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May 20, 2007

SpellCheck 2.0: Bringing the benefits of Web 2.0 back to the desktop

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I wrote this when BloodhoundBlog was very young, and I don’t think anyone got the joke at the time. There have been plenty of amazingly stoopid Web 2.0 product launches since then, but that doesn’t mean this is not still humor-for-one.

I was writing today, and I realized that spell checking, for all its added efficiencies, isn’t terribly smarter than it was on the dedicated text-processing systems of the 1980s. It made the jump to desktop machines, of course, a trusty sidekick of word-processing, the first true “killer app” of micro-computing. But both were quickly eclipsed by spreadsheet software, and text management tools have been a red-headed step-child on desktop systems ever since. Everyone needs them, and everyone hates them when they don’t work properly, but no one lays awake at night wondering what new computing paradigms might be expressed in future versions of their favorite word processor.

And spell checking has had it even worse. It’s the sidekick to the step-child, after all. If it had a more tangible form, it might be stuffed into a junk drawer, handy to have around but usually just in the way. Spell checking has missed virtually all of the internet revolution, of course. Many web development tools incorporate spell checking, as do some on-line web sites. But there was no formal presence for spell checking in the Web 1.0 paradigm. No spelling look-up servers. No advertiser-supported spelling portals. No spelling IPOs. In fact, not one single wide-eyed investor pissed away his retirement savings on a Web 1.0 spelling start-up.

Worse yet, it seems almost certain that spell checking will be passed by in the forth-coming Web 2.0 revolution. This would be unfortunate, since spell checking is in fact the perfect Web 2.0 application — er, platform. Note these criteria from Tim O’Reilly’s seminal paper on the characteristics of a Web 2.0 platform:

  • The Long Tail
  • Data is the Next Intel Inside
  • Users Add Value
  • Network Effects by Default
  • Some Rights Reserved
  • The Perpetual Beta
  • Cooperate, Don’t Control
  • Software Above the Level of a Single Device

If we envision a product — er, application — er, platform called SpellCheck 2.0, we can incorporate all that Read more

May 19, 2007

RE.net waist-loss challenge: Mid-term report cards

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re about half-way through the RE.net waist-loss challenge, so it seems like a good time to pull out the scales and the tape measures. This was the plan I laid out for myself in March:

My goal: A 34-inch waist by August 1st.

My plan: A half-hour a day on the stationary bike, while reading nothing work-related. Eat half as much, twice as often — or less. Add real bicycling as the weather warms up. Add free-weights and crunches as appropriate.

No crunches at all yet (O, the pain!), but everything else proceeds apace. I got sick a little while ago, and I haven’t yet reintegrated the weights before bedtime. I finally got onto my mountain bike a couple of weeks ago. I hate anything like cold weather, so I won’t ride if the outside temperature isn’t what most people would think of as blistering. Anyway, I found out right away that the recumbent bike is a vigorous way of sitting down. By now I can do 45 very hard minutes on the bike, but I haven’t yet found myself tempted by any of the nearby mountains. Eating less and better has been no problem at all. Food has always bored me, but the weights and the bike lead me to a certain fascination with protein.

Consequences? I’m down 30 pounds from the start of the year, but that doesn’t really matter. I care a lot less about weight than about converting fat to muscle. That much seems to be working well. I’ve burned two inches off my belt, but that vast beach ball above my belt is much deflated. Riding a mountain bike is an excellent workout for every muscle from toes to glutes (plus some upper body stuff), so the biggest muscle groups in my body are getting substantially stronger. Plus which, while free weights are beyond excellent for building fat-burning muscle, working out with weights is blindingly boring, where riding the bike is always interesting.

Even so, there is a degree to which all exercise sucks. There is nothing quite as pleasant as laying down on the sofa and sinking into another fascinating Read more

May 18, 2007

Where is the epicenter of real estate weblogging?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Arizona, of course.

Want proof? Jay Thompson, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy really is the phoenix real estate guy. I’m getting him in sixth place in Google organic results for that keyword, with nowhere to go but up.

John L. Wake at Arizona Real Estate Notebook takes us through the five stages of grief for months-on-market home-sellers.

Wally Neal of Metro Phoenix Real Estate (watch out, Jay) gives Redfin a nice filleting.

Down in Tucson, Dave Smith at the Real Estate Blog Lab drops a dime on the Clean Archives plug-in, which I immediately installed. Now you can visit our new Archives page to discover just how hyper-loquacious we really are.

Finally, honorary Arizonan Brian Brady is threatening to put together another convocation of Phoenix-area real estate webloggers. Let him know by email if you want to come along.

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May 18, 2007

New real-estate licensing law fails consumers

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me from today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link). (Nota bene: What you are seeing here is actually my own original draft text of this column.)

