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April 4, 2007

Do You Zlog? Making the Zillow Real Estate Guide Work For You

by

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

Author website

Do you Zlog? Let me define Zlogging on Zillow.com for you.

Zillow solicited listings this past fall from Realtors and announced the Zillow Real Estate Guide (formerly known as the wiki). I was a huge critic of the practice of posting listings because I felt their intentions were disingenuous. I did notice a cool “back door” to their changes that could promote the businesses of Realtors and loan originators. That back door was the Zillow real estate wiki and I saw it as an opportunity to use Zillow as a personal weblog. So, a Zlogging I did go.

The results were astounding. My personal weblog received 6-7 times the traffic within the first 2-3 days of my Zlog post and I received a call about a loan for a home in Mexico. I took it a step further and started posting “teasers” on Zillow in order to drive the traffic higher. It wasn’t completely altruistic nor within the spirit of the Wiki. I was caught red-handed by the Zillow cops and gently coaxed into more corrective behavior. My more toned down Zlogs were still driving traffic to my website while providing useful information to a consumer.

I walked in the back door, was thrown out by the Zillow bouncers, and invited back to the party through the front door. It was that defining moment that caused me to realize that Zillow has juice. If I can provide useful consumer content, they can deliver hits to my weblog. That seemed reasonable enough to me.

This latest announcement from Zillow, comprehensively analyzed by Bloodhound Blog, provides an amazing opportunity for the Realtor or loan originator to promote their practice on a national and local scale. Greg Swann explained how the practitioner can “mark their turf” in a zip code to gain expertise in the consumers’ eyes by farming via the Zillow Q&A feature. I will show you how to generate referral business by establishing expertise on a national level by Zlogging..

Understand that Zillow is extremely consumer centric and is striving to deliver Read more

April 4, 2007

Random observations on the new Zillow.com feature set

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Your profile can include an embedded YouTube video.

Your profile photo is going to be reduced to 66 pixels in width, so if you scale it to that size before uploading, you’ll get marginally better quality. (Or is it 100 pixels tall?)

In general, photo scaling seems pretty fuzzy to me. For your own listings, it’s worth your while to scale to their width (267 pixels?) before you upload. (Or is it 200 pixels tall?)

The text editor for your profile is blog-like except that UTF-8 high order characters are being dumbed down to 7-bit ASCII, so you might as well dumb them down yourself — again to keep quality control.

The Wiki text editor will smart paste, like the ActiveRain editor, but it won’t retain your CSS. That means you’ll probably have to blow in an extra return between paragraphs. I don’t know if you can past in raw HTML, which would be my preference.

How’s business? Zillow.com’s David Gibbons:

Site traffic is definitely up though it’s not as much of a vicious spike as say when the WSJ story suddenly hit in February. It’ll be interesting to see what MSM pickup there is through the rest of the week. Early activity around Q&A and EZ Ads looks great with a fair amount of “testing” going on — I’m impressed by how quickly some questions were answered. EZ Ads in particular is looking surprisingly good. A few advertisers are testing ads in multiple (>10) zip codes. Too early to tell the impact on for sale postings but it looks like a bunch of homes have already been reported for sale.

A bunch from me. I’d love to be able to do this with a tab- or comma-delimited file. Even typing into a form would be faster. If the house is already listed, Zillow can ignore me.

Page loads do not seem to me to be inordinately slow.

 
Further notice: I said: “I’d love to be able to do this with a tab- or comma-delimited file. Even typing into a form would be faster.” In retrospect, this multi-step, manual entry is a passive barrier against the kinds of vandalism Jonathan Read more

April 4, 2007

Andy Sernovitz Has Signed On To Speak at SOBCon07!

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

This blogger conference was already going to be one of the killer opportunities of the year, but adding Andy Sernovitz seals the deal. His landmark book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, a nuts and bolts guide so effective, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki wrote the foreword and afterward respectively.

Being able to listen to Liz Strauss AND Andy Sernovitz in the same conference? Get outa here!

SOBCon07 is the only blogging conference I plan to attend this year.

