There’s always something to howl about.

Month: April 2008 (page 3 of 9)

engenu public beta test goes live: If you want to explore the software BloodhoundRealty.com uses to build our web pages and web sites, this is your opportunity to deploy engenu on your own web server

I’ve been talking about engenu for a couple of months now. This is the software that BloodhoundRealty.com uses to build single property web sites for our listings and other web pages and web sites that we use to communicate with clients and vendors. Our belief is that the language of real estate is photography, and that, in many cases, the most effective way of communicating real estate concepts is by means of web pages and web sites.

I have been building pages and sites like this for as long as I have been in real estate, first manually, then with a steadily improving series of software programs. engenu is a further development on those ideas, designed and written from scratch this year. We have been using it for our own jobs for the past two months — to make sure that we had what we wanted, and to makes sure everything was working properly.

Here are some engenu sites we have built, both as live work and as examples of what the software can do:

What is it, exactly? engenu is slide-show-oriented software for the semi-automated creation of web pages and web sites. It is communications software, not a presentation package. As an expression of this, even though we make very elaborate single-property web sites for our listings, we continue to use a third-party vendor for our virtual tours.

Who should use engenu? Realtors — and I mean all of them — but also handymen, roofers, landscapers, inspectors — anyone who needs to communicate frequently with digital photographs.

What will you need to run engenu? Root level access to an Apache web server, a robust FTP client that you know how to use, and a strong need to create a lot of professional-looking web pages quickly and cheaply. engenu is multi-user software, so, as soon as you have it installed, you can split the workload for large Read more

Cleaned by Capitalism: Our professed love of nature is an artifact of our enormous prosperity

The other week Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek posted a wonderful article discussing the advent of the rule of law as a precursor to poetic rhapsodizing about the love of the natural world. The post featured a quote from Macaulay’s History of England:

Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have done far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit, to develop in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered or starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints of the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the abruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of falling two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which marauders have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose next meal may probably be on his own eyes. . . .

It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of robbers . . . that strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of lakes and by the rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain tops.

Today is Earth Day, and Boudreaux is back with another trenchant post, this one discussing the revolting squalor that typifies pre-capitalist communities.

Don Boudreaux is the Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University — a hot zone of free-market economic research. In today’s post, he cites an article he had originally written for The Freeman, the magazine of The Foundation for Economic Education.

Boudreaux has given BloodhoundBlog permission to print his article in its entirely. The Greek root of the word economics literally means household management, and it’s not a coincidence that Read more

Is It A Great Time To Buy, Or Just A Great Time To Be A Buyer?

I’ve said it my self hundreds of times in the last 12 months – it’s a great time to buy.  How could it not be a great time to buy – tons of inventory, prices have come down, interest rates are still low – of course it is a great time to buy.  Or is it?  Whenever I shout “it’s a great timehouse to buy” in a particularly loud fashion (generally quoted in the local newspaper), I get an e-mail from some intelligent sounding person saying, “no it isn’t.”  Here let me give you the latest example that was spurred by a front page story on a local promotion to promote first time home buying:

(unedited)

Let me see if I have this correct:·         House prices are falling;·         Houses are not selling at a rate which will supportrealtors, because no one wants to buy a depreciating asset;·         So, realtors want to sell more houses;·         Therefore, they target first time buyers, whopresumably know the least about the pitfalls of homeownership and are the most likely to try to ‘catch a falling knife.’ ·         The lines they use in their propaganda are the sameused nationally in every newspaper article on housing which publishes a realtor quote, to-wit “now is a great time to buy,” or “it’s a perfect storm.”Why do I find this reprehensible? 

In case you did not read the story I linked, just suffice it to say that we are doing a major local promotion to educate new home buyers on the new issues with financing and promoting them to purchase a home from the massive inventory.  Self-serving, yes, but there are also great benefits for sellers, mortgage bankers, others in the real estate business, and for the general economy.  Locally, people look to us to lead and that’s what we are doing.  Fortunately, our local economy is insulated from the national issues that are present in other areas.

The real issue in this rant is the claim that it is NOT a good time to buy because “no one wants a depreciating asset.”  Of course every market is different and prices have fallen here in Read more

I love freedom too much to be silent

running%20free.jpgI had some time today to write a few words. I’m waiting on a response — I spend half my life waiting on responses. Some people are prompt responders, some are slow, some are UNresponsive.