 
New real-estate licensing law fails consumers

My real estate license is up for renewal — just at the wrong time. Under current law, I am obliged to renew my license every two years, but under a new state law that is to take effect on July 1, 2007, I will only need to renew every four years.

The change will be convenient for me, the next time I renew. To qualify for renewal, I have to take eight three-hour continuing education classes, so my education requirement will go from twelve hours to six hours a year.

And the change will make things much easier down at the Arizona Department of Real Estate, where everyone always seems to be harried and frazzled.

But how does the consumer benefit?

The licensing requirement for real estate agents is a bad joke. Would-be licensees are required to take 90 hours of classroom instruction. There are real estate schools that will permit you to fulfill this obligation in ten consecutive days. The course material consists of tips and tricks for taking the state test, and the state test has almost nothing to do with succeeding — or even surviving — as a real estate agent.

How do we know this? Because more than 90% of new licensees do not renew their licenses. They fail within the first two years in business. Successful navigation of the licensing process is useless as an indicator of success as a real estate agent.

The state’s licensing procedure actually serves to deceive consumers. The implication is that a licensed practitioner is competent. Far too often, this is untrue.

What would work better? The free market. If competition for reputation were the only standard for judging agents, new entrants would have to get themselves hired by already-established big-name agents. Through a process akin to apprenticeship, they would learn how to work well and wisely in real estate — or they would get fired with dispatch.

And instead of depending on a useless talisman from the state, Read more

May 18, 2007

By withholding the secrets of the mystical MLS system are we betraying the home-buyer’s interests?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In all my spare time, I’ve been working over the past few days on a real estate porn movie. The film features pictures from hundreds of homes, with loads of juicy details. We took the photos over the course of years, so it’s entirely possible that some of those homes are listed for sale right now. In making the movie available to the public, will we be “advertising” those listings without the listing broker’s permission? I don’t think we will be, but I also don’t give a damn. We have a right to our work product, and we have a right to do as we choose with our work product, and I will joyfully fight for my rights down to my last dime.

Let’s be obvious, at least for a moment. An appraisal is something you contract to have done and pay a substantial fee to obtain. Any state attorney general, even Arizona State Attorney General Terry Goddard, should be able to comprehend such a simple fact. In the same way, advertising is something you pay for. Quibblers will insist that paying web site hosting fees is alike unto paying publication line rates or broadcast fees. To this “argument,” the only reasonable retort is a Bronx cheer. When a word means almost anything, it means almost nothing.

The obvious fact is that MLS rules against advertising other broker’s listings without permission are devised to prevent Broker Paul from placing paid ads representing Broker Peter’s listings as his own. In fact, the motivating premise behind the rule is that Broker Paul, even while giving a false impression about his prowess as a lister, would nevertheless be promoting the homes in a positive light.

So why would Broker Peter object to free advertising of his listings? In other words, why does this MLS rule exist in the first place?

Too obvious, isn’t it? It’s because of the double dip. If Broker Paul advertises Broker Peter’s listings as his own, then Broker Peter might lose out on some opportunities to collect commissions from both sides of his transactions.

Real estate brokers implemented Buyer Agency not because they wanted to Read more

May 17, 2007

Defending Redfin: Sweet Digs weblog buried by inane MLS rules

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t like Redfin.com. Its “business” model consists of quietly diverting its agency responsibilities to listing agents while loudly rebating its largely unearned commissions to buyers. My experience of the president of the company, Glenn Kelman, is that he is an oily liar who will say anything to draw the fawning attentions of a gullible mainstream media. I don’t care about discount real estate brokerages in general — let the market sort them out — but Redfin’s modus vivendi is to exploit defects in the real estate industry — that it cannot get along without — while decrying those same defects in its tendentious and mendacious PR.

However: I believe in liberty before everything. Although Redfin will never enter most real estate markets — this being forbidden by a cost-structure that loses money on even the priciest of homes — it nevertheless has a valid complaint when it draws attention to anti-rebating and minimum-service real estate laws. The National Association of Realtors is an anti-capitalist cartel, as are state and local Realtors’ associations and local MLS systems. They are liars just like Kelman, loudly proclaiming their protection of the consumer’s interests while quietly enacting every Rotarian Socialist scheme they can think up.

Today John Cook’s Venture Blog reports that Redfin is being fined and forced to shut down one of its weblogs for violating one of those schemes:

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service has fined Redfin $50,000 and asked them to stop publishing a popular blog in which contractors for the online real estate brokerage posted reviews of Seattle area homes.

