There’s always something to howl about.

Month: September 2008 (page 7 of 7)

Project Bloodhound: Are you talking to me? Connecting to your community and avoiding the echo chamber.

“I wonder who was your intended audience?”

A question from my inbox, and one I hear occasionally. I’m always pulled up short by questions like this, or this, because they tend to come unexpectedly and in this case, it greeted me first thing in the morning, and the writer, who shall remain nameless but knows who he is (and is, I’m sure, laughing right now) was by his own admission, a bit grumpy when he asked this question. So Good Morning to you too!

Actually, this question, or variations of it, has been on my mind lately because I forgot this intended audience for awhile, and the post to which this writer was referring was my way of going back to the beginning of my blogging days, when I was writing to the very same people to whom I wrote this post- local bloggers. How did I lose my way? Quite honestly, I think it was Twitter, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s return to my blogging roots.

Possibly the first piece of advice Greg gave me when I started blogging on The Brick Ranch was to find other local blogs and connect with them. Notice he didn’t say other real estate blogs, but local blogs. A Google search, and Google alerts, turned up only a handful of blogs back then- March 2007. Seriously, I think there were about five non-political blogs, and most had only been at it for a few months, which is a cool thing as I’ll explain shortly. At first I simply left comments on their blogs without a return blog url, because I wanted to be there as a participant, not as a spamming Realtor- there is an implied accusation when visiting local blogs, am I really there to sell them a house? Um, no. I’m really there because I like talking with people, throwing ideas back and forth, and I know that most bloggers like comments, so leaving a thoughtful comment, using my name, not “TimbuktuHomesForYou” in that tiny little blogiverse where everything was shiny and new, was an easy way to say “Hello! Nice to meet you.” It was about Read more

RealtyBaron.com comes up with something new: Commission hedging

Has SellsiusRealEstate.com (“Just like Craigslist, only not free!”) hit the Dead Pool? The weblog rages on, but the main site doesn’t even 404. The “About” page for the weblog has been re-rendered as yet another those-who-can’t-teach pitch, and, of course, Sellsius was a pioneer in the suddenly-popular practice of making net.friends in order to sell them out to advertisers. Perhaps these business models are enough to keep the wolves at bay. Sic transit gloria mundi.

But despair not. Even today, there is something new under the sun. RealtyBaron.com is introducing an idea it calls “risk management for Realtors.” What it is is a hedging strategy — akin to an insurance bet in Blackjack — whereby listing agents pay a premium to insure that listings are profitable whether or not they sell.

Worth a thousand words:

Oh, wait. That is a thousand words. 😉
 
This is not quite stoopid, although it shares some genes with stoopid. It’s a Realtor-milking scheme, beyond all doubt. It’s not quite as scurvy as some scams, but it does amount to you betting on your own failure, hardly the food of a good attitude.

I don’t completely hate the idea. But, assuming it takes off in sufficient numbers to matter, it seems to be misaligned to rational market incentives.

As I’ve discussed in the past, we charge a non-refundable retainer to sellers for similar reasons, to cover our front-loaded costs if the rug is pulled out from under us. But the primary reason for the retainer is to impose a meaningful cost on the seller for pulling the rug out from under us. We want for our sellers to have some skin in the game, to make cancellation an unattractive prospect — and to make sure they’re completely committed before we start working. The hedge bet does nothing to assure the commitment of the seller.

Moreover, as above, the entire plan is built around a bet on failure. If you as the lister know your ass is covered both ways, are you as likely to do the whatever-it-takes to get your listing sold? And if you are not, what direction should you expect the Read more

The Belly To Belly Dilemma: Questions YOU Must Answer

I was inspired to republish this post, which was first seen here almost 18 months ago, after reading the answer my son gave to a Brown & Brown client yesterday via email. I’ve spent four years mentoring him within an inch of his life. Pride bubbled up from nowhere as I read his response. At 27 he’s already where I was at 40. (I just turned 57.)

His journey to full ‘agentship’ is another post altogether.

Not being a hi-tech guy by even the most lenient definition, I try to bring to the fore, skills required to actually list or sell real estate. Until GeekWorld figures out how to interact with prospects and clients belly to belly, cats will continue to be skinned in every conceivable way — except hi-tech. Even Hal hasn’t figured that one out.

The ability, the art if the truth is told, to answer questions is almost always the difference between consistent success, and consistently being just ‘this close’. You’re reading that and know exactly what I’m talkin’ about.

It’s shameful the way I used to answer questions from prospects or clients. The excuse of age is available, as I was only about 25 or so. But even youth, or having just transitioned from homes to investments doesn’t wash as an excuse for my pitiful performance back then. It’s truly a blessing there were no hidden cameras or recorders in the office back then.

Clients would ask me if the rents in the area would tend to rise during the holding period. And I’d answer yes. The problem? Most folks asking questions want the answer, of course. But what they really want is the ‘why’ or ‘how’ behind your answer. Back then it irritated me no end that they wouldn’t just accept my answer as if I was quoting from the missing third tablet Moses forgot on the mountain. I knew the answer. Why couldn’t they just take my word for it? What a moron I was. I could have been more full of myself back then, I’m just not sure how.

That’s about the time I was blessed by Read more

Tech talk: Chrome, a theoretical MacTablet, session tracking and a cheap and reliable phone-based amanuensis — is that too much to ask?

Chrome: Yawn. Firefox, OTOH, is coming along nicely. I now run it side-by-side with Safari on my Mac. Safari is still my fave, but I don’t rail at Firefox like I used to.

