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March 8, 2008

Real Estate Web Site Extreme Makeover: If we help Russell Shaw get even richer, he might buy us drinks at BloodhoundBlog Unchained

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As I mentioned on Real Estate Radio USA yesterday, Mary McKnight of RSSpieces.com will be joining us at BloodhoundBlog Unchained for a session called Real Estate Web Site Extreme Makeover. What we’re going to do is take a look at web sites and weblogs of audience volunteers and talk about how they might be improved — to be more attractive to visitors, stickier, better-optimized for search engines, etc. It should be a very robust, fast-paced overview of what does and doesn’t work in real estate web sites.

Here’s a news flash: The purpose of a real estate web site or weblog — the purpose of real estate marketing in general — is to sell houses. Pull-based marketing is still marketing.

With that much as preface, consider this: Russell Shaw is one of the biggest newspaper publishers in Northeast Phoenix. By way of Custom House Publishers, Russ prints and distributes almost 50,000 newspapers a month — distributed as the 85022 News, the 85024 News, the 85028 News and the 85032 News. These are the zip codes of Russell’s geographic farm, of course, and the newspapers are one way he has of “dripping” on sellers in his farm.

Russ also has four domains for those four zip codes, each one running a templated web site built and hosted by Superlative Web Systems, one of our local — and lame without exception — IDX vendors. These are the four sites: 85022News.com, 85024News.com, 85028News.com and 85032News.com. As with all templated web sites, if we examine everything with a critical eye and then work up every ounce of salesmanical enthusiasm we can muster, we can dig deep and bring forth a hearty: “Eh…” Not absolutely awful, but nothing that is insanely great.

Now it could be that Russ has that kind of frail and fragile ego that regards every bit of professional criticism as a grave and grievous insult — but not on this planet! Instead, Russell Shaw is the kind of phlegmatic, pragmatic, practical guy who understands that, no matter how well he might be doing today, he can always do even better tomorrow. My kinda guy. So instead Read more

March 8, 2008

Zillow creates the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

Perhaps it’s cabin fever; Dayton is dealing with a late winter blizzard. The city is shut down giving me plenty of time to put on my own little version of a big-thinking cap and ponder away the what-ifs. Call me foolish but today, with a fresh cup of coffee at my side, I’m taking on the subject of repealing real estate licensing laws. Oh my. First things first: I’ve never read Ayn Rand and I don’t study the finer points of Capitalism. I truly love freedom, but I don’t philosophize about it. Now that we have that out of the way…

Let’s do a little time traveling. Step into the Way Back Machine and return to that point in time when you decided that real estate is what you wanted to do with your life. Do you remember that moment? You want to sell real estate. Forget what you know now and concentrate; remember then? You want to sell real estate. Consider what would have happened if there was no licensing. How would you have gone about breaking into the business? Don’t tell me you would have simply hung up a sign, c’mon, you know you wouldn’t get hired! Really think about this a moment- what would you have done?

Is it reasonable to think that you would have spoken to someone who was already in the business? Would you have picked just anyone in the business, or would you have carefully considered the reputations, the business models, the success rates of different brokerages? I know we wouldn’t have brokerages the way they exist today, but for our purposes, we’ll stick with that terminology. So. Would you have looked- really looked- at the other agents working at that brokerage? Would you have sought out past clients to get their opinions and comments?

Use your imagination and stay with me here. This is how you are going to feed your family. What are you going to do to make sure that you can put ramen noodles on the table? What if you want an occasional steak? You are working where you live, or in close Read more

March 8, 2008

The Wile E. Coyote School of Mosquito Extermination — and why you need to put a condom on your trusting nature

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That headline is lousy for Googlization, but it got your attention, didn’t it?

First, Russell Shaw unearthed an ugly little bug in WordPress that permits malware mechanics to hi-jack certain features of a weblog. If that sounds vague, you bet it is. I’m not going to tell you what happens, where, or how. It is sufficient to say that the exploit is possible in any currently-running hosted version of WordPress. Why did we get hit? Despite the scare stories in the newspapers, malware is almost-always devoted to some kind of quasi-legitimate commerce. Basically, the bug that bit us was trying to use our hosting and our traffic to conduct its business at our expense.

Not cool.

The exploit is recurrent. I can kill any particular instance of it, but since the trapdoor is in WordPress, the only way to keep this little mosquito from coming back is to keep slapping it dead — with the only alternative being to kill WordPress entirely.

