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February 12, 2009

The Way of the Farmer in Downtown Seattle

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ll be doing a different version of The Way of the Farmer in Seattle today. I know we won’t be able to do a lot of hands-on stuff, but still I’m keen to take on some practical, real-life marketing problems.

Here’s my syllabus, for which I have about a zillion open tabs:

  • Expired package, physical and PDF
  • Listing card, physical and PDF
  • Set up a Scenius scene
  • Engenu
    • Set up a single preview page
    • Incorporate that pages into a site
    • Add a day of previews to the site
    • Add another day of previews
    • Completely recast the structure
    • Build a site composed of PDFs
    • Engenu and real estate weblogging
      • Historics
      • Investors
    • Illustrate Beryl sites
  • Listing praxis

I don’t know what we’re doing in the way of recording today’s event, so my advice is to be there if you can. See y’all later today.

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February 12, 2009

Has real estate reality taken all the fizz out of FSBOs?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

It’s been fun dealing with years-old academic studies of the real estate market insisting that For-Sale-By-Owner marketing is just as good as listing with a Realtor.

It might have been, during the boom, when any idiot could sell a house. But it’s been kind of sad to watch people in our current declining market trying to sell by themselves — or trying to sell with the Help-U-Fail style of discounters — or trying to sell with the usual crew of spelling-impaired white shoe Realtors.

For owner-occupants clinging to the last of their equity, there is no substitute in this market for actual real estate marketing. The white shoe boys will shine you on, and the rape-and-run guys will beat you up on price once a week, but to actually sell a premium-quality home at a premium price, somebody has to make a sales effort.

This is what FSBOs normally do worst, of course. Even the typically-clueless rain-dancing Realtor at least gets the basics right, when many by-owner sellers are busy finding unique and original ways to get in their own way.

But the market tells, doesn’t it? A short bit in Fortune hints that the fizz may be gone from the FSBO highball:

“I used to get a phone call a day from people interested in FSBO Web sites,” Zwiefelhofer says. “Now it’s maybe one call a week.”

So were FSBO sites just flashes in the pan? Murray says that with properties harder to sell these days, sellers are returning to brokers for professional marketing help, causing the unassisted slice of the market to slip to around 15%. But he expects the FSBO market to bounce back – eventually.

Not all by-owner sellers stink at the job. BloodhoundBlog Contributor Richard Riccelli is scary-good at marketing his own properties — witness 214Calhoun.com — and here in Phoenix, the people most likely to adopt our style of listing tactics are FSBOs — a sad commentary on the so-called “professionals.”

But in a market where even well-prepared, well-priced, well-promoted homes are taking a long time to sell, doing everything you can to make things hard on buyers is obviously a sub-optimal strategy. Read more

February 11, 2009

How can you benefit from the sexiest search site in the Real Estate 2.0 world without becoming an employee? Redfin.com is going into the referrals business

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had this news last night, under embargo, but I was tied up with geek stuff. The Cliff’s Notes: In areas where Redfin.com has MLS reach but does not have its own agents on the ground, starting today it will begin offering client referrals to agents it has screened and whose performance it will monitor and publicize on its website.

What follows is a piece of an email sent me by Redfin.com CEO (and BloodhoundBlog contributor) Glenn Kelman:

Maybe this seems like deck chairs on the Titanic because it doesn’t fix sub-agency – which I agree needs to be fixed — but it seems like a step forward to us. I mentioned it when we increased our prices and offered unlimited tours, that we had one more rabbit in the hat.

Starting tomorrow Redfin is going to start connecting folks in outlying areas to real estate agents who work for other brokerages. This has been done many, many times before, and it’s something Redfin could have done years ago, given all the traffic we have in outlying areas.

