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August 8, 2007

Realtors Will Continue To Sell Houses – Business Goes On.

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Some odds and ends here. (now isn’t that a compelling make-you-want-to-read-it opening?) I got a call today from my friend and fellow agent, JoAnn Calloway. She had been getting conflicting information regarding what is likely to happen with interest rates and the immediate possible changes to our marketplace. She was pretty sure I would know what was going to happen next. I don’t like to disappoint, so I want ahead and knew (no major changes to her market due to the sub-prime fallout). After I told her, she wanted to know how I knew. I told her I read BloodhoundBlog. That is how I knew. Yes, there are other posts on other blogs, but I find out about those posts and blogs by reading BloodhoundBlog. In this case, it was just a few posts, this one, this one and this one. Okay, it wasn’t just those posts – it was those posts, in combination with the comments to those posts. For example, when Greg showed the graph in this post and I saw Dan Green’s comments linking to this graph I was able to get a pretty good idea of what was going on as a result of what was being heralded by some as the end of the world as we know it. Long term (over the past five years) rates are slowly moving up. Short term, they are dropping a bit.get a brain morans
Prediction: the world will not end right away. I have seen the future and it is a lot like the past, only longer.

_____

Today, I finally ordered the external microphone for the digital video camera I have had for some time. This is for the coaching / mentoring I have been talking about making available here on BHB. So soon. Very soon, that will start for real.

If you have been waiting for that to get started, here is a little something that you might like. It is scheduled for 1 PM (Phoenix time) on Tuesday the 14th. The call will last less than an hour. For those reading this after the specific event I’m doing, but wanting to know about Read more

August 8, 2007

Real Estate Bloggers — Why Are You Blogging? What Currency Does Your Banker Accept?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Since BloodhoundBlog isn’t about blogging for its owner’s business — the following doesn’t apply. In fact, Greg seems to abhor even the suggestion this blog might be construed as financially beneficial to him. He wants Bloodhound to be the best place to go when you want real estate information or expertise. His mission is to inform and educate — period. I’m sure there are other blogs who also exist only to distribute valuable information to their readers. This isn’t aimed at them either.

11th commandment

Let’s begin with what everyone who knows me realizes pretty quickly — I’m not a tech guy, and surely not a blogging expert. However, after blogging for a year now, I’ve noticed a few things in the so called blogging world. Wanna be a blogging expert? Just call yourself one. No kiddin’, that’s just about all you need to do.

In my first few months these so-called experts would write blogging commandments as if they’d found them on the third tablet Moses lost on his way down the mountain. You would have thought the 11th commandment was for blogging experts only — hidden in a secret place known only to them. At first I took them seriously. My mistake. My audience started to ask me what was up. What was up? I was listening to the experts, that’s what.

Kris Berg’s post on this subject was spectacularly on point. She then followed it up with the perfect satirical application of what she learned from the experts in San Francisco.

small dinner

Since I’m not in the house side of the business my subjects are……..different. They’re like a full dinner. They involve, at least much of the time, some relatively complex principles and concepts. They can’t be half a small bowl of broth. Uh, usually it’s the principles adding up that make a concept. Duh. Yet, I was constantly feeling like I was being criticized by the experts because my posts were too long. They said I needed to be short and snappy. As Kris quoted the experts: “Readers are scanners…….five paragraphs……max.”

Here’s some exaggerated examples of what they wished I would adhere to. Read more

August 8, 2007

President Bush says “No” to an Uncle Sam Bailout

by

Real Estate Rainmaker

Author website

neil-cavuto.JPGAfter reading BENN‘s, Michael‘s and Greg‘s articles today, my ears were uber-perked regarding the current market conditions. In preparing to blog today, I had Fox News on in the background and loved Cavuto’s analysis of the current conditions so much that I cared enough to pause, play, pause, play and transcribe his “Common Sense” piece. Do you agree or disagree with the following?

“Sometimes, the toughest thing about freedom is recognizing that you are also free to screw up, to make mistakes, to not read mortgage fine print or to understand that adjustable rates can also adjust up. In a free society, you are also free not to learn these things; you are free to assume that when you make the biggest purchase in your life, you do not have to do the most amount of research on the purchase in your life. You are free to study everything, or study nothing. You are free to be duped. It is not fair, my friends, it is not right.

I think the President in his discussions with me today cut to the core of the problem in some mortgages today. Some didn’t know what they were getting into. Some buyers didn’t read, some did not care, some stories did not end well. Some presidential candidates say ‘make the government make them well. Help them out, bail them out.’

