BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Archives (page 276 of 372)

June 29, 2007

Google’s reciprocal link penalty for real estate sites explained

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Who will be affected by Google’s real estate reciprocal link penalty? The answer in words and in pictures.

Cliff’s Notes: If you aren’t part of one of those goofy link exchanges to your static web site (we get spam for these every frolicking day), you’re not the target. Likewise your weblog. If you’re linking out like a normal web site, within and without the real estate industry, you don’t have a problem.

On the other hand, if you’re linking to hundreds of other Realtors’ static web sites, which are also linking to hundreds of Realtors’ static web sites, you could be screwed for a good long time.

Here’s a general principle: When you’re confronted with an idea that will “fool” Google — don’t do it.

Here’s an even better general principle: SEO is Plan B at best. The kind of community building we’ve been talking about here and at Real Estate Weblogging 101 is the way to grow your business on-line.

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June 28, 2007

Seven Days of the Dog: That’s no Bloodhound, that’s just a mangy old mutt!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We write a lot about real estate weblogging. We have categories on Blogging, on Blog Carnivals, on the Carnival of Real Estate and on Weblogging 101, with much of what we’ve written on real estate weblogging having been repurposed into a blog-book on the subject, RealEstateWeblogging101.com.

Truly, weblogging is a self-referential medium, but there is so much on the subject here that I am going to add only two items to that mass.

First, if you are graced with the opportunity to speak about real estate weblogging at your company sales meeting or whatever, if you like you can print out some of the bookmarks I made for the Southwest Real Estate Blogging Conference. They’re built to print four-up on a letter-sized sheet, with faint gray lines where they should be cut apart. The book is a very thorough introduction to the art of real estate weblogging, so your colleagues might get themselves off to a better, faster, less-costly start.

Second, I thought I would take a moment to show you where we came from. This pitiful mess, not a Bloodhound but simply a mangy old mutt, was the second of our failed attempts to start a real estate weblog. The first failure — even worse — was incinerated long ago. The posts you see there were sucked into BloodhoundBlog by WordPress, giving us a history before we had one. The first BloodhoundBlog post was People power, categorized under Blogging and Disintermediation and establishing a number of themes to which we have returned again and again. I wrote about the pre-history of BloodhoundBlog about a month after we started. The point of this is, if we’ve come this far in a year, you can, too.

Thanks for being here with us.

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June 28, 2007

The big iDea: iPhone could spawn a host of new products

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This was written by my friend Mike Arst, a very clever man whom I’ve entreated for years to start a weblog.

iStatements

In honor of the release of Apple’s new iPhone, which I just can’t seem to want (even though I know I should want it), today several new product names occurred to me. Having decided that I probably can’t sell them for a small fortune on eBay (iBay?), I have decided to pass them along to you instead. No charge, even.

This for someone who drops his little MP3 player: the iBroke

For folks who enjoy listening to music while they’re eating their favorite Vietnamese soup: the iPho

For workshops that are all about one’s self-esteem: the iMe

(If they’re conducted in French: the iMoi)

For people who developed a bit too much self-esteem at the workshops (and/or for people who love odd-looking little jungle prosimians): the iI

For people like me who are just plain slow, and proud of it: the iPlod

For people who hate settling for less: the iMore

Then again, for folks in the simpler-living movement: the iLess [contributed by co-worker]

For people who loved “Young Frankenstein”: the iGor

For the lonely fisherman in his boat: the iCod

For the local crows who wake us up every morning: the iCawed

For our infamous bad-tempered cat, of whom many people are justifiably terrified: the iClawed [also contributed by co-worker]

For guys who had too much to drink and got rude at a party: the iPawed

(The individual who behaves this way is the iClod)

For the ladies who had to put up (but only briefly) with such rudeness: the iSlap

(Could substitute the iClawed there)

And last but not least, a product for the marketing people who have managed with great success to persuade us [I plead guilty] that we need all this electronic stuff:

The iCon

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June 28, 2007

New Homes Sales, Market Slowdowns, and Investor Irrationality: Looks like its Time to Face a Correction

by

Real Estate Investor

Author website

Tanking new homes sells should have real estate flippers and small investors worried. Today KB Homes reported a loss of $149 Million. Additionally, CEO Jeffrey Mezger remarked in the Wall Street Journal, “We can’t predict when market conditions will improve,” essentially ensuring investors conditions will not improve next quarter. Homebuilders have been feeling the pinch for over a year now, but it is finally getting serious.

