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January 5, 2009

Free “gifts” for real estate webloggers: “The need to deny influence is damaging to the soul”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

On Vendorslut Eve, here are a couple of quick notes on free “gifts” and their intended influence:

Richard Riccelli points out this New York Times article:

Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies — Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs — that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.

No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X. So are pens advertising the Sepracor sleep drug Lunesta, in whose barrel floats the brand’s mascot, a somnolent moth.

Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians. But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients.

It’s not just a matter of subliminal influence. When every pen and pad you use comes from a vendor, the vendors are underwriting your office supplies budget. The “in-kind” gift translates directly to an “in-cash” benefit.

Here’s a very complete disclosure on this issue of “gifts” and affiliate marketing from the Mortgage Sales Blog:

While most of the information provided on this mortgage blog does not include product pitches or personal agendas, some of the authors may generate income by selling services to loan officers or real estate agents.

Personally approved mortgage vendors participate on this blog as a way to expand their online reach, develop relationships with our readers, and prove that their products are worth taking a look at.

In the instance where it is not obvious, I will make every attempt to be fully transparent with our readers about any affiliate agreements where the Mortgage Sales Blog receives financial compensation by promoting a product or service on this blog.

As of Jan 4th, 2009, the Mortgage Sales Blog (Mark Madsen) has not promoted any product or service where an Read more

January 4, 2009

Filters Aren’t Just for Coffee

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

As I take stock of 2008 and move into 2009, I’ve decided to  develop and implement a strategy for transforming my business moving forward.  I’ve settled on a theme for this year – creating, delivering and leveraging knowledge.

My goal for 2009 is to become a better filter.

I want to become an expert filter – more importantly, be recognized as an expert filter – transforming information into knowledge.  I had a very interesting conversation this morning with a client regarding the state of the current real estate market in Chicago.  After three attempts of getting several properties under contract, my client and I finally succeeded in getting a deal together.  We visited the unit again this morning.  After seeing the unit, I sensed his apprehension when talking about next steps.

He wants to renegotiate the price now after having the property under contract.  He’s been actively reading on the blogs that prices are continuing to fall in the US – he cited Case Shiller’s recent price decline of 18% as the reason why he should pay even less than our negotiated price.

This became a real example of why information is not knowledge.

I became a filter – he was not really aware that the indicator, often touted in daily news sound bites about the ailing US real estate market, was actually an aggregated statistic for 20 metro areas in the US – Chicago faring slightly better at alittle over 10% decline since the same period last year.  To drill even deeper, the indicator measures single family home prices, not condos .  The decline hasn’t impacted every neighborhood equally.  Perhaps more importantly, we have spent the past 5 months searching for properties in four different neighborhoods within the city.  The process was an eye-opening experience for him – he learned that while inventory was plentiful, there were only a handful of properties actually worth buying.

While I am not keen on resolutions, I have decided to spend less time listening to the 24 hour, continuous coverage of catastrophe that our news has become.   Without the proper context and filtering, consumers are simply mis-educated and misinformed regarding Read more

January 3, 2009

If selling is not a viable option, you need to fall in love with your house all over again

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
If selling is not a viable option, you need to fall in love with your house all over again

The foreclosure market dominates the news, but it remains that good old-fashioned American homeowners occupy the overwhelming majority of Phoenix-area homes. That’s the good news.

And here’s some even better news: If you have significant equity in your home, you can probably refinance right now, reducing your monthly payment.

But here’s the bad news: Unless you absolutely have to, you probably won’t be moving for at least five years.

Don’t believe the number you see on that refi appraisal. At most, your house is worth the same amount as a comparable lender-owned home, plus the net cost to bring that home up to the livability of yours.

Swallow hard. You may have read in the paper that Americans lost $2 trillion in real estate equity in 2008. That’s a specious number. Money is the stuff you can fold up and spend. The equity in your home is unrealized money. You weren’t rich when your home was worth a lot, and you’re not poor now that it isn’t.

But what you are is stuck, practically speaking.

You don’t want to sell your house for what it can bring right now. If you do, you will lose money. But, refi or not, you’re making your payments.

If your home really was purely an investment, like a stock, it might be wise to dump it, take your lumps and move on.

