There’s always something to howl about.
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy posts his catalog of WordPress plug-ins. I’ve made changes here since I did likewise, but they’re minor. We’re building a new general interest weblog, and I may discuss what I do there…
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, blogging, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate marketing
Is anyone going? We may go to Sell-a-Bration next year, but the NAR convention has never appealed to me. The invitations have been steadily more amusing, though: “You will not either get malaria!” I’m kinda thinking it will be less than a full house…
Technorati Tags: real estate marketing
The voters of Arizona passed a number of those pernicious ballot initiatives Cameron argued against Monday night.
Probably the most consequential is a coercive increase in the minimum wage. Warm-hearted people like to think of poor people making more money, but the net consequence of minimum wage laws is to get marginal employees — such as teenagers, the handicapped and people recovering from really bad decisions — fired, while lowering the marginal costs of alternatives to local human labor.
In other words, when you raise the marginal cost of employing goofy neighborhood kids, you essentially lower the marginal cost of adding labor-saving equipment or sending that labor off-shore. This is pure Bastiat, the seen and the unseen. What is seen are the shiny, happy people working at Taco Bell — already a capital-intensive response to high labor costs — for much more money. What is not seen are the many more people who had been working there, but who were fired because they were unprofitable at the coerced higher wage.
The good news is, if you own, say, a real estate brokerage, the cost of independent-contractor labor just went down, and the quality of the labor pool soared.
Remember, avoiding slavery is easy. Just keep running faster and faster…
Here’s are some faster-paced idea to speed the race:
Google Blogoscoped and TechCrunch both have news on like.com, a visual search engine. Like images.google.com or whatever, you can do keyword searches for images. But the cooler feature set is to use an image to search for other, similar images. Picture yourself standing outside a house, looking at all the junk mounted around the electrical panel, and the client says, “What’s that?” Wouldn’t it be sweet to whip out your digital camera and reply, “Let’s find out.”
The XBroker nails a manifesto to the door of the Treasury.
Christine Forgione at NY Houses 4 Sale has a stout defense of why you need a Realtor. (Am I the only person who sees this site as one giant link? Real Estate Snippets look like this to me, too, like everything is encapsulated within one giant link.)
This is something I had really wanted to avoid, but, as we are by now getting hundreds of spam comments every day, I have added a captcha function to the comments panel. In addition to quarrying your mind for every gem of brilliance, you will have to type in a six-digit number prior to previewing or posting a comment. In principle, I could just trash all the spam comments, but Akismet, our spam catcher, snags a few true comments in error. It wasn’t the quantity of spam comments that was proving to be a problem, but going through them several times a day to make sure no genuine comments got dumped. Anyway, as much as I hate doing this, we’re stuck with it for now…
Technorati Tags: blogging
Theoretically any company could “take over” almost any market by offering their services at a lower price than any of the competition. And sometimes economic theorists like to calculate just how long it is going to be until it happens in various industries. Usually those calculations are just exercises with a financial calculator or spreadsheet – they don’t tend to reflect much in the real world.
Specifically, I remember when Sears bought Merrill Lynch Real Estate and then Merrill Lynch went on a buying spree of real estate companies – one large local firm they purchased was Tom Fannin Realty (this was in the early 80’s). The buzz coming down the pike at that time was that only the VERY largest firms and small (really efficient boutique type operations) would survive. All of the “regular” real estate companies were going to go out of business. The big-money-wall-street-people were going to dominate the real estate industry.
As luck would have it, just doing number crunching (completely skipping the whole “people thing”) made almost everything they (along with all the robot reporters) predicted to be pretty much complete crap. A few short years later Sears was selling (after enormous losses) Merrill Lynch Realty and surprise surprise – the real estate business rolled on, almost like it had all along.
In any industry there are those consumers who believe that “the lowest price” is the most important issue. They constitute about 15% of the home selling public. About 5% fall into the status conscious arena and actually want to pay a higher price. The vast majority of the public (80%) are more “Value Shoppers”. Don’t confuse that for wanting the lowest price all the time. They want the “best deal” – which may or may not be the lowest price. Show them that something is a “good deal” and it doesn’t have to be the lowest price.
