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Archives (page 96 of 372)

February 4, 2010

What’s Your Niche Biche! – Could Broker Pimps Just Mandate Agent Created Content?

by

Retechulous...

Author website

So, if a broker owner really wanted to build a mega monster traffic magnet lead generation machine, couldn’t he or she just mandate that team members create a regularly occurring piece of content around some theme?

Maybe the agent entrance interview would so something like this?:

Broker Pimp: So, what’s your niche biche.

Agent: I don’t really have one.

Broker Pimp: That’s ok, we’ll help you come up with one. Then we’ll help you work it In a way that generates copious lead flow for you.

Agent: Sounds great, so what do I have to do?

Broker:Well every agent here at Cosmodemonic Realty is required to contribute some form of content to our company blog on a weekly basis. All you have to do is create the content and email it in to our in house technomarketer Nick Burnsy editor guy. And we’ll take care of the rest: Syndication to your social profiles, some paid click advertising, seo… All you do is create that juicy content on the regular then wait for the phone to start ringing. Our weekly E-Newsletter goes out every Saturday morning and most of our agents generatlly get some kind of healthy interaction based on the content they’ve recently contributed.

Agent:But I’m not really that great of a writer.

Broker PimpThat’s ok… Can you take a picture or a video from your fancy phone?

Agent:Sure.

Broker Pimp:Cool. We’ll set you up with a secret email address that you can use to send area photos to. What town do you live in? Could you see emailing in a “Yourtown” Business of the Week” on a regular basis? Maybe with a quick sentence or 2 about the business? Or perhaps you’ve got the stones to just stop a neighbor on the street and ask them what they like about where they live?

Agent: Sure I guess, but I don’t want to limit myself so narrowly to one area.

Broker Pimp: That’s great! You’ll never be asked to only work within your designated niche focus, you’ll be free to contribute as much extra stuff as you want. In fact, most of the Read more

February 4, 2010

A Scary Thought on the (Non-Existent?) Shadow Inventory

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

The shadow inventory has been a topic of interest with almost every agent I talk to lately.  Most believe it is large and few understand why it isn’t in the marketplace rather than held by the banks.  Russell Shaw recently wrote about the shadow inventory being gibberish.   It is an interesting article and one I recommend reading.

I rarely disagree with Mr. Shaw, and rather than do so now I’ll simply suggest that we are talking past one another.  As I read it, he is suggesting that this inventory doesn’t exist because it is, for the most part, out there already; just not listed as REO.  He makes it quite clear, however, that he is not talking about foreclosures still to come. (Apologies to Russell for over-simplifying.)  This is where we begin to part ways.  I submit that the shadow inventory must necessarily include not only actual REOs (or REOs not listed as REOs), but the entire picture.

More to the point, if we look at all the homes that have been foreclosed on, are in foreclosure and should be in foreclosure, we are left scratching our heads and find ourselves back to the same question: why aren’t the banks taking these homes in, putting them on the market, and selling them?   (I’m talking here especially about those homes where people have stopped making their payments and continue to live for 6, 12, even more months.)

MORTGAGES IN DEFAULT
Here’s a graph courtesy of the New York Times:

Sources: Federal Reserve Board and Mortgage Bankers Association, via Haver Analytics

That is an awful lot of mortgages in foreclosure; but add to that that lower line – of mortgages in default and not yet in foreclosure – and the numbers are staggering (again, think of people staying on a year after they’ve stopped making payments).  So no matter what we call it, the question remains: What are the banks doing? Why aren’t these mortgages foreclosed?  Why isn’t this inventory on the market?

I know all real estate is local and there are plenty of areas around this country where the last thing agents want Read more

February 3, 2010

President Obama To Las Vegas Residents: “Screw You!”

by

Las Vegas Mortgage Blogger

Author website

President Obama told a New Hampshire town hall meeting:

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices and it’s time your government did the same.”

Amazing, I wonder how Obama talks about Vegas when he’s not on TV?