But your home is not only where your heart is, it is very probably where most if not all of your savings are. You need to wait for the market to turn so you can sell at a profit.

So what should you do?

My advice: Paint.

Patch that stucco and paint it. Caulk the wood at the eaves and the trim and paint it. Clean out the house one room at a time and patch and paint the walls, repairing and painting the molding.

You’re stuck in your house for the next five years. It’s time to fall in love with it all over Read more

January 3, 2009

A premium appeal for Vlad Zablotskyy: If you’ll give $200 to his defense fund, we’ll give you a set of BloodhoundBlog Unchained DVDs

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of the biggest stories we followed in 2008 was Vlad Zablotskyy’s legal battle with ePerks.com. The fight ended in a settlement, about which it were better for me to say nothing, but it suffices to say that ePerks has filed for bankruptcy.

Working together, we raised a ton of money for Vlad’s Legal Defense Fund — but not nearly as much as was needed. Brian Brady and I would like to do what we can to help reduce Vlad’s legal debt.

So here’s our proposal: If you will make a $200 donation to the Vlad Zablotskyy Legal Defense Fund using the PayPal button shown below, we will send you a complimentary set of DVDs from BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix, 2008. The DVDs sell for $199, so you’re essentially getting them for free, in exchange for your donation.

Why are we doing this? Because Vlad jumped on the grenade for all of us. What happened to him could have happened to any one of us. For my own part, I have tried to make this episode instructive for any other corporate attorneys who decide that webloggers are easy targets. But it remains that Vlad took the flak that could have been aimed at any one of us. We can only imagine what he and his family have been through this year, but at least we can help to lift this finacial burden.

Click on the “Donate” button and let’s put “paid” to this kind of intimidation against real estate webloggers.


Support Vlad Zablotskyy’s Defense Fund
Defend your own right to free speech!

January 2, 2009

Bloodhounds In The Emerald City

by

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

Author website

RE BarCamp Seattle has a time and a date.  From Todd Carpenter:

Rich Jacobson and Brad Andersohn from Active Rain, along with Drew Meyers from Zillow have established the basics. A date and venue. February 13 at Zillow Headquarters.  This happens to follow a Bloodhound Unchained preview event held the day before, also at Zillow headquarters, and also free!

Greg and I are pretty stoked about heading to the Emerald City.   Scott Cowan signed up for Bloodhound Unchained Phoenix ‘O8 but had to decline participation to tend to familial duties.  Since then,  Scott’s been lobbying us to head up to Seattle to out on our “Mini-Unchained Event” for Coffee Bean Town.  Last month, I told him we’d gladly come if he could round up a venue and a group of eager people.  Scott called the folks at Zillow and we arranged to be a prequel to Seattle RE BarCamp.

Our event will be from 1PM until 5:30 PM, on Thursday, February 12, 2008, at the Zillow Headquarters. We’ll be talking about Direct Marketing (online and offline), Social Media Marketing, and Blogging.  David Gibbons and Rich Jacobson agreed to speak, as well.  Marlow Harris raised her hand to attend but I’m hopeful to have her to speak.

Our concluding session will be a debate between Glenn Kelman of Redfin.com and Greg Swann.  They’ll be discussing Glenn’s thoughts about whether size really matters.  Glenn outlines the case for why the little guy might get squashed:

This is a change. Marketing, which used to be the large brokers’s primary advantage, is actually getting cheaper — if Bloodhound has proved anything, it’s that the web has made marketing a question of what you have to say not how much you have to spend.

But the cost of running a real estate search site is rising fast. Large brokers throw money (if not always expertise) at the problem, while small brokers struggle to compete. The small brokers ask MLSs to provide a common set of services, like listing alerts, but the large brokers sometimes block these efforts as being beyond the MLSs’ charter.

Greg Swann thinks the little guy has the advantage:

I want Read more

January 2, 2009

Thinking About This Whole Social Media Thing As a ‘Non Expert’

by

Realtor, Certified EcoBroker

Author website

Ya know, this whole Social Media thing is pretty funny when you think about it.  For a little while now I have just sort of sat back and watched instead of hopping in to create a conversation.  It’s kind of like sitting at the airport and watching how people react to different things.  By no means am I a social media expert, I don’t really think I want to be one ~ I’m just a Real Estate Professional that finds it all really interesting and enjoys meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends.