I can’t wait to hear Andy in person. And if you haven’t heard Liz Strauss before, you’re in for a very special treat. Everyone talks about how to raise blog readership while she quietly became one of the most read bloggers worldwide in a very short period of time. She is simply one of the best.

I’ll be in Chicago May 11-12.

If you wonder what you need to do to bring your blog to the next level, SOBCon07 is a no-brainer. It’s also one of the best deals you’ll see for awhile.

I’ll say it one more time – Liz Strauss AND Andy Sernovitz speaking at the same conference.

If I wanted to learn how to throw a great curve ball I’d go to Sandy Koufax. And if I wanted to learn about blogging and word of mouth marketing I’d be at SOBCon07.

SOBCon07 — Already nominated for a 2007 Bawldy.

April 3, 2007

Planet Zillow.com: Burgeoning Realty.bot grows, potentially, to become a self-sustaining residential real estate eco-system

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the news. We’ll circle back for details and implications.

Zillow.com, the national Realty.bot growing out of the popular automated home valuation service, is releasing a new version of its popular web-based real estate portal tonight. Dubbed Zillow 5, the new functionality comes in three broad categories:

  • Any user of the system — not just homeowners or their real estate agents — will be able to report that a particular home is for sale and at what price. Only owners and/or listing agents will be able to create more elaborate listings for homes for sale.
  • Any user of the site will be able to ask or answer a specific question about a home, whether or not it is listed for sale. The questions and answers will be stored with the record for that home, and each user’s questions, answers and Real Estate Guide (formerly known as the Zillow Wiki) contributions will be recorded on that user’s personal profile page on the system.
  • Agents or other users wishing to promote either themselves or their homes listed for sale will be able to do so through a new “EZ Ads” system. In appearance, the ads will look like a cross between a button ad and a Google AdWords text ad: a headline, two lines of text, an outbound link and an image — a logo or a photo. Unlike AdWords ads, the billing will be pay-per-impression, not pay-per-click. The ads will be sold by the zip-code at a cost of one-penny per impression. Ads targeted at a particular zip-code will rotate at random to exhaust the advertiser’s pre-paid spend over a pre-set span of time.

BloodhoundBlog features extensive coverage of tonight’s announcement from Zillow.com:

BloodhoundBlog contributor Brian Brady will also be covering the story at these sites:

BloodhoundBlog has published more about Zillow.com than any other weblog or publication.

“With this release, Zillow becomes a community,” said David Gibbons, the company’s Director of Community Relations. That’s true, but it’s somewhat Read more

April 3, 2007

A screen-shot tour of Zillow.com’s new feature set

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Amending this: The site is live with Zillow.com founders Richard Barton and Lloyd Frink as the first Q&A links:

These are screen shots I captured during a teleconference with Zillow.com Directory of Community Relations, David Gibbons. Everything is scaled to fit the weblog column, so the live pages, when they become available will look different.


A Realtor-listed home with the Q&A panel. The listing agent’s contact information is shown at the right.


Detail of the full Q&A panel. The hot links will click through to user profile pages.


A user profile page with phone numbers plus email and web page links, along with links to all user-supplied content.


A home that is not listed for sale.


A home that has been listed for sale by a user other than the owner or listing agent. On the right is a link to that user’s profile page.


EZ Ads as they will appear on each page, three ads to a page, cycling at any page refresh.


The EZ Ads creation template. You have control over what you advertise, how much you spend and how quickly your ad buy is deployed. An ad will consist of a headline, an image, two lines of text and a clickable link to a page within or outside of Zillow.com.


The EZ Ads billing page. There is no automated billing/recurring for now.


The EZ Ads confirmation screen.


EZ Ads stats, very rudimentary for now. Zillow plans to improve upon this in the future.

BloodhoundBlog features extensive coverage of tonight’s announcement from Zillow.com:

BloodhoundBlog contributor Brian Brady will also be covering the story at these sites:

BloodhoundBlog has published more about Zillow.com than any other weblog or publication.

