There’s always something to howl about.
I guess my point is, if you’re one of these people considering giving up on blogging in exchange for paying more attention to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, or whatever they throw at us mere mortals, bear in mind you are giving up on something rather unique and wonderful. But I would say that.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
It’s been an interesting year, in the sense of the old Chinese proverb about interesting times. Interesting in this context meaning hard times. Mortgage brokers are scrambling, trying to give great service while simultaneously discerning between serious borrowers and serious time wasters. Real estate agents, many of them in he business since 2000 or later, never having experienced even a normal market, are being harshly introduced to reality. I’ve recently learned some of the agents with whom I’ve become friendly during the great times, have taken 8-5 jobs. Many of them are wondering how long they can hang.
Turns out real estate, lending, blogging, marketing, and all the other jobs, require expertise and hard work. Go figure.
Another surprising development has been how experience has also quickly risen to the top as a quality attribute the last couple years. (Think my tongue almost penetrated my cheek on that one.)
Because there is not nearly as much business going on these days, the small things are creating big problems. I don’t mean by themselves though. It’s because, in my opinion, people are reacting poorly under pressure. A small problem, a 2 on the 1-10 scale, will arise. They respond though, as if it’s a 10. They do this because even a small threat to their acutely reduced income, scares them silly. Over time, their credibility suffers, as nobody around them takes them seriously. No matter how it’s framed, a problem worthy of only a 2 rating, doesn’t become a 10 just because it’s treated that way. People aren’t stupid — they notice — sometimes. In an alternate scenario, others become infected by this overreaction virus. Now all around are behaving as if the 2 is in reality a 10. I’ve seen easily solvable problems become deal killers — they died from the dreaded, ‘2 into 10’ fever.
It can get ugly when that happens. Egos get involved, emotions take over, and before anyone realizes it, the elevator has crashed thunderingly into the basement.
My first really tough market when everything went to hell in a hand basket, began in the last quarter of ’79. Read more
A BloodhoundBlog.TV broadcast of the praxis used to create BloodhoundBlog.TV broadcasts. Let’s get clicking, shall we?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
A baker’s dozen this week. 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:
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$AltEntries = array (
"Marlow Harris -- Iggy's House Iggy’s House and B.S. Realty”,
“Jeff Brown — Lenders lend Lenders Clearing Deck To Blink, Uh, Lend — What Will They Think of Next?“,
“Robert Ashby — Credit crunch What Should be Done About the Continued Credit Crunch? How About Nothing?“,
“Jim Duncan — NAR speak Why use a realtor – decoding nar-speak“,
“Chris Johnson — 2011 Why 2011 might not even be the end“,
“Michael Wurzer — Advertising Everything Is Advertising“,
“Brian Brady — Market outlook 2008 Housing Market Outlook For U.S. Investors“,
“Kris Berg — Real estate blogging The Real Reason Your Agent Should be Blogging“,
“Jim Watkins — Foreclosure Sad Story of a Family in Foreclosure: Some things You Hate to See“,
“Mariana Wagner — RE agent You know you’re a real estate agent if…“,
“Geno Petro — Serendipity Serendipity, straight up“,
“Jay Thompson — NAR COE 7,373 Words – The NAR Code of Ethics“,
“Cathleen Colins — Memories Memories of my Dad in the house he never got to see”
);
shuffle($AltEntries);
$radioGroup = “”;
$num = count($AltEntries);
for ($i=0; $i< $num; $i++)
{
$pieces = explode("\t", $AltEntries[$i]);
$radioGroup .= "
echo (“
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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.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I’m a firm believer that you can often learn as much by a bad example as you can a good one.
Yesterday this little nugget slipped past my spam filters. Something, I don’t know what, compelled me to read it.
I need your help. Do you know someone that knows lots of Realtors and or Loan Originators that may be interested in earning an extra $1,500 – $12,000 a month?
The perfect person might be an Title rep, a Realtor, a rep for a Home Warranty Company, a Loan Officer, or just someone you know looking for an opportunity.
We need people to show folks how to get out of the ice age and generate business quickly using a new approach – especially in a down market.
<< Blah blah blah insert plan to dominate the world via CD ROM business cards here. >>
Just standard spammy crap we’re all inundated with on an hourly basis. Then came this part:
Forget the Caveman, our program is so simple even a Realtor or a Loan Originator can do it.
