Archives (page 208 of 372)

March 31, 2008

NAR Will Channel Data

by Dave Phillips

CEO, PA Association of Realtors

I’m thirsty, but not drinking the Kool-aid just yet

The NAR project formally known as the Gateway, a mash-up of all real estate data in the country, has now been relabeled The Real Estate Channel (TREC). There has been a new “interim” report issued by the Presidential Advisory Group (PAG), but still there is very little detailed information about NAR’s plan.

The new report makes it clear that the intent of TREC is NOT to be a national MLS or have a public access point (other than REALTORS®). These two clarifications will ease the fears of many local MLS systems and REALTORS® who were worried about the Gateway project. For others, the idea of a national MLS is appealing and they are still thinking that eventually TREC will become a national MLS, but they are keeping quiet about the prospect for now.

Not making the data publicly accessible is a similar situation. If you are against public access to data (read: still haven’t made the shift to reality), you will feel good about the new clarification. If you don’t worry about your clients having access to data, you will be happy with the report because you know that eventually such a massive mash-up will become available to the public.

So, what the current report says is that NAR will set aside the controversial aspects of the project for now. This seems like a good compromise to keep things moving forward although is does not feel particularly honest. So I find myself struggling between integrity and progress – between trust and fear – between belief and skepticism. Someone referred to the issue in terms of the Wizard of Oz – is there really anything behind the curtain?

The difficulty with this issue is that NAR does not have the details/answers to the questions because this is still a work in progress. This lack of answers causes fear because it is human nature to fill in information voids with negative beliefs. There is so much still unknown about TREC, that there is a lot of negative stuff being made up or inserted into the general thinking on Read more

March 31, 2008

ROI For 2.0/Social Media Marketing? So Many Questions So Few Answers

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Joe over at Selsius published a piece the other day — Show Me the ROI: Is Web 2.0 a Load of Hooey or Who’s Making Hay? in which he links to some pretty interesting posts on the same subject. So much of this is what has made me crazy since I first turned onto the onramp of the 2.0 freeway.

ROI? What’s return, if it’s not measured in money, yenom, cash, closing statements, origination fees, bank deposits, or fill in the damn blank? This is silly at it’s best, and embarrassing at its worst. I don’t mean anything Joe said, just the idea. In fact I thought Joe’s observation was right on the money — pun intended.

He noted some folks have decided it might be time to ask the question, “How big is yours?”

This goes back (Please Lord, protect me.) to what I’ve always wondered about the whole SEO thing. It fits into this topic as if it was custom tailored. What’s the ROI on 2.0/SMM? What’s the ROI on all those leads yer gettin’ from your website and/or blog? I’ve simply stopped turning to the experts out there, ‘cuz I’m tired of being ignored when I ask them to please let me know what their clients’ conversion rates are.

I finally ran into an upfront, plain talkin’ expert, whose name I will keep to myself.

When I emailed them privately, asking about leads per day for RE clients, and their subsequent conversion rates, the answer was a breath of fresh air, invigorating by its naked truthfulness.

Here’s my email to this expert.

‘Blog/SEO/Lead generation expert’,

I’ve been tryin, in vain, to find out what the batting average is for real estate bloggers who’ve been successful in generating a reliably consistent number of daily/weekly/monthly leads.

I’ve heard of, and keep reading about blogs bringing in 10 a day 20 a day, even 30+ daily. What I’m not hearing is how many closed escrows are resulting from all those leads.

Whenever I ask this question, especially to those who are experts, (in reality, not just in their minds) I become invisible.

You’re one of the Read more

March 31, 2008

Bad Marketing Candy from RSS Pieces

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Mary McKnight wrote an article last Friday called Real Estate Blogs are Stores, Not Websites – So Blog Like You are Selling Houses, Not Writing For Your Local Paper and it made the short list for the Odysseus Medal Sunday. It is well written and provocative. Mary McKnight is recognized as one of the premier web site designers and SEO experts in Real Estate. I have a great deal of respect for her knowledge as it pertains to web sites and SEO. If you have not read it, please do; and then answer this question for me: How is it possible that someone so good at creating real estate web sites, can be so wrong when it comes to real estate marketing?

