BloodhoundBlog

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Month: October 2009 (page 2 of 5)

October 20, 2009

Transactions Vs. Having a Business

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Getting obsessed with delivering good customer service has become more and more a focus of what I’m doing.   I’d rate myself a 3 on a scale of one to ten, but before June,  I was a -2.   So there’s that, at least.  My goal is to get to a “5” by the end of the year.

Customer service is the difference between “doing transactions” and “having a business.”  Creating a process that honors the customer’s intent is our job, and figuring out a way to do it within the human constraints of bandwidth and knowledge is not easy. But doing it is rewarding, both in the “artistic” sense and in the monetary sense.

Getting honest feedback is hard, too.  People don’t want to identify what you can do better, and our own egos create a situation where we justify our failures.  Perception of the customer is reality, and when we wanna break the stereotype of the entitled and mediocre Realtor (in my case, consultant), we have to fix what’s broken.  We have to be committed to the outcome of good service, and good perceived service.

They are both important.  When my wife was at Dominion homes, the customers there were all given a survey.  The managers would do whatever possible to let the customers know that “yes” was the only real answer.  Dominion was deprived of feedback because of the perverse incentives of the bonus program they created.  People were flat out told that they’d get $100 cash if they brought the survey back for the manager to fill out.  Attaboys were really what they were after.

Not “how can we–as a company–get way better.”

They assumed that they had achieved operational perfection.  They had not.   I have not achieved operational perfection yet (though I’m far closer now).   I want to know where I’m weak, and where I’m perceived to be weak.   Where the communication is chunky and commitments are unmet.

This is the core difference between doing deals and having a business.  Finding a way to get actionable information.  Hearing feedback.

My customer service survey that goes out says this:

I want to be the best ever.  I Read more

October 20, 2009

Real Estate Sales Transactions In Phoenix

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I don’t know if the local board in Phoenix allows agents to display recent sales transactions via idx feed, but it seems to me from talking to others around the land that most boards don’t.

Doesn’t it kinda sting that Trulia can display this info, but Realtor folk can’t?

Or can they?

How To Display Real Estate Transactions On Your WordPress Site Via Trulia’s Pretty Up To Date RSS Feed

1. Install and activate the “EXEC PHP” plugin
2. Do A General Property Search For Any Area On Trulia.
3. Click the “Recently Sold” Tab
4. Once the results are up, click on the link for more details on the first property.
5. When the info shows up, click “back.” – [This is key! 🙂 ]
6. Now there will be an RSS feed link at the very top right of the page.
7. Click On It, Then Grap The RSS Link That Pops Up Slightly Lower To The Left
7. Insert the RSS feed into the code below within a blog post, where indicated by “PUT YOUR JUICY SALES TRANSACTION FEED URL HERE”

< ?php // Get RSS Feed(s) include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php'); $rss = fetch_rss('PUTYOURJUICYSALESTRANSACTIONFEEDURLHERE'); $maxitems = 30; $items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, $maxitems);
?>

< ?php foreach ( $items as $item ) : ?>

  • < ?php echo $item['title']; ?>

< ?php endforeach; ?>

Phoenix Real Estate Sales Transactions

What you’re seeing below is actually a screen capture of the transactions on my own site… didn’t want to mess with plugins/php over here at bhb (or cause other trouble for ma and pop.)

Which leads to the point of all this. Can you see adding pages upon pages of dynamic content to your site using this little trick? Or is this content theft? Does Trulia own the data? Does your local board?


Phoenix Real Estate Transactions...

October 20, 2009

I was joking – honestly, I was really joking!

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Approximately a month ago, I was getting a client approved for a mortgage with mortgage insurance and while going over the details of what we needed to document the deal, the customer deadpanned to me, “Where do I go to get the bloodwork done?”    My response, “Nah, we don’t need that —- yet.”

The report below is actually from England but it now appears that the government is going to start requiring mortgage lenders in England to ask questions about how much their borrowers spend on tobacco and alcohol.

