by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ll share one more idea from Las Vegas, then I’m going back home to where the men are men and the women are symmetrical.

Start with this: Condotels. This is the utterly brilliant scheme by which I reap the financial benefits of owning a hotel suite while foisting off on you all the risks of owning that suite. When business is slow, neither one of us makes money, but you incur all the costs. Very gracious of you to underwrite my business in this way.

This of course is the time-honored business strategy that I call Socializing the Risk. I may give up some portion of the profits I might have made, but I absolve myself of all the risks associated with ownership while retaining some, most or even all of the predictable rewards. You in your turn acquire all right, title and interest in and to the unpredictable rewards — e.g., future appreciation — along with all of the costs and downside risks of ownership.

Which of us is getting the better deal?

Who pre-printed the paperwork?

In many of the newer, larger casino hotel resorts, you will see fake structures like this. This is at Paris, but you can see the same kind of faux-cade at The Venetian or Caesar’s Palace or Planet Hollywood. What we have is a ground-floor retail establishment with apartments overhead, just like back in Europe or Olde Boston Towne.

Here’s my question: Why are those apartments fake?

Why aren’t they condos or condotels or even just hotel rooms? Why not condotel whole structures, with the resort deciding who gets to lease the retail space? Living inside a casino would be too loud and too smoky for many people, but there are others who would love it, if not as a full-time residence then as a getaway home.

This retro mode of residential-space-over-retail-space is already happening at Kierland Commons-style outdoor malls. You can find it in Las Vegas at Green Valley Ranch, and no doubt elsewhere. It’s too late to do it in extant resorts, but it might be a fun idea to try in newly-built facilities.

Too much Disney for my tastes, but Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

Independence Day, in the United States, was a sweltering summer day in my hometown of Philadelphia. My favorite signer was the media entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin. Note that I didn’t refer to Ben as the inventor, statesman, or womanizer (he was known for all three things). I refer to Ben as a media entrepreneur.

Ben Franklin would have been a helluva weblogger.

Let’s try to parallel the life of Ben Franklin with how he might have done it today:

At twelve years old, he serves as an apprentice printer to his older brother in Boston. Today, he might have been a code writer, learning how emerging technologies work.

At seventeen, he runs away to London to continue his apprenticeship, returns to Philadelphia, and starts his own print shop. This makes complete sense. As a budding entrepreneur, Ben might have run away to San Francisco or Seattle to be near where the action is. Philly was the equivalent of what the Silicon Valley is today.

One year later, he becomes the sole owner and publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. Ben realized that the technology (the printing press) was merely a tool; it was content that would sell newspapers. Rather than provide the tools, he opted to vertically integrate and own the content, too. Three years after buying the Pennsylvavia Gazette, he publishes Poor Richard’s Almanack, an original content journal which shaped early American thought about business, life, and politics.

Now, Ben is wealthy. Rather than rest on his laurels, he expands his influence to provide a solution to the information delivery problem in the Colonies and is appointed Postmaster General. Talk about Bill Gates controlling information, Big Ben now has his hand in two influential publications and the government’s communication system. Ben establishes a “think tank” which becomes the brainchild for the University of Pennsylvania. Now, he becomes the indisputable expert on intellectual thought.

At the age of 42, Ben sells his printing shop but retains the rights to the Gazette and Almanack. Ben is considered by many Colonists as the wealthiest man in the Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s an enlarged image from BloodhoundBlog on the iPhone. Cathy and I spent about an hour yesterday at the Apple Store at the Fashion Show Mall toying with demo units. We’re rarely early-adopters, so we have no exigent plans to switch, but the phone is a lot of fun to play with.

The iPhone’s strengths are well-documented. We had no trouble figuring things out, and doing things — anything — is a pure delight. But: The phone’s short-comings render it less than ideal as a laptop killer for Realtors:

• As Will Farnsworth reported here, neither Zillow.com’s nor Trulia.com’s mapping seems to work
• Our MLS system did not fail in the Safari browser, but I could not get search pages to fully load, leaving me in doubt about listings pages; this may have been the fault of the MLS system, since I’ve had the same failures in MSIE 6/7
• The YouTube integration is H264 video only (that is, iPod/Apple TV video), not YouTube’s vast library of Flash-based video; if you’re doing iTunes video already, you don’t need to duplicate your content in YouTube

Connectivity over EDGE was not horrible, although the in-store Wi-Fi was much better. Tabbed browsing was wicked easy.