The Sugar Coating
Let me preface this by saying that I have a great deal of respect for Mary McKnight. Add to which a lot of people for whom I also hold a great deal of respect use her services and listen to her advice. But when she says Your real estate blog is a store, not a newspaper, I find myself asking the obvious question: If it is a store, what do you sell? If you answer “homes” I am going to assume you work at a mobile home dealership. Otherwise you clearly do not understand your product. Here’s a hint: you see your product every day in the mirror. You no more sell homes than you stock them… which is why you are not a store. You are a service and your product is your expertise.

The Creamy Middle
The point of her article is …to get you to understand that if your business is about real estate and you want to attract customers that have a real estate need you MUST write about real estate, not skateboards and restaurants. This is true on a very grand scale: most of your articles and certainly your “look and feel” must tell the reader that you can and will be the best agent they have ever had. But does that mean you should only write about real estate? When Mary says it

is inconceivable to (her) that Read more

March 31, 2008

The Theory Of Sales Relativity

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

When we upend things in physics these days, it’s not necessarily that the old things were wrong. It’s just that underlying it is a more complete theory. Quantum Web 2 mechanics tells us that a ball is made up of atoms, but Newton’s laws still work just fine. You can predict the ball’s trajectory without knowing that the ball is made up of atoms.

– Lisa Randall

___

When I read the quote above by Lisa Randall I knew I had to use that quote to pay homage to this wonderful post by my friend Jeff Brown. What is the benefit of Web 2.0? Transparency. I also really liked the post by Barry and I especially liked the comment by Allen Butler in this thread.

The only problem I see here is simply this: many consumers simply don’t know, or don’t care to know. The whole thing about being “transparent” is great ad copy. However, while we are waiting around for the internet to change our lives, your average Joe is simply looking for one more way to have to actually do less research and less work. The conveniences of modern shopping have led to very lazy consumers. Maybe a Redfin customer would have the gumption to search out the facts & such. Most will not. Real estate consumers fall into two distinct categories: buyers and sellers. The buyers will end up with an agent through sheer happenstance because they don’t know and don’t care.

The sellers will go with whomever is “recommended” to them by a family member of friend. It is usually not until they have expired a few times that they actually start to pay attention.

In a market like ours, the listing agents who get the job done will remain in the game. Those who don’t. . .well, most are already gone.

Gonna go out on a limb here (flame retardant suit loosely fitted to allow breathing room) and say that all this talk of disintermediation and having to prove your value in this new “web 2. . . .world” will not pan out. The consumer is too lazy.

Then again, I’m wrong occasionally.

I don’t think Allen Read more

March 30, 2008

Why chicks dig LA…and Dallas and Phoenix and Denver and…

by Richard Riccelli

Marketing Provocateur

Depending upon where you sell homes, you now have one powerful reason (of two) to target single, out-of-town buyers (as if Miami realtors need another reason to attract Minneapolis men). Me, I’m staying put in Charleston. But while the numbers may look good, I am furiously mining the data for the age (and, okay, income) to gain a better picture of where the girls are.

Buyer beware: The underlying article was written by 1 2 3 4 Richard Florida 5 6

March 30, 2008

Black Pearl Marketing Minute Hour: Your first six months as a real estate licensee — use your time now to make money then

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

For years I lectured at the pre-licensing classes of the the college professor who taught my own real estate pre-licensing classes. I hadn’t done this for the last couple of years, but I did a class on January 24th, 2008. We made a video tape of my talk, but I hadn’t done anything with it until Sean Purcell’s post, What’s Your Six Month Plan?, got me off the dime. Sean’s program is more thoroughgoing. I’m just leaning on a bunch of kids to get busy now, rather than waiting for money to come raining from the skies six months from now.

