Archives (page 133 of 372)

April 17, 2009

Handling a deal with a foreign buyer or seller

by Phil Hodgen

International Tax Lawyer

I am an international tax lawyer. I handle lots of real estate transactions with foreign sellers and buyers. I don’t have a real estate license, and I don’t ask for a piece of the commission. Got that out of the way for ya, didn’t I? Here are a few things to keep you sane when you handle a deal like that

Two mothers

“When Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.” And in a real estate deal with foreign players, you have two mothers. Keep them both happy and you’re likely to close your deal on time.

Mama number one is your title officer. Ask a simple question. Demand a yes/no answer. “Have you handled a real estate transaction with a foreign seller/foreign buyer in it before?”

Don’t say “Can you handle one of these transactions?” Because of course they CAN. Right? And they will.

Right up until 5 days before closing and they figure out that the seller is a Bahamas corporation and they start insisting that you register the corporation with the Secretary of State and get a certificate of good standing from Sacramento and the Bahamas and oh, who are these people who claim to be the officers?

Mama number two is escrow. Especially for a foreign seller. Call up your escrow officer and ask the same question: have you done one of these transactions before?

Loyalty matters. But business is business. You don’t want your deal to be the crash test dummy. Let them learn on someone else.

War story: two summers ago, I handled two very similar deals in Southern California at the same time. Different title companies. One inexperienced title officer, one experienced. The novice title officer cost the buyer an extra $5,000 in legal fees to get the deal done.

Foreign seller

If your seller is a foreigner, here’s your checklist:

Tax ID number

The seller needs a U.S. tax identification number. More often than not they don’t have one. Go to the IRS website and pull down Form W-7 for a human seller. Get in Read more

April 17, 2009

The epistemology of open-mindedness…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

In email to me this morning, someone said, “Your site is major-league high-brow.” I thought that was a funny observation, but I also know there is some truth to it. I don’t know that we’re all that high-brow-civilized, but we do try to take up ideas in a very penetrating way.

Epistemology — the philosophy of knowledge — how can you verify and validate your knowledge? — is an idea I’m always bringing up. There is no limit to how much better we can get at thinking.

This is a video I saw yesterday at Little Green Footballs. This is on-topic for BloodhoundBlog only in the absolute broadest sense, but BloodhoundBlog is all about looking at things in the absolute broadest sense. In any case, this is a very nice example of video doing an intellectual job that would be much harder to pull off in prose.

April 17, 2009

The two dirtiest words in English are “tax” and “attorney” — but new contributor Phil Hodgen is both…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Phil Hodgen has been a friend of BloodhoundBlog for a long time. He’s an international tax attorney working out of Pasadena, so why would he be reading the dawgs? Marketing and iconoclasm, the only two things we actually understand.

At Chris Johnson’s suggestion, he joins us today. Here’s his bio:

Phil is an international tax lawyer. Home is in Pasadena, CA. Clients are all over the world. Yes, he’s of those people you read about, setting up foreign trusts and other weird stuff in small palm-fronded countries. His clients like U.S. real estate, although at the moment they are just kicking tires. Phil makes complex tax stuff easy to understand.

Sounds like a giant killer to me. Let’s give him a big axe and see what he can do with it.

April 17, 2009

Shop Talk: How Are You Collecting on Bad Debt?

by Mark Green

Database Marketing Expert

Seeing that 2007-08 were extremely rough years in our industry, we at Top of Mind experienced a significant rise in slow-pays and no-pays. Ultimately, we found ourselves with high-five figure 90-day+ receivables. Anyone who’s ever been in this position surely is aware of how uncomfortable it can be calling clients and asking for past due payments. After all, if we’re doing our jobs right – our clients ultimately become our friends.

There are basically two common approaches to collecting on receivables – and they’re polar opposites of each other:

Approach #1) The aggressive, finger-pointing, condescending way: I think this is the way most businesses pursue bad debt. Heck, when I was young and ignorant, I let a few personal account balances go late. The increasingly frequent calls I received from my debtors became threatening and borderline obnoxious. Certainly I wanted to make good on my debt, and ultimately I did. My motivation in paying the debt, however, wasn’t to please these bill collectors – it was simply doing the right thing and paying my bill as soon as I could. As far as my debtors were concerned, their tactics worked.

Approach #2) The compassionate, understanding and communicative way: I’d like to share how I’ve handled our bad debt over the past couple years.