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April 3, 2007

Zillow.com’s press release detailing added functionality in new software release

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Zillow.com™ Launches Home Q&A

“Ask Questions, Share Answers”at the heart of numerous new features harnessing knowledge of agents, homeowners and neighbors

Seattle — April 4, 2007 — Real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced the launch of Zillow™ Home Q&A, among other new features aimed at further opening the site up to community contributions. Home Q&A is the ability for anyone to ask questions and share information and insight about more than 70 million U.S. homes.

“The release of Zillow Home Q&A enables anyone to ask any question about any house for the Zillow community to answer,” said Rich Barton, Zillow CEO. “This is the next step in our quest to help make everyone smarter about real estate. A quest that began with publishing Zestimate™ values last year as a starting point to answer the critical question, ‘How much is this home worth?’ Since then, we have enabled homeowners and agents to update home facts, post homes for sale, and set their Make Me Move™ prices. Over half a million people have made these contributions so far, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface in helping people get answers to critical real estate questions.”

Visitors to Zillow.com can now “ask a question” or “answer a question” about millions of homes, right on that home’s Zillow Web page. Anyone can rate answers as “helpful” or “not helpful,” and each contribution links back to a user’s profile page — telling visitors, for example, if the question was answered by a local agent or other real estate professional, or if the contributor frequently answers questions within the Zillow community.

“Today, some of the most colorful and important information about homes and real estate is trapped inside the heads of local experts — agents, homeowners and neighbors,” said Lloyd Frink, Zillow president. “By allowing people to freely ask questions and share information online about homes, we hope to unlock, for the community as a whole, a powerful vault of data — such as an agent sharing insight into a neighborhood, or a potential buyer asking the shortest commute route downtown.”

In addition to Home Q&A, other new features announced Read more

April 3, 2007

Podcast with David Gibbons, Zillow.com’s Director of Community Relations: “We are throwing the gates wide open to the entire community”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Appended below is an audio podcast with David Gibbons, Director of Community Relations for Zillow.com. In this recording, David talks with me, reflecting upon the details and implications of tonight’s new software release.

RE.net readers know David as the voice of Zillow on real estate weblogs, effecting the small miracle detailed in The Cluetrain Manifesto: Engaging in the conversation of the marketplace in a way that shows that Zillow will do what it can to ameliorate difficulties. I happen to know that he’s good at that job, because I have a talent for cultivating difficulties.

Until tonight, David’s title was Director of Customer Service. In addition to tending to the concerns of the RE.net, he was charged with dealing with the email and phone calls a site as busy as Zillow.com incites. He talks a little about that on the podcast.

David is originally from South Africa, which accounts for his accent. Before working for Zillow.com, he worked for Amazon.com.

BloodhoundBlog features extensive coverage of tonight’s announcement from Zillow.com:

BloodhoundBlog contributor Brian Brady will also be covering the story at these sites:

BloodhoundBlog has published more about Zillow.com than any other weblog or publication.

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April 3, 2007

Ask the Broker asks the audience: How best to invest an unexpected windfall

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Another question requiring expertise far beyond a broker’s license. Fortunately we have two great investment writers, three off-the-charts lenders and a readership of very prosperous people. Here’s the problem:

I have come into a situation, and was wondering if you could give me your opinion. I have recently come into an inheritance of about $200-$250,000 from a family member who has passed away. I decided that the best use of this money is to invest in real estate. I have narrowed down my choices to four options.

  1. A foreclosed house which needs repairing, however it can be bought for past due mortgage payments and past due real estate taxes, legal fees, etc. for $200,000. The fair market value is about $300,000.
  2. A housing project which has HUD financing of $1,750,000 and a fair market value of $2,000,000. Rental is locked in for $150,000 per annum, plus certain adjustments. Expenses are the mortgage with interest at 8% and operating expenses of $25,000.
  3. A shopping center with tenant rentals on an escalating year-by-year basis. The center is currently 80% rented and receives $200,000 cash flow and operating expenses are $50,000. The seller wants $2,000,000 and he is willing to take back a second mortgage of $250,000. I feel like I can get a $1,500,000 mortgage from the bank at the current rate on a 20 year basis. The second mortgage will probabably be a 2% higher interest rate.
  4. A shopping center with tenants who are all NYSE companies. All the leases are triple net with rental income of $500,000 last year. Sales price is about $6,000,000 and I feel I can get a favorable mortgage from an insurance company at a good rate. If I would proceed with this option I would probably cooperate with friends to get around $1,000,000 and get a $5,000,000 bank loan. I feel the property will appreciate at 8-10% per year.

