BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: April 2008 (page 9 of 9)

April 1, 2008

Automated Valuation Models – My New Favorite

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

The quest for automated valuation is a thirst unquenched, a fire that cannot be extinguished and seeming itch that cannot be scratched. Man is forever curious about the worth of an asset. Whether it is one’s home or one’s home on the web, curiosity slays its share of felines and we all have satisfied our secret urge to automatically valuate a time or two.

Did I mention that this Automated Valuation Model is for websites? (grin). Someone at REW pointed it out to me in their blog…here’s the link to it.

OK, ready for some fun? I took a look at some interesting sites to see their automated valuation as of today.

EriconSearch.com – My SEO blog VALUATION: $135,000 and change. Huh? (Think maybe the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest skewed things a bit?) Methinks that is the case. I am officially willing to sell!

HomesinLouisville.com – Our brokerage Real Estate site… VALUATION $64,000 and change. Huh? Not on your life! This site is worth MULTIPLES of that! It generated many multiples of that in commission last year alone.

BloodhoundRealty.com – $553,807! Way to go, Greg.

TheBrickRanch.com – $71,307! Whaddya say, Teri? Deal or No Deal

Sean– is $10,500 and change fair for a website that POPS??

NOW FOR THE FUN ONE:

REALTOR.com Valued at 5.7MM

SO THAT’S IT PEOPLE I AM PASSING THE PLATE. Let’s take up a collection and buy REALTOR.com out once and for all!

By the way, if you are laughing at the ridiculous automated valuations of your website right now, or maybe you are angry, or maybe you just think it is stupid. What do you think homeowners are doing when they look at AVMs like ZIllow et al?

The REAL Valuation of a REAL Valuation– Priceless.

April 1, 2008

As California Goes, So Goes the Nation

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Sometimes local news is national in nature.  This is often true when it comes to California.  With such a large population and a history of “active” politics, many of the laws and regulations that California passes eventually migrate to other states; sometimes this is reminiscent of a rainbow spreading across the land and sometimes it resembles more of a virus infecting people at whim.  Get ready to feel sick.

The California legislature is currently voting on AB0401, a seemingly innocuous alteration to the licensing regulations that govern real estate here.  But, as usual, the ramifications will be unexpected and monstrous.  The stated purpose of AB0401 is to clarify the relationship between RESPA law and non-monetary remuneration between licensed real estate agents and non licensed participants in real estate transactions.  Here is the key section

All transactions falling under the penumbra of RESPA shall heretofore be subject to review and restatement. No value shall pass or be caused to pass between a licensed broker or licensed sales associate of said broker and any non-licensed agency before or after such time as a real estate transaction may occur. Transfer of value is to include, but not be limited to: all forms of currency, any property or asset of value, any service of value and any intellectual property of value. (emphasis mine)

I am already reading pundits this morning here in California describing all online websites and blogs as intellectual property of value.  So what does this mean to the average agent, loan officer, title rep, etc?  It means that if you are syndicating your posts to another person’s site, or posting on another person’s site and that site has the stated or implied purpose of generating real estate business, you are in violation of RESPA regulations and subject to fine and/or loss of license.

This from Assemblywoman Debra Brady (R-Del Mar): “I believe this will cast a chill across the Internet and is nothing short of Big Brother clamping down on the free exchange of ideas.  We must defeat this and we must take a stand for the First Amendment rights of every citizen, no matter what business they conduct.”

I am Read more

April 1, 2008

The Odysseus Medal: “I feel like I too, am losing market share quickly in this wildly out of control time warp where one second I’m a kid and the next, I’m in my 50s selling real estate in a down market.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Odysseus Medal this week goes to Geno Petro for Geno’s Wrong (bang a gong):

My mother brings in a ham sandwich on a kaiser roll from the kitchen. It has mayo, mustard and a pickle on it. Onion, too. I rarely eat any of those things but I dare not say a word for fear of offending her.  “Diet Coke?” she asks.

“No mom…you know what Paris Hilton says about Diet Coke, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t like her.” declares Mitzi.

“What?” my dad pipes in, apparently with a different opinion of the media icon.

“Only fat people drink Diet Coke,” I say.

“Fat people?”

“Yeah, it’s a joke I think.” I say,  now wondering myself if it’s even funny. They don’t get it and now, I don’t get it either. My wife Mona, is taking a nap upstairs, belly full with as many sandwiches as she’s probably eaten in a month. The volume is turned down on the television and closed captions are streaming across the top third of the screen, covering  the faces of everyone on the Fox News Network. My parents read, watch and comment unfavorably whenever someone bashes Hillary or Obama and hiss in unison when anything positive is said about Bush or the War. I ask them why they even watch Fox at all if they are Democrats but they don’t really get the question. I guess I don’t really get it either in this particular election year. Perhaps they just have trouble working the remote and are afraid to mess with the Dish. There are Post-it notes taped to everything electronic in the house and most things static, as well.

And despite what I have just witnessed, I feel like I too, am losing market share quickly in this wildly out of control time warp where one second I’m a kid and the next, I’m in my 50s selling real estate in a down market.  In 10 minutes, I’ll be my father looking for any small victory I can muster. I sometimes feel as if I’m lagging behind all the youth and technology in my chosen industry of real estate. I have to read something three times before it makes sense, lately. I can only Read more

April 1, 2008

Where Were You When The Real Estate Industry Morphed?

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Life is good — I’ll be going to the Master’s next week. It’s been a few years since I’ve gone. A friend has some family connection with passes and if one of his business clients back out, he gets me in. Business is picking up also. I just got a contract on one of my “flips” before I even finished and put it on the market, so now I’ll change hats and be a buyer for a while looking for another one.

Leads are coming in on a regular basis, a mixture of strong leads, not so strong and weak. They are all possibilities. I’ve even had time to browse the web and see all the distinctions without much difference being made. As topics run thin we tend to make finer and finer distinctions to prove….what? Superiority? Most likely. Hell, I always think I’m superior. Well, not really, I just like to think I am a lot of the time. In my better moments I realize I’m perpetually on a learning curve. Just as soon as I’m ready to crown myself as “Expert” I hear something from left field that sends me back to the drawing board, to tweak, re-think, adjust.

Perhaps that’s the highest value of this great learning environment called the internet, we’re contantly evolving and becoming better, never crowned for long as “Expert”. However, the more we learn the closer we get to being knowledgable enough to know what we don’t know and how to find the missing pieces.

One thing that fires my imagination and pulls me into the good and the bad of the internet is the growing “conversation”. From Maine to Florida and from Georgia to Oregon, to Canada and overseas, people typing away, posting and responding, creating conversations that for certain specific interests like real estate become Great Conversations with various ideas and concepts being woven throughout. There’s no central authority managing the conversation, there’s no hierarchy of experts, only diverse voices growing, hopefully, not into a Tower of Babel but in different directions of movement and progress until the best ideas and concepts begin forming a great change for the better.

It’s a such a Read more

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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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