Now, if you ask me, I think that tighter restrictions in terms of downpayments, debt to income ratios, credit scores, job histories, cash reserves, etc. all make sense.   But whether my neighbor spends more or less on alcohol than I do, I can’t see what substantive difference that makes in our ability to repay our mortgages.  (Hint – I’m not the one who spends more on alcohol.)

The pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction in some areas and not far enough in others.

Tom Vanderwell

Homebuyers face questions on alcohol and smoking under new mortgage rules – Times Online

Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending.

In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers.

It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco.

Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”.

At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next.

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October 20, 2009

What makes “progressive” utopias like Portland seem so cool to the cognoscenti? Could it be a zoning-enforced racism?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From newgeography.com:

Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.

More:

This raises troubling questions about these cities. Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?

As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip? Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries and other mechanisms raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to Read more

October 19, 2009

Unchained Melody: Fields of Gold

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Saturday I took a mini vacation and visited my daughter Rian, who was taking a longer vacation in the Hocking Hills. If you are from the Mid-West, you may know about the Hocking Hills. It’s beautiful land- old forests, rolling hills. It was a treat to take a day away from normal life and I love driving through Ohio with its farmland and small towns. I’m a Realtor. Under all is the land.

Ohio is still, and always has been, an agricultural state. Our biggest business is agriculture- that’s large expanses of productive real estate- income producing dirt. I am, even in my inner ring suburb, surrounded by cornfields and soybean fields and small roadside farm stands and pick-your-own strawberries. And when I was a kid I hated it! Hated it. I was once much more cosmopolitan than the hayseed you see before you. I was once a citified mohawk wearing rabble-rouser. I was once on the fast track out of the Mid-West and onto somethinganything more exciting. And then I grew up.

I spent time with people who came from the same gene pool. I was accepted by the most gentle and loving people I’d ever met. Their quiet wit, their infinite love, their simple lives woke me up and let me understand that I could take the girl out of the country, but I never really wanted to take the country out of the girl. My mohawk grew out, my attitude softened- just a bit- and I learned to love the sight of a pristine barn rising out of tidy rows of cornfields. I know with the tiniest whiff on the breeze, whether I’m smelling cow, pig, or horse shit, and my husband Jamie, who has farming in his blood and spent his youth as an assistant to a large animal veterinarian, says that the dumber the animal, the better the smell. Hint: Pigs stink almost as much as humans.

We have beautiful land in Ohio, and no time is it more beautiful than now, in the fall, when the trees become a spectacular raging colorfest, and the farm fields are golden, Read more

October 19, 2009

7 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know – Part 1

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Here’s what I wrote about item #1 on the list last time:

6 months ago is ancient history. What your neighbor sold his house for 6 months ago doesn’t matter.   What the seller was asking for the house 6 months ago doesn’t matter.   What matters is what the market will support today.

So, how are things the same and how are they different?   A couple of things that need to be discussed:

How are things the same?

  • What happened 6 months ago is still ancient history.   Since I wrote the first piece, Fannie, Freddie and FHA have tightened up their appraisal guidelines and they will no longer allow an appraiser to use a sale that is more than 90 days old unless they have no other comparables and can write a 5 page essay of why they need to use that one.
  • I can’t tell you how many times over the last 12 months, I’ve heard people say, “3 years ago, the seller bought the house for $100,000 more than what I’m paying the bank for it.   I’m getting an awesome deal!”    My first response is, “Maybe.”   Maybe you are getting a deal.   But maybe the seller bought it at the peak of a bubble in the market and paid way too much and now things are just adjusting down to the market.    Maybe it’s not down to what the market will really absorb for the house and if you tried to sell it next year, you’d end up selling it for less than you paid for it.
  • “They just dropped the price by $50,000!”   This is a great deal!    Maybe, but then again, I can put my house on the market for $650,000 and then offer to give you $100,000 off the asking price.   Is that a good deal for my house?  (Hint – my house is still WAY overpriced at $550,000 – but I’ll sell it to you for that.)

So what is different?   A couple of things are a bit different from last year:

  • The First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit/Buyer Frenzy – If you are any where near the radio/newspaper/any mortgage lender or Realtor, you’re Read more
October 19, 2009

Intellectual Property Theft for REALTORS – a primer on what not to do.

