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October 6, 2007

Brass in Pocket

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

I think I forgot to put the cat out. But, I’m still curious – Who did set fire to her? My personal thermostat is broken. I now spend my days alternating between down jackets and ice packs. If there is a way to simultaneous run the furnace and the air conditioner, I am determined to find it. My total 20 minutes of sleep last night involved dreams of dorm rooms, escrows and Russell Shaw. (Don’t get excited, Mr. Shaw. It was the “You are a Failure of Epic Proportions” post that slipped into my subconscious. I have since determined that I am destined for moderate success, since the last thing I wanted to do yesterday was read a 2,000 word blog post on how much I suck. I skimmed).

It is so much fun getting old. Happy birthday to me.

Years ago, the children in my daughter’s second grade class each had to give a presentation on an exotic animal. The question and answer periods were more fun than my third time watching Weekend at Bernie’s. This is where classmates would toss out random questions about the featured animal, thus allowing the presenter to demonstrate their command of the subject. One girl mentioned that the okapi was threatened by the jackal. “What’s a jackal?” one child asked. “Oh, (pause) a rabbit.” Everyone was quite satisfied.

You see, if your audience is clueless, you can say just about anything and get away with it. If you only think in these terms, if you forget that your readers might know a thing or two, or if you forget along the way that people actually may be reading what you write, then you may only think you can get away with it.

On the heels of Inman’s Top 25 Most Influential Bloggers award, I am reminded that there are many (at least 25) writers who blog with passion and with credibility – with something to say. I am also reminded of how competitive is this business, and how competitive this business of blogging is becoming.

Blogging takes two forms. The blogger either has information or has opinions to share. Philosophical opinions, opinions of “what if”, can be debated, but Read more

October 6, 2007

Technology… A Terrible Thing To Waste

by

Commercial Real Estate Broker

Author website

Hopefully as a new contributor to the forum I will be able to provide some insight on the commercial side of the business. Without going into the history of the Site To Do Business and its involvement with the CCIM Institute (I’ll save that one for a later date), I wanted to point out that one of the most helpful, most talked about (at least within the inner circles of the Institute) and worth every penny of this designee’s annual dues is the Site To Do Business (“STDBonline”) website.

Simply, STDBonline is an information resource site geared towards the commercial real estate professional with over 20,000 subscribers to date. It is offered as a subscription service for non-CCIM designees, but included as an exclusive membership “perk” once you become a CCIM candidate “on the way to the pin” ( another topic to be discussed later). For those in Silicon Valley and Bellevue pushing the residential side of the real estate technology chase (zillow.com, trulia.com, terabitz.com, et al.) in order to attract numerous eye balls searching for homes to justify venture capital dollars looking for advertising payback, the informational aspect of the commercial side of the technology chase is left to a select few (providers, that is). As a CCIM, this invaluable tool continues to add features and data that meet the demands of sophisticated owners, investors and potential clients. For many of my CCIM colleagues, STDBonline is always open in one browser on the taskbar.

For example, the October 2007 news blog on the STDBonline website highlights the following valuable data resources for its subscriber base:

  • Business Lists – Once you establish a project and create a study area, you are able to generate lists of businesses to use for market analysis, competitive analysis, marketing, or prospecting. Business lists are available on study areas using radii, donuts, and hand drawn shapes or a standard geography, which receives the closest 2,000 to your center point. Currently, there are 16,000,000 businesses in this database. After creating/selecting a qualifying study area you want to use to create a business list, go to the deck entitled “Choose Reports Read more
October 5, 2007

You’ll lose money if you buy a house? Which house?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

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

 
You’ll lose money if you buy a house? Which house?

Jim Cramer, a clownish buffoon who screams for a living on cable TV, went on the Today show last week and said, “Don’t you dare buy a home now. You will lose money.”

The clownish buffoons in the National Association of Realtors have no faith in your ability to discount hyperbole, so they denounced Cramer’s remarks as “misleading, inaccurate, and inappropriate.”

Ya think?

A steady mantra of the NAR during the housing downturn has been to insist that all real estate is local. My friend and fellow real estate weblogger Dan Green (TheMortgageReports.com) amends that obvious truth by pointing out that all real estate news is granular — national trends say nothing about local markets, and lower overall prices in the Phoenix area are consistently belied by steady appreciation in high-demand neighborhoods. And not all bad news is bad: 2007 is the worst year in real estate since 2002 — but 2002 was a very good year.

Here’s the real truth: All real estate is particular. You’ll lose money if you buy? Nonsense. The right rental home will pay for itself no matter happens to home values.

Don’t buy a home? Which home? A few weeks ago I was in a trashed house that was listed at $200,000 below market. We estimated that it need $50,000 to bring it back to turn-key condition, with a four-month span of time between purchase and resale. Even allowing for errors in our estimates, the house would net out to between 200% and 300% cash-on-cash return in one third of a year. Do that three times and $50,000 capital becomes as much as half-a-million dollars in a year’s time.