The Redfin twist – and the reason we waited so long — is that we wanted to do in a customer-centric way that also works for agents. Here’s what that means:

  1. Data: We suck in data about all the agents’ deals for the past year and we survey all their clients and then we publish *everything* — reviews, deals – on a continually updated web page. We survey every new deal too. The reviews we got are mostly good – too good right now – but that’s because response rates are low for long-past deals with only happy people replying. We do show every no-response, and every deal where the agent did not provide an email address for a past sale (they can’t do that going forward).
  2. Consumer in charge: The consumer is in charge, choosing the agent he wants to work with based on all this performance data (see attached screenshot) & he can fire the agent any time – no procuring-cause, no leads, no fees for leads, & the consumer always knows what he’s signing up for.
  3. Referral fee Read more
February 10, 2009

Should We Be A Good Society?

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

lunt new construction

Every morning – even in near zero degree weather – I walk my two dogs around my neighborhood – the jaunt is roughly 4 miles with a brief but necessary Starbucks break. While I’d like to admit the motivation is to remain healthy, the reality is the required expresso jolt is what gets me up in the morning.

A little over halfway through my walk, I pass by the sign I have posted – proudly identifying the Neighbors for Responsible Zoning’s (the Zoners) disdain for profiteering Realtors, developers et al. Evidenced now by the presence of two mediocre-ly constructed mini-mansions, the realtors and developers undoubtedly profited.

My neighborhood may be one of the most ethically and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. Short of bucolic, it is an established neighborhood with mature trees that canopy the cross streets lined with woodframe victorians, brick Prairie-inspired architectural gems and classic Chicago courtyard buildings. Many of the residents have lived in the area their entire lives, having watched the tide of transients transform the neighborhood. In the frenzy of the condo boom, affordable housing became in short supply. There is definitely a strong sense of community. People care about preserving the past as well as the semblance of community.

While the Zoners may not have had success in staving off the wave of new development, they have acted in the interest of preserving what they value.

This sign has really had an impact on me lately. In light of the many recent discussions regarding the impact of the current stimulus package – the implications on the housing industry – so much of the focus has been on the financial impact.

Ideology has drawn the line – we can’t interfere with the market for fear of socialism – government intervention simply prolongs the inevitable.

Admittedly, I have subscribed to that line of thinking, however, recently I struggle with the lack of balance to the enormous social costs – many yet unseen – to this financial mess. It is difficult to have sympathy for many people that Read more

February 10, 2009

Swanepoel’s Top 10 Real Estate Trends matter to me — and to real estate — quite a bit less than my own list of burning issues

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Stefan Swanepoel sent me a copy of his Top 10 Real Estate Trends Report, which was gracious of him, considering that neither me nor any of the Bloodhounds nor BloodhoundBlog itself are mentioned anywhere in the book — at least as far as I could detect on a cursory examination. I don’t mind, mind you. I’d be amazed if we were cited. That kind of attention is reserved for the likes of Sellsius and Agent Shortbus — the biggest little PR3 weblogs in real estate. Every pundit or entity even remotely connected to the official world of real estate honors us by ostentatiously affecting to ignore us. And: Even then: We care a lot.

I did surprise myself by actually cracking the book. I had it last year, too, but I don’t remember if I looked at it. And I don’t want to seem to be hyper-critical of Swanepoel’s effort. It ain’t for me, that much should be obvious. I can’t think of anything in the tome that strikes be as being either important or non-obvious — or non-trivial. The whole thing, and everything and everybody in it, seem like deck chairs on the Titanic to me — but so does everything else even remotely connected to the world of official real estate.

Here are the issues Swanepoel takes up:

  • Nightmare on Elm Street: What if Your E&O Insurance No Longer Existed?
    If the tenth biggest issue in real estate is a FUD factor, we’re in better shape than we knew. Excellent reason for getting rid of the broker’s license, but, of course, that doesn’t come up.
  • The “Real” Energy Crisis: Factors Shaping Housing Values and Development
    Predictions about energy are as reliable as predictions about the weather.
  • Winning the Gold: Green Movement Gains Grassroots Support
    If we assume an energy problem, much of the green issue will concern money, not the environment. For now, I read it all as a fad.
  • Information Highway Congestion: Too Much Traffic Creates a Virtual Parking Lot
    More FUD, in this case I suspect fuddy-duddy FUD. We are overwhelmed by information. Our only hope for salvation will come from Luddite real estate brokers who can’t Read more
February 9, 2009

What are the Stimulus Plan and TARP II going to mean for the housing and mortgage markets?