Huh? What marketing genius came up with this?
I can just see a bunch of people, sitting around an office (or more likely in a booth at Pauly’s Pub and Pool Hall) brainstorming how to market their wares:
“Anyone have any ideas?”
“We could buy an email list and spam people!”
“Excellent! Run with that one. Just be sure to leave out our web address and make sure if anyone interested hits ‘reply’ to the email that it will be undeliverable, OK? Let’s make it as hard as possible for people to contact us!”
“Oooh oooh! How about if in the body of the spam, we insult the intelligence of our target market group!”
“You are a freaking genius! That’s a fabulous idea!”
Now I’m sure no readers of this weblog would be as clueless as these folks appear to be. But it does point out that it’s probably a good idea to stop and think about your marketing materials.
Here are a few tips to keep you from pulling the trigger on something and setting yourself up to look like a fool:
What constitutes real knowledge? By real, I mean knowledge that is truth, not logically provable by means of rational debate.
If that sounds ambiguous, let me focus the picture a bit.
After the 1927 real estate collapse, the infant Federal Reserve Board decided the best course of action was two-fold in nature. Constrict the money supply, and raise interest rates.
They arrived at that strategy, one which in hindsight would seem to have caused (or at least exacerbated), instead of avoided the Depression, by means of rational debate, logically put forward. We can assume they thought it was clearly the right thing to do. Put plainly — they weren’t trying to cause the Depression.
They were tragically incorrect. Their logic was akin to ‘proving’ the world is flat, which was rationally believed — and logically, God forbid, scientifically proved — for centuries.
How might history have been altered, had the Feds flooded the banking system with cash while simultaneously slashing interest rates? Again, logic tells us they’d have more likely than not, avoided the Depression.
In reality though — we don’t, rather we can’t know that. We can convince ourselves by virtue of the last 80+ years of experience since then — but in the end, we just don’t know for sure.
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting the Treasury Department is in the late stages of negotiations with major lenders to avert next year’s tsunami of interest rate adjustments on over 2 million sub-prime loans.
I’ve been telling anyone who’d listen, for over a year now, lenders were simply not gonna foreclose on hundreds of thousands of homes. The thought itself is ludicrous. The Wall Street gang(sters), better known as either Bears, or one-way @$%^&#’s, are gonna be beside themselves when this is announced. So many of them are invested in bad news — in the most literal sense. They need the economy to tank, at least a little. They’ve shorted everything but their four martini lunches. 🙂 For many of them, good economic news is now bad.
Many other Wall Streeters will be elated by this news. The Bulls Read more
The real news from the mortgage and residential real estate business just keeps getting better.
First the 30% of investor or 2nd home sales went away. Then the 20% of the market that was the sub-prime business went away. Then the 10% of the market that was the alt-A business went away. Those numbers may not be exact but those are about the right percentages nationally. In the Phoenix area the number of true “investor sales” was even higher. Particularly in the edge communities where foreclosures have now skyrocketed. Yes, those very same edge communities where numerous builders sold 10 – 15 homes to each “investor” who wanted to buy them. Some of those subdivisions sales were primarily to “investors”. It is interesting to note that the amazing percentage run up in foreclosures in the Phoenix area is due to us having almost none a few years ago – back then everything could sell quickly. Drive through some of those neighborhoods on trash pick up day. Notice how few trash cans are out at the curb. (hint: a trash can at the curb = an occupied house)
In my opinion, the drop in sales from about 10,000 resales a month to about 3,000 sales a month in our area isn’t going to be a “temporary thing”. Most of those extra sales were fueled by low cost, no real need to qualify, money that never should have been available in the first place. Here I am referring to the alt-A, the sub-prime and the stated income (liar loans). It never ceases to amaze me how people with money can find (or is it the other way around) really really stupid things to “invest” in. If they had all of the facts available, I don’t know anyone who could have loaned money (their money) on 1st & 2nd liens, who would have made any of the 100% LTV sub-prime loans. No one who wanted to keep their money for later, anyway. Yet billions and billions of dollars were flooded into such “investments”. Now, after the horse is WAY out of the barn, they are really Read more
Remember Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Well, Broker Greg’s theory is Men are Sellers, Women are Buyers. His observation is that prominent in a selling couple is the man — dickering over commission then exacting justification for those commissions; and when offers come in it will be he who will haggle over the details. On the other hand, when shopping for the new house, he doesn’t want to shop: “Garage for my stuff? Fridge for my beer? Sold!”.
