BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Archives (page 143 of 372)

February 19, 2009

Monetizing What Counts – Don’t Rain on Their Parade

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

My brother called me late last week. He lives in Dallas with his wife and kids – he’s in his early 40’s, smart, tech-savvy and owns his own business. He wants to buy a new home. The home he wants isn’t currently listed with a real estate agent – it’s a pocket listing FSBO so to speak -the owner would like to sell but doesn’t want to actively list and sell it. She’ll sell at the right price – she’s not going to go out of her way to find a buyer.

My brother has bought and sold a few homes, rarely with the assistance of a real estate agent – he’s open to cooperating with an agent when he wants to sell his home, but simply not keen on paying a commission for something he feels he is more than capable of doing himself.

I am not an evangelist. If he wants to do it himself, more power to him.

Funny thing happened, however – his call was a plea for help. He wanted me to review the standard real estate sales contract – he doesn’t know what boxes to check – or at least wants to make sure that he’s checked the right ones. He needed to move relatively quickly so he could get his hook into the “unlisted” home before word got out that she would entertain offers.

“Listen Tom, I really need your help – I’ll even pay you.”

Putting the whole lack of being licensed in Texas aside, a smile came across my face. ALAS, my brother of all people understands the value of expertise and knowledge – and you know what, it ain’t free.

I asked him how he knew whether or not the house he wanted to buy was actually worth what the seller wanted?

Not sure but felt her price seemed reasonable. I told him to go to Zillow and find out what it’s Zestimate was – the good news was it fell within a few thousand of the seller’s target price of $1M.

I walked through the contract with my brother Read more

February 19, 2009

The bad news: Obama’s housing relief plan is a giveaway to lenders, not homeowners. The worse news: It won’t work, anyway.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you read the news this morning, you’ll find Realtors all over the country rejoicing that President Obama has surged into the depressed real estate market on a white charger, bearing with him an heroic plan to rescue everyone — borrowers, lenders and especially Realtors. No discouraging words? To the contrary. Some Realtors think Obama’s promise of $275 billion in mortgage bailouts does not go far enough.

Here are two important questions to put the matter into perspective:

1. By how many dwellings will the standing inventory of housing be reduced under Obama’s plan?

2. By how many households will Obama increase demand for housing?

Since the answer to both of these questions is zero, we can predict with certainty that President Obama’s housing relief plan will do nothing to relieve the housing crises.

What will it do? The true essence of the plan is Rotarian Socialism for lenders. Obama’s hope — probably hopeless — is that if lenders take a lot of small hits now — by refinancing homes for substantially less than is owed on them — they can avoid a lot of much bigger hits later — by not having to foreclose on those homes.

But the real problem — in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, South Florida, the Rust Belt, etc. — is that the residential real estate market is overbuilt. There are more houses seeking homeowners than there are homeowners (or tenants) seeking houses. The real estate crisis will not end until supply is reduced, demand increases — or both.

Obama is trying to shove a floor under home values. But since this does nothing to correct the systemic problem — oversupply — he is simply pissing away money while delaying the ultimate and unavoidable market correction.

Want a true housing relief plan?

Here in Arizona, we could do ourselves a huge favor by repealing the employer I.D. check law that drove all of our undocumented friends out of the state — just at the wrong time.

And it would make great sense to make immigration to America easier and faster. Imagine having neighbors who work hard, pay their bills on time and can spell correctly!

But those Read more

February 18, 2009

Pin Money

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

1960

“Genie… here’s a quarter. Now run down to the corner and get me a Hershey’s from the store.  You keep the extra coppers for pin money.  Don’t tell Big Gene.”

My father’s mother was sneakier than any of her twenty-one grandchildren when it came to copping a candy fix in broad daylight.  A final stage diabetic, her pancreas barely running on fumes, Grandma Petro somehow managed, through simple fear of the Lord and all that His wrath might subsume in the afterlife beyond, to squeak out a few extra years of existence in the back bedroom of my uncle’s Levittowner before slipping away forever one snowy afternoon in front of  the 13″ black-and-white that rose above the medicine bottled landscape of  her night stand.  The last words I remember her telling me shortly before she died were,  “Remember Genie, God did not put us on this earth to be happy.”  I looked around her tiny room and dwelled on the thought as she prepared in her own way to pass away. I’ve tended to resist the pundits, across the board, ever since.