Surface level analysis of the problems with homebuilders points to signs of a tanking real estate market and excess supply of new homes in some markets. Given the choice between a new home and a “used” home, most consumers will choose the new one. Additionally, homebuilders have the power to offer incentives like upgrades, favorable financing, and lower prices to move their inventory. Investors in hot markets that are cooling will find it hard to compete with institutions like KB Homes, Toll Brothers, Lennar, etc. This will make it tough to move, even the nicest flip.

Furthermore, this situation definitely signals a slowing in the real estate market. Despite what many have been saying on the Realtor/NAR front, investors and agents alike should be preparing for a real estate slow down. KB Homes sites access to capital as one of the mitigating factors affecting home buyers among other factors. This access issue will affect buyers, as well as more aggressive investors, who opted for no money down loans.

The deeper analysis suggests all of the negative news will eventually affect the market sentiment on real estate. Over the past six months the real estate market has seen the collapse of the subprime real estate market, issues with commercial and investment banks, mortgage rates rise, and issues with homebuilders. At some point investor and consumer confidence in real estate has to be affected by all of this news. While this news may not be the tipping point, investors should be asking how much more can the market take?

Investing is part fundamental and part irrational. At times the market seems to go 90/10 one way, and at times those proportions flip. As more negative real estate news emerges Read more

June 28, 2007

ShackPrices.com a tear-down? Innovative map-search portal reconstructed as Estately.com

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The most-innovative little map-search in Seattle, ShackPrices.com, today relaunches as Estately.com, a name perhaps more fitting for a town where you can still get a decent fixer for less than a million dollars.

The site is also launching its monetization model with this release: A fee-based referral system for users who ask to be introduced to an agent, paid by the agent. From company co-founder Galen Ward:

Agent Match lets consumers get personalized recommendations for the best real estate agents in their area, hear personal introductions from the recommended agents, and see feedback from previous clients. Where most brokerages assign potential clients in a haphazard fashion, Estately recommends three prescreened, high quality agents from local brokerages to consumers.[…] [W]e already have a few happy beta-testers and a “rock-star” team of agents from a bunch of local brokerages.

We’re selective and we’re keeping the referral fee low enough (12%) that we have been able to recruit great agents who do most of their business from referrals.

Under the name ShackPrices.com, the company pioneered a number of great ideas in map-search technology, including showing nearby parks, schools, restaurants, access to public transportation, etc. The AgentMatch idea is also an innovation, sort of an eHarmony for Realtors:

Estately’s Agent Match algorithm uses consumer answers from a brief questionnaire to match them with highly qualified, individually recruited agents who meet their needs. Consumers and agents are matched geographically, based on consumer’s needs and based on agent feedback from past clients. Consumers are shown all the feedback for each agent recommended to them. Home buyers and sellers can choose to remain anonymous until they are ready to work with an agent.

This is smart enough to be truly scary.

More coverage: The Real Estate Bloggers, John Cook’s Venture Blog.

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June 27, 2007

Jeff Brown hits the big time: Copyblogger praises Brown and Brown’s give-to-get white-paper strategy

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From Brian Clark’s Copyblogger.com, guest contributer Mike Stelzner writes:

Mistake #2: On the flip side, how often do you see a white paper that is instantly displayed with the click of a link? While this provides immediate access to a reader, it fails to capture any information or make it easy for readers to sign up for your newsletter.

The Solution: What I am about to propose is a strategy that appeals equally to readers and businesses. Revisit my earlier premise, when you provide value, you gain respect.

Consider real estate investment specialists Brown & Brown. A few pages of their white paper, Achieving Early Retirement With Real Estate: Rethinking Traditional Retirement Planning, are presented before the registration form appears.

With this example, readers are given plenty of sample content before they are asked to trade their personal contact information for access.

This idea flows from the video game market. Remember playing video game demos that provided you access to the first two levels? By providing a good sample taste of the product, the hope is that people will act and want the full game. The same strategy can be applied to white papers.

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June 27, 2007

Seven Days of the Dog: The regal, indomitable arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This came in as a comment last night.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be competitive and wanting to win, but, reading your posts the last few weeks, you ego is a little bit too big at times. Yes, you are a heck of a writer and you have one heck of a blog and you have assembled a heck of a team of contributors, but your ego is getting a bit cocky.

This is ad hominem, so it violates our comments policy, but I’m not averse to discussing the issue it raises in a general way.

Just not yet.