Who has a good answer for this?

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April 3, 2007

Making A Case For National Mortgage Lending Standards

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

I live in Illinois and hang my mortgage license in Illinois. The licensing process was not simple.

I have family in Ohio and want to be actively licensed to lend in Ohio. The licensing process is even harder.

I have spent more than 100 hours (yes, I’ve clocked it) trying to prepare my application for the state of Ohio. To be fair, though, the 100 hours includes 24 hours of introductory training that I was required to take within the Ohio state lines on the basics of mortgages and mortgage lending.

I like the training aspect of licensing, but by “professor” had 20+ years of experience and — aside from using a slide rule to calculate payments — was flat-out incorrect on most mortgage facts. For example, Jumbo Loans are not more expensive because they’re more risky; they’re more expensive because the cost of securitization is spread across a smaller pool of loans. The brand-new loan officers in the room had no idea they were being fed misinformation.

But all of that aside…

In order to be licensed as a mortgage broker in Ohio, I need to do the following:

  • Register Mobium Mortgage as a business in Ohio
  • Register Mobium Mortgage’s main office in Chicago with the state of Ohio
  • Lease physical space for and then register that as the Mobium Mortgage branch office that will be located in Ohio
  • Register myself as a loan officer

On the surface, not so bad. But, looking deeper at the requirements, you see these steps:

  • State police background check for all officers, the operations manager, and loan officers wishing to be licensed
  • FBI fingerprinting for all officers, the operations manager, and loan officers wishing to be licensed
  • 24-hour in-state training for the operation manager and all loan officers wishing to be licensed
  • Provide W-2 statements dating back 10 years for the operation manager
  • Open and maintain a checking account in the state of Ohio for paying third-party costs (i.e. appraisal) that does not earn interest
  • Maintain all financial records on-site in the Ohio branch office

You read the list and it looks fine, but then you contrast it to New York, Pennsylvania, California, Texas and other states and you wonder: Read more

April 2, 2007

I want a LOT of money – would you tell me how to get it?

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

Late last night I received THIS from a form filled out on my website:

I read about Russell starting Realtor Training, I would like to know if he can set up an automated program for me to follow and use here in Victoria Bc. I sold 11 million dollars worth of real Estate in 2006, I would like to double that over the next 12 months or more. Cheers, hope to hear from you soon!

And tonight see this post from Greg, where the question is:

I would like to know if anyone has a great listing generation system that works, day in and day out. My goal is to gross $600,000 over the next 12 months. I know this is a big topic. I am keen to to see what you respond with.

Both questions are basically the same – how can I easily NET about 500k a year. Please send me the answer. Thanks!

Free MoneyThere are a number of things you can do to generate leads. The effective things require either your time or your money. For example, I use radio and TV advertising to generate lots of “come list me” calls. It is very expensive. Last year I paid over 600k just for my media ads. You can start with less – when I started, the first year on radio I paid about 20k. The next year about 40k. Geographic farms are a common way to generate leads. Some agents buy them from companies. Working one’s sphere of influence is another common lead generation method – contacting a “known database”. One way or the other you will spend time, money or both to generate leads.

To go big one must do one of these two things: prospect effectively or market yourself effectively. Pick one.

Do I plan to ever attempt to put together some sort of package of “steps” – kind of a one-size-fits-all to provide to other agents? No. You can get one here if you are interested in such useless crap. Is there a way to become really successful in real estate with a small amount of effort? It can look that way Read more

April 2, 2007

Ask the Broker asks the audience: What do you use for a listing system?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Another wide-open Ask the Broker question came in over the transom:

Very rewarding and refreshing to listen to Russell Shaw. Wow, I wish I lived nearby. I’d love to see Russ live in April. Having said that, I heard Russell say listing homes is my future. It really sank in.