Enter cron, the Unix utility that will run any Unix process on the schedule you set. With luck, this exploit will be fixed in WordPress 2.5, which is due to be released shortly. In the meantime, once a minute we’re swatting that mosquito, leaving not so much as a bloodstain. Most of the time, it’s not there, of course. When it is, it has 59 or fewer seconds to suck our blood before it dies again.

That much was easy, but I’ve had plenty of time to watch this little critter in action, and in consequence I’ve learned a ton about malware theory, as it were. So once every 15 minutes, cron is running a different job that combs our whole file server looking for suspicious files. And if anything else pops up, I already know how to kill it and keep on killing it.

All of which leads me to say: I love the Apache web-server technology. Where else can you drop a ton of Acme DDT onto one little mosquito once a minute — like Wile E. Coyote at his most frenzied — without even breaking a sweat?

Alright, that’s the first thing. Here’s Read more

March 8, 2008

Kevin Kelly will teach you everything he knows about the economics of abundance — for free

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Mike Farmer is the gift that keeps on giving. Last night at his place, and today at our place, he takes us deep inside the mind of Kevin Kelly.

I’ve been catching notices of Kelly’s name in the tech blogs, but I haven’t made time to read him. Big mistake on my part, corrected at some length this morning.

Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans forms the basis for a survival manual for exemplary-service Realtors and lenders.

His Technology Wants To Be Free is a much deeper discussion of the “free” economy than the Chris Anderson essay I talked about last week.

I may go into greater detail later, but you don’t need to be bottle fed. Get yourself to the Technium and drink from the fire-hose.

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March 8, 2008

Real Estate Web 2.0: Epiphany — Thanks To Kevin Kelly

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Reading Kevin Kelly’s post again created a fire storm of epiphanies as I relate his generative points to RE web 2.0.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php
I will take his ideas and twist them a bit to meet my purposes. First, the ideas of “copy” – in a sense all RE sites are a copy of one another — plenty of listings to look at. What makes one more valuable than the other is the “generatives“. I see the free copy stage as the beginning, but just the bare beginning – bang bang bang, site site site – popping up here, there and over there. Now we are entering the generative stage and this is where it gets interesting, where winners joke and losers yell “DEAL!”.

Kelly listed eight generatives, with the first being “immediacy“. This is a little vague, but to me it’s related to constant innovation, getting ideas out to the consumer, and being the first to experiment with new ideas. One thing I liked about my website provider Point2Agent was its “immediacy” with press releases coming out on a regular basis of new ideas and functions and plans. Now it’s lagging, and whoever achieves immediacy will outshine them. There’s a lot to be said for being there, being present, being vital and creative. Zillow is doing a great job with immediacy, and lately Homegain has shown a gift for immediacy. As for my own site, I need to “be there”, be vital.

The next generative is “personalization” and this is something I’ve written about ad nauseum. To me, it’s the Big Key to success with Web 2.0. Adding value by personalizing your offer opens the great door that few go through. Kelly writes:

“It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can’t copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that “stickiness” because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.”

Nothing is truer. Once the generative process of personailzation begins, a relationship is borne between provider and user. It’s time consuming, and this is what makes it valuable. It’s one of Read more

March 8, 2008

A Deficiency Judgement? In Arizona? Not Likely.

by

Realtor, Audio Engineer

Author website

Hello again!

Have clients asking you about short sales? I know I certainly do! In fact, it’s become a big part of my business. In fact, I am conducting short sale negotiations for 3 different REALTORS, as well as 5 different clients. Unfortunately, a lot of questions have arisen lately about Arizona’s Deficiency Statutes regarding foreclosure. I say “unfortunately” because I feel somewhat less than qualified to definitively answer these questions. Greater legal minds than mine (and mine is decidedly NOT legal) will be required to put the issue to rest. I will, in spite of the danger of blatantly misrepresenting the facts, case law, and statutes, attempt to answer one (NON-) simple question:

“If I do a short sale, or my property is taken from me by foreclosure, can the bank ‘come after me’ for the difference between what the property eventually sells for, and what I owe them, including sale costs, legal fees, etc?”

First, let me point the reader in the general direction of actual legal minds on this issue. Here is a rather esoteric treatise on the subject of getting sued for a deficiency judgement. Very good read, and fairly definitive on the issue.

