Archives (page 288 of 372)

May 8, 2007

A Case (by Case) For and Against Dual Agency

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Trevor Smith’s answer to Dual Agency?

Let the buyer represent himself, and give him the commission regularly paid to the Buyer’s Agent. (Granted, this would still leave the buyer relatively unprotected, but at least if something goes bad, its his own fault and not the agents).

Your obvious question is, “Where are the customary apostrophes to indicate a contraction or possessive noun?” No, wait, that is just me. What you are really thinking I suspect is that this sounds suspiciously like a Redfin philosophy, but then, Trevor is not so coincidentally a Redfin agent from Seattle.

By the way, according to Trevor, Redfin’s Blue Collar Spokesmodel, they are gaining market share there at warp speed. In 2006, it was reported that Redfin closed over 200 transactions. Now, it seems they are putting those deals to bed at a clip of 90 a week. I feel a press release coming on!

In light of Trevor’s recent remarks, I’ll take the opportunity to open old dual agency wounds. Is dual agency truly the root of all evil? It depends on who you ask. Even here at the Kennel Club, we have two camps. Now, let’s make that three.

I fall somewhere in the middle on the subject. Steve and I have acted as dual agents in many transactions. We do not like it, and we do not seek it out, but at times it is so very appropriate that any argument suggesting we are compromising our agency duties is simply ludicrous.

BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS ME

Greg Swann is a well-known critic of dual agency transactions.

Disclosed Dual Agency cannot possibly be effected — in reality — without repeated, overt agency violations.

I will offer one example of how this statement is not only wrong but offensive to those of us that bend over backwards to protect the rights and interests of our clients – all of them. We closed escrow recently on a transaction involving our listing and our buyer. The reasons dual agency worked in this situation relate back to Russell Shaw’s contention that we have less control over our client’s decisions than one might imagine.

The idea that the Read more

May 7, 2007

A questionable practice?

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

Christopher R. Dunn writes:

A questionable practice?It would appear that numerious RE firms here in the Bay are making it a practice to List, market with open houses, advertise properties at a below market number with no intentions of selling at that number.The listing broker will take offers and hold them until a later date, usually two weeks or so to generate “competitive” offers.

Are Real Estate Firms practicing this in other areas?

To my knowledge, not in our area. If it is as you describe it, I don’t see it as “questionable” but intentionally deceitful. It is in direct violation of the Realtor Code of Ethics (download a copy of the code here) Article 1 (treat all parties fairly), Article 2 (avoid exaggeration, misrepresentation, or concealment of pertinent facts) and Article 12 (shall be careful at all times to present a true picture in their advertising and representations to the public). It would also likely be actionable by the California Attorney General’s office, as well.

If some Realtors are doing this sort of thing I believe it should be stamped out and stamped out hard.

May 7, 2007

Pachelbel versus Warhol: Taking desktop real estate video to the streets

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I stand accused of being the “Andy Warhol of real estate video”. I’m pretty sure them’s fightin’ words, but, rather than exacting my vengeance by making a nine-hour film of a dripping faucet, I have chosen instead to assert my classical roots.

Vide: I had planned to do a video for this listing, but it sold before I could get it done. So I did one now for practice. This is just another randomized slide show with music, but it works better for me than the kind of slow, blurry pan and stammer we see too often in real estate videos: “This. Is. The. Formal. Dining. Room. The. Residents. Dine. In. This. Room.”

But: I’m learning a lot by playing with this software. I have this same slide show in a rock video-style presentation, Ken Burns-style fauxtion with angled cuts and dissolves — completely MTV-creepy. What I want to learn how to do is supplant the images from recorded video, retaining the audio, so that the kind of interview I put together last Friday becomes more visually appealing and more informative.

This is doable. As with high-end graphics production, the software is takin’ it to the streets. Neither desktop publishing nor desktop video are necessarily as high in quality as a professional might achieve. But the price is right, and, most often, close enough is good enough.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography

May 7, 2007

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

…is up at Lansner on Real Estate at the Orange County Register. Writing from The San Diego Home Blog, Kris Berg took fifth place for her playful rant on open house signs. Russell Shaw came in second place with his not-at-all-playful rant on the folly of real estate discounting.