I was talking with the head relocation person for Gulfstream Aerospace this morning and she was telling me a story about one of Gulfstream’s employees, head muckity-muck of hiring, and how she made a referral to a local agent to help him with housing relocation who never called him. HEAD OF HIRING AT GULFSTREAM AND THE AGENT DIDN’T RESPOND! How does this happen?

Gulfstream is our biggest employer. She also confirmed what a lot of us have been talking about — new hirees coming to Savannah for employment are choosing to hold off on buying. We both concurred it’s the psychological effect, mostly. There is a some legimate cause for fear of the unknown in a shaky market and it’s understandable that people just starting in a new place might be afraid to make the committment to buy a home with so much uncertainty; however, underneath all that is a market opportunity to buy at the lowest point they’ll likely buy at for quite some time.

So, we wait. I am not into convincing people to buy when they are afraid. I give my opinions, identify them as such, show them some numbers and probabilities based on those numbers and let it go. In midtown Savannah this past twelve months there has actually been an increase in home prices — downtown is flat with a slight decrease. But, we wait. A few buy, but the rest, we wait and see how things go for a little while longer.

I have a suspicion that the psychological effect will break after the elections in November. I think many people subconsciously consider that a turning point, and end of some sort, a beginning of some sort. I don’t think anyone knows why, and most don’t consciously hold that position, but they will be affected none the less.

It WILL be a new beginning after eight years of Bush (eight years of any president makes us weary). I personally don’t put much stock in changing administrations Read more

Is The Short Sale Dead?

Is the short sale?

The last time I checked, the short sale was on the gurney headed for the emergency room. I looked through the windows and saw the priest administering last rites so I am not sure if it’s going to survive. I can tell you though, it doesn’t look good.

What happened? Well, doing some investigative journalism, I crossed the police caution tape and started asking the witnesses what they saw. “Bank took to long to respond and my buyer walked”, remarked one distraught Realtor.

“My homeowner could not compile or would not compile all of the information the bank needed”, lamented another Realtor; while a third said she could not even find any pulse…the bank did not even respond. It was as if they simply gave up on life.

Yet, I could not understand why one Realtor, off in the distance taking pictures, seemed to be smiling, almost guffawing at the tragedy that other Realtors have endured.

I followed closely behind as he hurried away in his newly polished Mercedes. He did not seem to notice that I was following or if he did, he did not care. Either way, he drove for a while and showed up at a property. This property looked familiar.

It appeared similar to the property wherein the short sale was just shot down. The same weedy, tall grass, the same unkempt yard, even from my vantage point I could see the curtain-less windows that indicated that there was no one home. The property was vacant. Was this another short sale prospect ready to meet an untimely end? Was the Mercedes driver the Short Sale Killer?

I had to get a closer look. I moved up closer and closer until I was in view of the suspect. Just as he turned to see me, a bus drove up. From the bus emerged a bevy of other suspects who have been on the lam for some time. I recognized these perps.

They were BUYERS! They have been hiding for what seems like years! What were they doing here? Was the killing of a short sale some kind of gang initiation? Was it some crazy Mansonish cult Read more

Nobody wants to watch SNL reruns on Turner Movie Classics

NBC, Bravo and CNBC are three networks for three different audiencesThere’s a reason why certain shows play on NBC versus CNBC versus Bravo.  Different types of programming attracts different types of viewers.

Over the past 12 months ago, Bloodhound Blog has defined its programming and it’s now clear to me that the “viewers” are largely industry insiders that want to get a leg up on the competition.  There are passers-by in the crowd, too, but for them, BHB is just another channel in the 300s to flip through between commercials. 

Real estate professionals tune into Bloodhound Blog programming the same way that sports fans do with ESPN and celebrity-watchers do with E!.  And while the real estate pros are here, they’re treated to in-depth, throught-provoking programming that keeps them tuned in and coming back.

This concept is important because many Bloodhound Blog viewers have their own blogs somewhere else on the Internet and can learn from the concept of “knowing your audience”. 

When you know your audience, you never run out of things to write and you never lose relevance.  Your message is clear, consistent and constant — three goals in every good marketing campaign.  Over time, your message actually begins to define your audience. 

You soon write to your exact target audience because that is who is reading your blog.  It’s not a coincidence that people who like food watch the Food Network.

Now, as a real estate professional, you get paid in one of three ways:

  • You sell a home
  • You sell a desk
  • You sell a system to sell homes or desks

If you make your living selling desks to real estate agents and you blog, your blog programming should be written to attract your target audience of real estate agents. 

By contrast, if you make your living selling homes to people and you blog, your blog programming should be written with the consumer in mind.