Here is another article, that is more user-friendly on the same subject. Now, because I have a public education, and am somewhat literate, I will attempt to provide a synopsis of the above:

In Arizona, there are two types of “notes” given for real property: a “Deed of Trust” or a “Mortgage”. Despite the common parlance of the term “mortgage,” most people in most states do not actually have Mortgages. They have Deeds of Trust. I won’t go into the differences here, but suffice to say that a Deed of Trust has three parties to the agreement, and an actual Mortgage has only two. Actual mortgages are very uncommon in most states.

Now, the remedy of a lender for a home in default depends on what type of note was used to secure the property. If there is a true mortgage in place, the lender must sue in civil court in a process known as “judicial foreclosure.” The particulars of a Read more

March 7, 2008

Do you want to know the best Black Pearl of all? When someone offers you a valuable jewel, show up to collect your prize!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

During the ProjectBlogger competition last Spring, I advised the contestants to enter a writing contest Problogger.com was hosting. Of all the apprentices, only Teri Lussier entered, with the result that she finished the competition with a huge number of Technorati links and a Page Rank of 4 — truly astounding results for almost no effort.

Say that again: “Truly astounding results for almost no effort.” That’s like a BloodhoundBlog mantra. That’s everything we’re looking for, the leveraged opportunity that produces the best benefits for the least effort at the lowest cost.

Even so, I knew when I announced the BloodhoundBlog Black Pearl Diver’s contest that few people would enter. The effort was nothing, really, just another blog post. The Grand Prize is a full scholarship to BloodhoundBlog Unchained, but every winning entrant would get a link back to their site on our side-bar. This is possibly the most powerful link in the RE.net. It’s certainly the most powerful link anyone is offering you for free. And we had — count ’em — four entries.

The good news is, they were four great entries. But before we get to them, I’d like to cite three honorable mentions:

  1. Mike Farmer brought us This is not for the contest — just tipping my hat, discussing his plans to create single-property weblogs for his listings.
  2. Teri Lussier took on the entire Social Media Marketing universe with Does the RE.net mean Real Estate or Resist Everything?
  3. And Todd Carpenter knocked my socks off last night with this simple Google search. For now, Todd is dominating the keyword zillow mortgages by sheer blog-power. It will be interesting to see if Zillow is able to take that keyword away from Todd, but, no matter what, he is demonstrating the search-engine leverage of weblogging.

And now… on to the winners:

Kevin Warmath weighs in with If A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words, A Video Must Be Worth a Million, a discussion of his odyssey through visual marketing media for his listings.

Brian Miller offers up “…Vee have our vays. You vill sign zee papers…”, which details how he learned how to get more by demanding less.

Colleen Kulikowski Read more

March 7, 2008

My Real Estate Radio USA debut — and a reminder that the price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained tickets goes up at midnight tonight

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

You can go to Real Estate Radio USA to hear the MP3 of my appearance today. I went into it expecting to kind of goofy and fun, but we actually ended up covering a lot of nuts-and-bolts real estate techniques.

As Brian Brady announced when he made his own appearance on Real Estate Radio USA, the price for BloodhoundBlog Unchained tickets will be going up at midnight tonight. If you want to get the whole package — a $350 value — for the Guerrilla-only special price of $149, you need to make your purchase now.

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March 7, 2008

Mortgage Complaint? Welcome to The World Of Consumer-Policing at Zillow Mortgage

by

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

Author website

How can Zillow Mortgage become the online edition of the Better Business Bureau for mortgage lending?

It just did.

The future of consumer complaints is in transparency; breaking down the walls of the “smoke filled rooms” where industry insiders shear sheep and protect their own. This mortgage crisis has seen government response, spun as “consumer protection” but clearly designed to protect the mortgage industry. It sucks.

It sucks because the mortgage industry was a drunken frat party, from 2002-2006. Hustlers invaded our business and gang raped the borrower. First we slipped you a mickey by confusing the mortgage product offerings. Next, we practiced prestidigitation by getting you to focus on payments while reaping in enormous profits through secondary market transactions. Finally, when you couldn’t handle the intense pressure of your “new” loan, the government rallied around us like a college administration protects a red-shirted football star.

You (the consumer) are culpable, as well. You stuck your head in the sand and defined a long-term financial plan as the length of a mortgage prepayment penalty. You eschewed due diligence for the immediate gratification of an SUV or ATV, paid for by your withdrawn home equity.

Done. It’s time to heal.