Maybe this is why HUD Dissed Las Vegas In The Housing Stimulus Lottery, or Florida got their high speed Disney World Train and Las Vegas didn’t.

Either way, at least we know exactly what Las Vegas can expect when the President speaks about “Jobs” being his top priority in 2010.

And the Mayor’s reaction:

Speaking of blowing a bunch of money on trips….

February 2, 2010

iPad observation #9: I went digging through the heap of festering garbage that is the Vook and came home with an education.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Vain though it may be, tonight I looked in on my own past posts on the Vook. The writing was better than I remembered it, just exactly my kind of fun with words, but I do think I have been overly… forgiving… of this sleazy little… not vampire, even writ small… this skeezy little mosquito of a wannabe undead bloodsucker left over from the last century.

I am told that my swats at that mosquito incite much trashing and weeping amongst the very-publicly-aggrieved in the twitset — expressing, it would seem, the vitally-important necessity of brazenly butt-bussing besieged billionaires — but the plain truth is that I have not derided and denounced the Vook with anything like the rigor and vigor that this kind of epistemological emergency demands. One more way in which I feel myself blessed to have had the iPad to think about, this past week, is that thinking about the iPad and what it can and will do illustrate pellucidly what the Vook can’t and won’t do.

What the Vook actually does is lame and stupid. And while everything it does is fundamentally unnecessary, nevertheless, everything it does is very simple to design and to program. I do not know of anything the Vook does — neither the I-think-discontinued dedicated device nor the inevitable-fallback iPhone apps nor the “simulated” scenes of same found on the Vook.tv web site — that cannot be done on an ordinary web site. Easily. By anyone. With no programming or Javascript, and serving only as the broker in the embedded Flash video client/server transactions. In other words, if you can manage your own WordPress site, you can make “video books” that suck just as perfectly as a genuine Vook.

The sublime truth is, you can undoubtedly make much better Vooks than Brad Inman can, not alone because, if you have resolved to make the effort to Vook what you know, you’re going to make the effort to make your Vook — your gnuVook? — riveting and unassailable. That just by itself is tremendously exciting to me.

Now imagine every passion-driven web site out there re-envisioned as an Read more

February 1, 2010

Redfin.com’s Glenn Kelman comes to Scottsdale to beard the MLS lion.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman is in Scottsdale today and tomorrow for the MLSCOVE Conference, a gathering of MLS executives from all over the country.

Glenn made time for Cathleen and me this morning, buying us breakfast and regaling us with stories of the not-always-smooth path Redfin is traveling.

In real life, the man has a sweet and gentle — even beatific — nature. We saw this when he spoke at the first BloodhoundBlog Unchained event, winning a hostile audience over with a quiet, unaffected honesty.

That shone through again this morning, and, allowing time for Glenn’s son and our pets, we spent most of our time talking about real estate marketing issues: REOs versus short sales, new builds versus resale, the prospects for recovery, etc.

It’s funny, actually, to talk this way, because Glenn Kelman is a star in the real estate firmament, but in person he is fun and personable and very empathetic. Whatever our past differences, I respect and admire what he has been able to achieve with Redfin in such a short time. It was an honor to be able to spend some time with him.

January 31, 2010

How Can The iPad Can Change Mortgage Marketing? It’s The App, Stupid

by

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

Author website

I was plunged into the Apple world when my daughter won an iTouch from a magazine drive.  I dived into it nine months ago when I bought an iPhone.   Here’s why mobile devices work-  you can harness the power of the internet and international communications in your pocket.  To ignore this trend is to deny what most Europeans and Asians already.

Why then are Americans the laggards in the mobile me movement?  I think it’s because we’re wealthier than our cousins across the ponds.  Until we get mobile devices with a readable screen, that aren’t hard to use, we’re going to stay chained to desks or flopped with lap weights.  Americans won’t adapt because we don’t have to…yet.