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

While I could write for a LONG time about it, I’m going to limit it to what I feel are the top 6 things that I think could very well happen.   Keep in mind, this is being written after watching President Obama’s press conference but before anything gets passed.

1. The market is expecting that both the Stimulus Plan and TARP II will provide “the answer” to the problems that are currently plaguing our economy.   With that being said, I believe the markets will be disappointed because the problems facing the economy are way more complex and urgent than what one or two bills can solve.   The disappointment will put downward pressure on stocks and upward pressure on rates.

2. The $15,000 tax credit for home buyers will pass but rather than jumpstarting the housing market, it will instead cause a few people to buy homes, mainly first time home buyers, and will extend the inventory problems that we have because prices won’t adjust as they should.   We won’t get nearly the “bang” for the $Billions that will be spent on the tax credits.   I’m sorry but I really think the main beneficiaries of the $15K tax credit will be mortgage lenders, real estate people and the relatively few people who were already thinking of buying.   Will it reduce inventories?  No, other than taking some bank owned inventory (for first time buyers) off the banks, the rest of the people will be “shuffling” inventory because they all have a house to sell.

3. Between the Stimulus Plan and the TARP II funds, we’ll (yes, it’s you and me) will be spending close to $1.2 Trillion.   Do we have the money?   No, we don’t, so we’re going to borrow it.   What will that mean to the market?   A couple of things are going to happen (obviously in my opinion):  1) The government is going to flood the market with debt in order to finance this spending.   That’s going to push the supply demand equilibruim off base and that is going to put upward pressure on mortgage rates.

4. What about that 4.5% mortgage rate?  Is it Read more

February 9, 2009

How bad can the weather in Seattle suck? Come see the Bloodhounds this week and find out

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have been in Seattle in the late Summer, an idyllic time of year when it barely rains twenty inches a day and when the Banana Slugs start to think about snuggling up with you for warmth. I have been on Mount Rainier on Labor Day — playing in the snow.

(People say “ray-near,” but it should be pronounced “rainy-er.” I live among a bunch of mountains, but not one of them suffers from excess precipitation like Mount Rainier.)

Brian Brady and I are in Seattle later this week. We’re flying up to do a BloodhoundBlog Unchained preview, then we’re hanging out through Friday for REBarCamp Seattle.

The weather in Phoenix actually sucks right now, but, by state law, I’m forbidden to disclose just how badly it sucks. But our sucky weather is utterly nothing compared to what I have to look forward to later this week in Seattle:

Water freezes at 32 degrees. That never happens where I live, in North Central Phoenix. It can happen once or twice a Winter out in the sticks, but in town ice is something we buy at the supermarket to make Irish Whiskey more refreshing.

My plan is to go totally gnome, comfortably numb, in-to-it like an Inuit. A vast and cumbersome leather overcoat, with a sweater, a scarf, maybe even a hat. To understand how big an exception this is for me, right now I’m wearing a tee-shirt and shorts, no shoes, no socks. And I’m sweating.

Totally gnome for my presentation, too. Everything we do at Unchained is going to be hands-on, learn-by-doing, but I can’t count on being able to do that in Seattle. Instead, as with The Way of the Farmer from last May’s BloodhoundBlog Unchained, I’m going to go through a lot of hard-headed, practical stuff that you can take home and deploy at once, if you like — if you take good notes.

It seems likely to me that I’ll be sneezing and sniffling, too. I moved to Arizona from North Andover, Massachusetts, which makes Seattle look like a tropical resort. For the life of me, I cannot remember how I used to survive Read more

February 9, 2009

Some ugly questions about that $15,000 home-buyers tax credit…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I let the hoopla over the $15,000 tax credit for home-buyers of all incomes slide last week. There’s way too much sick-making news coming out of Washington right now, and, somehow, Republicans dancing in triumph because they had managed to squeeze out a little theft for the rich — and for the NAR — was more than I wanted to try to digest.

