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My friend Andrew Breese asked me to go through my own history, in light of both the real estate boom and the bust, detailing where I was wrong and where I was right.
Very big job, and it would be a long essay to write, so I’ve elected to go through it in video instead.
Click on the graphic below to watch the video.
I’m now writing on a few blogs. BloodHoundBlog, of course. But also my own firm blogs for criminal law and bankruptcy law.
All this blogging can get a guy down, especially when you have to use WordPress’s web interface. I like the act of writing. I hate the act of logging into WordPress and blogging.
So I’ve been looking for webblogging clients – tools you can use to interface with the blog, draft posts from your desktop, and post them without having to log into the actual WordPress site.
I’ve been using ScribeFire for a few months, and it’s ok. It is a plugin that works with Firefox, whether on a Mac or a PC. The problem is that, so far as I know, the plugin hasn’t been re-written for Google Chrome. And I like Google Chrome because it is so fast.
I recently did a little googling, and found some other clients. The best of the batch, which I’ve been using today, is called Ecto. Ecto is only available on a Mac. It’s light-weight, easy to use, has the ability to “cross-post” to different blogs, and also interacts well with WordPress’s various features, like scheduled posts, tags, and categories.
It’s a little buggy. It’s crashed once on me today. I’m hoping that is fixed, because otherwise I like it.
This post was written with Ecto, in fact.
When presented with an ultimatum my first inclination has always been to go for the ‘or else’ end of the proposition— a defiant tendency that was pointed out to me by more than a few black-hooded figures in charge of my early catechism. This probably explains the abnormally high pain threshold I lug around to this very day. (Go ahead, smack me across the knuckles with a ruler the next time we’re doing math together and see for yourself how little I seem to care.) I’m convinced this emotional dereliction has to something do with a mutated gene strand that skipped a few low risk taking generations in my inherent DNA. Clearly, I was breech born under a bad moon. I am a Virgo, they say, but not by much.
In the late 1960s, when the Age of Aquarius was recruiting the deflowered masses of my wayward generation, I found myself stalled, hesitant to beam up to the mothership. Manned with my own back alley (hearsay, to be sure) knowledge of that dirtiest of deeds, I actually did the arithmetic and concluded that my parents must have lost the rhythm on, or around, Thanksgiving Dinner, 1955. Born in the late afternoon on August 23rd the following leap year (and exactly three complete trimesters to the dinner bell hour later), I concluded that had my mother only pushed a little harder during labor, I could have been a Leo. But then again, if everyone hadn’t started drinking Cold Duck in the morning exactly nine months earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been…. at all.
So hence, I mentally celebrate—in my sick, sick head—two birthdays every year: The day of my most probable, mathematically correct Conception (Thanksgiving dinner, badda-bing), and…. August 23rd, that so-called celestial cusp I barely missed by some late breaking water. When someone asks me what astrological ‘sign’ I am, I simply spew out my theory as posed above… and they usually go away. It’s my own ultimatum of sorts, I suppose, to anyone who tries to get too close. After all, I did come out feet first and tend to veer a Read more
This time last year, I crashed my car, totaling it. We used the insurance money to pay off our most urgent bills, so we weren’t able to replace it for quite a while. We had an old Mercury that I used until its lack of a working air conditioner made that impossible. After that, I rented cars when I needed to show. For three solid months I escorted buyers in an amazingly awful rented Ford Taurus. It was literally painful to drive — backache-inducing — but it was only $500 a month to lease.
The last two quarters of 2008 and the first two quarters of 2009 were all action, no traction, so we lived by surfing the payables — paying nothing before it absolutely had to be paid, and paying nothing at all on bills that didn’t have to be paid — including the mortgage.
And that’s a story that had a deferred happy ending. We got hit with a foreclosure notice much earlier than I was expecting. Business had picked up markedly by then, so we redeemed our pawn ticket earlier than we absolutely had to. Even so, it’s not an experience I would commend to anyone.
We got hit with a couple of judgments over very late debts, but that’s just business. We’re current on everything current, and we’re chopping down the old-growth debts one-by-one. It’s not pleasing to me to be a dead-beat, but, while we might be late, we’ve never skated on a debt and we never will.
Meanwhile, the world is young again. In the first five months of 2009, we didn’t make enough to pay the pet food bills. In the last seven months, we made enough to get current on the mortgage, to get current on our current accounts, to retire a bunch of past accounts, to buy me a new laptop and (as of today) a new iMac, and to put a decent used car under my buyer’s butts.
Better still, we’ve been rolling on a six-figure pipeline for months — no hopes, no maybes, no blue-sky wishful thinking — and it’s been rolling along nicely. This Read more
Hello Bloodhoundbloggers.. It’s been almost a year since my last post and I’m feeling a little out of touch with the pulse of the market, which is the heart of this site. Since my last post, I’ve been involved in cell tower development in Las Vegas as a build-to-suit vendor for a wireless carrier, having started my company almost a year ago this month (And you thought the residential market was tough). Things are progressing in a positive direction although there is still more work to be done, but what spurred my writing muse (you can have her Geno when I’m done here) was a little app I bought for my iPhone last week.
