with some of the retarded gibberish that some of them do come up with. I fully understand that it isn’t polite to poke fun at retarded people but in cases like this I just can’t help it. What tortured logic makes it alright for Homegain – and others like them – to use the term MLS in their URLs but not alright for an agent to do it? Is it that the dimwits who sat on that board thought it might be a lot easier to push those local agents around than it would be to push the attorneys who work for Homegain around? Homegain would have been willing to litigate until they won, the local agents were not.

    I would also have been willing to litigate and I would not have just fired a few emails back and forth. In addition, I would have waged a local and national PR battle (for starters, naming all the names of the spineless and mindless dolts that passed such a ruling) that would have had them playing defense – not me.

    (why yes, I do write this sort of post to make good friends with the various boards of directors around the country:-)

    _________

    —– Original Message —–

    From: Bryan VantHof

    To: steve@stevewestmark.com

    Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 3:45 PM
    Subject: Fwd: Update on Chicago area use of MLS in URL’s

    Steve,
    Thought you might find this interesting. Thanks. Bryan Vant Hof – fishMLS Realty

    ———- Forwarded message ———-
    From: Gene Carey < Gene@view-mls-homes.com>
    Date: Oct 15, 2007 4:11 PM
    Subject: Update on Chicago area use of MLS in URL’s
    To: bvanthof@fishmls.com

    Bryan,

    Just wanted to give you an update on Chicago areas plans to start fining agents who use MLS in their domain names. After sending them some very extensive emails threatening lawsuits Read more

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