All real estate is particular: Which buyer? Which seller? Which house? Which ownership strategy? Which anticipated return? If you’re looking for a residence you intend to occupy for less than three years — rent. You’ll almost certainly lose money buying now. But there is a ton of money to be made in particular real estate transactions right now — provided you Read more

October 5, 2007

FlexMLS is coming to Phoenix!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is strictly local news, but I can’t stop myself from rejoicing:

FlexMLS is replacing Tempo as the web-based MLS system for the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing System.

What this means is that Michael Wurzer, whom we all know and revere, has volunteered to be devoured by savage Bloodhounds.

No, that’s not it. What it means is that we are about to get an MLS vendor who is willing to listen to us, and who very earnestly wants to do his very best — not just because it will mean more business for his company but simply because he is internally committed to doing his very best.

To this, there is but one word that expresses the proper reaction: Hallelujah!

The Epicentrics are already talking about building a group blog for this transition, so that we can help take away the fear of change as well as explore all the exciting new capabilities we stand to gain.

Michael plans to blog the transition from FBS Blog, and I know Cathy, Russell and I will be talking about it here. I can’t see Jay or Jonathan holding their tongues. This could be the most-blogged-about software installation in the history of wired real estate.

My response to Michael’s post this morning: “NOW I’m interested in being involved.”

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October 5, 2007

The Lords of Dogtown: How do you get to be a BloodhoundBlog contributor?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding a new contributor today, Sean M. Broderick, CCIM:

Sean Broderick is a real estate developer and a practicing commercial real estate broker, holding the coveted CCIM designation. His career has taken him from Florida to California, with a stint in minor league baseball.

James Hsu, who has always had a lot on his plate, is expecting twins. For now at least his plate is laden with dinner for five, so he’s going on the back-burner for a while. His account remains active and he’ll rejoin us when he can.

How do you get to be a BloodhoundBlog contributor? There’s no set formula, but a good rule of thumb is to bring us something we don’t already have. If you’re a Realtor in Phoenix, you would probably have to out-write me, out-wow-factor Russell and out-charm Cathleen to make the cut. Sean is a good writer with interesting points of view, but the fact that he’s a developer working the commercial investment side of the street makes him a unique contribution to our roster of contributors.

If you write and reason very well, your chances with me are great. I care a lot about the diversity of viewpoints we bring to the marketplace of ideas, but first-quality writing covers a lot of ground with me. Even so, if you’re a top-executive at a major brokerage franchise or a Real Estate 2.0 start-up, you can come on board even if you get lost mid-alphabet. We’ve swung and missed three times at big-name contributors — all chickened out (or were compelled to chicken out) for corporate PR reasons — but we haven’t given up.

What’s in it for you? Fame and influence. I say there are no rules for BloodhoundBlog contributors, but that’s no wholly true: We’re not in the business of selling anything except good ideas. Most commercial weblogging is done in pursuit of commercial objectives, but that’s at best a secondary pursuit here. We throw off dozens of hard clicks a day to our contributor’s home weblogs or web sites, and some of that may turn into business for them. But we attract around 1,200 unique Read more

October 5, 2007

The Common Denominator of Success

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Today I received two emails from Dean Selvey. One of them was a forward of an email from one of my least favorite people, Mike Ferry. Clicking on the link for the free audio allows you hear a 15 minute commercial for the Action Workshop. I can’t say it isn’t well done. I can say that most everything Mike Ferry ever does is to get people there so they can sell them coaching.

key_successDo you need a coach? Does coaching “work”? I believe that coaching does work but not for the reasons most real estate “coaches” usually think it does. I don’t have a coach. The closest I ever had to a coach was Paul Pastore or Dean Selvey when I was on my way up. Dean sometimes says I am his coach. I don’t believe any coaching organization can really claim “better coaching results” than any other coaching organization. Individual coaches often get better results than other coaches but I really doubt that there is any one organization composed of only good ones – those with a really high “care factor”. But why does it work at all?