Actually, my pet bette noir last week was the ridiculous idea of a compulsory 4% mortgage rate. What this economy really needs is a mandatory 720 FICO score!

Pinocchio — the NAR — is a vampire, a dead thing that feeds on the living, we all know that. But I was writing about that $15,000 gift from the taxpayers to the NAR this morning, and some ugly question came to me.

For one thing, this is a direct transfer of funds from the Federal budget to the housing industry. Normally I love the idea of starving the government, but the net effect of this tax credit is that we will artificially buttress home prices, delaying but not avoiding the ultimate price decline that we have to go through to achieve a true recovery.

Am I wrong? I read the tax credit as being a net reduction in taxes paid. If you owe $15,000 in taxes, but if you bought a primary residence, you pay no taxes.

I can’t see lenders resisting a bait like that. They will find a way to lend you the dough now, and you pay it off over the next 12 — or 24 or 36 or 360 — months. Your $15,000 can pay for up to 10% of the purchase price of the home, and your net tax liability will be reduced by $15,000 next April. If you have another $15,000 in cash — set aside for taxes, perhaps? — you’ve got an 80/20 loan on a $150,000 home with no PMI.

Let’s go once better: $15,000 down on an FHA loan gets you to a $428,571 purchase price — in excess of the jumbo limits in Phoenix. Have you been craving that $400K house up the block. It Read more

February 8, 2009

The Resistance Is Where The Action Is: Do what Others Don’t.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

So I’m designated the ‘cold calling guy,’ on BHB.   Fine fine fine.  Also cool that Jessica Horton said that she’ll always be calling her 4,000 past contacts.   That’s cool.  But I want my database to be about 50 people that I do loads of stuff work for and with.  The 50 best people.   To get there, there has to be planned churn.  I want to continuously improve the kind of customer I have.   Not till my client list includes Warren, Bill, Steve, Rupert…will I stop.   If I was a Realtor®, I’d not stop until EVERY bank CEO, hedge fund manager, and millionaire asked me to list some houses.

I at least admit that I’m here to sell you something.   Openly.  It’s been called the ‘implied accusation,’ here before.  I’m friendly, but I’m not yet your friend.  I tell you why I’m calling in 2 seconds.  (Oh, how many of those’ how are you doing today,’ calls have you had…)  More honest than beating around the bush, and more pleasant for both me and you.  I don’t drop hints, I’m here to help, and I’ll need to be paid for it. And I’ll help, and you’ll be happy.  It kind of sucks when you know someone wants to sell you but doesn’t have the balls to ask you.

Since my last post on Twitter, my account has nearly doubled in followers, and I’ll be at 1,000 followers sometime this week.  (Follow me at @genuinechris ).   I’ve limited myself to calling 10 people a day that are new followers because I can’t connect to everyone…but I’m calling…it’s fun.   I am checking out twitterhawk to do it more, and yes, I’m throwing folks in Heap…when I like ’em.

The reason that people don’t call more, is mostly that they are cowards.   There is magic in doing what others won’t. Almost all the time, if you can summon whatever it takes to do that, you’re going to separate from the pack.  Or herd, since we’re all pack animals.    Any place where people resist, there’s probably money to be made.  Something noone wants to do?  Something mentally hard?  Read more

February 7, 2009

Thirty-three touches from the cloud: Seriously seeking CRM

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We need a CRM solution, and it’s making me crazy that we don’t have one. We wrestled with REST for a couple of years, but we never got it cranking on all cylinders, and it lacks features I don’t want to live without. Chris Johnson raves about Heap, but I’m not sure it’s everything we need.

I need help, it’s true enough.