I do not delegate collection calls to my employees. In my opinion, this is the kind of s**t work that causes employees to dread coming to work. It isn’t my employees’ fault that we let some of our clients get behind on their bill, why should it be my employees’ work to clean up a mess management created? 99% of collection calls come from me as the President of our company (with the other 1% coming from my partners).
I have one ground rule on how I treat a debtor – if they’ll communicate with me, I’ll bend over backward to help them. Clients who owe us money aren’t treated as “B-class” clients. I use my CRM system to take copious notes on all phone conversations and email threads – and I set reminders to check the status at reasonable intervals (depending on Read more

April 17, 2009

10 reasons big box brokers suck

by Jolenta Averill

Realtor, Indie Broker

Did I really just say that? Sorry but it’s high time to call a spade a spade.

I recently decided to cut the apron strings so-to-speak with my old broker and go “indie”. After paying in about $200K in exchange for about $12K worth of business over a five year period, I had to evaluate whether the relationship with my broker was anything other than terribly one-sided. Since about Year 1.5 when I began working full-time from home, I’d managed to become pretty independent in terms of how I operated and procured business. I finally saw I wasn’t getting much of anything in return for those hefty commission splits and transactions (not counting the occasional pep talk, although at times it was much appreciated.) So I left at the start of the New Year. Since making the split official, I’ve had a chance to evaluate the cost of every aspect of my business compared to what it used to be. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that my overall costs are much lower. More surprisingly, however, I also discovered:

1. business cards were a profit center for the broker
2. sign installations were a profit center
3. color copies were a profit center
4. template sites (complete with crappy framed in MLS data) were a profit center that did not even generate leads
5. advertising was a profit center
6. leasing back office space to agents was a profit center
7. accounting services were a profit center (in the form of huge transaction fees)
8. sending closings through the broker’s joint venture with a local title company was a profit center
9. home warranty applications were a profit center (by skimming off the top of agents’ referral checks)
10. 100% tax deductible sales meetings were a profit center – vendors paid the broker to have their mediocre template sites etc shamelessly endorsed & pushed on agents

But wait, you may be thinking. Surely there were other ways your broker was adding value? Sadly, not really. Training beyond the basics was almost non-existent. Occasionally something would be offered gratis, eg a bank talking about changing lending standards, thus hoping to get some loan business. Or “training” Read more

April 16, 2009

FHA and VA Assumable Loans Offer an Exit Strategy For Today’s Buyers

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

How can an FHA mortgage or VA home loan sell a home faster? When mortgage rates are 10% and the 5% government loan is assumable.

I’ve taken a few pokes at the contributors on Active Rain; John MacArthur isn’t one of them. John is a Branch Manager with Long and Foster, in Olney, MD. John points out that agents and originators are failing to highlight one of the best features of government loans:

You see, no one is focusing on one of the sweetest features of an FHA loan. Oh, they talk about the modest down payment and ease of underwriting. They talk about a certain comfort level that the loan will close. We don’t hear many folks mentioning the biggest asset about FHA loans.

They are assumable!

Stop for a minute and think about 3 years or 5 years or 10 years from now. What do you think mortgage rates might be in 2012 or 2014 or 2019? Do you really believe that in the face of increased government spending, increased inflation, increased devaluation of the dollar that rates will hold around 5%?

This is really good advice. Professional agents can distinguish themselves from the also-rans through an understanding of mortgage financing. Nervous first-time home buyers will appreciate that an agent is thinking about an exit strategy for them. John does it here:

Oh, and why might the lad on the left sell sooner? His 5% mortgage rate is assumable. Now, the new buyer will have to get a “wrap around” mortage for the difference between what is still owned on the FHA loan and the sales price and yes, that loan will carry the going rate at that time. The seller on the left will have to try to move his home at time when money surely will cost a bit more. It doesn’t take an MIT grad to discern that 5% on the bulk of a loan is much more attractive and affordable than the 8%, 9% or 10% or more that will be the rate in five years.

I added a scenario, with hard numbers, on Mortgage Rates Report.

Here are a few Read more

April 16, 2009

Introducing HeyCentralPa.Com (MMBB Part 2 of 365)

by Ryan Hartman

Retechulous...

Ok…In my last post I set today as my personal deadline for posting part 2 of 365 in my Mega Monster Broker Blog Experiment….

So here we go.

But first things first.

Nobody reached out and volunteered to pay me the big bucks….

Ruby Clementine Hartman

Bummer. But don’t cry for me. Rejection has forced the establishment of a model for this thing that might actually allow for the accomplishment of the holy grail in Real Estate blogging.