Redfin is appealing the fine, though it took steps this week to shut down the reviews on its “Sweet Digs” blog. With about 3,000 e-mail and online subscribers, the blog was written by 15 freelance reviewers who over the past five months posted reviews on about 1,000 homes in Seattle and San Francisco. The company says it plans to maintain the blog as a source of information on pricing trends and recently sold homes.

Redfin Chief Executive Glenn Kelman said he had no choice but to comply, noting that the NWMLS had threatened to Read more

May 17, 2007

Two simple steps that can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars on Craig Proctor’s lead generation systems

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Russell posted a note about a forthcoming Tom Ferry seminar. It would seem to be the seminar season, so I signed up for that one and two others, purely for the thrill of the chase: Identify the scam, marvel at the upsells, listen for the fall-back sale, all that cheesy crap.

Today was the Craig Proctor seminar. I’ve been getting spam from this guy for years, so I was interested to see what the pitch was. Craig’s ideas are every bit as new as the Claude Hopkins classic, Scientific Advertising, as you can see from the advertorials he puts in Realtor magazine.

There is probably more to the Quantum Leap System than I’m giving it credit for, but the essence of the thing is the long-standing teaser-ad strategy, as exemplified by the headline of this post. That much is covered in a very thorough and much more economical “system” in the form of the two Gooder Group Real Estate Rainmaker books. Ergo, here is my two step system for saving a ton of money by not buying into the Craig Proctor hype:

Step 1. Real Estate Rainmaker: Successful Strategies for Real Estate Marketing.

Step 2. Real Estate Rainmaker: Guide to Online Marketing

But remember, the short statement of the Craig Proctor philosophy is “Frustrate them with a problem then offer a solution.” You might just resolve instead to work with people you actually respect.

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May 16, 2007

Ask The Broker — Discrimination based on price range?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Can a prospective buyer be discriminated against because of the price range of home they are looking to purchase? For example I feel that an agent I recently visited would not help me because I was looking for a low-priced home. I am a young, single, first-time home buyer and basically just wanted a roof over my head to avoid paying rent. The agent flat out told me that I needed to spend more money. I have called and left messages for him and he has never returned my calls. I think he is avoiding me becuase he knows I will not spend a lot of money on a bigger home. Should I press the issue or is this just something I need to get over? Thanks.

This is an easy one.

This agent did you a great favor. It sounds like he doesn’t handle that price range. You want an agent who specializes in lower end homes, or better yet, first time buyers. There are many loans available just for first time buyers that most agents, (including me) don’t have a clue about. It’s not that I don’t know the answers for all of your questions. It’s more crucial than that. I don’t know the questions you don’t know to ask — much less their answers. And that’s not a position in which you want to find yourself.

Let’s reverse this situation. What if you had asked a first time buyer’s agent to find you a million dollar show place? Would you have felt discriminated against if they had turned you down? Here’s the principle — Don’t use a wrench when what the job requires is a hammer.

I’m an expert in real estate investment, yet I don’t know about every single kind of investment real estate. For instance, I’ve never known much about industrial property. If you came to me wanting that kind of investment, I’d immediately fess up, then refer you to someone who is a specialist in that kind of property.

Believe me, you don’t want an agent who needs to reinvent the wheel because he wouldn’t turn you down Read more

May 16, 2007

Not to be missed: Marlow (The Hammer) Harris on the Redfin hustle

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Eminently worth waiting for:

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at those meetings with the investors and venture capitalists. Pie charts, graphs, facts, figures. Lots of talk about disintermediation and volume of scale and that sort of thing.

When Redfin fails, they won’t blame themselves, the business model, lack of planning, poor management skills or bad judgement. They will blame the NAR, the “real estate industrial complex”, and the “real estate monopoly”.

VC’s out there reading this, please, use your head. At this rate, you will never see a dime returned on your money. It will just go down the same hole where the other $8M already went, subsidizing the 150 or so buyers who got their 2% refund from Redfin. That was YOUR money!

Redfin believes real estate agents are overpaid. They want to reduce commissions. If they succeed, THERE WILL BE NOTHING TO REFUND. Their whole M.O., their raison d’etre, their entire business model disintegrates.

Priceless. Read the whole thing.

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May 16, 2007

60 Minutes Redux – What it means to be Nordstrom

by

Mortgage Banker

Author website

After the fur is done flying over the 60 Minutes piece what are we left with? What has really changed? Has Redfin “revolutionized” real estate? Well if offering rebates on commission is considered revolutionary count me among the witnesses. With 6, soon to be 8 markets, I think there is some time before everyone that’s not Redfin is out on the sidewalk with their hat in their hand.

But really, after the complaining of how UNFAIR it all was, it all is — what are YOU going to change?

