The Long List of Odysseus Medal Nominees

What If The Real Estate INDUSTRY Didn’t Control The Real Estate Market?
... That lopsided opacity was the real reason for the eventual implosion of the real estate market. We hid market information from the buyers while the Baby Boomers moved through the home ownership life cycle. ...

Are Our Customers EnTitle-ed To Better Fees?
Admit it.  You’ve wondered if there was a lot of fat in title policies, didn’t you?  I mean, how many claims does a title company REALLY get in this “nobody trusts anyone” market? ...

Why Real Estate Agents Should Stop Playing Loan Officer
I wasted a few hours this week cleaning up the messes that real estate agents created for their first time home-buyers. End result - loan officer still looks like a jerk, but now the borrowers are really confused about who to trust. ...

Swiss Accounts, Condo Developers, and an Open Door
Americans who hide money offshore have a almost mystical belief in foreign bank secrecy laws. Whether it is Switzerland or the Carribean they believe that these countries’ laws and bankers will protect them from the U.S. government’s investigators and tax collectors. ...

Why move to Dayton Ohio? “It’s time to reverse the wagon train”

I had an interesting conversation the other day. A potential buyer is looking online and finds me and gives me a call. He’s a Californian. He’s a family man. He’s a hard-working construction guy. We have a long talk. …

Go ahead, Google me and see what happens

Really.  Google “me” in your search bar or Google home page and see what happens. …

Some Home Buyers Believe Agents Work for Free

When home buyers go out to look at homes with their buyer’s agents, every single buyer’s agent expects to get paid. …

10 reasons big box brokers suck

Did I really just say that? Sorry but it’s high time to call a spade a spade. …

Real Estate Blogging Interest Picking Up

I’ve experienced more calls and emails in the last couple of weeks from real estate professionals with static websites who want to blog, particularly on WordPress. …

The Bottom Line on MLS Data Standards

In a post last week, I asked a pretty open-ended question: “Are the costs of an MLS [coverting to a standard format] worth the long-term benefits?” …

California Proposes to Regulate REALTORS Alongside Pawn Shops, and Lenders, and Banks… Oh MY!

Assemblyman Pedro Nava sponsored a bill (CA-AB33) to reorganize our state’s financial services’ regulators to be under one umbrella, the newly created Department of Financial Services.  The idea is to save a bunch of money for the State. …

Chinese Drywall Corrodes Pipes and Blackens Jewelry, Sickens Families

The housing boom created a need for more drywall, so suppliers went to China to get it. This may have been a huge mistake. …

Facebook Advice… Straight From the Buck’s Mouth

One of the interesting things about reading cutting edge, real estate thinkers here and elsewhere is how, every now and then, we miss the forest for all the trees. …

Battle Back With Your Posse

Seth Godin calls it a “tribe”, I call it a “posse” but they are both slang words for network.  If you’ve heard me speak at any of the Unchained events, you learned about my “deliberate posse creation” using social networks. …

How To Sell Using Social Media… Without Pissing Everyone Off

There’s no doubt the online marketing space is changing due to social media. It’s been happening for at least 5 years, but the pace of change seems to be accelerating. …

Do Clients Spell Service R-E-S-U-L-T-S? Bet They Do

Lately I’ve wondered if some of you have noticed the same thing I have. I’m talking about the how the concept of service has been elevated to somewhat of a deified state. …

Pulte Acquires Centex Homes

Pulte and Centex announced today that they would merge to become the largest player in the homebuilding industry, dwarfing rival D.R. Horton. The $3 billion stock-for-stock merger is a sign that at least Pulte’s management thinks a bottom may be near in the housing bust. …

Which is the Best Business Structure for Real Estate Investors?