Normally, I’m more interested in the free apps geared towards saving me time in one way or another, but I must admit that I do enjoy playing NFL Madden 10 when I’m sitting in a zoning hearing. But as I found this one (www.zosh.com) – Video click here – I past over the $2.99 without a thought. Let me summarize what it does and how I use it:
I receive numerous proposals and eFax’es on my iPhone as a PDF file (the app only works with PDF files) that require my signature. Some of them are minor, but necessary documents that need my approval when I’m on the road, in an airport or at a hearing (I have a laptop but don’t always have access to a printer or WiFi).. then I found this app.. The document comes to my inbox on the iPhone.. I forward it to mydocs@zosh.com (after you setup an account on the iPhone – make sure that you use the email address that you have defaulted on your iPhone as your login – makes it easier) and the forwarded PDF file will show up in the list of files once you open the app.
Once Zosh is opened, find the file that you just emailed to zosh.com and open it. Now you can insert a signature, text or date. With the signature, you tap on the location of the document where you want to sign and a Read more
I will be on KJZZ radio (91.5 FM) in Phoenix tomorrow from 11:30 am to Noon. I’ll be talking about the state of the real estate market, the impact of the real estate tax credit and the flow of international buyers into the Phoenix market.
I think there will be an MP3 available, afterward, but you can stream KJZZ by clicking on this link.
Further notice: Click here for a link to the broadcast.
“If your car keys are with you, your camera should be with you.” That’s one of the mantras I preach at Realtors when I speak in public. The language of real estate is photography, and you cannot do your job properly if you can’t communicate what you’re seeing to your clients.
Having a camera along solves a multitude of dilemmas. I see a lot of houses for out of state buyers, so the web sites I build for them can provide invaluable details about candidate homes. But there are all kinds of other benefits to always having a camera with you when you’re out of the office: Documenting benefits and drawbacks of specific neighborhoods, capturing on-the-spot images of red flag issues before the inspector transmits his report, etc.
“But,” you may be be straining to expostulate, “my phone has a camera.” Believe me, I know. I see its output in the MLS way too often. Your phone has a bad camera, with a cheesy little lens — its focal length much too long for real estate — and a cheesy little image size. Someday phone cameras may be adequate for day-to-day real estate work, but that day is not today.
We have a Kodak Digital SLR for listings and other high-end work, but, until lately, we have each carried a Fujifilm Finepix E500 for everyday photos. This was a reasonable price/performance compromise when we got them. They’re light in weight and they’re powered by AA batteries, so there was never any threat of running out of juice. The lens is only 28mm at its widest, which is adequate but not ideal. But those cameras were workhorses. Cathleen and I both rolled them over, call it around 15,000 photos each over the past four years.
But all things come to an end. Cathy lost her Finepix recently, and mine is exhibiting the kind of noisome behavior that argues that it’s about to fail permanently.
Time to go shopping. I’ve been following the Panasonic Lumix line of point-and-shoot digital cameras since I first heard about them in a post by Jeff Turner, a long time ago. I got Read more
As we approach the end of this year, celebrating and reminiscing, dining and partying, worshiping and contemplating, I wanted to simply say thanks to all of you. You’re now all part of my world, and thus what you give spills over into that which I, too, am able to give.
A very special thanks to Greg and Cathleen, who yoke us together, all of us, in our individual pursuits, foibles and moments of grandeur.
Enjoy a bit of celebration about the world you Bloodhounds have helped shape. Remember our singular bond, notwithstanding our differences, to be bold and fearless in all our endeavors, seeking a taste of Greg’s Greekness if only for just moments at a time.
Oh, in case you didn’t notice, I managed to sneak into the session around the 50 second mark to add a bit of my own musicality to the group. Happy Thanksgiving week to all of you!!
A few of the comments on my last post about the moves Google seems to be making in the direction of a more robust National Real Estate search have focused on what this means for MLS.
The consensus (hope?) is that Google’s move in that direction, as well as RPR, are bad news for MLS.
Maybe. Probably. But not necessarily so: There is a case to be made for the value of the local MLS in terms of Quality Assurance.
Google wants to index information, not create or validate it (think automation vs manual processes), but if Google Real Estate were riddled with inaccurate listing data, if users were consistently finding listings that are no longer for sale or that have the wrong price, that would degrade the user experience, and that is probably more important to Google than anything else, which may explain why they haven’t, and might not, leverage their position as the conduit through which most real estate traffic flows by creating a Google MLS.
The way it works now, Google’s RE data, accurate or not, leads to sites where changes entered into MLS are quickly reflected. MLS also ensures that only its members contribute listings, so there is some vetting there, as well. As a source of QA that Google does not have to set up and manage itself, the local MLS serves a purpose.
