BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: June 2008 (page 7 of 7)

June 3, 2008

Real Estate Video: My Love Hate Relationship

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Video is coming, it’s here, it’s real, and it’s not going away.   It makes me happy that there is some high quality content being created for Agents, and tools to enhance communication.  What I don’t like about video is it’s non-interactive nature, and the sluggish pace that it churns out information.  It’s great for some things (some tutorials, house tours, testamonils), and for those things there’s no equivalent.

But, for a lot of things (other tutorials, deep analysis, and even advocating positions), the format is such that you can’t quickly extract the content YOU want.  There’s got a 1-2 minute investment in whatever your watching to see if you’re going to learn what you want–compared with the speed of glancing at a stack of RSSfeeds  and quickly seeing if it’s valuable.    This is a function of the format and an inherent limitation  of video itself.  I continually find my attention wandering and myself perpetually on the verge of hitting alt-f4 to shut the video up.   For every good example, of what Video can do to enhance the consumer experience there are countless bad examples (with preroll credits and more crap).

I’m BRAND new at messing with video. I’ll get real good at it real soon.   It’s a communication tool, and I am getting over my inherent dislike of it.  I’m not yet  expert, but I’ve made some promises to myself as to what all of my videos are gonna be like,  in true  Bloodhound fashion, I submit it for your criticism and review.

  • Content Dense: If it’s in video, it’s gotta deliver on the promise of being content dense.  That doesn’t always mean talking fast.  It means ensuring that there is content.
  • Quick Preview: spend the first 5 seconds previewing what you’re gonna give ’em, not on some insipid preroll liner.   People will relax, or change the channel.
  • Deliver the content as fast as it can be effectively communicated.  Similar to content density, we want to make sure we know that video is grabbing attention.  No filler.  Read more
June 3, 2008

What does Zillow.com understand that Trulia.com is missing? “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I think that there may have been a time, in the blue-sky days of gray-skyed Seattle, when people with two-digit badge numbers at Zillow.com actually thought they might be able to disintermediate Realtors — much as Expedia.com had disintermediated travel agents. No one at Zillow will admit to this, but I suspect that a notion like this could have been in the original design parameters for the hypothetical software they were brainstorming in those days.

If this is true, then, to their credit, they came to their senses. Presumably, they realized, first, that the National Association of Realtors is a ferocious criminal mob that will do anything to destroy perceived competition, and, second, that, as simple as it might seem from the outside, real estate representation is too complicated to be automated cost-effectively, at least for now. Instead, Zillow.com made a conscious and thorough-going decision to partner with real estate agents and lenders, offering them exposure on its platform in exchange for building out its content.

You could argue that Trulia.com made a similar resolution, but it seems more likely to me that the San Francisco start-up is simply aping Zillow’s partnership with individual practitioners without really understanding it.

From a distance, the differences in the partnering relationships of the two companies could not be more stark. At Trulia, the most important kind of partner is the one who can deliver the most listings. The hierarchy runs from brokerage chain to brokerage to broker to agent to seller.

Zillow’s hierarchy is the other way around: The most important source of information about a home is that home’s owner. Next comes the agent, followed by the broker, the brokerage and the brokerage chain.

In both cases, higher parties on the hierarchy have the power to override — and thus usurp — the contributions of lower parties. What this means in practice is that sellers and their listing agents are regarded as being the least authoritative sources of information at Trulia — and therefore the last in line to receive practical benefits from the leads that might be generated by the on-line reiteration of the agent’s listing of Read more

June 2, 2008

Phoenix real estate market news: May rocked

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I tend not to cover local market news at BloodhoundBlog, but this is big, and I expect it might be replicated across the country. I’ll be writing about it tomorrow for Saturday’s Republic, but it won’t be news-pages news for another ten days or so.

Here’s the news, in any case:

May was a very strong month for clearing bread-and-butter inventory in the Metropolitan Phoenix real estate market. We track sales of newer suburban tract homes, with records going back to January of 2004. May was the strongest month for those homes since May of 2007, with the best month before then being November of 2006.