I’m linking an audio podcast from BloodhoundBlog.com and the video in iPhone podcast form from BloodhoundBlog.TV. The video is basically just Fred Flintstone shuffling around and waving his arms around a lot, so you might do just as well with the audio-only version.

I know there are a lot of brand-new and soon-to-be-brand-new Realtors reading BloodhoundBlog, so I hope y’all take this to heart. We talk a lot about passive marketing here, but selling is always active — belly-to-belly. If you can’t push yourself to get belly-to-belly now, with people who already know and like you, you will not somehow achieve miracle results later by direct marketing, social media marketing or any other form of passive marketing.

Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology

March 30, 2008

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

We have 13 entries on the short list this week, out of a long long list of 74 posts. I’ve already decided on the winner of the Odysseus Medal, so I’m not linking that way. Instead, again this week I’m showing nothing but Black Pearls, practical hard-headed ideas for working better, faster and more profitably.

Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Barry Cunningham -- Marketer, Advertiser or a Salesperson? Are you a Marketer, Advertiser or a Salesperson?”,
“Barry Cunningham — Sun Tzu and the Art of the Short Sale Sun Tzu and the Art of the Short Sale“,
“Chris Johnson — Rapport Rapport: You Don’t Matter. You Are Here To Add Value“,
“Daniel Rothamel — Getting Myself Organized Getting Myself Organized (with a little help from Chris Brogan)“,
“Darren Rowse — Should I Change My Website Into a Blog? Should I Change My Website Into a Blog?“,
“Jeff Turner — Panasonic Lumix FX35 vs. Kodak v705 Panasonic Lumix FX35 vs. Kodak v705“,
“Jim Cronin — Blogging SEO All You Ever Needed To Know About Blogging SEO, But Were Afraid To Say So.“,
“John Coley — Talk Like a Woman? Can My Real Estate Blog Help Me Talk Like a Woman?“,
“Mark Collier — 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog Traffic 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog Traffic“,
“Mary McKnight — 1 Month of blog topics 1 Month of blog topics: Ultimate guide to building real estate blog content that gets results“,
“Mary McKnight — Real Estate blogs are stores Real Estate blogs are stores, not newspapers – so blog like you are selling houses, not writing for your local paper“,
“Sean Purcell — What’s Your Six Month Plan? What’s Your Six Month Plan?“,
“Tony Schuricht — Make your buyers Read more

March 30, 2008

Are you a Marketer, Advertiser or a Salesperson?

by Barry Cunningham

Real Estate Broadcaster and Investor

When you see a commercial on television, are you being sold to or being marketed to? When you’re at a sporting event and you see the Goodyear blimp, are you being sold to or being marketed to? When you see a billboard on the highway…well you see where this is going.Successful businesses are able to definitively understand and integrate these components while being able to discern the differences in each of these valuable areas.

Marketing is typically the creative source of ideas to be implemented to feature a product or service to the consumer. Think of marketing as a large umbrella under which all demographic, psychographic and segmentation analysis takes place. It also covers market quantification, determination of who may be competition and what reaction competitors may have. It serves as a catch bin for all of the ancillary components such as promotional marketing, event marketing, integrated marketing, branding, distribution and positioning.

Realtor Marketing example: I have a house that I need to sell.

It is located in an upper-scale neighborhood (75% of the homeowners have a household income exceeding $100,000)
mainly white (82% white 12% black, 4% Hispanic, and 2% other),
predominantly occupied by homeowners (94% owner occupied, 6% tenant occupied
there is substantial product saturation and competition as there are 22 homes for sale in a half mile radius of this home
competitive homes all have pools and 80% are represented by Realtors and the others are FSBO’s
my idea is to position this home as an “executive’s dream home”
I want to brand this home as an “oasis from the hustle and bustle of work”.
I plan to implement a promotion featuring an online component, participation at a local event and utilizing the surrounding community to convey the message stated above

Marketing is the development and design of a cohesive plan to deliver a message to the consumer regarding the product or service you wish to promote and sell.

Advertising is the actual delivery and communication of your marketing message. Advertising provides you, the marketer, with an opportunity to pronounce your marketing message by the utilization of selected mediums.