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

REALTORS are great at sharing ideas.

I really do like the idea of team spirit and sharing. I think that one can make a strong case for it in business among friends who trust and respect each other. It is what a scenius is all about. It is what we do at our brokerage with what we call our Roundtable. It is a good thing.

But that is TOTALLY different from intellectual property theft. One of the things that I watch REALTORS do time after time is to “help themselves” to other peoples’ intellectual property (or have their hired folks do it) and then fight arrogantly when they are informed about it. Most times it starts as an innocent thing where the REALTOR is unaware of it and ends with the REALTOR losing significant time and money.

Two examples:

Take the latest controversy about a REALTOR named David Bigham. I was not aware of it until my buddy Jon posted on it on our real estate newspaper site. This, sadly enough, has happened literally hundreds of times while I have watched. It is TOTALLY avoidable.

David Bigham is (apparently) a REALTOR somewhere in Minnesota. I neither know him or care. I simply want to help folks avoid his plight for THEIR business.

Here is how it typically starts.

1) REALTOR buys a domain.
2) REALTOR is a visual person, so they find a competitors site that LOOKS cool.
3) They contact the firm that built it and ask “How much?”
4) They faint. Lotsa bucks.
5) They start contacting EVERY web developer from their cousin Fred to the local web development students to every serious firm looking for a person to “make it look EXACTLY like that.” (Famous Last Words…)
6) So Fred or Betty or whoever (insert web developer here) literally copies and pastes the code which is EASILY done and makes a few simple modifications and posts the site as “theirs”, lock stock and barrel.

Then the trouble starts. See, the guys who designed that site…they ummmm…. OWN that design. Yes it may be fashionable for REALTORS to “steal” (or “pinch” “boost” “hi-grade” “lift” etc-grin),,, advertising and Read more

October 17, 2009

When the Saints…

by

Retechulous...

Author website

I’m an East Coast Liberal-tarian type who’s ok-down with all the political talk around here… in theory.

But in general I follow the no politics or religion in public rule… just because it’s easier, and I guess I wussily think there’s really only negative stuff that can come from political or religious chatter, especially done in a professional bloggy context…

Sports on the other hand, nobody’s offended by sports talk right?

Go Giants!

(Image, created by Eric Hartman)

October 17, 2009

A Look Back – What Has Changed and What Hasn’t…..

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

In July of 2008, I wrote a piece as a guest post on Paul Kedrosky’s site, Infectious Greed.    I called that piece The Top 7 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know.   The piece got a lot of “press” and actually got me interviewed by the New York Times.    I was talking with the reporter who I’ve gotten to know at the New York Times about a month ago and we realized that it was almost exactly a year since he had ran the piece, “Considering the 7 Year Plan.”    He made a comment at that point, “It would be interesting to see what, if anything, has changed over the last year in your opinion of what a home buyer needs to think about.”     I agreed and decided at that point to do that.

So this is the introduction to what will be a 7 part series over the course of the next week or so.   I’m going to take each item, one by one, and look at what my view was in July of last year and then factoring in what I think has or has not changed over the last 15 months.

Here’s a hint for you – out of the 7 parts, I think that we’re going to find that at least 3 or 4 of them have changed substantially.

I’ll have the first one up in a day or two.

Thanks for listening in/reading what my thoughts are…..

 

Tom Vanderwell

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October 15, 2009

When you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Here’s what happened: I had to stop walking because I was sick. You may not know it, but on top of all the other scourges it entails, the state really has it in for itinerants. You may never have wanted to run off to Alabama with a banjo on your knee, but I’d bet you’re more than a bit dismayed to discover that you can’t. Got to have a fixed address, so they can inflict all their precious ‘benefits’ on you.

So I had to stop walking and I had to see a doctor, and of course I couldn’t. I’ve walked myself right out of society, and I have an inkling I may have walked myself right out of the human race. At least that’s the way Nurse Martinetti made me feel.

That’s really her name, but I think she must have married into it. She looked like American Gentry to me, which is to say John Bull white trash six generations from the last capital crime. Short, bottle-blonde with a cut that looks cute on smudged-nosed tomboys, thick through the ankle and the cortex. My guess is she became a nurse because she red-lined the psych profiles for meter-maid.