One of the sites I find the most interesting is Twitter.  It’s amazing how everyday there seems to be another site that helps you ‘use’ it as a tool.  You can go and find out who is following you back-maybe get your feelings hurt when you find out who is not reciprocating or Grade your twitter stream and find out how you rank or if you just pretty much suck at socializing..

All of these tools seem, in my eyes atleast, to make us more vulnerable in so many ways.  It all takes so much time.  Where our blog used to be what we needed the most, folks are saying there is no point in having a blog if you are not on every Social Media site imaginable.

While I love the Social sites, have met some amazing people and truly value all of the Relationships that have formed through Social Media Sites-what is this doing to business?   Are we at some sort of tipping point?

All of this just makes me think about how much time it really takes away from conducting business.   While we may be out there creating opportunities, marketing a listing or other service, prospecting…are all of these ‘tools’ that ‘grade’ us  in a way taking away from what we should really be focusing on?  Are we worrying so much about making others happy in what we say, tweet or update that we are not connecting with people on a real one on one level?

I am totally in agreement that Social Media is a place to be, Read more

January 2, 2009

Kevin Kelly: A New Kind of Mind

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Technium:

Instead of dozens of geniuses trying to program an AI in a university lab, there are billion people training the dim glimmers of intelligence arising between the quadrillion hyperlinks on the web. Long before the computing capacity of a plug-in computer overtakes the supposed computing capacity of a human brain, the web—encompassing all its connected computing chips—will dwarf the brain. In fact it already has.

Pascal kept a room full of “Rainmen” — idiot-savant math geeks — as human calculators. He could have done the problems he threw off to them himself, but they saved his time for the work they could not do.

While we will waste the web’s ai on trivial pursuits and random acts of entertainment, we’ll also use its new kind of intelligence for science. Most importantly, an embedded ai will change how we do science. Really intelligent instruments will speed and alter our measurements; really huge sets of constant real time data will speed and alter our model making; really smart documents will speed and alter our acceptance of when we “know” something. The scientific method is a way of knowing, but it has been based on how humans know. Once we add a new kind of intelligence into this method, it will have to know differently. At that point everything changes.

Read the whole thing.

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January 1, 2009

Upgrade play Part II: Grunion contact form

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

All of the stand-alone BloodhoundRealty.com-hosted blogs (that is, the SplendorQuest.com blogs) are going to WP 2.7 this weekend, with a few changes in our standard line-up of plug-ins. If we host you at BloodhoundBlog.net, your big changes will wait for the release of WordPress Multi-User 2.7.

But the plug-in discussed here, the Grunion contact form, is available to you from any weblog we host. (SQ.com admins may have to Activate it.)

Here’s how you use it: Put the words contact-form between [square brackets]. That’s all. You’ll get a contact form that emails its responses back to you. Very simple, very smart.

So: In the text-input box shown below, tell me how much you like the Grunion contact form:

January 1, 2009

Content is King: How do you crown yours?

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I was quietly writing on a different post this morning when an email or two from my buddy Cal Carter kicked me in the butt and made me switch gears.

One of the first principles of internet marketing (and marketing in general) is that you follow the eyeballs. Preferably the RELEVANT (targeted) eyeballs of those who are mostly likely to use you product or influence those who will. Wherever they are find them. Target them. Starting with the highest ROI and working down the list until you have all of the business you can handle.

Why do we optimize for Google vs Yahoo or MSN?
More relevant eyeballs to be had at the least cost. Simple as that.

Why do we use facebook?
Brian Brady showed us in Orlando that you can HIGHLY target niche eyeballs using it. And those coming to Unchained in Phoenix will hear MUCH more about that I am sure.

Would it surprise you if I told you that for the last month or two, over 30% of the traffic to EricOnSearch has come directly from Twitter? (true story…).

That’s what I get for listening to Teri (thanks Teri!!) and finally trying to make solid business use of Twitter! 2 new customers, and much more traffic every day. (Hint: What’s your Tweet / Follower ratio?) That’s the key metric in terms of ROI in my world.