That message can be delivered in a myriad of ways. You have Read more

March 30, 2008

Listing real estate the Bloodhound way: Everything we do to list historic, architecturally-distinctive and luxury homes for sale

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

This is a detailing of the things we do to list a home for sale. We don’t do every one of these things on every home. For example, we know that if we list in a newer tract-home subdivision, much of the noise we try to make will fall on deaf ears. If I am listing a tenant-occupied investor-owned home, we won’t do much beyond the normal MLS, lockbox and sign kind of listing. But this is what we do when we pull out all the stops for those homes that are likely to excite the most attention among buyers.

Setting the stage for staging. Cathleen Collins will go though the house with a fine-tooth comb, often taking many photos. She will make lists of repairs, touch-ups and redecorating she wants to do, and she will plan her staging strategy.
Home-warranty pre-inspection. We put a home warranty on our listings covering the listing period and the buyer’s first year in the home. We use ServiceOne, and they do a fairly rigorous pre-inspection so that any pre-existing conditions can be addressed.
Repairs, painting and cleaning. This can take anywhere from a few days to more than a week. Everything’s a trade-off, and we can’t always do everything we might wish for, but we want for our homes to be as clean, as homey, as livable and as turn-key as we can possibly make them.
Staging. This is Cathleen, and she is a master at it. We own about three houses worth of furniture, and she is always trawling Craigslist to find more — period, modern, eclectic. She has tons of art and decorator items as well, and her modus vivendi is to take everything she thinks she might need to the house, then move back what she doesn’t use.
Professional photography. We have just switched to Obeo for our virtual tours. They send in a local professional photographer to do hi-resolution and panoramic photos. In addition to forming the basis of the virtual tour, the hi-rez photos are also used for Obeo’s Style Designer, virtual remodeling of selected spaces.
Floorplan measurement. We put an interactive floorplan on the Read more

March 29, 2008

Facebook Made Easy: A Tutorial For Marketers

by Brian Brady

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

Travis Greenlee, on www.facebookmadeeasy.com, produced a Facebook tutorial that outlines how to get up and running. He gives it to you in five 3-4 minutes videos. Grab a pen and legal pad and take some notes instead of watching the Brady Bunch rerun. In thirty minutes, you’ll have a clear understanding about how to use a social utility to meet referral partners and/or customers.

Travis has a weblog and specializes in teaching “solo-professionals” (sound like any of us?) how to benefit from online marketing. His podcasts are short and informative.

If you’re coming to Unchained, the Facebook Made Easy tutorial is required viewing for The Way of the Hunter session, with me. For extra credit, subscribe to Travis’ podcast. For independent study, Listen to his free “Expert Training Series” or watch his free Virtual Practice Builder webinar.

March 29, 2008

If you don’t have to sell into the current Phoenix real estate market — don’t. But what if you do have to sell…?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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

If you don’t have to sell into the current Phoenix real estate market — don’t. But what if you do have to sell…?

Here’s a piece of real estate marketing advice that should be obvious: If you don’t have to sell your house right now, don’t.

If you are living in your home — or if you are an investor and you have a tenant — and you are making your payments and don’t have any exigent need to sell — sit tight.

We are probably nearing the bottom of the downturn in Phoenix, but the path to the bottom is likely to be pretty steep. If you don’t have to compete against deeply-discounted lender-owned homes, don’t.

Will the market go back up after we hit bottom? Eventually, yes. How long is eventually? It could be a long while. But prices should stabilize after the bank-owned inventory has cleared the market. What you can get for your home may not be all you want, but you won’t be facing competition priced 20% or 30% less.

But suppose you do have to move right now. You’ve taken a job out of state or you have a pressing financial need and need to tap your equity. How can you compete effectively against the lender-owned homes in your neighborhood?

The bad news is, the price pressure on you is still downward, and probably will be for longer than you can afford to wait. That means you cannot set your price above the market and hope for an offer anyway. If you price your home above the recent high sales for your floorplan — where recent means the past 60 days — your home might not show at all. There is simply too much inventory for buyers to bother with an overpriced home.