You (consumers) need to start getting educated. You need a forum where you can get transparent answers to hard questions. You need to know that you’re talking to a mortgage professional who knows the difference between principles and principal.

We (the mortgage originators) need to know that we’re competing for your business against legitimate competitors, not some lead.bot service that parses your volunteered information and sells it to six of us.

You ( the consumer) need a public forum to air complaints about our service offering; real complaints. We’ll take forever to return phone calls, forget to disclose a loan condition, and change up loan terms as loan programs are canceled by lenders. That’s an unfortunate reality of the world I live in today. Demand for mortgage money is high while supply is low.

You can complain against me on the wide-open platform Zillow Mortgage provides.

…and I can Read more

March 7, 2008

When The Dog Bites The Hand That Feeds It

by

Associate Broker

Author website

The Race To The Bottom Is Getting Really Crowded

Some twenty-odd years ago I worked in the petrochemical engineering industry as an electrical designer – but we quit building oil refineries, so thousands of engineers, designers and draftsmen like myself were put out of work. Hey – that’s the breaks.

So I started a landscaping company and became a licensed irrigation system designer… which worked out okay until the oil bust in Houston caught up with the residential construction market… but I digress.

One of the local irrigation supply houses – the one that I used – decided to start installing irrigation systems… in direct competition with companies like mine.

I couldn’t compete with them on installation bids, as they bought equipment and supplies at much lower prices. So I stopped giving them my business.

Fast forward to today.

I was listening to talk radio and heard an ad for another flat-fee broker offering a listing in both of our listing services for $295. I went online to take a look – then logged into the Georgia Real Estate Commission’s website to research this broker.

Interesting enough, this broker has been licensed for a long time… but only became a broker less than a year ago. I noticed that he had failed to renew his license from April 2001 to November 2004… which made me wonder what he was doing for a living during that period.

Digging a little deeper I discover that this broker is a REAL ESTATE ATTORNEY. Admitted to the Bar back in 1997. Member of one of the big real estate law firms.

How interesting.

Virtually ALL of our real estate transactions in Georgia are conducted by attorneys, so it was unsettling to see one of them setting up shop to compete with the agents who bring him work – kind of like the irrigation supply house I mentioned above.

To top it off… the name of his website is ListingDog.com. What a coincidence.

The idea that an attorney – who is probably earning more than 98.9% of the agents in this town – is now horning on what few dollars are being spread around so thin that Read more

March 7, 2008

Fred Flintstone speaks: Listen to me today on Real Estate Radio USA

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

As a reminder, I will be on Real Estate Radio USA this afternoon at 2:30 pm MST. I’ll be talking about everything I can remember about BloodhoundBlog Unchained, plus, presumably, a lot of other stuff. I’m full of ideas and light on sleep, so I should be a fun listen. You can snag the MP3 later if you miss the show live.

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March 7, 2008

Zillow Nation? Zeelocation?

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

As I wrote about just a couple of weeks ago, Zillow and other online players have an opportunity to do something incredibly different as the national/local problem begs to be resolved. With the new Zillow announcement regarding mortgage connections, the network gets closer to realization of true partnerships. I believe, and I might be wrong, that Zillow is testing the waters — mortgages are a safer micro-experiment. It’s not that Zillow is creating tough criteria and selecting the best to recommend, but they are establishing criteria.

A couple of more steps and you might have something like this:

Zillow announces today it’s new Zeelocation Program. What Zillow will be doing is inviting RE professionals from around the country to join a partnership in an attempt to strengthen its online efforts to provide consumers with cutting-edge home searching experiences, and begin solving the problems of localism, personalization and context.

What does this mean? Well, the main home search experience for consumers will be unchanged. Home shoppers and home sellers still have free access to listings and all the useful functions Zillow has to offer. However, for those home-buyers who are more seriously and immediately looking for a home and who want reliable local information, Zillow will be creating what is called The Zeelocation Program. Consumers will pay a $15.00 monthly subscription fee for access to a list of RE professionals in the area of the consumer’s interest. These professionals have been vetted by Zillow and meet strict requirements for inclusion in the program. RE brokers, Mortgage brokers, RE attorneys, inspectors, etc.  from all areas of country, after meeting the criteria for acceptance, and after paying the yearly fee that Zillow charges for acceptance, will be local partners with Zillow and will be offered to consumers who have subscribed to the program.