I would like to know if anyone has a great listing generation system that works, day in and day out. My goal is to gross $600,000 over the next 12 months.

I know this is a big topic. I am keen to to see what you respond with.

I have no good answer to this — for now. What we are learning from Russell is that what we thought was a listing system is, in fact, a halfasstrophic mess. We’re rebuilding everything from the ground up, and we may have some good, market-tested answers to these questions in a few months. For today, what about you? Do you have any good advice to proffer to our financially ambitious questioner?

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April 2, 2007

Redfin.com’s Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights: A wolf in sheepskin clothing . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I am a hardliner on the subject of reform in the real estate industry. Over the last nine months, I have written at great length about, among other things, the skill-set required to survive in the future of full-service real estate, empowering buyers, dual agency, how the NAR makes war on the free enterprise system, divorcing the buyer’s agent’s compensation from the listing agent’s fee, rebuilding the MLS without the co-brokerage fee, eliminating the IRS safe-harbor for real estate brokers to induce them to take responsibility for managing head-count, and getting rid of real estate licensing laws — or at least the broker’s level of licensing — to promote better competition among agents and better due diligence among consumers in hiring agents. There’s all that, plus much, much more.

Why am I going through my bona fides as a reformer? Because I am about to denounce a failed, flawed, fractured, false reform that is to be proposed today by Redfin.com. At first blush, this “Real Estate Consumer’s Bill of Rights” sounds like a good thing — and it easily could have been a good thing. Instead, it uses a treacly moral suasion and calls for new legislation to ram the corrupt Redfin style of doing business down everyone’s throats.

Start at the beginning. Yesterday, Kris Berg, Ardell DellaLoggia, Kevin Boer and I had this email from Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman:

Hope you’re having a good weekend. We wanted to let you know, under embargo until tomorrow at 9 a.m. (or whenever Inman goes live with the news), that we’re launching a program on Monday called the consumer bill of rights.

It doesn’t argue the issue of commission rates; we don’t consider it our business what others charge. It mostly focuses on simple reforms that would ensure that consumers get complete and open access to information about properties and the process of buying or selling properties.

The reason we’re asking you guys about it is that we want other brokers to support these rights. This is something constructive and positive, not antagonizing and negative — which itself is a result of coaching you’ve given us.
Read more

April 2, 2007

Wow! You Saved 4&162; A Gallon? What’re You Doing With The 60&162;?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Now I’m not talking about the student or the guy with four kids, a mortgage and $98 in savings. I’m talking about the majority of people. It’s a phenomena that translates into real estate investment on a huge scale. But first, let’s look at what I call the 4&162; savings logic.

15 gallons results in a savings of 60&162;. If the average person fills up their tank every 10 days or so, that’s a whole buck-eighty a month as Grandpa used to say. In a year that’s a savings of less than $22. And that’s why they would waste time looking for that 4&162; savings?

gas station

Think about how people do this in so many areas of their lives. They’re like the blind man who only touches the elephant’s trunk and concludes it’s snake-like. Situational awareness combined with rational thinking and the long view, will almost always produce better results than behaving as if you’re blind.

Yet that’s how a surprising number of people consistently make their decisions when finances are involved. It never ceases to amaze me. Real estate investors often think this way, costing themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars — sometimes millions.

Here’s an example.

Cher and John are clients of mine, and are very successful investors. They were very quick learners. As a matter of fact Cher is sought by investors all over for her new found expertise in property management principles.

About three years ago I told them it was time to not only exchange out of four of their San Diego properties, but that they should take their net proceeds to the Phoenix area. They were fine with that. I also gave them the same speech I gave them before we embarked on their last exchange.

Don’t focus on how much you get for your properties as long as it’s in the reasonable range of value. Whether in fact you could have held out for another $10K on that triplex is a good conversation to have at Starbucks with your $5 cup of Venti Whatever and a cookie. Otherwise, as I tell my clients, “You won’t be able to find that 10 grand 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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