The Carnival of Real Estate Investing is at the Real Estate Investing Blog. We entered a great Jeff Brown post, but Jeff and the CoREI are writing the other chapters of The Secret — The Law of Mutual Repulsion — so he didn’t win. He’ll be crushed if he ever does, so here’s to his unbroken streak of ratifying if not totally gratifying disappointments.

Technorati Tags: blogging, investment, real estate, real estate marketing

May 7, 2007

What’s the antidote for a dubious statistic? A countervailing dubious statistic

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Seventy-seven percent of home-buyers start their home search on the internet. Except, sixty-nine percent of Americans think the internet is a pain in the ass. What’s the real truth? I like to say that forty-seven percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. It’s not true, but, unlike all the other dubious statistical “news”, it’s funny.

May 7, 2007

The lead to loan cycle of an Internet lead aka Distrust Mountain

by Morgan Brown

Mortgage Banker

My mortgage company works primarily with Internet leads — we’ve found it far more effective than direct mail, telemarketing or any other of the dying mass marketing techniques. We’ve developed and implemented systems and processes to effectively convert Internet leads in to customers and those customers in to repeat and (hopefully) long-time clients. As the marketing guy at our company I spend a lot of time looking at Internet leads and where and how we are converting them. I look at our successes and our failures and try to build marketing to support our chosen business channel.

I wanted to share with you all the lead to loan cycle that is typical with an Internet lead in terms of trust. Everyone talks about being a trusted advisor to your client, but what does that mean and really look like through the loan cycle? I’ve developed a (crude) graph that I show to all of our sales people to explain the challenges of working with a person who has solicited a refinance or purchase quote via the Internet. I call the graph Distrust Mountain.

While I’ve documented the Internet lead here, you can apply this with varying levels of correlation across all lead sources. It also does a nice job of documenting how much better referrals or repeat business are, because that initial hump is so much lower.

As an originator, when you first receive an Internet lead, you must understand that although that person has expressed a varying degree of interest in some part of the refinance or purchase transaction they haven’t expressed any interest in you or your company. When you conduct the first phone call you are faced with a very high barrier to earning the person’s business. You are calling them (one of four or five people) and soliciting your services. They may have talked to others before you and will definitely talk to people after your initial conversation. Their defenses are up and they are looking for any reason to not continue the conversation with you.

This is the most difficult part of the transaction for inexperienced loan officers. The Read more

May 7, 2007

Odds & Ends

by Russell Shaw

Mega-Producing Realtor

In no particular order:

Who has the most irritating driving habits, men or women? I don’t think this question has an answer but found the comments section funny.

The other Russell Shaw. Actually, there are several. This one I’ve been in touch with several times over the past few years, as people sometimes send him an Family Market email in an attempt to reach me. Russell always forwards them to me. He is (in addition to being a very nice and very bright
guy) a VERY prolific blogger. And until now he had not been blogging about real estate. He is now. As much as I might like to take credit for some of the insightful things he writes, I don’t want to risk getting caught – so I wanted to point out that I am not “that Russell Shaw”. In the past it was Russell the blogger and Russell the Realtor. The line became blurred once I joined BloodhoundBlog and now the distinction of “the one who blogs about real estate” just went away too.

He damn sure better not move from Portland to Phoenix and go into the residential real estate sales business – because then we are going to have trouble. 🙂

Years ago I read a book (now out of print) called the Robert Half Way To Get Hired in Today’s Job Market. Robert Half had and has one of the largest employment agencies in the world. As I’ve always considered the process of me “getting a listing” me applying for a job – I got a lot out of it. About two years ago I happened to run across this website and was very impressed. His name is Nick Corcodilos. He has a free weekly email newsletter where he responds to letters from people looking for jobs. Lots of smart employers and business people read it regularly. There isn’t something I can use in every issue but there is often enough to make it worth my time.