Rachael Ray knows her audienceVery few network mix-and-match their programming.  Nobody wants to watch SNL reruns on Turner Movie Classics, after all.  Heck, even HBO has seven different channels for its movies.

Some bloggers know this inherently, some learn it the hard way.  Some never figure it out.  But if you look around at the blogs that you love best, it’s Read more

Eye On The Ball, Folks…Hug Your CPA Today…

We’ll keep this first post short, sweet, and incredibly practical.  We all want that magic bullet.  That thing that gets us four more work free "deals" this quarter, right?  Well, it doesn’t exist.  So instead of whining about marketing, let’s look to the calendar for a drop dead simple, 1.0 way to get a little bit of scratch this month.

We all know what happened last Tuesday, right?  It was tax day. 

Lots of people thought about their finances, lots of people talked to their local CPAs.  Loads of CPAs saw lots of financial statements, heard why people were freeing up cash, maybe a few even heard the sugar-sweet phrase ‘1031,’ just days ago. 

And you know what?  Betcha a Starbucks they don’t all have trustworthy referral partners to work with. 

Betcha that if you grabbed a list of CPAs–now that the CPAs aren’t in tax season–and reached out via ANY authentic method (post cards, friendly calls, offering lunch, whatever you’re comfortable with that gets measurable results), and authentically offered yourself as a trustworthy person to help navigate these turbulent waters…

You’d get solid referrals in days and weeks-not months.

There are dozens of "scripts" you can use, but why not do it in a sentence:

The more direct and more honest, the better.  I’ve called CPAs (and financial planners) and uttered a run on sentence: "Hi, I’m Chris Johnson, with ____________.  I wanted to reach out and let you know that if you had clients buying a property, I would be honored to help them, and help you make sure it was congruent with their long term goals. Do you have anyone in that category?"  

Now, I’ve never once had someone jump through the phone to send me a client.  But, I’ve made (too) few of these calls to CPAs.  And every time I do, within a couple of hours, I meet someone I connect with, I want to help, and that sends people to me because I reached out.  I’m still closing loans from CPAs I Read more

Calling All Women

Teri’s latest post on BHB sparked a thought for me. She mentioned that BHB was not really a friendly place for women, but she plays with the boys anyway. As someone who has 3 daughters and works in an office full of women, I was taken aback by Teri’s comment. After a few moments of introspection, I realized just about every Blogger I know was male and despite my best efforts, I had failed to get the gals in my office very interested in Blogging (reading or writing). Heck, I can’t even get my wife to read my Blog.

Out of curiosity, I Googled “women blogs” to see what’s out there. I found a fair amount of Women’s Blogs. Topics such as dating, sex, art, and health with featured posts titled 10 Things You Can’t Change About Men and Mean Mom Selling Son’s Xbox 360 can be found on women’s Blog sites. Nothing, however, on real estate.

women lifting

Okay, maybe my semi-sexist-pig sub-conscious set that Google search up a bit skewed. Ah, “women real estate blogs” found much better results. Lots of good Blog sites and a Top 12 Women Real Estate Bloggers list and a post titled Top Women Real Estate Bloggers Speak Out.

To be politically correct (something I loath doing), I Googled “men blogs” and “men real estate blogs” to see what I could find. The “men blogs” search revealed expected topics like sex, sports, dating, and beer. The “men real estate blogs” search came up with a similar list called 10 Good Men, but not much else. No directory of men’s blogs or any other specific reference to the blogging men in real estate.

man lifting

So, what does this tell us? Not much, but I am curious why men are doing all the heavy lifting on BHB? Ladies, do tell. It could be all our scary faces on the home page, or titles like the one just posted by Jeff Brown – Don’t Listen to the Arrogant Attention Whores – just Skin Your Cat.

Women are starting to take Read more

Don’t Listen To The Arrogant Attention Whores — Just Skin Your Cat

As happens with blogging sometimes, certain topics inspire many to register their take. That’s what we do. Whether it’s real estate, loan, or tech oriented, it’s amazing how quickly certain subjects can morph into almost a spiritual debate.

Watching all the back and forth the last month or so has been, uh, enlightening — not.

I’m here to tell you, Bloodhound is all about making agents better at what they do. I adhere to that as my Bloodhound mission statement with whatever I write here, just as I do in my own house. Writing here is such an honor. The first thing readers realize is that most of us understand it’s not about us, but about you. This is a critical distinction when passing on expertise.