The user interface of the iPhone is actually a hugely subversive paradigm shift in computer design: Tapping, multi-touch, micro- and macro-spatial awareness — these are all new things under the sun. Cathleen has been hearing interesting rumors about this UI being the basis for a MacTablet computer. And Apple has an event scheduled for next week…

I mentioned a week or two ago that I’m having Cameron build a session-tracker for our web sites. What he’s working on will live at the top HTML level of our server, so that, if necessary, he can track activity from the same one IP address across multiple domains. In other words, if someone follows a link from here to BloodhoundRealty.com, then from there to one of our single-property web sites, we should be able to see every movement.

I find myself wanting something like Jott without the limitations. When I’m previewing a house, I’d like to be able to dictate my impressions on the spot. I’d also like to be able to dictate emails, weblog posts and miscellaneous memoranda. Is there anything out there like that, ideally phone-based like Jott?

Technorati Tags: , ,

To Whom Shall I Pledge My Allegiance?

The Pledge of Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance

Alright now – simmer down – relax – this is not a political post.

With the advent of a new school year here, I couldn’t help but be reminded of days gone by – in the classroom – Ms. Sukula, my second grade teacher – with Bewitched hair – stood proudly at the front of the classroom, hand over her left breast – slowly reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.   She told us to stand like soldiers – hand over our chests with pride – you’re an American!

Now if you didn’t recite it along with her – her eyes would focus on you with the deep intent of causing bodily harm – lips firmly and taughtly pulled back to bare her brilliant white teeth – still slowly reciting the words – almost melodically.

It was definitely not a smile –  believe me – her message did not lack clarity.

Ahh – memories

Now – surprisingly, this draws parallels in my current day-to-day life as a real estate agent deeply embroiled in the pursuit of sorting out of all the new technology solutions in the Real Estate 2.0 cyber space.  You’ll notice from my last post – this is a taking some time.

Greg has shared with us the cool new Trulia app for the iPhone here on Bloodhound.  I recently saw on Twitter that Trulia has already surpassed over 10,000 downloads – this new functionality not only is cool, it clearly has legs.

But why am I not running to Trulia?

I am a member – I participate on TruliaVoices.  I’ve claimed all of my listings and have subscribed to Trulia Pro – but their latest feature has me frustrated – blogging.  While it is a great feature, I can’t help but ask myself, why do I want to put all of my eggs in the Trulia basket?

I have spent the last several idle months re-alphabetizing my CD collection, sorting through my closets and more importantly, really being focused on learning the new Web 2.0 tools and building my online presence.  I’ve invested in my own domain for my blog and Read more

We’re eating ourselves

I was installing a new Genie garage door opener one Friday evening on my very first house back in 1980-whatever. Basking in ‘pride of ownership’ and eager to….

Pause.

Deep breath.

Now, let’s be honest Mr Petro… (inner voice)

Okay. Let me begin again:

I was spending an entire weekend trying to replace an old Genie motor with a new one I had purchased, on a dump I never should have bought in the first place, with just a screwdriver, a hammer and some vice-grips; the Holy Trinity for those of us born without the dominant handyman gene. This was back in a time before Fixer-Upper actually meant Tear-Down but I was a young insurance salesman born with the recessive sucker gene so what did I know? Rookie sales guys are the biggest suckers. Everybody knows this. My Realtor certainly did.

And to this day I’m still not sure if she was actually my Realtor. She shanghaied me from her Open House I’d happened upon one Sunday, hustled me into the back of her 2-door Caddy (the passenger side front seat was stacked with MLS binders the size of phone books, briefcases, and boxes of direct mail envelopes. Piles of loose, legal length paperwork and blue carbon sheets rose from the floorboard to the glove box) and shot me over to another, much cheaper Cape Cod on the northeast side of Baltimore, blowing cigarette smoke in my face the rest of the afternoon and staring me down in silence until I signed the paperwork in her office and wrote an initial earnest money check to her brokerage firm. I was nowhere near my car or I would have run like Updike’s Rabbit but like I said earlier, I was shanghaied.

Truth is, had I hung on to the place (I shuffled it off to another sucker 24 months to the day later; old tax code) it would have been paid off a few years ago and worth about $350,000 today for the land value alone. I paid $65,000 and almost cried every month the $495 mortgage payment was due. Now, I do cry every Read more

It’s September 1st: Do you know where your next paycheck is?

Time is physics, the stately transit of the stars and planets. Time is space is mass is energy, four faces of the same one thing, elegant in its simplicity.

The passage of time — or, rather, the awareness of the passage of time — is a human artifact, a man-made thing. The Greeks or their forebears gave us seconds and minutes and hours — elegantly composed of factorials. Days, weeks, months, decades, centuries, millennia — time marches on, don’t it?

Here’s my thing, and it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about with other people: I am constantly aware of the passage of time. It matters to me that I get things done, so I am always measuring my performance against the clock.

Even moreso if I have set aside time to complete a task.

Even moreso at the end of the workday.

Even moreso on Friday afternoons, when I look back to see what I accomplished for the week.

And much, much moreso at the start of a new month, when I not only look back at what got done in the month just past, but also look ahead to what the coming month promises.

If you’re in straight commission sales, you live out of a pipeline, that’s understood. It’s nice to watch those paychecks coming out of the pipeline, but the haunting question — always — is what am I doing right now to put future paychecks into the pipeline?

Like many people reading here, August was a great month for us. I won’t know until I see the final numbers, but it may have been our best month ever. Certainly it’s in the top five.

September shows real promise, both because lenders are getting back on their bicycles and because Phoenix is suddenly very appealing to all-cash buyers.

But still… I look at the calendar and I think about that pipeline…

I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got to go to work.

Technorati Tags: ,