I received the following email from Kerry J. Grinkmeyer:

—– Original Message —–

From: Kerry J. Grinkmeyer

To: Number1Expert@nohasslelisting.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:47 PM
Subject: Your Recognition Plaque

Russell Shaw

Congratulations on Read more

May 6, 2007

So, Boss…You Want I Should WACC Dis Guy?

by Brian Brady

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

You know how lenders are. We’re always talking about WACC-ing a guy who borrows money. Do you REALLY know what we’re tawkin’ about, though?

The Weighted Average Cost of Capital or WACC, is a corporate finance term used to measure the true cost of debt. You can find that figure in any bank’s annual report, on the Sources and Uses of Funds Page. They refer to it as a Cost of Funds.
It’s a pretty simple analysis. I use WACC analysis to determine whether you should refinance your home loan.

I can just WACC a property, I can WACC a certain person, I can even WACC your whole family if you want me to. Here’s how I would do it:

Let’s assume this homeowner has a $210,000 first mortgage at 6%, a $60,000 second mortgage at 9%, and $30,000 in consumer debt at 12%.

1- Add up all of your debt.

$210,000 + 60,000 + 30,000 = $300,000

2- Determine what the percentage each loan is to the sum of all the debts.

First mortgage= 70%, Second Mortgage= 20%, Consumer debt = 10%

3- Multiply the loan rate by that percentage for each loan.

First Mortgage= 70% * 6.0= 4.2, Second Mortgage= 20% * 9= 1.8, Consumer Debt= 10% * 12= 1.2

4- Add up all of those figures. That’s your WACC

WACC= 4.2 + 1.8 + 1.2 = 7.2%

Now, compare that WACC to the loan you could get to refinance those debts. If it’s lower than 7.2%, dat’s an offer you can’t refuse. Pretty simple, huh?

Fuhgeddaboudit.

P.S.- I tried this earlier and it seemed awfully confusing. You can figure for after-tax WACC to be more accurate but this post is probably easier to understand.

May 5, 2007

The Almeria Files: 318 photos in 60 seconds

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I made another short movie to demonstrate that real estate videos don’t have to be small and crappy and void of colorful details. Better than this, it seems to me to illustrate the real life of the wired listing agent. Believe it or not, the film features every photo we took for the Almeria listing — in 60 seconds.

This is for your eyes only. I’m not sharing it with potential buyers. If I can impose a theme upon it, it’s about the accelerated crush that goes into putting one of these listings together. I think the music — Midtown by Tom Waits — sets just the right tone…

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography

May 5, 2007

Renovation Project

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Never one to sit idly by, Greg has come up with another of his “Insanely Great Ideas”. A video tour essentially hosted by the seller, to me, is shear genius. The fact is, we are selling not a bunch of sticks and stucco but a lifestyle each time we market a property. What better way to make it personal than to bring the potential buyer into the home through video, not as someone panning and zooming their way through a bunch of lifeless rooms but as an invited guest to a conversation over coffee?

Now, Greg’s video deals with a renovation, so it is hard to achieve the warm-and-fuzzies where this particular home is concerned, but I think the possibilities are exciting. The problem for me becomes one of time and time management.

I would venture a guess that most of us here have a hard time with delegation. The fact that we are participating on blogs would suggest that we have some grasp of the power of the technological tools at our disposal, and anyone with a feedreader knows that forty-seven hundred (give or take) new spiffy ways to advertise our properties and ourselves are born every nanosecond. Unless I am a Realty.bot with an arsenal of tech geniuses at my disposal, I have to value engineer my way through the maze of exposure opportunities.