I was  the only youngster in the clan she trusted enough to routinely make the street corner run and actually return with her chocolate dope; the few copper coins from the grocer, a meager compense for my silence. “Pin money,” she’d insist. Whatever that meant.  The woman terrified me and loved me at the same time.

For half a generation, eight people lived under the pitched roof of that modest three bedroom, one bath tract home just north of Philly and across the river from Jersey.  Grandma occupied the tiniest room in the back; my aunt and uncle, the largest; the five children of varying ages and gender split the square footed difference with blankets and pillows strewn in every remaining  corner of carpet.  By 1968 the family finally added another bedroom and bathroom to the tax rolled address along with three more kids and a foster child.  Life trickled on.

1980

On occasion of the long anticipated and touted Mortgage Burning Party celebrating the last and final payment to the Savings and Loan, Read more

February 17, 2009

A big heap of Heap goodness: Revising my universal contact form to create Heap records, assigning initial drip campaigns to them

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve rebuilt my universal contact form to be Heap-friendly. Now, in addition to emailing you and the prospect with a quick follow-up, as well as optionally epaging you, the form will also optionally create a new Heap lead with the contact information and with the name of an initial drip campaign to be assigned to that prospect.

The revised form draws upon a new initialization file, which is called “HeapInitialization.txt.” This file works along with “HeapContactMeForm.txt” to specify the unique variables that apply to your situation.

So, for example, the first line of “HeapInitialization.txt” will contain your Heap account name, which is used along with your email address to establish your bona fides when we are communicating with Heap.

The next lines of “HeapInitialization.txt.” comprise the menu of choices you will make available to your users. This is the default menu:

Buying a home|Buying
Selling a home|Selling
Relocating to Phoenix|Relocation
Acquiring income properties|Investment
Real estate advice|Consultation

To the left of the vertical bar is the menu text. To the right is the value that will be assigned to that choice — and which will be transmitted to Heap along with the contact record. Ideally, that value should also be the exact name of an existing event template in your Heap installation.

You can edit either the menu text or the menu values at will, to reflect your unique circumstance.

If you elect to omit the menu lines, the form will revert to a text box in that position, and whatever text the prospect enters will be transmitted with the emails and epages. If you leave “HeapInitialization.txt” empty or delete it from your server, everything will work as before and nothing will be transmitted to Heap.

You can see the Heap-specific form live at our Phoenix real estate weblog.

If you want a copy of your own — guess what? Fill out the form:

< ?PHP $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/SendTheFormForm.php"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); ?>

It’s a pure geek thrill, but everything that happens after this is automated via Heap, untouched by human hands…

Technorati Tags: , ,

February 17, 2009

Marketing Advice from the Grave

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

San Diego lost a local icon last Friday.  George “King” Stahlman was a bail bondsman known throughout the county and I suspect, thanks to this once being simply a “Navy town,” parts well beyond the county.  His passing, while important to many, is not really the stuff of a national real estate blog.  But he was a master marketer.  I doubt you could  find a dozen people living in San Diego who can’t sing his latest commercial jingle:  “It’s better to know me and not need me, than to need me and not know me.”

Even in death, King Stahlman still has something to teach.  This, his motto, as reported in an article in the local paper announcing his death:  “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”

Vaya con Dios “King” Stahlman…

February 16, 2009

Honoring Great Leaders for President’s Day

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Did you ever have the feeling something very bad just happened?  You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you sense something is wrong.  Or worse, there’s that feeling you sometimes get that not only is something bad happening, but someone, somewhere is orchestrating it.  Very eerie: the hint of impending doom, the frustration, the uneasy awareness  something dreadful has been laid out for you and there’s nothing you can do.

As painful as those feelings may be, they’re not normally accompanied by anger – not unless there’s also a sense of outrage.  To be really and truly angry, you must not only sense something very bad is happening and someone else is causing it to happen – but the added insult that they enjoyed doing it.

