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December 31, 2007

Mortgage Cicerone: Tony Gallegos

by

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

Author website

Tony Gallegos posted his top bloggers’ list of 2007.

Many of the lists published are a beauty pageant and none, to this date, mean a whole lot to MY industry; residential real estate finance. Tony’s participation in MTG.net is a measured and intelligent position. It has to be; Tony is a senior executive for a big bank. While the originators were bickering with The X Broker, Tony was pointing out the strength of both sides’ arguments. When I chronicled the curse at Countrywide, the Countrywide employees went bonkers. Tony offered measured but cautionary advice to those folks about the reality that lurked in the bowels of the balance sheet.

If you’re a loan originator, Tony’s the real deal. He closed 400 units in one year. Here’s the trick; he did it with one processor, no team…just one processor. What this whole thing means, if you’re a loan originator, is that you listen to Tony Gallegos and you read The Mortgage Cicerone. If strength comes from restraint, Tony is the modern day Charles Atlas. While you won’t see him writing many opinion pieces (as bank executives shouldn’t), you will see him pointing you to relevant information…like a guide, a Cicerone.

The Mortgage Cicerone points us to three unsung voices in his 2007 list:

Joe Zekas from Yo! Chicago. I met Joe, on Active Rain, last year. One thing I’ve learned to dread is the Zekas comment; they’re always incisive and usually correct. Joe takes on the MSM in this post but don’t start cheering. Two of my favorite Zekasms are his take on treating people like leads and his rules for what NOT to do on a weblog. Even more astounding are: 1. some genius hasn’t called him arrogant and 2. there is no Fake Joe Zekas blog floating around the internet.

Brett Rogers, of BeatCanvas.org , offers intelligent commentary. His post, The Second Handers, summed up my thoughts about the rugged individualism that made this country great.

Dan Melson, of Searchlight Crusade, is one Read more

December 31, 2007

Can Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman tell me what to say and not to say?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Can Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman Tell Me What to Say and Not Say? Sure he can. There is no law anywhere in America that says Todd Kaufman’s rules about what Realtors writing Kaufman's Oversized Haloon a blog should not write have to be limited to Loudoun County residents (Realtors). Some people don’t even know who Todd Kaufman is and that is going to change. Fast. Todd
Kaufman (for those who just got off the banana boat) is the County Assessor for Loudoun County Virgina. Todd didn’t like what Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic wrote on his blog and attempted to shut Danilo up by making stupid threats about ethics complaints and possible legal action.

Near the end, Todd included the following in his Threat Letter to Danilo:

The Office of the County Attorney, the management team of your office, the Chairman of the NVAR, and the Chairman and CEO of the Dulles Area Association of Realtors are copied in this correspondence.

I like it. A lot. It puts Danilo on notice that Todd isn’t to be trifled with, not even a little bit. Todd had already fired this salvo:

I will address that issue through the process provided by the NAR if the misleading information is not immediately removed from your site.

Was what Danilo Bogdanovic posted on his blog about the amount of property tax that should be collected correct? I don’t know. I don’t care. If Danilo was in error then the right thing to do is to (with specifics, please)  correct the error with factual information. Pretty simple, really. Not to Todd Kaufman. No, Todd starts off by making threats.

Good news for Todd Kaufman. I believe that if Todd Kaufman has the right (duty?) to keep Danilo in line, he owes that to me and the rest of you reading this, as well. If Todd is going to threaten Danilo and his broker with legal action or complaints to the NAR, I want him to threaten me that way too. In fact, I insist on it. He wants to accuse Danilo and his broker of being “unprofessional” per the NAR Code of Ethics – well how about Read more

December 30, 2007

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

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Only seven entries on the short list this week, but the long list was barely 25 posts. 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 $AltEntries = array ( "Jillayne Schlicke -- Mortgage fraud Recent Mortgage Fraud Developments and Future Outlook”,
“Tom Royce — Property taxes Making the Seniors Work To Pay Off Property Taxes – Your Bloodsucking Government in Action“,
“Dustin Luther — Year in review A trip down the memory super-highway…“,
“Kris Berg — Happy holidays Happy Holidays!“,
“Todd Carpenter — Zillow mortgage Zillow Mortgage Prediction“,
“Dan Melson — Short sale Getting Another Mortgage Loan After A Short Sale“,
“Jeff Brown — Expert results Do Others Think Of You As An Expert? You Must Be Getting Results”
);
shuffle($AltEntries);

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  • “;
    $radioGroup .= “$pieces[0], “;
    $radioGroup .= “$pieces[1]”;
    }

    echo (“

      $radioGroup

    “)
    ?>

    Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own weblog entry or any post you admire here.