But, the President today offering me a not so politically correct answer- “no.” No bailouts, no gains, no money for the very same folks who some say created the mess in the first place. FORCE them to be transparent? Yes. Force them to write in English? Yes. Forcing them to do everything to help borrowers before dumping them on Uncle Sam? Yes. But, you don’t correct a problem by throwing more money at the problem. I think that what the President was saying is that in the end, it is up to US to know when we’re getting in too deep.”

August 8, 2007

The National Association of Realtors is Simply Outrageous

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

This title truly comes from the heart. Reading the Wall Street Journal today, I stumbled across the latest report from the lead economist at the National Association of Realtors. In the face of overwhelming negative information and despite their own lowered forecasts, Mr. Lawrence Yun states,

Existing-home sales should be relatively stable over the next few months, holding in a modest range, with some pent-up demand growing from buyers who’ve been on the sidelines.” He continues on to say, “A modest upturn is projected for existing-home sales toward the end of the year, with broader improvement to include the new-home market by the middle of 2008

Perhaps he considers the third time he tries to shovel this to the markets will be the charm. I am not sure what it takes to be an economist, let alone head of economic research at the National Association of Realtors, but the first interview question must be “Do you have a pair of unbreakable, impenetrable, gigantic Rose Colored glasses?”

Before I move forward, I want to say that I understand that there are many different economic philosophies out there. From Regan’s supply side economics to our own Jeff Brown’s interesting economic theories, there can be many ways to interpret various economic indicators. Instead of spouting my own point of view, I will layout simple economic trends and let you the reader be the judge of where you think the market will go.

The Current Market Climate:

  • The Subprime mortgage market has been shut down, shutting out at least 10% (probably more) of the buying market
  • Alt-A (Loans below prime, but above subprime) mortgages have taken a huge hit, shutting out another indeterminate amount of buyers (~2-5%)
  • Fed chose to hold interest rates steady, resulting in higher expected mortgage rates
  • Adjustable rate mortgage resets hit many consumers in their wallet very hard
  • Time on the market has increased significantly for most markets and overall
  • Defaults have been climbing and have showed no signs of slowing. Additionally, defaults significantly lower market values, resulting in lower selling prices
  • Leverage finance troubles in the broader economy will have an effect on real estate Read more
August 8, 2007

Sun Microsystems draws free pictures of the twenty-first century; to be shown to barbarians to illustrate the path to relevance

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s the opposite of an antiquated product in a useless form-factor being hoarded behind a paywall? Sun Microsystems has developed the world’s fastest microprocessor — and is making all of the design details available by Open Source:

To add fuel to the fire, the blueprints for our UltraSPARC T2 (I personally like the moniker, “Niagara 2” – named after Niagara Falls, btw, and the great volumes of water that pass over them), the core design files and test suites, will be available to the open source community, via its most popular license: the GPL. Making Niagara 2 the only commodity silicon whose core designs are available to the open source community – whose strength, and market power, only grows by the day.

The economics of walls and safes and locks and chains is based in fear, hostility, suspicion, anger and doubt. Resources are presumed to be scarce, so if I don’t hoard them with an ugly vigilance, I’ll starve.

The economics of abundance is built on the opposite premises: Openness, candor, an effortless joy that flowers into pure splendor: The only true economic resource is human intelligence, a resource infinite in potential. By sharing with you everything I know, I will enrich us both: You will have the wealth I have created so far, and I will have the wealth you will create from that starting point.

These startling innovations are as new as Socrates, at least, so people can be forgiven for not having learned them after twenty-five centuries’ time. But there are two unhappy consequences to the economics of hoarding. The first is the tax on human dignity that comes from wresting treasure away with a thief’s cunning, hiding it and cowering over it, like the baubles in a raven’s nest, with a stingy, guarded greed. But the second is the vast riches that are foregone by this idea of wealth as trinkets to be withheld, rather than as ideas to be shared and cultivated.

We come back to Cain and Abel. Abel’s wealth is the raven’s wealth, gems and metals, portable and enduring but finite in quantity. Cain’s wealth is the fruit of Read more

August 7, 2007

When Lenders Stop Lending, Another Lender Lends.

by

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

Author website

The title is a funny play on words from advice Jeff Brown and Ron Feinberg gave me last week. When I returned from Inman last week, the market started melting down. I pride myself on my cool head but some days the Awshits sneak up and dominate my mind; Friday was one of those days.

IndyMac- discontinued neg-am

Bear Stearns- repriced neg ams by adding 2.25 points to the fee (thievery)

American Brokers Conduit- I didn’t know they were owned by American Home Mortgage until it was too late.

World Savings- a workable solution but their margins are so expensive. Now, they’re cheaper than the rest.