Price are down, month over month, and not just a little, so May’s results no doubt reflect the sale of a lot of lender-owned properties. But inventories of these same homes are down 7% from April and over 14% from March. The implied absorption rate from May’s results is 5.2 months, down from 8.4 months for April.

The lender/title month ended on a Friday, so it will be Wednesday or Thursday before I’ll be willing to commit to solid numbers. As a matter of anecdotal evidence, I called yesterday about a very market-weary short sale. After months of no activity, three offers came in over the weekend. The seller multiple countered, with the current high-bid being $17,000 over list. We won’t know for sure for two or three months after the fact, but May or June could be the bottom of the market in Phoenix.

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June 2, 2008

BloodhoundBlog in the terrible two’s and the me-me-me meme

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had mail last night from a sweet kid who wanted to tag me in what she called a MeMe game. I thought that by itself was nice take on the idea of memes as represented in the wired world of real estate, but it also put me in mind of a promise I made a while back:

Inlookers: I will be happy to entertain any other What would David Gibbons do?-type questions. You can email me; I’ll shield your identity. Or you can use the “Ask the Broker” button — if you fudge the email address field, it’s completely confidential. If your question is obnoxious, don’t waste your time — because I don’t waste mine. But if you have a sincere question about BloodhoundBlog or me or whatever […] fire away. I am surely also the most forthcoming — and loquacious! — person any of you are ever likely to meet. If you want to know something, just ask.

This is not a vanity on my part. People who have met me in person will tell you that I don’t ask many personal questions. I see them as bring not so much impertinent as irrelevant. All I care about is work — mine, yours, ours. But if there’s something you’re just dying to know, don’t suffer in ignorance, and, for goodness’ sakes, don’t gossip. Ask away. I will conceal nothing.

BloodhoundBlog will be two years old on June 29th. The world of real estate weblogging has exploded since we got started — but my argument is that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We’re doing everything we can do expand this world we live in, to help more and more real estate professionals understand the implications of Web 2.0 marketing. In the coming weeks, I plan to revisit some of the underlying philosophical issues that drive BloodhoundBlog — to illustrate where we’ve come from and where we’re headed.

Louis Cammarosano sent this along yesterday:

Was going over our google analytics re the HomeGain blog and was checking sources of traffic. Someone came to our site from a Google search excellent real estate marketing. Click on the Read more

June 1, 2008

Being a Trust-Player

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Trust is more than a word, it’s embodiment through action. I become a trustworthy person. It’s critical in the new 2.0 environment to establish trust and to live it. The whole of business 2.0 is dependent on trust — individual players and companies.

You don’t become a trust-player by espousing transparency alone, you also have to determine motives, intent. What drives the transparency and what is the intent of transparency? What is your agenda? A natural, honest transparency built on unmuddied motives with the intent of being trustworthy is noble as long as you’ve searched your motives, and your behavior is in line with the stated intent.

Using transparency as a weapon or a smokescreen for hidden agendas is not trustworthy, not the avatar of a trust-player – it’s 1.0 scam dressed up in the latest social garb. Those who USE transparency as a marketing technique are cynically misguided and naked before the sharp 2.0 eyes of trust-players. Trust-players are interested in the truth not social chicanery. Trust-players are intestested in reciprocity built on mutual benefit and mutual trust. Transparency is for the benefit of honest business practices laid out on the table. Transparency is not for the benefit of uncovering thy neighbor who prefers privacy; however, transparency can be used as a flood light to reveal the thieves who thrive in darkness.

It’s best to be honest and reveal yourself as honest, rather than hide tricks only to have someone else reveal the tricks. Another way a business can get respect is to say THIS is what we do, and we realize some won’t like it, but, neverthless, it’s not hidden — you be the judge, here is the evidence.

The political players this season are realizing more than ever that it’s useless to hide the negatives — they will be uncovered.

Trulia has recently realized that nothing escapes notice. The one part I respected from Rudy in his defenses was when he said they would continue handling the “no-follow” set-up like they have been. That’s good, at least we know.

The funny thing about transparency is that it’s double-edged and sharp — while you might preach the public’s right 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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