One of the more idiotic assumptions made by the howler monkeys at the FTC and the DOJ in their pursuit of “lower commissions for the public” is that “commissions should have come down because of the internet”. The mere fact that Read more
Oh, good grief. Having returned from an extended drive-time radio stunt, Sellsius blog spreads a trail of Zillow crumbs. I don’t have time to bother with it, but this came in with a trackback:
We say: You can’t shakedown the innocent. If you pay-off, you’re guilty.
So a large gentleman shows up at your retail store. He’s tossing a baseball as he talks to you about the benefit of supplemental plate-glass insurance. It is by preying on the innocent that many, many large gentlemen in New York City — where Sellsius is located, incidentally — make their living.
Who can’t figure out why Zillow.com would pay not to be smeared as being racist…?
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, real estate marketing
I wrote this this morning, and it’s been bugging me all day:
Here’s a thought: The $99 divorce. It only works where the split is unclouded by children or property. But imagine a $999 FSBO package: The usual MLS-only marketing package with a buy-back guarantee for the buyer. Quoting me:
“From the buyer’s point of view, the buyer’s agent’s compensation can be thought of as a risk premium. An important benefit the agent brings to the transaction is a reduction in the risks the buyer takes on in purchasing a home. There is certainly a value to this, but that value cannot possibly be infinite — nor even terribly elastic.”
If, by using something akin to insurance, a Realty.bot can drive the risk of limited service buyer’s agency to something approaching zero — then what?
This is a business model. I’m not saying anyone will — or should — do it, but it is a workable answer to marketing objections.
Consider: Nu-Way Realty is a low-ball lister in the Phoenix market. They’re very big on promoting their listings — big newspaper ads and flyers distributed door-to-door. Taking account that MLS search is ubiquitous by now, they have that as promotion of their listings, too.
Do you see why this matters? Buyer’s agents don’t control what houses their buyers know about. As long as buyers can log onto an IDX system, they can say, “What about this one?”
A brokerage like Nu-Way could leverage all of this.
First, let’s do a limited-service listing — but with stipulations. Part of the listing contract is a full inspection of the property, with the seller agreeing to correct any identified defects prior to the MLS listing.
The listing brokerage now has a listed home in which it has a high degree of confidence. This is why it can offer a Money Back Guarantee — because it will never be in a position where it will have to honor it.
The MLS listing carries a $1 co-broke, which is the ultimate joke on all the NAR posturing about price-fixing. Probably, most buyer’s agents won’t show these homes voluntarily, but there is nothing to prevent buyers from Read more
In the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service at large, 5,590 homes sold in October against an inventory of 47,069, an implied absorption rate of 8.42 months. There are 6,059 properties listed as “Sale Pending.” All of these numbers are very close to September’s results.
Number of Homes Sold (with Days on Market)
March 2003 6471 67
2004 8678 60
2005 9959 36
2006 7469 58April 2003 7429 67
2004 8889 61
2005 9567 32
2006 6725 60May 2003 7428 67
2004 8932 56
2005 9853 27
2006 7582 63June 2003 7409 67
2004 9969 55
2005 10225 26
2006 7209 67July 2003 7643 64
2004 8974 51
2005 9326 25
2006 6101 70August 2003 7648 63
2004 8968 47
2005 9996 25
2006 6170 76Sept. 2003 6802 62
2004 8648 45
2005 9152 28
2006 5607 80Oct. 2003 6501 62
2004 8127 37
2005 7970 31
2006 5590 87
Average prices are up from September, from 324,370 in September to $330,210 in October, a net gain of about 1.77%.
Note that this may not accurately reflect the Phoenix-area real estate market as a whole. All private sales and most new-home builder sales are excluded from MLS statistics.
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate, real estate marketing
I know a lot of people who don’t vote. Not because they’re lazy, but because they’re philosophically opposed to the whole business. For my own part, I vote for just about the same reason I go to Mass, and about as often. Since 1848 or so, the main objective of government seems to me to have been universal penury. But as huge a drag as the state has been on wealth creation, it is failing nevertheless. By the quality of our ideas do we “out-run” those who would enslave us. This is hardly ideal — there is no justice to being a slave, and there is no justice to living as a fugitive from slavery. Even so, I could make a Dawkins-like argument that eluding the pandemic wealth-destruction of government is an evolutionary goad — “How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?” In any case, here is my celebration of some ideas that caught my eye today:
Phil Hoover from Boise Real Estate Blog is one up on all your shaggy-dog stories. Phil (blogrolled) had a great take on “Real Estate’s Broken Business Model” that I had noted but failed to mention when it appeared.