    Technorati Tags: , ,

    • December 29, 2007

    Unchained Social Networking: Setting Up a Facebook Profile

    by

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

    Author website

    I was a latecomer to Facebook. I was an early adopter of MySpace and, as a marketer, still prefer the open access to user data MySpace provides. Facebook profiles are “closed” to the public unless you have a “connection”. As a user you may love that but as a marketer it’s a little bit annoying.

    Facebook is better for social networking with contacts and/or friends than MySpace. They encourage independent developers to create applications for Facebook users. Facebook is much more “geeky” inasmuch as you can customize your profile with widgets while MySpace does not. It is a great resource for pure “pull” marketers; we (if you are playing my game) are not pure “pull” marketers; we gently push people.

    Facebook’s closed access reminds me of the original LinkedIn gated access feature. LinkedIn realized that the gated access feature inhibited utility so I suspect that Facebook will ease it’s restrictions in the near future.

    Once in, the applications ARE terrific. You can throw sheep at your friends, “poke” them, and do other adolescent things if you wish (but we don’t care about them). Some of the useful professional applications for our kind are are RSS feeds to a blog, CribFinders, etc.

    Let’s get started. Go to www.Facebook.com

    1- Click the green “sign up” button

    2- Let’s stick with the personal profile. The “business” profile has limited reach. Fill out your name AND “at a company” in the drop down menu. This is important because you may have a greater reach across “networks” if you work for a large franchisor, like Keller Williams. Use your professional e-mail address; that determines your access. Fill out your password selection, birthdate, and captchka, and hit SIGN UP.

    3- Retrieve your confirmation e-mail and click the activation link.

    4- Use the “Find Friends” link and import your address book. It’s safe; they don’t e-mail your friends nor store that data. You control the invitations. When you’re finished, click “next”.

    5- Populate the profile information. Entering your company data and alumni affiliations are important to future networking capabilities.

    6- Read more

    December 29, 2007

    Updating WordPress for the New Year: Just because we’re living in an ethereal world, it doesn’t mean there’s no house-keeping

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    I’m upgrading eight of the weblogs we host this weekend. That’s not all the weblogs we host, just the ones that are currently being maintained on at least a semi-regular basis. The single-property-web-sites we’ve done as weblogs are languishing in neglect.

    These are the blogs I’m hitting:

    • BloodhoundBlog.com
    • BloodhoundBlog.TV
    • BloodhoundRealty.com
    • DistinctivePhoenix.com
    • PRETExchange.com
    • RealEstateWeblogging101.com
    • TheBrickRanch.com
    • TooMuchVegas.com

    I’m bringing this up for two reasons.

    First, if you have privileges on any of those weblogs, watch for potentially significant changes between now and tomorrow morning. Two of them are running WP 2.0.10, and only one was running 2.3.1 until I started updating. Plus which, I’m updating and standardizing all the plug-ins. Let me know if you detect anything broken.

    Second, I need an easier way of doing this. I expect that WP Multi-User already does this, but sometime soon I’m going to see if I can make WordPress run multiple installations from something like a common code-base. In other words, I would like to be able to update eight (or more) weblogs with one FTP upload. I would like to be able to update a plug-in one time and have that update apply to every weblog we host. I’ve got a lot on my plate between now and Unchained, but I’ll see what I can come up with.

    And this entire post is a hint to you. This is a good time to look over your weblog and see what needs to be updated.

    In particular, the year is about to change. If you have the words “Copyright 2007” somewhere in your weblog (it’s often found in the footer), you can change that copy to this:

    Copyright <?php echo date('Y'); ?>

    The PHP “echo” command will echo the current year forever. You’ll never have to change the date again.