The problem is that lots of MLSs are not going to be happy with going back to their original, limited role of organizing a local market among brokers. They will be loathe to give up on the idea of “adding value” (IOW justifying fees) with things like public-facing Web sites. They also, in many cases, see themselves as a bulwark against change that they don’t like, hence their role as the enforcers of rules meant to “protect” the traditional industry — to the detriment of consumers.
(Exhibit A: MIBOR’s attempt to use NAR IDX rules to label Google a “scraper”.)
As long as that is the case, we are stuck with the balkanized, inefficient and anti-consumer “system” we have now, and that is what makes it ripe for Google Read more
I have been selling real estate for a while now. Not as long as many of you who are frequent contributors or readers here, though. When I got started in real estate, it was the outcome of my last falling out with Corporate America. What my last experience with working for someone else finally taught me is that I am unemployable. I am a great worker; I have a constant flow of ideas that would be of potential value to a business. I simply do not play well with others who are in positions of responsibility and who insist on being a choke point either for my career or for the flow of good ideas to benefit the company. I experience many of the same frustrations in real estate, but at least in real estate I am free to move myself into alignment with others of like mind. I find the choke points to be less restrictive and the potential for personal growth and development to be unlimited.
When I earned my real estate salespersons license (what the State of Washington calls me) I thought that the business would be simple. Just tell people that I am selling real estate and they would say “well, we need to have you help us.” What I found out very quickly was that EVERYBODY knew a Realtor. I was constantly being told “Oh, that’s great but <Insert name here> is selling real estate too.” That response stopped me dead in my tracks. I know that many of you will respond to me that this response should have never stopped me. You are right it; it no longer does, but it did then. I was terrified of rejection or so I thought. What I found out was that I was terrified of everything but the word “Maybe.” No meant that I was being rejected and my self esteem took another blow beneath the belt (I was also going through the long slow decline of a marriage and self esteem was in short supply). Yes meant that I had to deliver value, and frankly I did not Read more
One of the things I picked up from reading Greg’s blog was his desire to dominate the real estate market not in Phoenix, but in particular neighborhoods. Chris Gilgian’s, a 1950s development where I used to live, the Willo Historic District, and other neighborhoods in downtown Phoenix.
As a criminal lawyer, it’s a bit different because, at least in North Carolina, the court system is countywide, meaning that anyone arrested for a crime in Wake County will be handled at the same courthouse or go to the same jail, regardless of whether they live in Knightdale or in Apex. It doesn’t much matter whether they’re a North Raleigh resident or a Cary resident from a lawyer’s perspective. The case will be handled at the same place.
But for search and ranking purposes, it does matter. That’s because most people I want as clients have never committed a crime before or have only had traffic or minor misdemeanors. And because they’re new to the system, they may not realize, when they’re searching for a lawyer, that the system is county wide. As a consequence they will search for a lawyer in their neighborhood.
That insight – that potential clients will search for an Apex criminal lawyer or a Cary criminal lawyer – has focused my web and marketing approach. In the first few weeks, I would mention every neighborhood in the community in my posts. The scattershot approach wasn’t incredibly effective in terms of ranking.
Now I focus my attention on three communities: Cary, Apex, and Raleigh. Why those communities? Raleigh is obvious: if I can dominate Raleigh, there’s a lot of business to be had. But I picked Cary and Apex for four reasons. These are the wealthiest parts of the county, so people can pay for legal representation. These are places where a lot of northerners live – the joke about Cary is that it stands for “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.” The fact that I also am a northerner is certainly not a negative when interacting with them, and may also be a plus.
In addition, it was clear to me from a Read more
…at least not yet.
On Sept 24th when the Google Blog announcement of Google Places was posted, there was no mention of Place Pages for Real Estate:
“A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.”
Notice they didn’t say “addresses” or “real estate listings”, but today over on SearchEngineLand, there is a post by Matt Mcgee titled Google Builds out a National Real Estate Search Engine which features a “Real Estate Listing Place Page”, and several other outlets have picked up on it.
The Place Page that Matt uses as an example does indeed show that there are now Place Pages for listings that Google knows about via Google Base.
A closer look reveals that, at least at this point, this isn’t very different from what Google has done up to now.
The content on the example that Matt from SearchEngineLand used consists of photos from PrudentialProperties.com and redundant basic information from that site and two others.
As Real Estate listing pages go, its a hodgepodge with little added value, such as an AVM, or local market info, that you would find on a good IDX site for the same listing. Even Realtor.com’s basic listing page is better. If you want that detailed information Google, as it always has, provides the links back to the original real estate sites.
That makes this an extension of Google organic results, nothing more.
As a stand-alone listing detail page as opposed to the beefed-up search result page that it is, this “Real Estate Listing Place Page” is pretty half-assed by Google’s standards, which may be why Place Pages for real estate are currently hard to find.
I tried entering the address from Matt’s example in Google Maps, without putting the /realestate after the address, and was not offered the “more info” link that leads to the Place Page, even though we know it exists.
Then I tried entering the address on my new Droid (yes it Read more