Christine Forgione at NY Houses 4 Sale tells an inspiring story with a $66 million happy ending. (Also blogrolled — boneheaded oversight; I live out of my feed reader.)
Kevin Boer at Three Oceans Real Estate argues that Realtors will never be disintermediated, but Pat Kitano at TransparentRE.com offers some possible caveats. Here’s a thought: The $99 divorce. It only works where the split is unclouded by children or property. But imagine a $999 FSBO package: The usual MLS-only marketing package with a buy-back guarantee for the buyer. Quoting me:
From the buyer’s point of view, the buyer’s agent’s compensation can be thought of as a risk premium. An important benefit the agent brings to the transaction is a reduction in the risks the buyer takes on in purchasing a home. There is certainly a value to this, but that value Read more
So, I get to vote, even though I’m only fourteen! Earlier today my father, Greg Swann, gave me the pamphlet that contains information on all the propositions for this year’s general elections, which are taking place tomorrow. He told me that, if I told him how I would vote for each proposition, and he agreed with my opinions, he would vote that way tomorrow.
In a nutshell, here are this year’s propositions:
After much reading and reflection, I voted “No” across the board, in a Metternichian style of acting. In my opinion, every proposition either was useless or gave the government more power.
Here are some more in-depth explanations for why I voted “No”:
Anthony Barba tips us that the Phoenix real estate market is going to get Drudged tonight. I’ll link to it when it happens…
Further notice: The article is up. The New York Times and it’s full of condescending errors: Hunt Highway is in Queen Creek, 45 minutes south and east of Tempe. A four-bedroom home is not a McMansion. I’ve always read Brewer-Caldwell as a scam operation. You cannot get $1,400 from a responsible tenant in the Phoenix. In any case, like much of Drudge, it more hat than cattle.
Technorati Tags: arizona, arizona real estate, phoenix, phoenix real estate, real estate marketing
Kris Berg at The San Diego Home Blog, has a great gift for biting satire. Working together with her husband, Steve, their take on the Zillow.com shake-down is not to be missed…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate marketing
…inbound weblog links from Technorati, that is. I don’t know when we will be deemed to have “a lot of authority” (although I live my life by the Presumptive Close anyway), but we’re dancing as fast as we can…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate marketing
…is up at Landlord Shmanlord. Seeds of Growth took first prize — amazingly enough with a pumpkin delivered by a Realtor. The difference in perception — warm gift versus cheesy gimmick — is enlightening.
Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato is host to The Carnival of Business this week, so there is good reading all over the RE.net.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate marketing
Greg,
The issues in your post that really caught my attention were trying to become a lister as a new agent and finding much more early success working with buyers.
As many real estate instructors are failed agents, even the very best of intentions – trying to give new agents the best advice possible, winds up with some “almost useful” info.
Yes, listers last. But if a new agent starts off as a lister (non friends or family appointment) they have just stepped into the ring against a possible heavy weight champion. They then can get the idea that the only way to compete is with a lower commission. (I promise to cover the subject of defending commissions in much more detail in a later post).
But far more important is the prelisting package (EVERY lister MUST have one) and the listing presentation itself.
There is a big difference between working with buyers than in working with sellers: buyers are usually not looking for an agent, they are looking for a house. For example, most people who are going out to buy a car probably wouldn’t be thinking, “gosh, I hope I meet a really nice car salesman today” – they want information and are possibly willing to talk to the salesperson to get it. Initially, buyers for houses aren’t much different. It is the relationship building skills of the agent that makes them successful when working with buyers.
The ability to get and keep customers is the senior skill with both buyers and sellers but the specific skill set is a bit different with each group. Working with buyers is basically relationship-based selling. It is for this reason that a relatively new agent can be perceived by a buyer as being just as desirable to work with as a highly successful veteran agent. What the buyer wants most of all is someone who will be totally honest with them – so getting them to like you and trust you is THE primary thing.
Unlike most buyers, the typical seller IS looking for an agent. However some of them don’t want to have to pay Read more