    Of the eight weblogs listed above, six are done. I have to go show and I don’t plan to do BHB and TheBrickRanch until late tonight, anyway. Should be duck soup, but if something looks hosed to you in the wee hours, tilt your head to the southwest and I’ll teach you how to swear.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

    December 29, 2007

    Best of the worst: BloodhoundBlog’s most popular posts for 2007

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Here’s a comment that got deleted earlier tonight, a pearl of wisdom issued from one orifice or another by a less-than-brilliant pundit who chose to keep his or her identity concealed. The soul and substance of this partial portion of wit:

    this is easily the worst blog on the RE.net

    Todd Seavey wrote a brilliant essay this week on the nature of this kind of drive-by malice, but ours is a very special kind of misanthrope. For our anonymous abortive commenter is so well versed in the greater and the lesser, the better and the worse, the ridiculous and the sublime of the RE.net that he or she seems not to know that I coined the term ‘RE.net’.

    “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” Indeed. I know from a lifetime’s experience that I bring out the worst of the bad in people. That much requires no special effort on my part. I strive, when I remember to think about it, to bring out the best of the good in people, as well. And while BloodhoundBlog is not “easily the worst blog on the RE.net,” we have a colorable if not utterly incontestable claim to being the best of our breed. And if we are not beyond all doubt the very best, it is certainly not for the lack of effort.

    Witness: These are the top 25 most popular BloodhoundBlog posts for 2007, expressed in terms of hard clicks:

    1. What’s Wrong with zipRealty? by Russell Shaw
    2. HR 3915 Is Dangerous by Brian Brady
    3. HR 3915: Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007 by Brian Brady
    4. More on the iPhone… by Greg Swann
    5. Is the Subprime Mortgage Market the next Enron? by Brian Brady
    6. How to make Google your weblog’s best friend… by Greg Swann
    7. HARD MONEY: Life as a Legal Loan Shark by Brian Brady
    8. The Countrywide Federal Bailout Act of 2008 by Brian Brady
    9. 401(k)’s IRA’s & Urban Myths by Jeff Brown
    10. Redfin.com’s Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights: A wolf in sheepskin clothing… by Greg Swann
    11. Game Time: What Are Your Favorite Real Estate Slogans? by Dan Green
    12. Subprime Loans Disappeared? Learn How to be a Hard Money Loan Broker by Brian Brady
    13. San Read more
    December 28, 2007

    A potentially canonical list of weblog naming ideas

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    I updated the potentially canonical list of real estate weblogs yesterday for the first time since June. One of the benefits of delay is that I get to see who didn’t make it in the long run, saving me some work. Hope is easy. Weblogging is hard.

    In any case, I added a form to the page to make it simpler (and, one may hope, quicker) to add, change or remove entries from the list.

    Here are two ideas that occurred to me while I was sifting through 3,000 un-dealt-with emails (of all sorts, not just real estate weblogs):

    1. Naming your weblog with an image instead of CSS-styled text is probably a bad idea. We’re guilty of this at DistinctivePhoenix.com, but it’s something I’ll fix the next time I go after that weblog in a big way.
    2. Naming your weblog with your most potentially-valuable keyword is probably a very good idea. Here we’re entirely off the reservation. With the exception of RealEstateWeblogging101.com, nothing I’ve ever done is right. But the value of having your most valuable keyword as your URL is so rich that it might be worth your while, if you don’t already have a lot of traction, to consider starting over with a new domain name.

    RealEstateWeblogging101.com is a complete category-killer, and Dave Smith is studying it extensively. It’s interesting to Dave because it’s built entirely in WordPress “Pages,” with almost no ordinary weblog message content.

    The name of that weblog is an image, also, not styled text, but, of course, the title of each post and the name of the weblog are encoded in the title tag of each page. There’s something else we’re doing on all of those pages: The title of each weblog post or WordPress “Page” is shown twice, once as the heading of the content and once on the “blackboard” at the top of the page. I don’t know if that is making a huge difference with Google, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting anything.