It couldn’t possibly be the stupid “someone to be accountable to” reason that most coaches seem to think is so damned important. If having someone to be accountable to was the correct reason coaching “works” then how do so many people without a coach become successful? And If I am Dean’s coach then how is it he is so incredibly successful (he is the # 1 Re/Max agent in the world) talking to me for about an hour a month. And in that hour we may chat about what is new with me, cars I might want to buy, how things are going, etc. Do I give him vital data (usually an organizational concept I learned from Hubbard) that he can use? Yes, but our lunches are hardly “class is in session now”. Over the years (Dean and I have been having lunch once a month for 19 years) he has helped me about as much as I have helped him. What is it Read more

October 4, 2007

Who is the most influential real estate weblogger in the RE.net? Beyond all contest or doubt, it’s Dustin Luther

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me in a comment at Todd Carpenter’s REMBEX Blog Fiesta:

Not to be too contrarian, but this is all Old Testament. None of these people meant anything to me when I was building BloodhoundBlog. If influence means creating the RE.net as we know it, Dustin Luther is the New Testament. He’s not a category killer, but the phenomenon Inman is trying to surf has Dustin as its without-whom-not. I may post on this, because it’s a point we ought not lose in the hoopla. I know Dustin would credit Levin and others, but the fact is that Dustin more than anyone else invented this thing we do.

I hadn’t intended to write anything about this silly Top 25 list, other than to make fun of it in comments to Russell’s post, but I didn’t want to let the moment pass without drawing attention to Dustin’s amazing achievement.

Todd was writing about the people who pioneered the idea of real estate weblogging, and I certainly don’t want to take anything away from them. But the real estate weblogs that dominate the conversation now owe their origin either directly or by — perhaps unknowing — concatenation to the work that Dustin Luther did in building Rain City Guide. BloodhoundBlog, as I disclosed very early on, is a virtual blogchild of RGC, a maculate reconceptualization of ideas Dustin invented or himself reconceived — not from the nascent RE.net but from the weblogging world at large.

Inman’s list means nothing to me. I don’t want to be categorized in any way with exponents of evil, which Keith Brand surely is. The idea of being influential is important to me, but there are but few human behaviors upon which I would seek influence, with all the rest being so much noise. What Inman is celebrating is not influence but popularity — or perhaps simply the celebrity of having been written up in the past by Inman. It’s all one to me in any case. The entire universe I would conquer can be encapsulated by a baseball cap. Lend me your mind, and the rest of the world comes Read more

October 3, 2007

The Mortgage Liquidity Crisis Is Over

by

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

Author website

The liquidity crisis in the mortgage industry is over. I don’t mean that we are going back to the lending guidelines of the go-go years of 2003-2006 but the non-conforming loan guidelines are coming back to a sense of normalcy.

Dan Green talked about the non-conforming home loan market being like the NFL Draft, six weeks ago:

As soon as the first buyer puts a “market value” on a specific type of sub-prime or Alt-A loan, a number of positive things will happen:

  1. Funds will re-value their holdings and begin allowing withdrawals again
  2. The sub-prime and Alt-A mortgage product menu will expand a bit
  3. Wall Street will relax a bit

Until that buyer shows up, though, mortgage money will stay out of the market like JaMarcus Russell stays out of training camp.

While the “top picks” were holding out, the “position players” went into training camp. The position players, in California, were the portfolio lenders. Banks like Downey Savings, First Federal Savings, and old skool Home Savings of America, stepped in and filled the void a little bit. They didn’t pick up all the slack but they did gain market share as Wall Street twiddled their thumbs.

Ponder Dan’s excellent sports analogy a second. August and September of 2007 was like the infamous 1994 baseball strike. Replacement players, far less talented than their striking counterparts, took the field for Spring Training in 1995. Major League Baseball took decisive action to insure that the game of baseball, admittedly watered-down in talent, would continue. That forced the MLB Players’ Union to deal with the prospect of being completely unnecessary.

The aforementioned portfolio lenders are the equivalent of the replacement players. They took market share from the superstars and actually started the get a bit greedy by raising their rates. When they started to get a significant portion of the cream-puff loans, the superstars on Wall Street stood up and took notice.

Flailing lender Countrywide was the first to cross the picket line. Desperation reigned in that house as they repositioned their warehouse lending capabilities away from the commercial paper market and Read more

October 3, 2007

We Have Not Seen The Bottom, Yet!

by

Associate Broker

Author website

Watching How Lenders Deal With Short Sales

When lenders start to deal with foreclosures and pre-foreclosures in a manner consistent with reality, we might see the bottom of this market. Recently, my experience with these lenders has been less than heartening.

In one case, I represent a seller who paid waaaay too much for her home, and a death in her family resulted in her inability to keep up the payments. The offers than we have received have all netted the second lien holder NO MONEY – so they will not allow the sale by releasing the lien.

Keep in mind that when the house hits the courthouse steps – the second lien holder will get NOTHING, anyway. But, instead of helping facilitate the sale – they block it.

When I brought them an offer, the second lien holder sent me their list of requirements (which included some very detailed info that took a great deal of time to acquire) and told me that they will need at least 21 days to consider the offer. Don’t even bother us before 21 days, is what the instructions read.

Well we waited over a month for them, then called to find out where we were on this deal… only to be told, “Well, we’re not going to accept NOTHING, that’s for sure!”