First, let’s address some general beefs I have with the world of real estate weblogging. You can regard this as an impromptu staff meeting of the RE.net, or, if you’d rather, as a Pompeii-like graffito.

Here’s one: I’m seeing more and more truncated feeds, and I am unthrilled about it. My entire purpose in using a feed reader is to aggregate everything I might want to see in one place. If I’m interested in what you have to say, I might click through to your site, but I don’t appreciate being forced to do so. I understand that you may be trying to boost your hard clicks, possibly to placate your advertisers, or you might be trying to frustrate sploggers. I don’t care. If you don’t capture my attention completely in the forty or fifty words you deign to show me, there is zero chance that I will click through to see if I might be missing something good. I can’t be that different from your target reader. You got ’em to subscribe. Now deliver the goods. Hoarding — for whatever reason — is the economics of the past.

(Near the subject, I had mentioned a long time ago (in a comment or somewhere) that I almost never do trackbacks. If for no other reason than that it offers automatic trackbacks and pingbacks, WordPress should be your CMS of choice for any weblogs you build (or migrate to) in the future.)

Here’s another beef: This came in as a comment to Real Estate Weblogging 101:

I think you Read more

June 27, 2007

A contrary point of view: “Apple iPhone debut to flop, product to crash in flames”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Surely fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one, but just try getting them to admit it! David Platt makes an interesting argument about why the iPhone will fail, but, even stipulating his entire case, it seems reasonable to suppose that most early-adopters will be stout fans for at least two years — the length of the service contract with AT&T.

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June 27, 2007

Ask the Audience: Can I get rid of that snail-mail newsletter?

by

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

Author website

Hilary Shantz, a real estate agent from Oakville, ON asks:

Hi Brian,

You are on the cutting edge of marketing/blogging. Do you think that it is sufficient to have a business blog and forgo having a newsletter, just send people a reminder every time you post a blog which they can go to if they want or if it interests them? I am trying to decide. I have neither and have been in business 2 years.

Signed,

Hilary from Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Thanks for the kind words, Hilary. I notice from your website that you have a MBA and a background in banking. I’ll speak somewhat academically here and then give you some practical suggestions.

Blogging is a marketing communication. Think of it like writing an article for your hometown paper, Oakville Today. The first time you had an article published, you’d probably call all of your friends, past clients, and family and tell them to run out to the newsstands; that would be fine. If you wrote a weekly column, however, that serial self promotion would become tired quickly.

I said that blogging is a marketing communication but it is a subtle one. It’s call pull marketing as opposed to push marketing. Pull marketing entices the consumer to call you. Think of the movie Glen Garry Glen Ross when you think of push marketing. Be careful to understand that the permission-based e-mail system I use is, indeed, permission-based. Abuse that permission and the consumer takes it away. I think an e-mail every three weeks is often enough to keep you in the consumer’s eye without abusing that permission.

Again, blogging is a marketing communication. Remember the principles of promotion class you had to pass in business school? Blogging falls somewhere between public relations and advertising in the promotional mix. You’ll notice that there are two more very important factors in the promotional mix: personal selling and sales promotion. You want to be certain that you weave those components into your blogging message without sounding like an overt advertisement.

Finally, effective promotion is a multi-media approach. The more “senses” you can use, the more effective your marketing Read more

June 26, 2007

iPhone reviews begin to appear: A strong win with caveats

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m writing about the Apple iPhone for Friday’s Republic, putting me in an august company of gushing fans. Reviews appeared today from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Newsweek. So far, everyone loves it, with some reservations.

Engadget has a run-down of the caveats turned up so far. Chief beef from all over: No AT&T, no iPhone. You can’t buy the device as a wi-fi enabled pocket-sized Macintosh with a video iPod and a 2MB camera — but without contracting for a cellular phone and data plan. On the plus side, the Applefied monthly plans are robust and reasonably priced.

Biggest unnoticed beef? Perhaps because fish are not aware of the waters they swim in, no one in the enblogged globe seems to have complained that, because the device is activated and synced through iTunes, you cannot use an iPhone if you don’t own a Macintosh or Windows computer. Lachrymose Luddites and Unix eunuchs need not apply.

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June 26, 2007

Seven Days of the Dog: Carnival of the Bloodhounds

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My father manufactures mens’ outerwear — overcoats, raincoats, jackets. He was with Windbreaker and London Fog for many years, but for the last couple of decades he’s been a private-label vendor: He supplies the goods, the designer or department store supplies its label. One year Consumer Reports reviewed mens’ raincoats and my dad took first, fourth and fifth place with the same raincoat. Different labels, different price points, same coat. The winner was sold by J.C. Penny for $99. Second place went to a $900 Aquascutum.