Anyone who has closed on a purchase of real estate knows one simple fact: the legal profession kills a lot of trees. …

A brilliant and simple guide to how we are being lied to about the meltdown

There has been a deliberately high signal-to-noise-ratio (”the ratio of a signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal“) around the financial fiasco. The reason for this is the same reason that a magician does patter — to divert your attention from the sleight-of-hand. …

Why Long Copy Will Never Die

… About 20 minutes after the development of HTML, some clever copywriter worked out a formula to use long copy to sell stuff on the Internet. …

MGM Mirage Weighs Casino Sales

MGM Mirage hired Morgan Stanley to handle the potential sales of two of its steadiest cash cows, MGM Grand Detroit and the Beau Rivage casino. …

Big Question: Would a standard MLS data format matter?

I’ve long advocated MLSs to work together on as wide of a basis as possible (nationally or regionally) to agree on a common data format for MLS listings. …

City Center May Get Investor

Real estate investment firm Colony Capital is considering a possible investment in the troubled City Center project in Las Vegas. …

Hey Sunshine! Tell Me About Your Day

I’ve not only been a broker since January of 1977, but the designated broker since then too. For those not familiar with the term, a designated broker is the one with the dotted line drawn on their neck. The buck stops with the DB. …

HOPE for Homeowners Saves 1 Home - 1 Home???

Wow! That is the word for this epic failure. The 300 billion dollar Hope For Homeowners program the government touted as being the savior for 400,000 families has their results in. They saved 1 homeowner out of the 752 applications. …

The “Bad Bank” Plan…(complete with music and video)

I’ve copied the announcement from the Treasury that sent the markets on a moonrocket today and thought that I would “walk you through it” so that we can get a better feel for whether this is a relief rally or something sustainable (and therefore what it means for mortgage rates). …

Nest Realty, Jim Duncan’s new broker, joins the custom sign club

Long-time real estate weblogger Jim Duncan moved to a new brokerage recently — Nest Realty. As a part of their launch, they’re building custom real estate yard signs, the prototype for which you can see above. …

Chicken or Egg? A Survival Guide to The Great Mortgage Refinance Boom of 2009

The Fed announced that it will buy up to a trillion dollars more in mortgage-backed securities and mortgage bond traders reacted positively on Wednesday.  Mortgage bonds were up 1.25% which would theoretically lower rates to the 4.5% range; that didn’t happen today.  Lenders didn’t pass that largesse through and only lowered rates to the 4.75% range in the morning. …

Bankruptcies strike real estate brokerages

Bankruptcy is a fact of life. And it’s a fact that has never been far from the collective community of real estate brokers and salespeople, though it may be much closer in the current climate. …

iPhone 3.0 Adds Copy and Paste, MMS, Search, Notes Sync, and Tons More [IPhone 3.0]

The iPhone event just ended, and the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software update adds a ton of new functionality to the iPhone—claiming over 100 new features, including long-awaited copy and paste, MMS messaging, and more. …

NAR 1, Banks 0 - Banks Out of Real Estate Brokerage

Realtor.org announces that the eight year battle to lock large banks out of the business of real estate brokerage has ended. President Obama has signed legislation that prohibits banks from entering the real estate brokerage and management business. …

February Foreclosures Up 30% from 2008; Does Obama Own the Crisis Yet?

Almost 291,000 homes across the US received at least one foreclosure-related notice last month, up 6 percent from January, says RealtyTrac.com, a compiler of foreclosure data. …

BloodhoundBlog Radio: VA Home Loan Tutorial For California REALTORS

I recorded this webinar on March 11, 2009. Listen along and click through the links as I discuss them. …

Kicking the CAMELS Habit: Is Your Bank “Safe and Sound”?

The FDIC developed an acroynm for the composite ratios it runs to “rate” the financial health of its member banking concerns. An index, ranging from one to five is calculated and the FDIC premium charged to the institution is commensurate with its CAMELS rating. …

How to Write With Confidence

Writing sounds easy enough, right? Just slap some words onto a page, spell-check, sense-check, job done. …

Four VA Home Loan Myths Debunked

Are you using VA loans properly in your real estate brokerage business?  Most agents don’t fully understand them and their customers are suffering because of it. …

With zinepal.com you can create a targeted magazine in no time flat

The Scenius set, set in motion by Teri Lussier, has been playing with a clever little web app called zinepal.com. It’s a further elaboration on the kind of feed games we’ve been playing for months, but zinepal takes us into the world of atoms. …

I want my… I want my… I want my TA-R-P

This is getting too easy.  Financial Times interviewed Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. His answers reveal why the quasi-government agency that BAC has become is destined to fail. …

WPLookup - The Google Search of WordPress Functions

I have always found the codex to be too difficult sometimes, and the search has always been very ineffective, especially when I am looking for something as simple as a WordPress function.