Hmm – they knew there was nothing in it for them from the inception. They knew there was nothing in it by the detailed Seller’s Net Sheet that I submitted to them. So after more than a month – we now know that they will not accept such an offer.

Gee – I guess it was too much trouble to just say that in the beginning.

The second lien holder wants the first lien holder to give them some money, or they won’t release the lien. The first lien holder, of course, will not give the second lien holder anything.

I guess we should just go get our sign and lockbox…

I have another client who has been trying to sell for the last year and a half. They no longer live in the property (it’s been vacant for a year Read more

October 3, 2007

Ask the Broker: How can the seller paying the buyer’s broker’s commission be fair to the seller?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s a truly fascinating question from an agent working in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. The idea of buyer brokerage is just being introduced there, and our interlocutor is understandably mystified:

I am a bit confused, to say the very least.

If I write up a listing contract with a seller, traditionally, when offering compensation to a sub-agent that agent was working in the best interest of the seller as well — working to get the seller the best price and terms.

However, If we are now offering compensation to a Buyer Broker, we know that the other agent is going to be representing the interests of the Buyer — working to get the price as low as possible.

Why would a seller agree to compensate the Buyer Broker for any part of the commission?

Where traditionally the sub-agent would negotiate the best possible price for the seller. It seems to me we are telling the seller to pay a party who is going to negotiate against their favor? Isn’t this unethical?

So far, to my knowledge, there has been one actual rigorous argument against divorcing the commissions. We do what we do for practical reasons, and I have offered practical solutions to these problems, but, so far, no one has been able to defend seller-paid commissions as a matter of equitable rectitude to both principals. If I’m wrong about this, cite the link to the argument.

Meanwhile, our interlocutor makes defending seller-paid commissions that much more difficult. I don’t think there is any way to dispute the argument that buyer brokerage, as compared with sub-agency, induces sellers to act against their own interests — even as the seller’s hands on the purse-strings provides incentives for buyer’s agents to betray their clients.

Does anyone have any thoughtful answers to these questions?

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October 2, 2007

Things You Can Legally Do In Nevada

by

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

Author website

1- Gamble your house away.

2- Patronize a prostitute.

3- Fund a stated…(sound of needle scratching across a vinyl record)

It may now be considered a crime to originate a stated income loan in the State of Nevada.  Of course all the waiters, cocktail servers, strippers, and construction workers will be left behind but there will be no stated income loans in Nevada.

Last year, one out of four loans, funded in Nevada, were stated income.  One out of three loans, funded in the Las Vegas metro area were stated income.

Gamble responsibly.

 

October 2, 2007

Oh, good grief! He went to JARED…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Joel Burslem cites a Glenn Kelman quote from a comment to John Cook’s post this morning, but I think this one is more interesting:

By the way, no matter how many times the real estate industry insists that we’re JARED (Just Another Real Estate Discounter) we can’t help but add that our goal is to be different and better, whereas discount brokerages simply aspire to be the same but less expensive. This is why we say we’re not a discount brokerage, we’re an online brokerage.

“JARED” is a genuine neologism as far as I can tell, and a boon to the taxonomy of real estate brokerages.

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October 2, 2007

The Weight Loss Process and the Real Estate Market: The Same Animal in a Different Form

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

Much like the real estate market my life has taken on significant changes over the past two months.  Fortunately, unlike the real estate market, my life has been on the upswing.  A major focus for me has been weight loss, resulting in my dropping nearly 40 pounds in about two months.  As I am not one for long personal stories, the major reason for sharing this is to relate how weight loss and real estate seem to go hand and hand.

The Realization

I am fat.  Plain and simple, one day I realized I was fat.  There were plenty of signs, quite obvious to others, which I chose to ignore: tighter pants, lower energy, the mirror, etc.  Eventually the mountain of evidence reaches a tipping point; a point at which, despite my best efforts, I simply could not ignore the fact that I was no longer the chiseled college athlete of six years ago.  For me, this point was when, on a whim that was clearly not thought out, I decided to weigh myself.  When the scale read 260 pounds and I officially weighed more than my father, it was a sad day.  The day became even sadder when my wife thoughtfully pointed out that the BMI for a person my height (6′ 2″) suggested that I should weigh 190 (thanks, dear).  

The real estate market reached this point about six months to a year ago.  Much like me, the market chose to ignore that fact that real estate prices were increasing much faster than wages.  Additionally, prices continued to increase at break neck speeds assuming the lowest interest rates in history would get even lower.  At the height of market gluttony, people were using homes as personal cash registers, spending as if the money created from nothing, would magically go on forever.  Then one day, the market hit a tipping point.  For the real estate market, my guess would be the subprime market disaster acted as this point.  At this point people begin to wake up and come to their senses.

The Action Plan

Getting back to the fundamentals of eating right and exercising brought me 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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