Enter the iPad.  Everyone can use it and that says a lot about it’s user-friendliness.  More importantly, my father can use it and that says a lot about it’s reach.

What can this  mean to the mortgage industry?

POINT OF SALE: For the most part, mortgage shoppers care less about the loan terms than convenience and the ability to get approved.  I want the ability to give them all three on a mobile app.  I want them, and the real estate agents to use that app to get a pre-approval, check payments and cash-to-close, follow the mortgage market as it relates to their loan approval, and watch the loan process from a magazine sized computer.

MOBILITY:  The loan process lasts 30-150 days.  I want that borrower or agent to check rates and recheck their application status by simply touching that app button.  If  I’ m the user, I want the ability to take a loan application…anywhere:

  • at a Chargers tailgate party while watching the ribs on the BBQ
  • in the schoolyard at my daughter’s school
  • at a Chamber of Commerce networking mixer
  • in a real estate agent’s office
  • at an open house on a Sunday
  • at the beach

COMMUNICATION:  I want to receive a text message every time they open that app and/or login.  I want to know what they’re doing in there so that I can anticipate their questions and perceive their concerns.  I want them to be able to send me a text Read more

January 31, 2010

iPad observation #7: When you’ve built a product that turns whole worlds upside down — what happens next?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve got more to say, but I’m running out of Sunday. Here’s what’s next:

The iPad is the first move in the disintermediation — disintegration — of dozens of well-established institutions in our society.

Vendors of mediocre crap like Windows computers and Android cell phones are done for. Established on-line retailers are finished. Broadcasting in the spectrum is kaput. Best of all, the union-organized ignorami called schoolteachers will be put out of work.

In a circumstance such as I describe, what would you expect to happen?

My answer? Rotarian Socialism.

When the mediocre feel threatened, they pass laws. When the established face disestablishment, they pass laws. And when the ignorant get organized, they pass laws.

If anyone besides me could clearly foresee what a disruptive influence the iPad is going to be, they would already be clamoring for protection from the awful consequences of free choice.

Here’s the good news: Almost nobody can see what is going to happen. They might be myopic, but at least they’re very proud. They will insist — one may hope until it is too late — that Apple cannot be doing what it clearly is doing.

The bigger threat, in the near term, would be the Antitrust Laws, which say that your company can grow as big as it wants, as long as it’s really mediocre like Microsoft. But if you’re growing because you are satisfying — ecstatifying! — consumer demand, the Feds have to come in and bust your company up.

Here’s hoping that everything that matters in this revolution of the mind will have happened before the Rotarian Socialists can marshall their defenses.

And on that note, I will shut up.

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January 31, 2010

OK, OK, I finally get iT!

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

iPad is the real estate kiosk. I found this leaked video from December. The earth moved for me when I saw the guy change the kitchen cabinet finish. The 3D CAD interior design idea has been around for a while, but now you can put it in HER purse so SHE can redecorate your listing while waiting at the car wash. Then we go viral from the app store. She can then collaborate with all her friends and they all can redecorate my listing. One of them will buy it or redecorate some other house on my IDX site and buy that. Now I see.

January 31, 2010

iPad observation #6: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Oscar Wilde said that, the best kind of philosophy — bonum, verum, pulchrum — the good, the true and the beautiful.

I don’t hate it that we are monkeys biologically, genetically. But I hate it when people act like monkeys. Despite everything else that is going on, last week we caught a glimpse of the fully-human life. The prospect for an iPad-like device to take over education is cause enough to celebrate.

To the unchained human mind!

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January 31, 2010

iPad observation #5: Linking frees slaves, sometimes, but the future of mobile real estate is unknown to attorneys from New York City.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s a true fact: I’m pretty much disgusted with the RE.net — which denomination I quarried with my own hands, back in my early days on the apellation trail. By now, just about everything looks to me like hoke, smoke, hustle and jive — smirking vendorsluts and the clueless suckers who can’t stop themselves from pridefully posturing about having procured their own plundering. I know that’s not fair — or not entirely fair — but it often seems to me, lately, that everything I have ever hated about the real estate business is successfully infesting the on-line world.