Yep. I think I may have actually figured out a way to get a large group of agents consistently blogging! And of course, the local broker pimp is nowhere to be found in this wicked little piece of innovation…

Fun Digression

I realize that my warnings that this would be a costly venture probably scared a lot of BHB readers from getting in touch with me, but I was surprised that none of these York Pa Area brokerages even responded to my emailed offers to talk to them about proceeding with this project locally. Even those recruiting fiends at KW didn’t respond to try to land me as an agent. (Ouch!)

My response? A Well Meaning “You Still Check Your Email Guys?”

And a…

(Self-Censored, Click At Your Own Risk)

if you didn’t respond because you don’t see the value in the idea…

🙂

Proceeding Without A Broker…

Here’s the thinking: Since I haven’t been picked up by one brokerage, I’m free to recruit agent contributor’s from amongst any of the thousands currently practicing in the CentralPa region, right? And with no interloping brokers there will be more left on the table for the agent contributor’s, right? I think so…

So HeyCentralPa.Com will be exactly what I said it would be a few days ago – A monster online publication written and sustained by a cooperative group of real estate agents looking to farm individual neighborhoods or niches by blowing the local chunks. The only difference – these agents won’t all come from the same office, and no one broker will benefit from the blood sweat and tears of their content contributions. Instead, HeyCentralPa.Com will run as a cooperative, with all agent partners receiving their fair share Read more

April 16, 2009

Andrew Klavan, “Night of the Living Government”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

The horror…

It’s a funny treatment of the issues, but the explication of why taxation is a conscription of the freedom to act is nicely done.

April 16, 2009

Bringing it. And sharing it.

by Eric Blackwell

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

It is just before 7am as I write this.

Our large office is dark and quiet this time of day, waiting another couple of hours before truly springing to life. But I am not alone. Seems there is always at least one of our 110 agents here getting some business done. That’s a good thing. But I really do enjoy this quiet time to reflect and plan. And write.

I have been trading e-mails since last night with someone coming to BHBU. She is not the first. Another attendee contacted me with his “homework” questions a few days ago. I think I caught her off guard by offering a small modicum of blog help before we get together in Phoenix next week.

As I sit here this morning, I thought it might be good for me to share with you why I am taking the time off and coming to BHBU. The guy who built our brokerage calls it sharing ideas. Harrell explains it this way. “If I have a dollar and you have a dollar and we give our dollars to each other, then we each still only have a dollar. If we do that with ideas, we each then have two.” (Addendum: It is often far more than two because of the stimulated thoughts from the original ideas) He is far from a typical broker and this is far from a typical brokerage. Harrell Tague is THE reason for that.

Greg refers to the synergy of shared genius as a scenius.

Call it whatever you will, I see it as a true principle. It has worked for me every time it has been implemented.

That’s why I have taken the time last year to go to the RealEstateWebmasters conference. And BHB Orlando. And now BHBU and soon to RealEstateWebmasters2009 and HomeGain Nation live.

The pay I get for these conferences is the synergy of shared genius (scenius) plus relationships with each of the people involved. The ideas and relationships that come from that are huge. It’s the kind of compensation that could keep one of our 110 agents in business Read more

April 15, 2009

“Americans today are taxed at levels most of our forebears would have considered unthinkable. By our own nation’s historical standards, we are outrageously, insanely overtaxed. And yet we shrug our shoulders and say, well, at least we’re not France…”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

The American Spectator:

How did it become “fair” for an American family to give to government a third of its income? How did it become “fair” for an American family to give to government half of its income?

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, Americans had never before experienced direct taxation. They rebelled. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied taxes on an array of British goods. The colonists responded by boycotting British imports. Parliament repealed most of the Townshend Acts in 1770 (except the tax on tea), and in 1773 passed the Tea Act, which essentially told Americans they had to buy their tea from the East India Company through government-approved merchants. Though the act actually lowered the cost of British tea, Americans were so outraged at Britain’s assertion of authority that they forbade tea-bearing ships from docking. And, of course, in Boston they threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

All of these taxes, by the way, were passed to finance the British Army. The newly independent United States taxed its people directly to pay off the war and ongoing conflicts with France, but in 1802, under President Jefferson, all direct taxation upon the American people was ended. That lasted for a decade, until we had to finance the War of 1812. That war was paid off by 1817, and Americans experienced no direct taxation from their federal government until 1861.

That means that “Manifest Destiny,” including James K. Polk’s war with Mexico, and the expansion of the country from coast to coast, was financed without a single direct federal tax being levied upon the American people.