The Bloodhounds made a run at winning that decisively at this week’s Carnival of Real Estate, but judge Mike Simonsen was smart enough to see through us. I entered three times, and Kris Berg and Brian Brady entered from their home weblogs. A small demonstration of the volume at which we can howl, when we want to. These are the entries I know about (there may have been others from other BHB contributors):

Alas, we didn’t win, although all three of us were mentioned in Mike’s post.

Truly, you can’t win ’em all, but we have won the Carnival of Real Estate more than any other weblog:

Meanwhile, Michael Cook has won Read more

June 25, 2007

Seven Days of the Dog: BloodhoundBlog makes the short list

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s the short list, not the short bus.

We are among the nominees for the Inman Innovator Awards — Most Innovative Blog category. These are the other nominees in our category:

Looks like somebody likes bubble blogs…

My own immediate reaction to our nomination is colored by three mental filters: First, I have a fundamental contempt for any sort of beauty contest. Second, I cannot stand the thought of not winning — decisively, by an incontestable margin — any competition I happen to find myself in. But third, I have no confidence that I will win any competition where the results are based on anything other than my own performance. If it’s an objective race, I will win by force of savage will. But I know from bitter experience not to put too much faith in subjective judges.

(I swear there are times that it’s like Fyodor Frolicking Dostoevsky inside my mind…)

Anyway, it doesn’t matter if we win. It doesn’t even matter to me if we get thrown out of the competition for insufficient obsequiousness. All that matters is that we kicked ass this first year of BloodhoundBlog — decisively, incontestably. Whatever the hell “innovation” might be in a real estate weblog, if it’s not us, it’s not worth worrying about…

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June 25, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…is up at Altos Research Real Estate Insights. Plenty of great reading, including three posts from BloodhoundBlog contributors.

And… The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is up at The Flipping Pad. Michael Cook one with The Real Risk in Real Estate Flipping, one of the five posts he wrote last week that could have taken first prize.

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June 25, 2007

Blending Criticism & Real Estate

by

Realtor, Audio Engineer

Author website

A couple of great questions from Ronnie Coleman of Gulf Coast Real Estate Services, Inc has prompted my response, and may prompt yours also. Very cool ideas here…

Allen,

A partner and I are hopefully about to launch a real estate blog here in Destin, Florida in the Florida Panhandle. Our market is upscale with about 4 million visitors per year and lots of second and third homes on the coast. My vision and slight slant is to put in play my avocation which is restaurant reviews. I was the restaurant critic here for the newspaper, judged our local wine festivals and have written a small book about our Top 40 Neighborhood Restaurants.

I have two questions — how do you feel about mixing opinioned restaurant reviews (with pictures) with a real estate blog and secondly (and maybe most importantly) should I buy an existing real estate blog template (I’m looking at something from RSS Pieces or should we start it from scratch by ourselves (we have some capability) or hire a local web/blog design firm?

And lastly I notice you have both a website and blog. Because I’m starting anew, I was thinking I would only go with a blog — do you think I need both?

Kindest regards,

Ronnie Coleman

Broker/Owner

Gulf Coast Real Estate Services, Inc.

My Response:

Hello Ronnie.

Excellent to hear from you. I think that your idea of integrating a restaurant review is a fabulous idea from a couple of standpoints. First, if you just started blogging like crazy about restaurants, you’re pretty quickly going to get noticed. But maybe not for what you’d like: real estate.

As I see it, there are a few ways around this. You could target the blog to out of towners who are looking for great places to dine. Featured prominently on the blog landing page would be large ads and hooks that draw people to look at your real estate web site. This has the benefit of adding dual credibility. One is linking to the other. Submit the blog to like minded sites in other cities and become part of a social network of food critics. Again, somewhat restricted real Read more

June 25, 2007

Utterly brilliant: “Just Sold” ‘postcards’ on Zillow.com

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Zillow blog. Advertise yourself as a lister in the neighborhoods you farm in a venue we know is strongly appealing to sellers. This is so smart it makes my brain ache…

Later: Adopted. Whole-heartedly and with alacrity. I need for you to be shopping for what I’m selling, or else my advertising dollars are wasted. But I need to be selling you what you are actually shopping for, or I am wasting your time. This idea beyond brilliant…

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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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