Jeff Brown told me that some smart company would figure out the void in the market in less than one month. Ron Feinberg said six weeks. I called the 2-3 borrowers and explained that the repricing may have made the neg-am loans a poor recommendation; it just didn’t fit into the plan I had created for them.

Look who slipped in the back door with killer pricing and terms. I’ll be damned! It took less than a week!

August 7, 2007

Looking for a traditional listing agent when Redfin.com lets you down? 60 Minutes has got that covered, too!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Beau Betts in Seattle writing about the 60 Minutes commercial for Redfin.com:

60 Minutes also interviewed Deborah Arends from Re/Max and represented her as having the “old school” real estate mentality and didn’t really portray her in the most positive light.

Well, I just started laughing when I was browsing the mls just now looking for home for a client of mine and saw a house that I think could possibly be a good candidate for them. One thing that I noticed was that the home had been on the market for almost 100 days. Here’s the amusing part, the home was originally listed by Redfin back in late April and they just lost the listing to none other than Deborah Arends.

Arends took a beating by proxy for the rest of us. It’s good to see her getting a bit of her own back.

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August 7, 2007

Greg plays PHP games with ZeeMaps: The story for July in the F.Q. Story Historic District of Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Kris Berg and Jonathan Dalton have been making good use of ZeeMaps to show sales activity in their local market areas.

I’ve been digging this, but at StarPower, I discovered that I am smart and lazy — good at figuring out how to avoid hard work. So: I built a little bot that, in conjunction with our MLS system, will build ZeeMaps of ideas I want to illustrate visually. Here, for example, is MLS activity in the F.Q. Story Historic District of Phoenix for the month of July: Active, Pending, Expired and Cancelled. I have the bot set up to use different colors for Sold, Active With Contingencies and Temporarily Off Market, as well.

We’ll use this for DistinctivePhoenix.com, to show off the neighborhoods we farm, but we will be able to use it for any purpose we can imagine — listing appointments, price-adjustment meetings, etc. We can make a map out of any search we can run. It’s not a mapping search interface, but it’s something while we wait to get a mapping search interface.

August 7, 2007

New York Times discovers Earth: “Mr. Sulzberger, tear down that wall!”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Says the New York Post, the New York Times is about to remove the paywall that conceals from public awareness its once-famous (even if smarmy and tendentious) op-ed columnists:

The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives – including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. – made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would only say in an e-mailed statement, “We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com.”

While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.

I’m told there is something like this in real estate — news of dubious value jealously hoarded behind a paywall — but, since I don’t pay for ordinary information, I can’t say for sure.

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August 6, 2007

In Search of Excellence

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

That, of course, was the name of a best-selling management book that came out in the early eighties. It not so much defined my market philosophy as confirmed what I’d already learned from Nordstrom: Concentrate on excellence and rewards will follow. Concentrate on rewards, and you’re pretty much assured of being consigned to mediocrity.

What’s been interesting to watch in the twenty five or so intervening years isn’t so much that nearly every business gives lip service to the tenet, but what’s happened to the definition of ‘excellence’. The education establishment meets failing test scores by dumbing down the tests. Grades are allocated not on merit, but on the perceived sensitivities of the students, just as soccer games are played without keeping score so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. You can get an undergrad English Lit degree at the University of Washington without ever having studied Shakespeare. In the frenetic twenty-first “I want it now!” century reading has become a chore, replaced by vapid visual stimulation and fifteen minute podcasts. Writing skills have devolved to YouTube. Joseph Conrad need not apply.

So what? Here’s so what: Words matter. Reading builds vocabulary, writing exercises its use. But not only is someone who draws on 150,000 words able to communicate concepts better than one who’s limited to the normal 50,000, but he or she is infinitely better able to conceive them in the first place. I’ve said — often — that good writers invariably make good thinkers, largely because they do.

All of which was going through my mind as I read this weekend’s BHB posts.

Whew. Excellent.

Before I started my own RE blog I searched the internet to see how others were doing it. Lots of people giving advice, most of it in the genre of Kris’ exquisite satire: Keep it short, be witty, illustrate cleverly. Most blogs seemed to keep diligently to that formula, but two things were apparent: that A) Most were blogging just to be blogging, and not to be actually saying anything; and B) the “Keep it short” formula was necessary to mask an inability to string words Read more

August 6, 2007

Vale, carne vale: Recasting The Odysseus Medal as a carnival of real estate weblogging excellence

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m pretty fed up with the Carnival of Real Estate. It is what it is, and there have been times over the past year when it has blown tender kisses toward the sublime. But much too often it has chosen to rut around in the mud, and, in any case, it is much too much of everything to be anything at all.

This is not good.