The federal income tax imposed to finance the Civil War had two tax brackets — 3 percent and 5 percent — and was repealed in 1872. It remained off the books until 1913, when the 16th Amendment was ratified. The federal income tax rates in 1913 ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent. That highest rate applied to people earning $500,000 a year or more. Today, a married couple earning that much would pay a federal income tax rate of 35 percent, Read more

April 14, 2009

If you want to learn what we know — and to learn what we are learning — you’re coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Okay, this is my last pitch for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. If you can’t figure out which side of the bread has the butter on it, you’re just going to have to wear a bib.

Here’s the deal: What we’re going to teach you, nobody teaches. We’re going to go hands-ons, step-by-step through the things you need to be doing to create a state-of-the-art marketing profile. By the time you leave Phoenix, punch-drunk and exhausted, you will have built yourself a brand new marketing profile — just in time for the real estate market to make its rebound.

We’re going to be together for 72 hours, and out of that you might sleep 15 hours. The rest of the time we’re going to be working — in eight three-hour hands-on labs and in between-class and after-class sessions where we can learn, think and grow together.

The goal is to build a scenius, a shared genius among the bunch of us, so that we all come away smarter and better-equipped to take on the wired world of real estate.

What are you going to get for your money?

State-of-the-art weblogging techniques, photography and graphic arts expertise, social media marketing acumen and the salesmanship skills necessary to make belly-to-belly conversions. (Excuse me: To Skin cats.)

On my side of the quad, you’ll learn search engine optimization and search-engine marketing, lead generation and management techniques, landing pages and a whole lot more.

Taken together, we’ll be covering every step of the real estate marketing process from the customer’s first tenuous investigations through first contact, incubation, the sales cycle and conversion.

And these classes will be taught by actual working real estate professionals who are actually doing this work in their own practices.

Like who? Mister Ubiquitous, Brian Brady, is the Dean of Marketing. He’ll be leading Linda Davis, Kristal Kraft and Sean Purcell on the content side of the campus. I’ll be serving as the Dean of Geeks, working with Eric Blackwell, Kelly Kohler and the inmimicable Ryan Hartman.

There will be other people speaking, including Mark Green giving a presentation on CRM marketing. And there will be a support staff of experts to Read more

April 14, 2009

California Proposes to Regulate REALTORS Alongside Pawn Shops, and Lenders, and Banks…Oh MY!

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Assemblyman Pedro Nava sponsored a bill (CA-AB33) to reorganize our state’s financial services’ regulators to be under one umbrella, the newly created Department of Financial Services. The idea is to save a bunch of money for the State.

Of course, CAR is going nuts. Amy Steele reports via ActiveRain.com:

AB 33 (Nava), which C.A.R. opposes, was approved yesterday in the Assembly Banking Committee. This bill would abolish the Department of Real Estate, the Department of Corporations, the Department of Financial Institutions, and the Office of Real Estate Appraisers. AB 33 proposes to transfer the powers, duties, purposes, jurisdiction and responsibilities those departments to the Department of Financial Services, which would be a newly created overarching department. C.A.R. opposes AB 33 because the function of a real estate licensee is not to provide financial services, but to list and show houses for sale, sell or manage investment properties and raw land, and manage and oversee residential rental properties. Real estate licensees, regulated by the DRE, should not be blended in with the banks, credit unions, consumer finance lenders, residential mortgage lenders and pawnbrokers because, unlike these other licensees, real estate licensees are individually licensed agents that have a fiduciary agency relationship with their clients.

Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY! Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY! Pawnshops and lenders and banks, Oh MY!

What CAR (and Amy) conveniently left out is the subsequent bill (also sponsored by Nava); AB 34- Licensing of Individual Loan Originators:

Requires all mortgage loan originators to be individually licensed. Also requires all loan originators to register with a national database and submit criminal history background checks.

CAR has been calling for a bill like AB34 for a number of years but only if it fell under the Department of Real Estate. California was one of the first states to license individual originators, under the California Department of Real Estate. Let me re-highlight a key phrase to the opposition of AB 33:

Real estate licensees, regulated by the DRE, should not be blended in with the banks, credit unions, consumer finance lenders, residential mortgage lenders and pawnbrokers because, unlike these Read more

April 14, 2009

With San Francisco’s tenants rights the way they are, it’s always a tough fight .. but still: Peeking back through the looking-glass

by Brad Coy

Realtor, Urban Jedi

Mark’s post as well as Sean’s got me thinking. It’s certainly not unusual these days to ‘friend someone up’ on a social platform such as Facebook these days and learn just a little bit more than you wanted to know, but how would you deal with the situation of finding out a bit TOO much.