The good news is that the lender-owned homes are almost certainly trashed. Filthy, in bad repair, with overgrown lawns. Investors know those problems are easily addressed, but owner-occupants want turn-key homes.

That works to your advantage. If you are willing to put your home in turn-key condition — Read more

March 29, 2008

Flipping Homes: A Closer Look

by Mike Farmer

Real Estate Broker

First of all let me say that I distinguish between fraud and flipping. When professionals collude to trick sellers into taking a low price, then flip the home for a profit in a short time, this is not what I’m talking about, and it shouldn’t cloud the issue of flipping. Why do we always take the worst practices and make that the norm?

Hell, let’s change the name to something that better represents what I consider a legitimate real estate practice — let’s call it BuyRebuild&Sell (BRS) — it sounds like Briz, so let’s call it Brizzing, in order to give it dignity and a cool name.

So there is this dog of a house uglying up the neighborhood and no one wants to buy it. I come along and look at the home — yet I’m looking at it in a different way — I look at its soul. The poor darling is sitting there being made fun of, people are even cursing it — That damn ugly house! It’s killing values! Some even secretly wish it would burn down.

Now, I’m a compassionate person, and I’ve always rooted for the underdog and tried to protect those who were bullied and ridiculed for their appearance. And I’m a businessman. Yep, I’m a crude businessman who likes to make a profit.

I say to myself, this poor house needs brizzing. I’m a good brizzer — I’ve brizzed over a dozen houses now. It’s funny how some people look at brizzing — they like the fact the house has been brizzed but they hate the profit you make off brizzing. “I know what you paid for that dog of a house!” — “You are charging what? You only paid $60,000 for it!”

Yes, but I brizzed it, you dope! I took a chance on this poor ugly house when no one else would. I didn’t sit back and make fun of it and curse it, I brizzed it! I could have lost my butt on this, but I believed in this house — I saw its soul! And, I’m a businessman. I’m a crude businessman who likes to make a profit. So, shut Read more

March 28, 2008

Don’t blog your listings? How about this? Don’t try to pass sales call reluctance off as social media marketing expertise

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I know, I know — I owe, I owe.

I owe Jeff Brown a discussion of every little last thing we do to launch a new listing with maximum impact.

And I owe The Lovely Wife a discussion of the role of self-promotion in real estate weblogging.

But…

We listed two homes today — Mutt and Jeff, $400,000 and $60,000 — go figure. And, while the prep work leading up to a listing can be time-consuming, the actual day of listing is often an 18-hour blur of activity.

Part of my effort was to write weblog entries about both of these homes. My primary reason for doing this was simple: I want them sold! But I also wanted to demonstrate that weblogging about listings is not only an appropriate use of a real estate weblog, if it is done right it can be a very effective sales tool.

So: In both cases, I am explicitly telling the readers that I am selling them on the home I am talking about — and I close, in both posts, with a bald-faced call to action. Take that, wannabe social media marketing experts rationalizing your sales call reluctance!

Witness:

I say a lot of memorable things — so many not even I can remember them all. 😉 But there are two precepts that came out of this extended discussion of whether or not to blog listings that I think are worth remembering:

The purpose of real estate marketing is to sell real estate.
Nothing sells houses like houses.

I love new things because I have a young and eager mind, but I don’t confuse new with better. Nor old with better, for that matter. What I’m interested in — all I am interested in — is better, pure and simple and clean and cool and quiet and breathtakingly elegant. I know that good promotional copy sells homes. Imagine how effective it Read more

March 28, 2008

Arizona Short Sales Not For The Faint of Heart

by Allen Butler

Realtor, Audio Engineer

I’ve commented before about short sales on this blog, but not to much extent, and I haven’t seen many of the other contributers do it either. I wonder why? Does everyone abhor them? Are they afraid of them?