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    December 28, 2007

    Thank You Seth: “Why not be great?”

    by

    Mortgage Banker

    Author website

    In his last post of the year, Seth Godin visits the archives to pull out a piece of encouragement that has never rang more true in our industry until this year.  Read his whole post and get excited about 2008.

    From Seth’s post on Why not be great?

    Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times.

    So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

    You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

    Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

    December 28, 2007

    Speaking in tongues: Dynamically updated lists of links in PHP

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    Let’s get dynamic, shall we? There are a lot of things you can say about PHP — and some of them are even safe for work. But, at bottom, PHP is a working stiff’s programming language for producing dynamic web pages.

    What’s a dynamic web page? It’s a page that reflects a user’s actions or editing without requiring manual editing of each little line of HTML. In the world of AJAX coding, web pages are becoming so dynamic that they seem to mimic the behavior of stand-alone complied applications. Calm down. We’re not going to do anything that sexy. And while we will actually be introducing real bona fide PHP programming in this post, you can dial down the palpitations: We will be doing precisely one line of PHP programming. Everything else will be familiar old HTML.

    Okay then: Go take a look at this article on HR 3915. Brian Brady wrote that post, and it was one of our most popular entries this year. BloodhoundBlog is the home of big stories on the RE.net, and, when we cover a big story, I do everything I can to make sure that readers — especially readers arriving from search engines or by hard clicks from non-RE.net sites — don’t miss the full extent of our coverage.

    So, if you scroll down in that post, you’ll see a bullet list of links to other posts with the heading “More on HR 3915.”

    That list of links is done with PHP.

    The actual list is simply a file of plain vanilla HTML — no PHP programming. The file for this list of links is called HR3915.php. It looks like this:

    &nbsp;<br>&nbsp;<br><B><I>More on HR
3915:</I></B><UL>
<li><a
href="http://www.mortgageratesreport.com/2007/11/
15/daily-kos-on-hr-3915-mortgage-industry-set-to"
target="_blank">Daily Kos on HR 3915: Mortgage
Industry Set To</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2217" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Why Federally-Chartered Banks Get The Pass</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2200" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Open Letter to Senator Dodd from a Veteran
Mortgage Originator</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.mortgageratesreport.com/2007/11/
08/hr-3915-legislating-to-armageddon"
target="_blank">HR 3915- Legislating to
Armageddon</a>
<li><a
href="http://blownmortgage.com/2007/11/07/hr-3915-
mortgage-reform-bill-passes-committee-with-
important-changes/" target="_blank">H.R. 3915
Mortgage Reform Bill Passes Committee with
Important Changes</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2176" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Anti-Consumer Bank Protection Act of 2007</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2153" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Exploring the Minds of the Enablers</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2112" target="_blank">HR 3915 Is
Dangerous</a>
<li><a
href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/
BloodhoundBlog/?p=2103" target="_blank">HR 3915:
Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of
2007</a>
</UL>

    (It’s cleaner than that in real life. I had to introduce line breaks to keep it from screwing Read more

    December 27, 2007

    Unchained Social Networking: Setting Up A LinkedIn Profile

    by

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

    Author website

    LinkedIn is the first social network I joined. I received an invitation in 2003. Back then, the network was dominated by tech types networking for jobs. I set up a profile and was BLOWN AWAY by the rich user-provided content. I was a National Sales Manager, in 2003, and new to San Diego. I used LinkedIn to connect with loan originators (to recruit) and potential clients (the refinance craze was underway in 2003).

    Unchained Rule #1 of Social Networking: Bridge the Digital Divide

    Jeff Brown is a master at this. If Jeff makes a connection, on the internet, he does some homework (click through to a blog, Googles their name) to see if there is potential synergy. Jeff then calls them and introduces himself.

    I did the same thing in 2003. I keyword searched, on LinkedIn, to see if I could find Villanova alumni, Knights of Columbus, and independent stockbrokers in Southern California. The first two were affinity groups and the latter was my ideal referral source. I Googled the potential prospect’s name and found contact information for them. I called and introduced myself to them IN A NON-THREATENING, LOW KEY manner. The responses ranged from annoyance to acceptance, heavily laden with surprise. Most tech people were communicating through the “gated-access” approach that was the signature of Linked In. I had more success than failure with my “digital bridge” call. If you’re polite and professional, most users respond well.