WPLookup tries to help fix that issue by providing a simple search interface for connecting you to various codex function pages quickly. …

WordPress - Not Just For Blogging Anymore

It’s certainly no secret that I think the WordPress self-hosted platform is the way to go in developing a web presence for the real estate professional who wants to do it on their own and control the result. …

Why the economy isn’t ruined

As I was coming home from the Clareity conference last Friday, I was struck by how many people there were in the airport given the travails heard daily in the news about the economy. …

No, Mr. President. I Won’t Stand Down.

I tried so hard to keep an open mind about this Obama guy.  The optimism of our people on Inauguration Day was infectious.  The snappy patter of the “three words” video had my toes tapping and heart filled with optimism.  Alas, the honeymoon is over.  …

A few thoughts about freedom and real estate from the middle of an undisclosed cornfield

… I went to a farm forum yesterday and learned about the state of farming in Ohio. I think Ohio is returning to it’s agricultural roots. We are becoming the Green Belt, and I welcome that change. …

One More Thing: How Steve Jobs could return triumphant to Apple

Wouldn’t it be nice, if you were a cancer survivor suffering from a serious metabolic disorder, to be told by your doctor that you’d be good to go in June? Wouldn’t it be comforting to know that, come June, you’d be able to pick up right where you left off at the top of the tech world? …

Epiphany Marketing and Rocky Road ice cream?

I have talked about and written on Mayoral Marketing before.  The basic premise of marketing, according to this theory, is to build a community of people who would elect you mayor.  This concept leads to some useful details on how we should go about marketing in order to accomplish this election. …

The Subprime Bank of America

Remember those impetuous, ne’er do well subprime borrowers and those greedy subprime lenders?  Writing about them is sooo… 2007 but I’m happy to report that both greed and reckless abandon are alive and well today…. …at Bank of America. …

Amazon unveils Kindle for iPhone

Amazon.com just started shipping Kindle 2, the new version of its electronic book reader. Now it’s making another bold move in the market. The online retailer has started selling e-books on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. …

Democrats to Temper Mortgage Relief Bill

House Democrats have reached an agreement to narrow the impact of legislation allowing bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages. …

How Much of YOUR PageRank Are You Wasting on Twitter?

… All that PageRank must come from somewhere. When people mention you on that silly network, you probably don’t get anything of lasting value…it simply steals links that would have occurred on the real web, and replaces them with junk rel=nofollow links, surrounded by trivial bits of content. …

Not Ideology… Terminology

Do you still wonder whether banks will be nationalized?  Does the idea of an auto manufacturer declaring bankruptcy scare you even just a little?  Tell me you’re not still engaged in any discussions on whether or not the response to our economic crisis has been a step toward “socialism!” …

Technology’s Challenge: Understanding How Cats Part with Skins
Several recent posts have had me thinking about just how technology isn't addressing the needs of cats. ...

Feeling Overwhelmed? Turn To Ayn Rand
... Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. ...

Mangiare! Morte! Mangiare!
"You aren't supposed to be smiling at a funeral," my niece whispered out of the corner of her mouth as she sat between me and her older sister in the first row of  Salon A. ...

Go ahead, Google me and see what happens
Really.  Google "me" in your search bar or Google home page and see what happens. ...

“No Matter How Good You Get, You Can Always Get Better…
... and that's the exciting part."  End Quote.

Introducing HeyCentralPa.Com (MMBB Part 2 of 365)
Ok…In my last post I set today as my personal deadline for posting part 2 of 365 in my Mega Monster Broker Blog Experiment. ...