I have taken a lot of advice around here, and one of the best pieces of advise I have gleened is to write about something that interests me, and build a long tail. Well, the long tail has actually been working. I have written on my home blog about The Ins & Outs of Arizona Short Sales, and lo and behold, people started coming out of the woodwork. And I don’t mean a few. Let us just say it’s been a fabulous return on investment.

I have agents calling me from around the country asking for short sale help. I have homeowners calling me (from around the country, no less) about the possibility of doing a short sale on their home. I refer them out. (Incidentally, if you are from some other state than AZ, and you are familiar with short sales, send your contact information to me, I may have clients for you.)

I would like to first give a shout out to the new Barry. His Real Estate Radio USA has been very cool and helpful for me professionally, and is entertaining to boot.

When I say that short sales are not for the faint of heart, I mean that in two distinct ways: for realtors, and for sellers.

Realtors are running up against brick walls with “The Gate Keepers.” That’s what I call the people who protect the actual “loss mitigators” like the Swiss Guard protects the Pope. Loss mitigators are behind bullet-proof glass, tucked away somewhere in a bunker under the Potomac river, without email, without phone lines, without fax machines; they are completely incommunicado. They send messages between the bunker and the outside world by carrier pigeon. The particular brand of pigeon they use is not one of the kind where you separate it from its home turf by a thousand miles, thow it up in the air, where it circles a few times and Read more

March 28, 2008

What’s Your Six Month Plan?

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Every now and then I get to talk to someone just coming into the real estate business or contemplating the move. My initial response is often a surprise to them but I bet many of you would agree with me when I tell them, “Great! This is the best time to get into real estate. If you come in with a good plan, establish the right habits and market consistently you will become a producer while times are tough and a star when times are good.” They usually look at me a little crooked and then smile. I guess they have a lot of people telling them they should have their head examined for going in when so many are getting out. Maybe they should, but I always found the party a lot more fun after the wanna-be’s and coulda-beens were done posing and said their good-byes.

The Three Questions
Following my response the potential new agent will inevitably tell me about their past experience and how it gives them a great sphere of influence in which to market. They share with me their personal motto about discipline and the pledge they gave their cousin – the copier salesman – to never stop marketing. I applaud all of this. Mottos and pledges and enthusiasm are all important, maybe even indispensible. But the first admonition about coming in with a good plan, the one they missed, is the most important. Where is your business plan? I have yet to hear: “I agree with you Sean. I have a business plan written out and I am excited to begin.”

So here are the three questions I pose to all new agents:

Why do you want to become a real estate agent?
Do you have a written business plan?
What is your six month plan?

The first question is really just a leading question designed to get people to open up and talk about their passion. If you do not have a passion for some aspect of this business it is going to be awfully tough to work through the rejections. The second question is meat and potatoes. I call it Read more

BloodhoundBlog

Archives (page 208 of 372)

NAR Will Channel Data

by Dave Phillips

ROI For 2.0/Social Media Marketing? So Many Questions So Few Answers

by Jeff Brown

Bad Marketing Candy from RSS Pieces

by Sean Purcell

The Theory Of Sales Relativity

by Russell Shaw

Why chicks dig LA…and Dallas and Phoenix and Denver and…

by Richard Riccelli

Black Pearl Marketing Minute Hour: Your first six months as a real estate licensee — use your time now to make money then

by Greg Swann

The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open

by Greg Swann

Are you a Marketer, Advertiser or a Salesperson?

by Barry Cunningham

Listing real estate the Bloodhound way: Everything we do to list historic, architecturally-distinctive and luxury homes for sale

by Greg Swann

Facebook Made Easy: A Tutorial For Marketers

by Brian Brady

If you don’t have to sell into the current Phoenix real estate market — don’t. But what if you do have to sell…?

by Greg Swann

Flipping Homes: A Closer Look

by Mike Farmer

Don’t blog your listings? How about this? Don’t try to pass sales call reluctance off as social media marketing expertise

by Greg Swann

Arizona Short Sales Not For The Faint of Heart

by Allen Butler

What’s Your Six Month Plan?

by Sean Purcell

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