Take the process and importance of having killer property photos. I finally had to acquiesce and admit that photos taken by a true professional are superior to any I can take with my own, albeit very expensive, digital camera. All of our properties, from the one-bedroom condo to the multi-million dollar estate now enjoy professional photos. True, there is an added cost involved, and I still cling to the notion that given the right equipment and time commitment I could achieve somewhat comparable results, yet there is a cost savings… of time. My forty or so photos are now delivered to me within 24-hours in hi-res and web-sized format. No more resizing, no more hours on end of Adobe fun, which frees me to do other things. And Read more

May 4, 2007

Not-ready-for-HGTV: My alternative to the listing video

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I am not hugely in love with the idea of video for listings. My problem is simple enough to state: I think photos do a much better job of selling buyers on the home. Why? Because they’re bigger. Brighter. Of much higher resolution. And: Because they hold still. Video has geek-appeal to geeks and age-of-wonders appeal to everyone, but if buyers want to get to know a house, they are going to study it. Even if video overcame its crappy, fleeting quality, it would still be a poor medium for touring a home.

However: I do want that age-of-wonders appeal, and we always want to do more than our competitors can on our listings. And: If I can soak up another twenty minutes of a potential buyer’s time, that’s twenty minutes that won’t be deployed looking at other houses. The point is, there are good competitive reasons for including a video tour with our listings, even if video competes poorly with digital photography.

So what I wanted was a video format that made sense in the context of the listing — video doing a job photography cannot do, rather than video doing photography’s job badly.

Here’s what I came up with: An interview with the seller. This film was made this week — and, yes, I know: I suck as a videographer. The particular home is an extensive restoration, so taking the seller through the house room by room to talk about what was refurbished, what was remodeled, what was created from scratch — this is a way of turning video into a true added-value asset in the listing package.

The next time this seller refurbs a house, we’ll shoot video all along, memorializing the major changes. It might be slick to mount a web-cam from the ceiling to snap a picture every five minutes while work is going on: Time-lapse remodeling.

This works much better for me, in any case. We’re not depending on the video for high-resolution images — there’s luck! — but we are able to take on the story behind the listing in a way that is both compelling and uniquely suited Read more

May 4, 2007

Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):

Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home

Here’s the brutal truth about the real estate market in the Valley of the Sun: There are nine homes for sale for every motivated, qualified buyer.

So what should you do to make sure that your home is the one in nine that will sell this month? Everything you can.

For our listings, we’re pushing our way up the technology ladder as fast as we can. We’re doing custom yard signs for each listing, custom Web sites or Weblogs, interactive floor plans, virtual tours, even video tours featuring interviews with the sellers.

It goes without saying that the homes are priced right, in perfect repair and staged to encourage buyers to move themselves in mentally. Ideally, we want an inspection report, with the repairs documented, and an appraisal to demonstrate that the price is fair — and that an offer will make it through loan underwriting.

Not everyone can do all this work, but there is a simple technology available to everyone that can make a huge difference in marketing your home.

What is it? Digital photography.

An MLS listing can have up to six photos, but many have only one — or none. A flier can have even more pictures, and a simple Web page can feature photos of everything that matters in the home. Photography hasn’t been expensive since the days of George Eastman, but digital photography is virtually free.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Good real estate photos should be taken with the widest-angle lens you can lay hands on. And while multiple mega-pixels sell cameras, for a real estate photo to be useful it needs to be a small file size: 640 x 480 pixels is perfect. Fill the frame, showing what’s important, omitting what isn’t, and be sure to work with plenty of light.

Virtual tours draw eyes at Realtor.com. People will watch videos, if only for the thrill of watching “TV” on the computer. Poetic copy instills dreams. But nothing sells the buyer’s imagination on a home like a wealth Read more

May 4, 2007

Second Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar: Podcast #5

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Linked below is the fifth of five podcasts from the Second Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar. This event was held on April 17, 2007, and lasted for about three hours. That seminar, along with another held on March 13, 2007, are precursors to the forthcoming Russell Shaw Sales Success FAQ files. Russell will take questions from these podcasts, along with others you send to him by email, and answer them in a series of FAQ-like video and audio podcasts. His plan is to end up with a complete real estate sales training course in podcast form.

This podcast is available in audio and video format, each covering the same content.

Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing

May 3, 2007

FHA Streamlined Refinance Loans: Originators, Git You Some !

by Brian Brady

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

Loan originators, subprime mortgage blues got you down in the dumps? Let’s talk about a way to get your pipeline phat again. I’m going to give you a step-by-step plan to start, what Todd Duncan calls, the 90-day burn. If you follow these steps, and you don’t close 10 loans in the next 90 days, quit the business.