For example, as a youth baseball coach, (five all-star teams 🙂 ) I never told a kid he was stupid ‘cuz he hit a line drive other than how I’d taught him. On the contrary, I praised him for gettin’ the job done. There are so many ways to hit a baseball hard. But if you freeze frame the hitter at the point where ball meets bat? They pretty much look identical.

The same goes for real estate agents. Their success depends on one thing: How many prospects were they able to get themselves in front of on a consistent basis? In baseball parlance, how many at-bats do they get every week, month, year?

Wow, you made seven figures?! Yep. How’d you do it? The answer isn’t relevant. The target of the question did it — that’s what’s relevant. He skinned the cat. Now that you’ve discovered that fact, you can sit down with them and find out how. The next agent who impresses you with their income will have done it an entirely different way. Go figure.

We human types are funny. We figure out what works for us, then become evangelical about it. Billy Graham was never more passionate than those on either side of the discussions on SEO methods, what to call a lead (Are you serious?), cold calling/door knocking vs the internet, Read more

The Odysseus Medal competition will be postponed this week

We’re busy with real estate stuff, and I’m grinding on all gears to push engenu out the door. Plus which, there were only 65 nominations, suggesting, perhaps, that the rest of the world has Teri’s Spring fever.

In the mean time, here’s a blog post from Mark Steyn illustrating why a reactive, me-too, catch-up strategy is likely to fail in the net.world:

Old media dinosaurs looking to the Internet to make up for declining print sales will find this analysis disquieting:

In the first three months of this year, the average amount of time visitors spent on newspaper sites fell by 2.9% to 44 minutes and 18 seconds per month, or less than 1½ minutes per day. In the same period, the average number of pages viewed per unique site visitor dropped by 6.6% to 47.2 per month…

The decline in the average duration of sessions at newspaper web pages suggests that visitors are not utilizing the industry’s sites as primary destinations, but, rather, as places to episodically view individual articles highlighted by Google News, Drudge, Digg, blogs or any of the thousands of other places they might be.

So, if you happen to see a link at, say, NRO to something in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, you’ll click and read it, and then go away and not return to the paper until you click another link that tickles your fancy. That’s a hard model to sell to advertisers.

American newspapers have only themselves to blame. Instead of recognizing the necessity to reinvent their approach online, for the most part they simply transferred their old dullness to the new technology. Their print drabness derived mostly from the complacency of their local monopoly, and that’s the one thing you can’t transfer to the Internet. It will take more than the web to save these sclerotic franchises.

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Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link):

 
Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt

The big news in real estate is the market, of course. My view is that the American economy is much stronger and more resilient than you might guess from day-to-day reports.

But the other big story in real estate is the idea of “disintermediation” — replacing Realtors with some combination of do-it-yourself effort and hi-tech tools. The stock retort to this notion — and I have made it myself — is that people will never buy homes like they buy books on Amazon.

Perhaps so. But I lived through the desktop revolution in printing, so I have a different take about the dreaded word disintermediation.

If the triumphant yelp is that some travel agents and some stockbrokers still have jobs, I will point out that some blacksmiths still have jobs, too. Horses still need shoes. That much is beside the point.

Here’s my take on the matter: Don’t think in terms of disintermediation. Use the word “supplantation” instead. In industry after industry, old techniques are being supplanted by new ideas. More importantly, the old technicians are being supplanted by new ones.

This is not a necessary consequence, but it often works out that the “old hands” don’t want to make the change to the new ways of doing business. Even if they do, the “first-mover advantage” can be too great to overcome.

The same goes for everything — most especially real estate. Realtors who are not all the way onboard with the way business will be done in the future will be left behind at the station.

A real estate transaction is so complex that most people will continue to want professional advice — even as they handle many of the simpler functions Realtors might have done in the past. The work we do will be superficially similar to the work others have done in the past — but those others won’t be doing it any longer.

Will they have been disintermediated? Not if you insist that they haven’t. Read more

Marketing performance: BloodhoundBlog is the last place crybabies should go when they need to have their boo-boos kissed, and, therefore, it is the last place to go looking for crybabies

I want to talk about the idea of marketing performance as a disruptive strategy — but not quite yet. I’m using the term as a gerundive: Developing tools and techniques that by far eclipse your competition, then promoting that outsized commitment to excellence in your marketing. Not: “I’m the best.” Not even: “Here’s why I’m the best.” Simply this: “Here is everything you’ll get that you can’t obtain anywhere else.” This is the means by which we can flush most of the bums from the business even as we supplant the sclerotic dinosaurs who claim to be our leaders.