Then came along this hot story could be a guide in how to help with property management. Even with heavy handed tenants rights keeping a choke hold on you as a property owner, at least you might know what to do next about a bad tenant.

Tenants evicted after “Skins-style parties” at her home on Facebook

Carolyn Lorimer couldn’t resist a quick look at the latest snaps on Facebook of her old friend enjoying a party.

It seemed like quite a bash. Revelers rolled about clutching bottles of beer amid scenes of ripped wallpaper and smashed TVs.

There was even a picture of three girls wiggling their thonged bottoms as they danced on a table.

Not a very wise thing to do, trashing your flat and then having friends blow it up on Facebook with pics to prove how you throw a serious rager.

How about just pissing off your neighbors?

New media civil war on Rotten Neighbor.com

Drug addicts. They fight outside in the middle of the night over drugs, kick in people’s cars, and cant afford to clothe their children. Pretty much the scum of the earth. They like to leave garbage all over the place, spray-painted “#### Pigs” on their house, set fire to their own shed for fun

Wow! Looking out for your investment is getting easier, no? As a landlord or a property manager I wouldn’t waste too much time monitoring this, but I could think of a few easy ways to keep my ear to the ground. 🙂

eviction-letter

image courtesy of magerleagues on Flickr

April 14, 2009

Susan Boyle shows us how to skin a cat

by Teri Lussier

Rust Belt Realtor

Something light for a Tuesday afternoon.

I’m a sucker for the underdog. I’m a sucker for delightful surprises. I’m a sucker for big dreams and never giving up and making things happen when everyone else tells you it can’t happen.

Do you remember Paul Potts, who brought us to tears? In that tradition comes Susan Boyle, who dreamed a dream. I can’t embed the video, but please click over to watch. I dare you to tell me that you are not feeling inspired, uplifted, ready to take on the world, and empowered to Battle Back after watching this.

What’s the real estate connection? Oh honey, to me the connections are many, but please feel free to tell me what connections you find. I suspect different people will be able to pull different things from this performance.

May the Susan Boyles and Paul Potts of the world continue to show us how it’s done.

April 14, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen….Lower Your Prices By Making things Products…

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

I’ve been a freelancer, mostly, since November of 2007. (I closed about 4mm in loans in 2008, mostly 1st quarter). I’ve built websites, blogs, I’ve set up CRMS, and I’ve created landing pages, and sold a variety of e-books. I created an ill fated subscription service, (got it up to 30 members, then remembered the things I hate about loan officers) and I’ve built a ton of websites, done a ton of writing, and had an utter blast. I’ve delivered sometimes, f’d it up sometimes, and learned more faster than I ever have at any period of my life.

One of the things I learned…and that Dan Kennedy would freak out about is that lowering your prices means more profit, more relaxation, and better, happier clients with a chance to succeed. I used to charge people about $2,000 per blog. And I’d do a reasonable job with the blogs. I’d spend time training people in what WordPress does, I’d train them in how to post, I’d share my analytics with them, and I’d go through it. But for $2,000, you gotta have value. So people would continue to call. The service I offered wasn’t worth $2,000 to them, they felt like something MORE was needed. And honestly, they were right.

I had more time sunk into support and followup than the stuff that I was charging for. So, I thought some more about it.

And decided to lower all of my prices on everything I do. Because if you’re only charging $700 or $800 it’s a far different situation than $2,000. People can afford it, and it’s easier to meet that expectation. They have a level of indifference about the outcome because, honestly, $700 bucks isn’t going to make or break most months for most people. You can increase value by adding more information (videos etc) and it’s a BONUS and not an ENTITLEMENT.

To do that, though, ya need a defined process. The blue ocean thing: everyone was using the Thesis framework for blogs, why not make ’em look cool? I mean really cool? Take away the option from the customer, sell a Read more

by Phil Hodgen

Two mothers

Foreign seller

by Greg Swann

by Greg Swann

by Mark Green

by Jolenta Averill

by Brian Brady

by Ryan Hartman

Fun Digression

Proceeding Without A Broker…

by Greg Swann

by Eric Blackwell

by Greg Swann

by Greg Swann

by Brian Brady

by Brad Coy

by Teri Lussier

by Chris Johnson

Search BloodhoundBlog

Subscribe to our RSS feeds

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Back of the house

Media Contacts