I’ve long been a believer in campaigning. A campaign is where you focus your promotional and sales efforts on a particular product type. The benefits of campaigning are astounding. You crank up the action volume (calls, door-knocking, mailers, e-mails, etc.) so SOMETHING happens. You learn a specialty because you must study the product to campaign. Consequently, you close a bunch of loans and half of them won’t be related to the campaign. Don’t worry about that.

Step One: Learn the FHA streamlined refinance guidelines. This loan program is designed for the greenest originator. I cut my teeth on this product when I started in the business. No credit scoring, no income documentation, and a current mortgage and you get an approval.

Step Two: Find a bunch of FHA loans . I’d call your favorite title company and get a list of HUD loans, closed within 10 miles of your office.

Step Three: Go on a mission. Go forth and communicate to these homeowners about the FHA streamlined refinance program with the zeal of a newly ordained priest. This is your career your fighting to save so pull out all the stops. Mail a postcard, call the customers (if they are not on the do not call list), even go so far as to knock on their door and hand them your card while explaining that you are an FHA streamlined refinance expert. If you are not an expert, dedicate three hours to this loan guidelines link and you’ll be one.

Step Four: Track your activity items. You should be able to talk to 20 people per day within the first 60 days. You will have Read more

May 3, 2007

If you were the cutest dog at the dog show, would you work for world peace, or would you just go for the contact info?

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Give Shaun McLane of EKDAY.com credit for self-promotional skills, anyway. He has started a new site called Posh’d, which is — I kid you not — a beauty contest for real estate web site.

Say that again: He is finding the least ugly of — let’s face it — the ugliest stuff on the web, and featuring it on a one-page gallery site, which links back to the designated beauty queens. I can’t but think that this will win Shaun the Mister Congeniality award, but the idea is still kind of a stretch.

For example: BlueRoof.com is featured first and should be. It is a stunning site. But right next door is Realtor.com, looking as dowdy and dated as the Yellow Pages.

(For younger readers, the Yellow Pages is a big, useless book perfect for exhausting landfills. The Council of Residential Specialists publishes its own version, which is even stoopider.)

The rest of the dog show, including BloodhoundBlog, is not awful. But it’s not great, either. Better than average, maybe, but that’s hardly an accomplishment. I know there are some sightly sites among the Realty.bots. For example, Eppraisal.com has the coolest Web 2.0-like Weebils. My guess is that there is more and better to be found in The Undiscovered Country, the world beyond weblogs.

So: Here’s for everyone except BlueRoof getting kicked out of the dog show by ever-prettier dogs. Even better: Here’s to clinging by claws to our vaunted status by revising our sites into something useful and beautiful — with no movies, no MIDIs and an absolute maximum of 937 links on the home page. Who ever heard of anything like that in real estate?

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

BloodhoundBlog

Archives (page 288 of 372)

A Case (by Case) For and Against Dual Agency

by Kris Berg

A questionable practice?

by Russell Shaw

Pachelbel versus Warhol: Taking desktop real estate video to the streets

by Greg Swann

The Carnival of Real Estate . . .

by Greg Swann

What’s the antidote for a dubious statistic? A countervailing dubious statistic

by Greg Swann

The lead to loan cycle of an Internet lead aka Distrust Mountain

by Morgan Brown

Odds & Ends

by Russell Shaw

So, Boss…You Want I Should WACC Dis Guy?

by Brian Brady

The Almeria Files: 318 photos in 60 seconds

by Greg Swann

Renovation Project

by Kris Berg

Not-ready-for-HGTV: My alternative to the listing video

by Greg Swann

Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home

by Greg Swann

Second Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar: Podcast #5

by Greg Swann

FHA Streamlined Refinance Loans: Originators, Git You Some !

by Brian Brady

If you were the cutest dog at the dog show, would you work for world peace, or would you just go for the contact info?

by Greg Swann

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