RE professionals will be required to follow strict guidelines dealing with consumers in the Zeelocation program – for instance, all forms of spamming are a violation of the program’s guideline and can cause the RE pro to be dropped from the program. Consumers who subscribe to the program will be given a list of local RE pros along with contact information Read more

March 7, 2008

Zillow Mortgage: Zoriginators’ Delight or Bane?

by

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

Author website

Greg Swann covered the big Zillow Mortgage announcement so I won’t regurgitate the details here.  I will weigh in my opinion and speculate about the consumer offering.

I share Greg’s enthusiasm for an independent originator database.  The industry can’t get it together and the Federal government may be violating the Constitution if they remove the licensing authority from the states.  While the National Association of Mortgage Brokers contemplates, private industry acts; and act they did.  Here’s the other cool part; both banker-employed and broker-employed originators are required to register with Zillow and have their employment verified.  Zillow accomplished what the government couldn’t.

What Greg may have missed is that lead aggregators, like Lending Tree, really don’t offer much of a background check.  If the credit card is good, they’ll sell leads. What Zillow has done is to disintermediate the lead aggregators and that, is a good thing.  The unlimited access to consumers will be a great offering for originators because it will allow them to focus their efforts on delivering good customer service to Zillow readers.  Originators who are not good marketers or who desperately want a consumer-direct channel may find joy in the Zillow offering.

I’m not one of those originators because I focus my efforts on referral relationships with Realtors, accountants,  and financial planners.  I’m not one of those originators but I want to play.  Why?  The offer is just too damned interesting to pass up.  Competition will be key as Zoriginators try to compete for business.

Now, here’s my opportunity to be critical of the Zillow mortgage offering; they may attract the very least talented originators. We’ll see when the consumer offering comes out.  The traditional “order takers” of the mortgage industry ,with time to engage in anonymous repartee with consumers, are not the most talented of our industry.  In fact, they may lack the courage (and financial reward) to properly educate consumers about the appropriate loan product for their financial situation.  Let’s face it; if you create a model that encourages the commoditization of a financial product, you leave little incentive to attract the heavy lifters who educate and Read more

March 6, 2008

Realtor Porn?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

What makes the following email “interesting” is I received several copies of it – at different email addresses – each of those addresses one that was was part of a purchased list of email addresses of Realtors.

___

David Slaton [davidslaton@megared.net.mx]

Adult Website Investment Opportunity

To Whom it May Concern:

We would like to offer you an investment opportunity in an adult website. If you are interested in making truly substantial profits, write us back with your name and phone number and we will have a representative contact you and explain all of the details to you.

Sincerely,
David Slaton
CBM Media

__

Doing a Google search of CBM Media I found this site. Nice looking site but the only Realtor porn I’m interested in is the accidental type, like this:

Real Estate Porn

March 6, 2008

The NAR Has Caused Hell To Freeze Over

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

I don’t know if Hell has actually frozen over. Even though I’ve been told to go to hell many times over the years, I’ve not actually gone there (in the literal sense). So I can’t say I’ve seen it frozen over. But if a year ago someone had told me that I would gladly and joyfully be sharing a stage with Glenn Kelman – and that I would have previously publicly stated that Glenn is not only brilliant but also a really nice guy – I would have said, “you’re nuts.” He won’t want to get on the same stage with me and neither do I. I would have been wrong. Glenn and I will be sharing the stage for our debate at BHB Unchained on May 20th. (None of this it to even imply that I won’t point out why Redfin, the company, is doomed to failure – but Glenn, himself, is destined for greatness.)

A year and a half ago, BHB was famous for bashing Zillow. Pointing out what was wrong with Zillow (and getting huge traffic, as a result). Zillow is now the main sponsor of BHBU. And David Gibbons, from Zillow, has practically become an icon in the area of how to win people over and get them to like you and your company.

But those two items above are just the introduction to what prompted this post. Jay Thompson has a blog called NAR Wisdom. When it was first started it didn’t seem Jay even wanted his name on it. But before long his name was on it and the blog consisted primarily of posts critical of and (rightfully so) mocking NAR. But check this out. I wrote there that I am impressed. I am impressed. And delighted.

East meets West.

Some things may take time but as far as I’m concerned this is the best news about the future of our industry I’ve ever seen. Now if we can emulate David Gibbons’ style (WWDGD?) we can get David Gibbons’ results too.

Hell Freezes Over

I’m all in.

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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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