The iPhone needs Flash and Javascript — the essence of AJAX for real estate — but those can easily be added with a software upgrade. I need to satisfy myself that it can handle our MLS system. Beyond that, it was fast, intuitive and fun.

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

This is perhaps a regional topic. I admittedly don’t know how it is done in other cities, but in San Diego we still have the time-honored tradition of the weekly Broker Caravan. This is an entrenched ritual which has historically been preceded by a “pitch session”, a practice originally born out of necessity. Steve shared his disdain for the archaic ritual this morning at our home blog, and being in the same philosophical camp, I felt compelled to add my two-cents.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, absent a computerized MLS data base, the “book” was published, weekly or monthly depending on the region. The “book” held the key to the real estate agent’s business: All active listings. For new listings taken between publication, the only way to get the word out to the real estate community was to have a little social gathering. The homes were the draw, and the free donuts and coffee were a nice side benefit. Agents shared information, networked with one another, and truly brokered homes. The term caravan was appropriate to describe the pitch session aftermath, where the agents all piled into their respective Realtor Mobiles and visited the new offerings in succession. Ah, the good old days.

The Origin of Species

Darwin would be proud. With time and progress came change. In many instances, thankfully, the pitch session was eliminated. All listing information is now available online, real time. If an agent has a new listing, I know about it, and no 60-second oral presentation is going to give me more information than the MLS already has. The Broker Caravan still has value, that value being a convenient opportunity to allow agents to gain access to a home without having to make appointments and preview. It is a convenience for the sellers as well – Give them a two hour window to get it, get out, and get it over with.

Survival of the Fittest

About a year ago, a local title company got the fabulously fabulous idea to reinstitute the pitch session in our local community of Scripps Ranch. To my amazement, they successfully sold the concept by Read more

by Brian Brady

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

Author website

The following essay is taken from a lecture by Todd Duncan at the Strategic Equity Summit. Mr. Duncan opened the conference of 3,000 mortgage originators with an electric speech chock full of useful information. Mr. Duncan is an author, a highly sought after speaker, and a business consultant. His company, Todd Duncan Enterprises, serves salespeople in general and mortgage originators specifically.

The Six Daily Disciplines of Purposeful Advisers Are:

1- Knowledge Acquisition: We work in changing markets. An daily hour should be dedicated to learning more about our industries. Much of the weblog reading I do helps me stay on top of mortgage markets but I supplement it with podcasts and books. Originators would do well to examine a monthly investment of $59 in Mortgage Planning University.

2- Partnership Planning: Purposeful Advisers have a referral-based business. Planning your communication each month with these referral partners helps to drive your integrated approach to client advisory. I spend approximately one hour daily on this function. Mostly, it’s a few phone calls to that partnership base but I supplement it with online conference calls and personal meetings.

3- Prospecting Engine Maintenance: Purposeful Advisers have a prospecting engine which drives potential clients to them. Direct mail, radio advertising, telemarketing, and cold-calling are traditional engines for newer originators. I use online seminars, weblogging, online advertising, and direct mail.

4- Prospect Follow-Up Program: A system should be in place for sufficient follow-up. Nothing hurts more than when you get the news that a potential client chooses another adviser because of insufficient follow-up. I use drip e-mail campaigns tracked by Salesforce.com CRM. This is my most glaring weakness.

5- Client Consultations should take up most of your day. For originators, you’ll be talking to past borrowers, current borrowers, and potential borrowers about lending strategies to build wealth. For Realtors, you’ll be showing property, negotiating contracts, and following through with contracts in escrow. If you aren’t in a client consultation, you should be calling to set more up for Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We tipped our way into the most amazing room we’ve ever had in Las Vegas. There are at least 13 cranes visible from our window, looking south on the Strip, most of them at MGM’s Project City Center. We plan to take a closer look at that today.