So Thursday night, Husband Greg was perplexed. First, he surprised himself by doing physical labor. This is against his credo — the human mind is supposed to engineer methods to circumvent physical toil. But it was time for me to unstage Oregon. It closed yesterday and I had to get all my stuff out. When I buy staging inventory, I’m always careful to limit the heft of each item to something I can move in and out of the house without (Greg’s) help. However, I’m just recently recovered from pneumonia — a solid month of complete bed-rest. So there was Greg, huffing and puffing with the grunt work as I daintily packed my pashminas and platters.
But what really floored Greg happened after he had packed up our last load, while we were sitting in the drive-through line at Wendy’s, waiting to celebrate with Frostys. And I broke down crying. Through my sobs I hiccuped that I would probably never be inside of 718 West Oregon again. This brought my dear articulate Greg to speechless amazement.
We Realtors know we bring value to the real estate transaction… each in our own particular way — our value proposition; but we all offer the consumer the value of our experience from sheer numbers of transactions we work with. In comparison, years and years typically pass between transactions in which any individual consumer is involved. What is so easy for us Realtors to lose sight of, specifically because we do handle so many transactions, is the emotion involved in the process. Those of us who work with buyers get to see the elation of clients preparing Read more
The printed membership directory came in today’s mail. Straight to the trash barrel, unopened.
Who’s the real moron, though? I pay to belong to the Clueless Morons Club. I pay to have the Morons-in-Charge print and mail a membership directory for me to throw away…
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology
The F.Q. Story Historic District Home Tour is tomorrow, so I’m going to be out for much of the day. In consequence, I’m moving the deadline for Odysseus Medal nominations to 9 am, to give me time to put together the short list.
Between church and the hangover brunch, there aren’t a lot of nominations on Sunday mornings, anyway. But if you had plans in that direction, amend them. Anything that comes in after 9 will be kicked into next week.
I can’t predict my time tomorrow, so my thought for BHB.TV was do do a piece on BHB.TV — how it’s done. If you have other topic ideas, speak up.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
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I’m turning into my father. I just finished my annual tradition of watching the Army-Navy game. Two things annoyed me:
1- The game wasn’t played in Philadelphia (they experiment with New Jersey, Pasadena, and now Baltimore). The game is hosted by a neutral city; Philly is 130 miles from both Academies and is the default home to this rivalry.
2- They sold a sponsorship to the game. I get the big picture. Sponsorships are win-win for both schools. I just think that this game should transcend commercial interests.
At least I can enjoy the DaltonsAZHomes Territorial Cup this afternoon. Fork ’em Devils.
The trouble with trade shows is the shopportunities. I can restrain myself, by Cathy can be suggestible. Jeff Brown had been talking to me about after-dark lights for our yard signs, but it wasn’t until StarPower, when Cathy saw the product offered by ListingLight.com, that we bought into the idea:
That’s flash photography. The light emitted by the ListingLight is adequate for reading at night, but taking a useful picture would require a tri-pod. Even so, they do the job. Where every other sign on the street is an unreadable silhouette, ours pop out at a distance.
Is it enough to sell the house? Perhaps not, but every little thing helps. There’s no telling when the buyer is coming by, and, even in Arizona, evenings are dark in Winter.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, StarPower, technology
Sometimes people do things that if they would have considered all of the available options they might have made a different choice. For example:
Another example is the guy who drove his Lamborghini at speeds verified well above 200 miles per hour (219, to be exact). On an Arizona freeway. Late at night. Now I can’t honestly say I’ve never heard of any Porsche owners who have done something like that on a similar stretch of highway, late at night, a few summers ago (minus that high a speed and the video). What makes this particular feat so remarkable is he did it in a Lamborghini and then posted it to You Tube. Per this article (which includes a link to the video) there are about 350 Lamborghini Murcielago cars in the state of Arizona. This one is gold colored. I’m thinking that is an even shorter list. I wonder how many days until the East Vally Tribune reports the arrest of the young man who was driving the car?