(side note: Do you have the authority (read: credibility) to send 100 people to your blog simply by letting them know that you posted? Here is the BEST question…when they visit, are they impressed enough to link to it? Maybe even to syndicate it?)

Pat Kitano and friends are promoting Social Media conscious marketing as “online marketing without blogging”. Of all of the things I think Pat gets right, this is a point I (humbly) disagree with. Blog is NOT a 4 letter word (contrary to popular belief).

LAZY is. (I don’t wanna blog is too often code for I don’t wanna put effort in. Time to face that truth and call it what it is.) Own that.

I totally agree with him that a Read more

January 1, 2009

Happy New… ah, to hell with it.

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Please, allow me to be the very first to wish you a Happy New Year!  What’s that?  Not the first huh; the second?  The tenth?  Well just forget it then.  Truth be told “Happy New Year” is kind of silly isn’t it?  I mean, it’s just an imaginary line drawn in a calendar.  The time of year we just know we’re going to write the wrong date on our checks and when we do we’re still surprised by it: “Look what I did here Mac, I was writing out a check and I wrote ’08 instead of ’09!  Can you believe it!  Golly, I wonder how many more times I’ll make that mistake.”  (Note of explanation for the younger readers out there: we used to carry around these little pads called checkbooks.  They were nicely encased in a faux leather little cover and you would write on one of the sheets in this pad a kind of IOU that your bank would pay out of your account.  It had the benefit, especially right after the holidays, of creating a little time between when you paid something and when you necessarily had to have the actual cash.  You could not use them for online purchases, which was OK because the world was offline at the time.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah: saying Happy New Year on this day is a bit arbitrary.  When you think about it, we begin a new year every single day of our lives.  As a matter of fact, we begin a new life every single day of our lives.  Why don’t we wish each other Happy New Life each day instead of Good Morning?  Wouldn’t that put a much finer point on the power of today?  Oh I know what you’re thinking: “arbitrary or not, this is the time for Resolutions.”  Have you read the statistics on New Year’s resolutions?  Do you know how many are broken within hours of their creation?  (If so, please go ahead and post them in the comments because I didn’t bother to look them up – one of my resolutions is to Read more

January 1, 2009

What Is a Good Scent Trail ?

by

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

Author website

Kelley “Klik Kween” Koehler, instructing from the ARE-TEC blog:

Users like to see words describing their goal on a site, it helps them have more confidence that the thing they’re looking for is indeed there to be found. It’s called a scent trail.

Which means that if I create a page on my site just for people looking at townhomes, then I need to very carefully optimize for those kinds of words, and then I need to restate those words plainly on the page.

Kelley taught us about scent trails at Unchained Orlando.  She explained her “long-tail search engine marketing strategy” and how she makes it easy for online shoppers to find exactly what they want.  Kelley told us to build a landing page with the exact same phrase as the web surfer searched.  

I’m using my BloodhoundBlog.net weblog for these experiments.  Greg Swann suggested that I use it to post mortgage rates.  I built a page on the weblog, titled “Current Mortgage Rates Report”. “Current Mortgage Rates” is a keyword search phrase that a plethora of consumers search.  If I start a PPC campaign, I’ll play in that keyword search phrase.  “Current Mortgage Rates” is the scent trail I’m trying to build.

I want to build it with a long-copy sales letter, with no links other than a “Contact Me Now” link (call to action) throughout the landing page.  I want to have that landing page present the proposition, air out (and hopefully answer) all of the potential objections, and ultimately weed out anybody who doesn’t have interest.  My goal is to have clicks that are consumers who have “flopped” and want a mortgage right now.

BUT…as Kelley states, I have to “title” and theme the page with the keyword search phrase that EXACTLY matches what the consumer wants.  I have to make it as simple as possible for them.

Who’s implementing what Kelley taught us?  How are you doing it?