First, it’s not a doctor’s office, not anymore. It’s a ‘Health Services Cooperative’. We all know what a cooperative is: It’s a place where you go to not get whatever it is you came for. It would make too much sense to stay home, where you already don’t have it. In any case, Nurse Martinetti is charged with making sure that no one gets anything they came for, although they might get stuck (literally!) with quite a lot they’d have sooner done without. But I wasn’t even that (un)fortunate, because I don’t have a fixed address.

Nurse Martinetti gripped her clipboard and said, “What do you mean? How can you not have an address? Everyone has an address. Some people even have two!” She looked at me as if I were something a puppy accidently left on the carpet.

“…,” I said with a shrug.

“Are you homeless?”

“I wouldn’t say so. I sleep Read more

October 15, 2009

Why I write on the Bloodhound Blog….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

and on Zillow’s Mortgages Unzipped Blog and on the Straight Talk About Mortgages. I was asked that question the other day and the answer I gave surprised the person who asked it.   I found that intriguing, so I thought I’d share both the question and the answer.

Why do I write on these blogs?   The person who asked it reads a lot of what I write on these blogs and other places, so they know that even though writing comes rather easy for me, I do spend a lot of time on it.

Here’s my answer:

  • I write on these blogs because the mortgage world can be terribly confusing and I want to try to help educate people, and that’s true even in the best of times.
  • I write on these blogs because sharing my understanding and knowledge of what’s happening and what it means helps to elevate the professionalism and expertise of the mortgage and real estate professions.
  • I write on these blogs because we are in horrendously confusing times and the full ramifications of what’s happening won’t be truly felt for decades.
  • I write on these blogs because there are a lot of people who have experienced and are going through severe financial disruptions and need someone to help them understand what’s going on.
  • I write on these blogs because the economy is going through what I believe we’ll see to be “seismic shifts” in consumers attitudes toward credit, saving, investments, banking, and real estate.  I’ve based my entire mortgage career on helping people manage their money wisely and making solid decisions and this is a logical extension of that.

The person who asked the question was surprised at my response.   He said, “I would have guessed that the reason you write on these is to write more loans!”

Have I written more mortgages that I wouldn’t have otherwise?   Yes.   Is that why I’m doing it?   Nope.

And that brings me to the main point of this post.   I’m working on something new.   Let me explain:

  • There are a lot more facets to people’s financial condition than just mortgages.
  • There’s a lot of people who are struggling to understand what’s happening Read more
October 15, 2009

Dead Mac Society: Cupertino, we have a problem…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a Macintosh IIfx that is old enough to vote and yet still runs perfectly. But just a little while ago, we lost the hard disk in Cathy’s iMac, and this morning my own precious piece of Iridium woke up by not waking up.

I saw some screen noise in my noodling about, so I’m hoping it’s a circuitry issue. That would almost certainly mean that the machine itself is slag, but, as long as the hard disk has survived, all is not lost.

But still… Macs don’t fail. And two Macs don’t fail this close to each other in time.

After Cathy’s machine went south, we added a 2 terrabyte backup server — even though I have never backed up a Macintosh in my life.

Not the end of the world, but this is going to bite a big — and expensive — hole in my day.

October 14, 2009

Howard Brinton : A Chance To Do Something Really, Really Cool.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I remember a long time ago, getting Star Power manuals in the mail.  Big, 3 ring binders full of worksheets that I’d work out with fear and trembling.  I remember getting star of the month stuff.

I remember hearing stars, ordinary schmoes like Phil Herman–a former postman talk about what made him separate from the pack.  I was hooked.  There was a formula to this success stuff, and this guy went out and gathered it up.

A collection of excellence was what Star Power was about, formed in the pre-Internet days, largely, maybe a precursor to the Bloodhound Blog of sorts.  In any case, Howard Brinton has been given a most unfavorable prognosis by his doctors.

So, a tribute site popped up, and it’s a place to go and reconnect with the stars, and to leave thoughts and tributes.   There, not here.   Thanks much.

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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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