This will fail, all of it, in the end, and I’ll say why in detail when I get time. But for now I persevere by holding my nose and holding my ground. Whether it is the seemingly harmless simian chatter of net.monkeys desperate to prove their ape-titude to all the other net.monkeys or the craven schemes of hack vendors looking for just one more gullible fool to make their month, I’m well sick of it all. I haven’t looked at a feed-reader in many months, and my Twitterverse consists of my Best Beloved, Cathleen, and Teri Lussier.

The rest of the net, however, is a different thing. I’ve been following Apple tablet posts for months, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog is the only blog other than BloodhoundBlog whose client I have on my iPhone. On and off last week, and in greater earnest today, I’ve been looking for decent iPad posts from the RE.net.

Not hard to foresee, but Agent Shortbus doesn’t get it. Typically insipid kibitzing with no real understanding of the revolution the iPad will bring to the entire universe of commerce.

But, alas, the Shortbus set doesn’t have the vision to come up with a truly idiotic argument against using mobile devices to market real estate. This honor was earned by Rob Hahn, an attorney in New York City who doubles as a vendorslut consultant or a consultant to vendorsluts or some bizarre combination of the two. Realtors follow his musings religiously, apparently because they confuse being an attorney with being a Realtor, and Read more

January 31, 2010

iPad observation #4: Looking for a smart way to connect with your clients in a pull-based marketing world? Update your iPhone/iPad app.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I give away a lot of killer marketing ideas here, but I never worry about the competitive implications.

For one thing, I believe to the core of me that it’s raining soup, that wealth is pouring out of the skies and almost none of us is smart enough to reap that bounty.

But, second, I have learned through years of experience that, no matter how good my ideas are, almost nobody will ever follow through on them. We learned to sell, most of us, from people who believed to their cores that real money comes from laziness and lies. My way of marketing looks too much like work, I surmise, for people to adopt it in big numbers.

So much the better for me, I guess, although, to be frank, I would rather see Realtors doing more to earn the business — and the trust — of their clients.

In any case, here’s a way of thinking about marketing my way, a style of salesmanship based on integrity, transparency, follow-through and client satisfaction.

So: Start here: Build an iPhone/iPad app for your business. (See there? I just lost almost everybody!) The app has to be mission-critical and laser-focused on what your clients really need. Not — with emphasis — more idiotic self-promotion. If you’re not delivering something of value — in the estimation of your target-marketed end-users — you’re wasting your time.

Then get it on their iPhones and iPads. It ain’t easy, so you have to do it relentlessly. Ideally, everyone who can be expected to use you in the future — and to refer you to their friends and family members — should have your app on their iPhone or iPad.

Now you have the perfect means of staying in contact with those folks going forward. I’m not talking social networking, and my thinking is that drip marketing is probably a waste of effort. If they don’t unsubscribe, they’re going to ignore you except when they need you. It’s a pull-based marketing world, and your clients only really want to hear from you when they have a real estate need — not when you have a Read more

January 31, 2010

iPad observation #3: If your baby — or a caveman — can figure out how to use the iPad, the user-interface works

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from an email exchange with Teri Lussier:

Here is the computer for the rest of us:

Imagine that civilization has collapsed. It’s happened before.

Now imagine a computer something like the iPad (but durable enough to have survived and solar-powered or whatever).

The ideal user-interface could be put to use by whomever finds that computer, with zero assumptions or expectations about what that person does or does not know about conceptual volitionality.

It will be babies (crawlers, not toddlers) who will tell us — by their interaction with it — if the iPad is there yet.

(FWIW, this is one of the things I’ve been waiting for all my life, a computer that can train its end-user literally from scratch — from nothing — from the complete collapse of all abstraction-based learning. If civilization ever does collapse again, a computer like this will deliver a much faster renaissance to the survivors.)

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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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