As if maybe they were laughing at you…

stimulus-bill-laughing

Democratic House members, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (second from left) and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York (right), laughed at a news conference Thursday after the House had approved the stimulus bill.

February 16, 2009

Piling onto Heap: I’ll trade you a big bunch of CRM development ideas for an affiliate link click-through

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If your contact information is on any of the BloodhoundBlog Unchained interest lists, I spammed you last week with a form email that pitched the then-upcoming Seattle Unchained preview as well as the still-upcoming BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix event.

The form letter was sent out as bulk email from the Heap CRM software application, and I played a few games with the software: The letter asked recipients to click on a link that opened a web-based form that in turn solicited them to complete and update their contact information — not just name and email but also phone numbers and snailmail address. That form in turn fed its input back to Heap, in effect semi-automatically scrubbing our Unchained database.

The response rate is over 25%, so far, which is just astounding to me, but the essence of the thing was to put Heap through its paces. As I discussed a little while ago, I want a highly-programmable CRM solution that I can use to automate our databases. Heap seems to be the best solution for the work we need to do, as a compromise between power and cost–per-user.

I’m going to be talking about everything I do with Heap, going forward. I’ll make the tools I build with it available, starting with a new version of my universal contact form that will not only create new contact records within Heap but will assign those contact to the appropriate drip email campaign.

After that, I want to build code that will do a truly robust round-trip contact scrub, because I’m thinking you can get people who really want to do business with you to tell you anything you might want to know.

For now, I need some help from you:

If you are signing up for Heap, I’d appreciate if you would use this link. I will get credit in Heap’s affiliate program. We’ll donate the affiliate fees to charity, but with each new sign-up, I will gain clout with the developer. As always, I’ll be sharing every new idea I come up with, but if we can demonstrate that wired real estate professionals are a significant portion Read more

February 16, 2009

The ActiveRain hokey pokey: You shoot your left foot off, you shoot your right foot off, you shoot your left hand off — and then you present the audience with an invoice…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What costs $360 a year and puts you in touch with vast hordes of sweet people who cannot do business with you? Starting today, Active Rain will cost $30 a month for new members.

That’s a load of dough. If you want to host your own WordPress.org weblog, a perfectly adequate hosting account at HostGator.com will run you $4.95 a month. Toss in ten bucks a year for the domain and you’re still less than $70 a year. For $7.95 a month, you can host unlimited domains, which puts two domains at $116 a year, three at $126, ten at $196. For $360 a year, you could host 26 unique domains. Or you could get a BloodhoundBlog.net blog for free, aliasing it to your own domain name for free.

The demurrer from ActiveRain will be that they are delivering added value. But most of that added value comes from selling the membership to each other — all with advertising and extra-cost features piled on top.

I met many of the AR folks in Seattle last week. Very nice people, fun and enthusiastic. But if your idea of a productive use of your time is schmoozing with other Realtors, Twitter is (still) free…

Technorati Tags: , ,

February 15, 2009

Making the Scene: How to create new public Scenius scenes

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve written a ton about Scenius scenes, but, until lately, we’ve kept the scene creation praxis fairly close to our vests. I had documented the process very early for the folks who were involved in the original discussion of the Scenius idea, then shared that video how-to with other folks by email.

But we’re doing things differently than we were last November. And I took up the topic of scene creation in public in Seattle both Thursday and Friday. On Friday, I promised to cook up newer, better documentation by Monday.

I’m a day early. Click on this link to be swept off to a comprehensive site on how — and why — to create a public Scenius.net scene.

The site features three videos, including a link to the one made by Jim Reppond at Friday’s presentation.

There are also links to some of the pages mentioned in the first video, which is intended to be the canonical scene creation reference, as well as links to BloodhoundBlog posts on the how and why of Scenius scenes.

Let me know when you create a new public scene and I will add it to the index at Scenius.net.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

February 14, 2009

Living that Seattltude: Bloodhounds listening above the Sound

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Still recovering from two exhausting days in Seattle. Brian Brady and I both had a great time. Taught a ton, learned a ton and met a lot of truly wonderful people.