In all of the complaints and defense I heard a favorite refrain. It seems everyone likes to toss the Nordstrom/Kmart analogy around whenever the full-service v. discounter argument arises. It’s like a broken record “Realtors offer Nordstrom-level service, Redfin is the Kmart of the real estate world” we all drone on. But do we really know what we’re saying; what we’re implying when we toss around our favorite analogy?

Because, truth be told, there ain’t that many Nordstroms folks. There just ain’t. So what makes you as a Realtor THE NORDSTROM REALTOR? Let’s look at some of the elements that helped the Nordstrom brand become synonymous with excellence and see how we stack up.

  1. Do we follow the motto: “Respond to Unreasonable Customer Requests”? How well do we respond to reasonable customer requests? When is the last time we left a truly remarkable memory with a customer? Do we relish rising to the challenge of unreasonable requests like Nordstrom does? Do we look at them with dread and think “How am I going to deal with this one?” or do we think “Here’s the opportunity to add another story to the growing legend of my customer service”?
  2. Do we “Use [our] good judgment in all situations”? Do we shirk responsibility when our gut tells us not too? Do we look at the phone at 4:59 on Friday ringing and not answer it? Do we start or end the day in a bad mood? Do we brush off someone because they don’t look like a potential customer? Do we skip the neighborhood mixer for the ballgame Read more
May 15, 2007

Speed links: Freakonomics, podcasting Dustin and WordPress 2.2

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Thanks to Rueben Moore of BrickAndGarden.com, we were cited by the Freakonomics weblog today for beating up on the NAR.

BloodhoundBlog contributor Morgan Brown has a podcast interview with Rain City Guides’s Dustin Luther at BlownMortgage, his home weblog.

WordPress 2.2 is out. We’re running 2.1 on all our hosted weblogs except this one, which is still quivering in the corner under version 2.0.10. Time for some upgrades.

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May 15, 2007

FTC to NCRC regarding Zillow.com: What price justice?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The attempted shakedown of Zillow.com that began last October — when The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaining that the nascent Seattle-based Automated Valuation Model (AVM) was misleading minority homeowners about the value of their homes — has come to stunningly banal conclusion.

In a letter dated May 4, 2007, the FTC elects to take “no further Commission action,” citing Zillow.com’s fortified disclaimers about the accuracy of AVM results and the need for site visitors to investiagte other sources of real estate evaluation.

The NCRC has since discovered the sub-prime mortgage melt-down as a more profitable mine to be quarried, since lenders can be faulted simultaneously for the foolish loans they made to minority borrowers in the past and for forbearing to be equally foolish in the present.

You can read the FTC’s letter here.

I wrote a great deal about this issue last fall, all of which is linked below. As with the State of Arizona’s persecution of Zillow.com, I see the NCRC shake-down as old-school criminality attempting to impose itself on the internet — trying to leverage off of Zillow’s fame or perhaps viewing AVMs as the weakest member of the new-economy herd in PR terms. In any case, this moral victory with the FTC will rob innuendo-wending reporters of a minor weapon to inveigh against the web start-up in stories about the on-going Arizona controversy.

These are my posts about the attempted NCRC shake-down of Zillow.com:

More at John’s Cook’s Venture Blog at Read more

May 15, 2007

When To Buy? Now — Later — Never?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Last night Greg posted an Ask The Broker question — In your market, is it better to buy in eight months or 14 months? Aside from the arbitrary and limiting waiting periods, it’s an excellent and very timely question. It’s also a question my bride and I are tossing around these days.

We’re still living in my bachelor pad which is a very well located condo in a suburb of San Diego in what’s informally known as East County. It has plenty of room, is incredibly convenient, and has served us well. But we want to buy a detached home in the area. Our current floor plan was apparently designed by a sixth grade class project, and since my wife (in a former life) was a very successful interior designer, it’s time to end her suffering.

Deciding to buy a home in San Diego isn’t a choice made on a lark. A piece of mundane crud goes for half a million bucks. Also, we’re probably going to insist on a granny flat or room to build one, as my mom is closer to 80 than 70. We may actually end up with two extra flats as my mother-in-law is also approaching the time when she’ll need family close by. So our price range will fall somewhere around $700-1Mil — ouch! We’ve been spoiled by the relatively low monthly housing costs we’ve enjoyed for the last few years.

Adding to the cost of buying of course, will be the truckload of cash Queen of All That Is BawldGuy will require to make the new house our home. When you marry a designer you know this going in. Moving or adding walls, and even rearranging entire floor plans isn’t out of the question with her. I’m already practicing my “of course, honey” responses. 🙂 Since I couldn’t design my way out of a wet paper bag, this is guaranteed to be the correct approach.

Our market hasn’t been hit nearly as hard as Phoenix. I haven’t checked, but I can’t imagine we’re mirroring their market — only one of nine homes listed actually selling. And, also 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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