As a matter of general notice, it were well to take account of a couple of salient facts:

  1. This is not an alien message to the BloodhoundBlog audience. The people who come here are already committed to doing the best job they can do as Realtors, lenders, investors. We appeal to the elite of real estate professionals, and, not coincidentally, we tend to repel the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators.
  2. In consequence, beating up on the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators is probably a pretty poor strategy here. Most readers here would not just agree with but would joyously amend denunciations of specific bad behavior. But generalized complaints about unspecified groups of miscreants may have the opposite effect: The uncontested best of a group of people rising to the defense of the uncontested worst.

That’s as may be. There are no groups of people, there are only individuals. Defending a group is no less irrational than attacking that group, but I have no use and no time for irrationality in any flavor.

I’m interested in individual practitioners becoming so much better at the performance of their jobs, and so much better at marketing that performance, that they put themselves beyond competition. I want to put the bums in another line of work, and I want to put the dinosaurs in a museum, where they belong. To my ears, everything else is pointless noise.

I’ll deal with this all in detail, but not now: It’s Saturday, Realtor day, and I gotta go to work. Here Read more

It’s Raining Soup. Why Are You Starving?

I’m pretty stoked about our new contributor, Chris Johnson. I spoke with him yesterday about his new book, Loan Officer Survival Guide. He was amazed that the two people he cited as NOT needing the book, bought it. So… why did I buy his book?

I bought it for the very same reason successful people are attending the BloodhoundBlog Unchained Social Media Marketing Conference, powered by Zillow.com.

Greg Swann says “it’s raining soup” all the time. What he means is that because of the internet, we have all the information we need to be successful. Loan Officer Survival Thrival Guide (I changed the title- deal with it, Chris) and UNCHAINED are the bowls and spoons you need to more efficiently ingest the soup.

I didn’t learn one new idea from Chris’ book, just a lot of proven ones. I DID learn how to better implement the proven ideas. He’s laid them out in a “home study” format that’s as practical as scissors in a barbershop….and I’m “doing the homework”, too. It takes about 30 minutes a day to complete. The Thrival Guide (I changed the title again, to be more encompassing) moves my actions from instinctive to purposeful.

It’s raining soup and I paid fifteen bucks for a bowl and spoon, get it?

Now, instead of standing outside with my mouth open, having soup splatter my clothes. I catch it in a basin, pour it in a bowl, and eat it when I need it. This brings me to my title. The Thrival Guide will be criticized just like the BloodhoundBlog UNCHAINED Social Media Marketing Conference, brought to you by Zillow.com has been.

So be it. Let ’em get splattered in the soup rain. They’ll fill up their bellies but they’ll be eating with their hands.

Does anyone NEED to come to UNCHAINED to learn how Russell Shaw delivers consistent results? Nope. You can read Bloodhound Blog. Does anyone NEED to come to UNCHAINED to learn how to optimize your weblog for search terms? Nope. Read more

Spring fever renders me unfit to tackle big issues facing Web 2.0 and the real estate industry, so we get to play in the mud instead!

Yeah. Well.

There are always heavy duty posts on Bloodhound and I do my best to keep up. Lately, I’ve been percolating my own brand of seriousness. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: Web 2.0 is different for girls. I’ve been pondering this for quite awhile, and last week it dawned on me that I might not be the best person to address that issue as I don’t think like a girl. Want proof? I’m here, aren’t I? Bloodhound isn’t the most girly place to hang, but that’s fine. Here’s the thing: it’s Friday, and it is Spring in Dayton. We’ve had a long, grey, and gloomy Winter, but it’s been 70 for the last few days, and the sky is blue and the sun is shining, and the mere fact that I’m making note of that will tell you exactly how cloudy it’s been around here.

Still, I have been doing some research on my serious topic of gender differences and apparently, I’m not the only one who has been thinking about this.

How about a BlogHer Study that says women might trust blogs more that traditional media.

The survey, conducted with Compass Partners LLC, illustrates several surprising new trends in social media, specifically that 36.2 million women write and read blogs every week and approximately half consider blogs a “highly reliable” or “very reliable” source of information and advice about everything from products to presidential candidates. Fully 24 percent of women surveyed say they now watch less television because they are blogging instead.

The implications for marketing real estate in a blog format could fill a blog post or two- if only it was miserable outside.

Want proof that girls might looking at this whole Web 2.0 thing differently than boys? Men are from video games, women are from soc nets. h/t @BradCoy

For those under 30, women and men are just as likely to be members of social networks. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Flixster are extraordinarily popular. But we found that young women are much more active on these sites then young men. And for people above 30, men – especially married men – Read more