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There’s always something to howl about.

Month: December 2008 (page 6 of 6)

December 2, 2008

It’s not the singer nor the song. It’s the audience.

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

One of the most amazing things about scenius scenes is that they change your outlook. Often permanently. After enjoying two of these experiences lately, one at Swallow Hill at BHB Orlando and one Thanksgiving morning via email (more on that one in a later post), I was thinking over some (of the many) things that I learned from Sean Purcell and Brian Brady. These guys have well developed sales skills where I am a technology guy who likes to teach, but needs to sell.

While I was ruminating on some of their wisdom, up popped this post from Thomas Hall. I asked myself: Do you know REALTORS like this in your office? Of course. We all do, I think.

Do you know people who are making money using Facebook and other social media? You need to spend a little time with Brian Brady. Seriously. Beg. Borrow. Steal. Do what it takes to pick this guy’s brain. As intrigued as I was to listen to him as we talked ABOUT what he does, what fascinated me was watching him DO it, while Sean called out the play by play. And the ideas flowed in bunches. It was seriously cool stuff.

I mean it. Whatever it takes to watch him do what he does. That hour you grab with him at BHB Unchained in 2009 may well MAKE 2009. Here’s a little insight that I just gained…weeks after the scenius…that finally soaked through this thick skull of mine.

I was with Brian as he met people in person. and connected with his audience.
I listened while he worked on the phone from the house at Swallow Hill. and connected with his audience.
I spoke with him in front of an audience. And he connected.
I watched him work Facebook, Active Rain and other social media platforms.and he connected with his audience.
I watched him connect with Bloggers. again his audience.
I read his post “Pick up the damn phone!” again, connecting with his audience.
And I have watched many successful REALTORS do exactly what Thomas Hall describes. These people are EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE at building their sphere by networking to where folks Read more

December 2, 2008

Not All Dinosaurs Are Extinct

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

I know an agent with big hair – she used to drive a Cadillac – she traded it in for a Lexus.

She likes to lunch – alot – with friends, clients and colleagues.  She started selling real estate when I started high school – basically ALONG time ago.

She’s not on Facebook.  She twitters only in the office – face to face – with friends, clients and colleagues.  She’s not on MySpace – Her space is the desk in the office – overwhelmed with a prodigous Rolodex with cards falling out.  She emails, but her assistant does the typing.  Funny thing is – she seems to always be on the phone.  Talking.  Offering well-wishes on birthdays, engagements, job promotions, new children arrivals and even new grandchildren arrivals.

I think she may be working on the third generation of her first clients.

I’ve never heard her ask for business – often times the phone calls are incoming, not outgoing.  She’s busy, but not overwhelmed.  During a casual conversation regarding a recent property showing, she shared some very valuable insight regarding the unit – you see, she’s sold it twice before.

When she tells me she knows everyone in the business, I believe her.

She’s social – but not of the media type.

In comparison, I believe I am more social, but perhaps too much of the media type.  I like technology.  I believe that technology can and will transform how real estate is transacted.  Through observation, however, I have learned that even in the absence of technology, real estate is transacted – quite successfully.

December 2, 2008

Investor Sues to Block Mortgage Modifications

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

The battle over the mass modifications of troubled mortgages has begun in earnest. On Dec. 1, William Frey, a private investor in mortgage-backed securities, filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court alleging that the proposed modification of some 400,000 home loans originally underwritten by the defunct lender Countrywide Financial is illegal.

Investor Sues to Block Mortgage Modifications – Yahoo! News.

At first glance, you’re probably thinking what I was (well, maybe not…) but seriously, why would some mean hearted investor want to prevent Bank of America from helping 400,000 home owners stay in their homes?

Let me attempt to explain:

  1. Countrywide wrote the loans and sold them on the secondary market.
  2. When they sold them, they didn’t sell them in 1 piece, they sold sections (called tranches) to a multitude of different investors and investment companies.   It’s actually possible that parts of one mortgage end up being owned by 30 different “parties.”
  3. The parties who bought these loans bought them as contracts that had a prepayment risk but didn’t buy them with a modification risk.
  4. When a loan gets modified, it changes that contract which inherently changes the value of the investment.
  5. The investors who are suing to stop it are saying that if you start changing the contracts, you are going to effectively ruin the secondary mortgage market because suddenly the value of the loans that are sold becomes an unknown.
  6. If the secondary mortgage market dies, then the housing market dies.   It’s just that simple, without mortgage money, the party is over.

Are the investors saying that the loans shouldn’t be modified?   No they aren’t.   What they are saying is, “I didn’t buy this investment with the thinking that it could be modified going forward.”   So if you, Mr. B of A, want to change the terms, that’s fine, buy it back and change the terms.

The investors are, it seems to me, hoping for one of two results:

  1. That Bank of America will buy the loans back (with our help of course).
  2. That they take their chances with foreclosures.  Given the report that the National Association of Realtors issued earlier on Mortgage Modification Defaul Rates of 50%, that’s not Read more
December 2, 2008

Does “Googleopoly” = Evil ?

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

I have a running news search going for anything that has the words “Google” and “Real Estate” in it. More often than not, this search returns cookie cutter press releases designed to reassure agents who plunked down a credit card for a cookie-cutter Web site (“Real Estate Agent Ollie Tabooger Adds Custom IDX Tools to his Web site” — film at 11), but it occasionally yields something interesting. Over the weekend, I got a link to a one-sided attack on Google that was published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which offered no forum for a reply, so allow me to retort:

The piece, called “Googleopoly darkens future of innovation” was written by Scot Cleland,  a telecom lobbyist that is fighting Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality debate is really complex, so I’ll boil it down to a paragraph:

As Ted Stevens tells us, the Internet is a “series of tubes”. On one side of the debate, you have the Tube Builders (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) and on the other, you have the Tube Users (Google, eBay, Apple, etc.). The Tube Builders are also Tube Users and they want to charge other Tube Users based on what they are putting into the tubes and how much of it there is. The Tube Users are afraid (based on past behavior) that the Tube Builders will take unfair advantage of their ownership of the tubes so the Tube Users want the Government to regulate the Tube Builders. The Tube Builders like to point out that the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was set up to stop the railroads from doing basically the same thing a hundred years ago,  ended up making the problem worse and they say it is best to let the market work things out.

(Where have I heard that before? In other words, we tax-paying consumers and small business owners will eventually get screwed on this deal no matter who wins.)

Cleland is behind a group called NetCompetition.org, which is funded by the Tube Builders. His beef with Tube User Google is that it is displaying monopolistic tendencies because the deal they tried to put together with Read more

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