The Zillovians were excellent hosts, pulling out all the stops for both the BloodhoundBlog Unchained event and for REBarcamp Seattle. They basically gave an entire floor of their offices to the RE.net, with spaces big and small for people to get together.

Zillow’s offices are on the 41st and 46th floor of a vast office tower. I would marvel that the building has its own Starbucks, but so does every other structure in Seattle. Here’s the view, looking north and east over the Puget Sound:

Here’s a panel from the Unchained conference featuring Rhonda Porter, Marlow Harris, Brad Coy and Rich Jacobson.

We capped off the day with a debate featuring Glenn Kelman and me. The photo shown here was taken by Marlow Harris. Marlow also shot some video clips, and I may post those later today.

REBarcamp Seattle was a lot of fun for me, mostly because I just did my own stuff and didn’t worry about it. Here’s Zillow’s Drew Meyers delivering the convocation:

On Thursday night, Scott Cowan approached Brian, asking him if he thought I might have time to talk to him on Friday. Brian laughed at the question saying, “If I know Greg Swann, he’s not going to go to any classes. Just grab his ear and ask what you want to know.”

Brian knows me better than I know myself. He signed us up to lead a session on group blogging, then later sent me off to teach a class on setting up Scenius scenes (for which I will provide better documentation Real Soon Now). Other than that, I spent my day in small offices (with incredible views) going at things one-on-one with anyone who wanted to talk to me.

Notably…

Al Lorenz is building a media empire in bucolic Lake Chelan, Washington. He wanted to learn how to build a Scenius scene, but he ended up teaching Brian and me a ton of juicy tidbits about Joomla.

Al later drove the computer Read more

February 13, 2009

Keeping It Light For Friday The 13th

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Sometimes You Have To Push The Seriousness Away. Seriously.

Fellow blogger April Winchell posted this little tidbit a few days back:

If you’ve ever read President Obama’s Dreams From My Father, good for you. I couldn’t get past the foreword.

I wish I had. Because today I discovered that there’s a fairly juicy little subplot in the book, involving one of Obama’s high school friends.

Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.

This would all be snickerworthy enough, but it turns out that Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.

And that means he read Ray’s quotes.

And that means you’re about to hear the President of United States using language that would finish Cheney off once and for all.

Warning: Mature Content

http://tinyurl.com/cvrbap

(Don’t shoot me – I’m only the messenger)

February 12, 2009

De-Commodotize Your Listing Content

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

This is in response to Greg’s post about Jim Flanagan’s question, “What does today’s real estate consumer want in (on) a real estate brokerage’s website?”  “Listings” was the predictable, correct answer.

It’s no secret that Real Estate Web site users are primarily interested in listings. That’s why everyone has them, and that makes listings a commodity.  That begs the question: When everyone offers the content that your target audience is looking for, how do you set your site apart?

Blogging is one answer, but at the outset most consumers are not looking for you or your expertise, they are looking for listings, so at the end of the day, listing content is still the most powerful thing you have control over when it comes to attracting users to your site.

Before I spent most of my time on Real Estate (I heard you get to make your own hours and its easy money, plus I am a real “people person”), I managed eCommerce sites for a living.

If there is one golden rule of successful B2C eCommerce, it is this: Content is currency.

Consumers are used to the wealth of content that Amazon puts around a copy of Home Buying for Dummies. They are not impressed by cheap, 50-word “descriptions” full of Real Estate jargon and one or two grainy pictures from the IDX feed that feature cat boxes, dishes in the sink, and amateur porn lighting.

Google is not impressed when the content you offer on your own site is identical to the content that is offered on sites it considers more authoritative than yours.

The answer is to add value to your currency. Start by minting rich content and then stop giving it away and you will get more visits from both Google and humans. It’s a three-step process:

Step 1: Develop rich content for your listings, or for listings that you get permission to modify on your site. At a minimum, that means a few hundred words of grammatically correct English, lots of decent photos, and the right meta data in the right places.

(There have been many posts on BHB about how to write decent listing Read more

« Older posts Newer posts »

Inventing Real Estate 2.0

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.

Media Contacts