PS:  I changed the title of this post from “Give them What They Want” To “What Is  A Good Scent Trail ?” to reaffirm what Kelley says.  When you click the links on this post,  you get Read more

December 31, 2008

Human sovereignty as a New Year’s resolution

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I hate lies, and I hate just about everything that doesn’t hate lies. We live our lives enmired in lies — in hoke, in smoke, in hints and allusions and innuendoes, in juice and hustle and jive — and it is entirely too easy to become one of the liars, de facto, without really intending to. My post on linking is one of the best things I wrote this year, and it’s apposite to the discussion I’ve been carrying out all week:

People are so used to marketing trickery that they expect it everywhere. The challenge for anyone seeking to change minds in the Web 2.0 world is to take away that expectation. Transparency doesn’t mean I am obliged to disclose to you the color of my underwear. Transparency means that if there is any possibility that you could entertain the smallest doubt that I am effecting some kind of sleight of hand to trick you into doing something you otherwise would not do, I have to give you the means of eradicating that doubt to your own satisfaction.

On Christmas, because of the latest episode of puerile posturing, I said to Teri, “I believe in Christmas. I won’t let it lie to me.” Later it came out as, “I believe in humanity. I won’t let it lie to me.” And the final form, I think, is, “I believe in life. I won’t let it lie to me.” That’s the architecture of this year’s Christmas story. Now all I need is the story.

I smile to myself at all the ways my life has conspired to put me where I am right now: A philosophically-adept obsessive writer, enraptured by the most beautiful and rigorous kind of ethics, with a background in high-volume, high-tech publishing problems, who works as a real estate broker and who spends much of his time thinking about the marketing of everything. Where would I be, by now, but here? It’s funny for me to watch people try to whimper-whip or brow-beat me into echoing their lies — after I’ve told them every way I can think of that I would Read more

December 31, 2008

Last call for end-of-the-year discounts on tickets for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix, April 28 – May 1, 2009 — and catch us for free at Zillow’s offices in Seattle on February 12

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is the front

and back

face of a door-hanger we have going out in high-equity neighborhoods starting January 3rd. In most of Phoenix, for now, listing is essentially limited to short sales and lender-owned homes, so most of our time this year will be devoted to buyers. But if this card — or variations on it — can pull the way we want it to, it should be worth around $3,000 a week, net of all expenses. The lord knows we can use it.

Brian and I keep getting mail from people wondering why we’re going to be teaching weblogging at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. We’re not. All we ever teach is marketing — on-line, on paper and face-to-face. There is a piece to this door-hanger that you’re not seeing that should more than double its response rate. That’s marketing — and there is no one else in the real estate industry who teaches the kinds of marketing that Brian and I cover as a matter of course.

You can catch a preview of our marketing curriculum in Seattle on February 12th. We’ll be doing a free Unchained preview at Zillow HQ, 999 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA, on Thursday, February 12th from 1pm to 5pm. Scott Cowan is organizing the event with help from Drew Meyers and David Gibbons from Zillow. Marlow Harris will be joining us, along with some other Seattle blogging luminaries. The grand finale will be a debate between Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman and BloodhoundBlog iconoclast Greg Swann, moderated by Brian Brady, American Real Estate’s Number One Marketing Maven.

I gotta go. I’m showing this morning. But I wanted to remind y’all that today is the last day for a couple of big discounts on Unchained tickets. The Early-Bird price — $100 off — goes away altogether today. And the Unchained Alumnus discount will drop from $200 to $100 at midnight tonight. That’s $100 in savings, either way, for acting today.

Click the appropriate button below to sign up now.

CyberProfessionals: $397


















Unchained Alumnus: $497 (you must act on this offer before 01/01/09)


















Early-Bird Price: $597 (you must act on this offer before 01/01/09)


















The full price Read more

December 30, 2008

A 4.5% Mortgage In Every Pot

by

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

Author website

Embrace the New Deal!  The Bailout has made its way to Main Street.

The Fed’s gonna do it..for real:

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it expects to begin operations in early January under the previously announced program to purchase mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and that it has selected private investment managers to act as its agents in implementing the program.

Under the MBS purchase program, the Federal Reserve will purchase MBS backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae; the program is being established to support the mortgage and housing markets and to foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally.

Here’s Sean Purcell and I, talking on BloodhoundBlog Radio, about today’s announcement (15 minute podcast)

PS:  Expect an orgy tomorrow and Friday, in the MBS markets….if the traders fly back from Cabo tonight

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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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