There is a Carnival of Real Estate Investing and a Consumer-Focused Real Estate Carnival, both of which seem to do a decent job of staying on-topic. The Carnival of Real Estate should be devoted to excellence in real estate weblogging, broadly defined. Instead it has become a Carnival of Solipsism, a space where the inherent subjectivity of judging has given way to an overarching, overreaching subjectivism: The universe is whatever that week’s judge says it is. An entry that would have been judged the best by any rational standard can get buried beneath the judge’s whim, the testy assertion of a right to supplant enduring standards of excellence with a momentary fit of pique.

In rebuttal, one word: Bah!

For a first thing, I am done with the Carnival of Real Estate. I have supported it since its birthing. BloodhoundBlog has entered a post for every new edition, winning, despite everything, more than any other weblog. No more. I will no longer submit posts from BloodhoundBlog to the CoRE. If individual contributors wish to enter their posts, that’s their business, but I will no longer make an official entry from BloodhoundBlog, nor will I enter any of my own posts.

Second, I have recast The Odysseus Medal as a new carnival of real estate weblogging. This is the description of the new carnival from its home page:

A weekly carnival for real estate, mortgage, real property investing and housing weblogs — very broadly defined. The Odysseus Medal is awarded to the highest quality writing in real estate weblogging.

The Odysseus Medal competition will be hosted at BloodhoundBlog every week, and it will be judged by me alone. That is arrogance personified, but by doing things this way webloggers will be assured of Read more

August 6, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at RealEstateUndressed. Host Larry Cragun got around our having broken the rules on entries by breaking all the rules. In consequence, this week there will be two consumer-focused real estate carnivals and no Carnival of Real Estate.

Even so, our friend John L. Wake took second place with Landscape staging your home.

Michael Cook came in fifth with Can I Still Get a Mortgage in Today’s Lending Markets? With Cold Hard Cash and Great Credit, Certainly; Otherwise?

I respect the right of each weekly judge to do what he or she wants about the Carnival — the lord knows we do. But much more than that, I respect, admire, revere and exalt actual excellence in real estate weblogging. We’re going to do something different from now on. News later…

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August 6, 2007

Black Pearls: Two practical uses for video in real estate marketing

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Someday soon I’m going to write a post with a title like “Why all available real estate video solutions suck eggs.” Here’s the one-word summary as a teaser: Bandwidth.

In the mean time, here are two ways of using video in real estate marketing that are actually useful and practical right now. These qualify as Black Pearls because Cathy thought up one of them while we we at the StarPower Conference.

Black Pearl #1: At your initial listing appointment, videotape the seller’s tour of the home
If you do this, you’ll able to revisit everything you saw in the home, to review every detail the seller divulged and to provide the basis for your notes on repairs and staging. You can use stills or clips from the video to show the seller what you want corrected. You may even be able to use clips from this video for your marketing video — even though all available real estate video solutions suck eggs.

Black Pearl #2: Videotape the seller’s instructions on the major systems
This may happen at the final walkthrough or some earlier time, but if you’re representing buyers of homes with complicated amenities — pools, spas, septic tanks, home theater or central vacuum systems — you should be writing training classes into the purchase contract. We use language like this: “Seller agrees to hold a two-hour class for Buyer at any mutually-agreeable time prior to Close of Escrow to teach the care and use of the pool, septic system and any other major systems, tools or appliances on the property.” If you’re the buyer’s agent, you should videotape this class, but you should do it even if you’re the lister if the buyer’s agent does not. Deliver it to the buyers as a DVD, split into chapters by major systems. This is a closing gift that keeps on giving.

We have a third idea, videotaping the reactions of visitors to our open houses, HGTV-style, but they’re always too shy. Besides, all available real estate video solutions suck eggs.

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August 6, 2007

Wagging the dog at the Carnival of Real Estate

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Our policy is that Cathleen Collins chooses our nominees for real estate carnivals. I trust her to be objective, particularly about my posts. The contributors are polled for nominations on Saturday night, with their suggestions going to Cathy. Sometimes I overrule her, and sometimes she asks me to cover for her.

This week, Cathy got her short list down to four posts, one each by Morgan Brown, Kris Berg, Brian Brady and me, but she didn’t want to choose from there. She threw it over to me — heavy hangs the head.

I checked and saw that nine of our fifteen contributors had written in the past week. So I entered everything of moment from each of us. That’s a violation of the Carnival of Real Estate rules, but this is my attitude: If we’re going to lose anyway, let’s lose our own way.

These were the posts that I entered, starting with Cathy’s short list:

Morgan Brown:

Kris Berg:

Brian Brady:

Greg Swann:

Michael Cook:

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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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