    Okay, let’s get you set up. Click here to get to the start page. This will open in a new window so you can follow along with my instructions.

    1- Click the yellow “Join Now” button at the bottom of the page.

    2- Fill out the contact information. Use your primary, professional e-mail address. Click the “Join LinkedIn” button.

    3- Fill out the user survey for how you might use LinkedIn- click “Save Settings”

    4- Start building your network three ways:

    a- import your e-mail contacts (extremely safe and they don’t spam anyone)

    b-“Reconnect” with past colleagues through a company Read more

    December 27, 2007

    Speaking in tongues: Presentable PHP in WordPress

    by

    Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

    Author website

    In the coming days, I plan to take up the idea of PHP for non-programmers, helping you tap the power of PHP’s dynamic text processing without learning (much) actual coding.

    The problem is that illustrating HTML or PHP in WordPress is always a problem. Why? Because WordPress eats code for breakfast. Properly-formatted coding looks to WordPress like… properly-formatted coding. Instead of a code example, you get the executed code itself.

    There are ways around this. I’ve used pictures in the past, or done elaborate searches to suss WordPress into showing the code sample as a code sample. But because I’m going to be showing a lot of code, and because I want for you to be able to copy and paste my examples into your own files, I built a tool (in PHP) to render PHP and HTML in a form that looks to WordPress like mere text, not code to be executed, but which will work just fine when you copy and paste it into your own files.

    Like this, as a very simple example:

    <html>
<body>
<p>Hello, World!</p>
</body>
</html>

    I’ve made my little toy available to you, if you want to play with it. You can use it to show coded examples to your own readers. It’s not doing any kind of error-trapping, but it’s not doing very much of anything. Let me know if you can break it.

    Building this was actually easier than talking about it, but there is a caveat. WordPress won’t love you if you try to go back and edit a published post that has one of these encoded examples in it. The second time through the WordPress parser, it will try to execute the code. The solution is either to write in and edit in an off-line editor like Ecto or to create your posts using coded examples in a text editor, editing your original files, rather than the published post. The point, either way, is to make sure that WordPress parses the coded examples only once before displaying them.

    I’ll have more shortly, but if you want to get a jump on things, do this: Copy the example code above and paste Read more

    December 27, 2007

    Do Others Think Of You As An Expert? You Must Be Getting Results

    by

    Real Estate Investments Broker

    Author website

    Ever noticed nobody wants to know how you skinned the cat until they ascertain the cat was actually skinned? In baseball, they ask you if you won. Or if you got any hits. They ask about the details after they find out what matters — results.

    These days so many in real estate tell whoever will listen what experts they are. Think Babe Ruth ever had to tell folks he was an expert home run hitter? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question, and silly on its face.

    In baseball the first pitch of any particular plate appearance has been analyzed to death. Ricky Henderson made a career of hitting first pitches. Ted Williams, arguably the best pure hitter every to hold a piece of wood in a batter’s box — watched first pitches go right by him about 95% of the time. Pitchers knew this, yet still threw an amazing amount of balls, not strikes on all those thousands of first pitches.

    Was Ted Williams an expert? You bet. Were the pitchers he faced for more years than 99% of major league players experts? Some. Probably way less than half. Did most pitchers realize Ricky Henderson was literally hoping for a fat first pitch for immediate deposit into the left field bleachers? Absolutely.

    Both Ted and Ricky were real life experts. They knew what folks thought they knew — and knew it better than anyone in their day. Ted was the last hitter to bat .400 for a season, hitting .406 in 1946. Ricky was, no debate, don’t even embarrass yourself, the best leadoff hitter of all time. I’m not sure there’s a #2. That’s how good he was.

    He was an expert. Experts actually know what they’re doing, and better yet, know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They know what situations they’re in while it’s happening in real time. Sometimes they have to analyze more or less, but their expertise is what makes the difference.

    Today there’s been an explosion of experts in every possible discipline. Real estate is no exception. In fact in real estate there seems to be an 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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