What I want:

  • Cloud-based. I don’t want any proprietary apps running on dedicated hardware. I want to be able to do my CRM business from any web-enabled computer and any iPhone anywhere.
  • iPhone empowered, therefore, of course. Needs to integrate with Contacts, iCal, etc., and it needs to sync periodically through the cloud.
  • Email-based data entry. Heap can do at least some of this. What I would like is to be able to have a form on a web page produce an email that is mailed to my CRM, with that email initiating a sequence of events: Create client record and initiate a particular set of sequences of follow-up contacts. These should be selectable by the email received: Investors should be subscribed to different campaigns from sellers or first-time home buyers.
  • Jott-able. Heap does some of this, also.
  • As tightly-integrated with Google Apps as possible. For example, I want the calendar to be the Google Apps calendar.
  • Action scripts or event scripts or whatever, as automated as possible, ideally already scripted with the text already written. By now we’re talking about the “33 touches” idea from The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but I want as much of this as possible to happen automatically and hands-free. As above, there will be different “8×8” scripts for new clients, and possibly also different “33 touches” scripts, but, once these are assigned, I want for them to proceed “untouched by human hands.” Agent 360 seems to be well-equipped in this regard.
  • Action scripts that require real live human action should create to-do lists for the affected team members.
  • We own our own data. That means we have the ability to move our data off in a usable format whenever we want, and our data is never shared with anyone else.
  • Simple to use, with Read more
February 5, 2009

Are We In Trouble?

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

We are in trouble …

The population of this country is 300 million.

160 million are retired.

That leaves 140 million to do the work.

There are 85 million in school.

Which leaves 55 million to do the work.

Of this there are 35 million employed by the federal government.

Leaving 15 million to do the work.

2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied with killing Osama Bin-Laden

Which leaves 12.2 million to do the work.

Take from that total the 10.8 million people who work for state and city Governments.
and that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.

At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.

Leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.

Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.

That leaves just two people to do the work.

You and me.

And there you are, sitting on your ass at your computer, reading jokes.

Nice. Real nice.

February 5, 2009

Ask the Bloodhounds: What do people want on a real estate web site?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Jim Flanagan of Flanagan Realty has a nice-looking Coldwell Banker site. But he sends along this question, which I’m passing on to the brilliant minds who read, write and comment here:

What does today’s real estate consumer want in (on) a real estate brokerage’s website? You may have answered this before but I have not been able to find the “list” on GOOGLE.

It’s an interesting question. Even if you have the secret sauce, how do you enhance that initial moment of engagement? Rephrased as a more metrical question, how do you cut the dreaded bounce rate?

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February 5, 2009

Things not to do…

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

At Unchained this spring, we are going to cover a lot of what TO DO when it comes to making your web presence as a REALTOR search engine friendly. That is going to be fun and I am looking forward to it.

But lately I am seeing more and more BAD advice and examples go out to REALTORS and I figured it was time to post a couple of things NOT to do.

Google has made it clear that link exchange schemes (aka reciprocal linking schemes) are a no-no. Search engines use links as a method of gauging a site’s (or post’s) popularity and relevance. Yet if you Google real estate link exchange and look in the pay per click section, what do you see?

Several REALTOR sites openly asking for exchanges. Paying to get people to look at their link exchange directories. Good grief. And one of them ranks #1 for a major city’s real estate terms! Geez…If someone comes to you and says “This is how to do it.” Run, don’t walk. You are getting some insanely bad advice.

Sad part is…the REALTOR may not even know how bad this is.

Should there be ANY PPC ads from people asking for reciprocal link exchanges? I don’t think so.

Other bad examples…Google came out and said clearly that buying links was a no-no. The thing is, how can you tell whether a link is paid or not? It is difficult to tell. The best advice is to make sure that whoever is linking to you looks natural because they ARE.

Since I was looking at Trulia’s pages yesterday, here’s a page that may or may not be paid. Do I know? Nope. But the thing is, it LOOKS like a paid link because why would a REALTOR in Columbus IN put the exact links to the “most Popular” city real estate pages on Trulia. And these same links are on many pages of that site.

Here’s some more info from Eric Bramlett on Trulia and some of the things going on there. (He’s done a great job of breaking it down and making it understandable for Read more

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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.

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