FHA and VA Assumable Loans Offer an Exit Strategy For Today’s Buyers
How can an FHA mortgage or VA home loan sell a home faster?   When mortgage rates are 10% and the 5% government loan is assumable. ...

10 reasons big box brokers suck
Did I really just say that? Sorry but it's high time to call a spade a spade. ...

Bringing it. And sharing it.
It is just before 7am as I write this. Our large office is dark and quiet this time of day, waiting another couple of hours before truly springing to life. ...

California Proposes to Regulate REALTORS Alongside Pawn Shops, and Lenders, and Banks…Oh MY!
Assemblyman Pedro Nava sponsored a bill (CA-AB33) to reorganize our state's financial services' regulators to be under one umbrella, the newly created Department of Financial Services.  The idea is to save a bunch of money for the State. ...

How India Made Me a Better Agent
The following is a true story.  The names were not changed and only the mistakes were innocent. ...

The Traffic Magnet Mega Monster Multi Agent Niche Focused Broker Blog Recruiting & Retention Market Domination Tool = A Huge Company Asset [Part 1 of 365]
Dear Large Broker/Owners, Are you ready to enter the web publishing business? ...

Do something even if it’s wrong!
I love the old cliche, "Do something even if it's wrong!" I am a broker who needs to be creative and diligent in connecting with buyers and sellers, and rather than sit around scratching my bald head, I decided to launch my own small town online newspaper. ...

A fertility celebration from a dying city
An Easter egg hunt in Dayton Ohio? ...

Wanna Piss Off The RE.net? Succeed with Online Sales Letters
I forgot how much I love Copyblogger. Greg Swann is echoing its posts on a scene in the sidebar.  I just clicked over to the one which explains that the death of ugly long-copy is overexaggerated. ...

Tony Hawk Rocks Twitter With Easter Egg Hunt
... I hadn't been on Twitter in a couple of months so I checked out my Tweet stream the other day. ...

Facebook Advice… Straight From the Buck’s Mouth
One of the interesting things about reading cutting edge, real estate thinkers here and elsewhere is how, every now and then, we miss the forest for all the trees. ...

Ladies and Gentlemen… Lower Your Prices By Making things Products…
I've been a freelancer, mostly, since November of 2007.  (I closed about 4mm in loans in 2008, mostly 1st quarter).  I've built websites, blogs, I've set up CRMS, and I've created landing pages, and sold a variety of e-books. ...

Susan Boyle shows us how to skin a cat
... I'm a sucker for the underdog. I'm a sucker for delightful surprises. I'm a sucker for big dreams and never giving up and making things happen when everyone else tells you it can't happen. ...

With San Francisco’s tenants rights the way they are, it’s always a tough fight .. but still: Peeking back through the looking-glass
Mark's post as well as Sean's got me thinking. It's certainly not unusual these days to 'friend someone up' on a social platform such as Facebook these days and learn just a little bit more than you wanted to know....

The failed listing revisted: What the hell do sellers need you for…?
I keep meaning to come back to Barry Bevis and his discussion about what to do about "stale" listings, but I've got too much on my plate right now. In the mean time, let's talk about this house. ...

Battle Back With Your Posse
Seth Godin calls it a "tribe", I call it a "posse" but they are both slang words for network.  If you've heard me speak at any of the Unchained events, you learned about my "deliberate posse creation" using social networks. ...

The Inman Prayer: “Deliver us not into deliberation and tempt us not into leadership, for ass-licking for lucre is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen…”
You just can't make this stuff up: Inman News is launching a new feature: Real Estate Product Reviews. ...

Do Clients Spell Service R-E-S-U-L-T-S? Bet They Do
Lately I've wondered if some of you have noticed the same thing I have. I'm talking about the how the concept of service has been elevated to somewhat of a deified state. ...

Please Get Out of My Face(book)
Part of my core schtick at Top of Mind is to ask my prospects two critical questions about email marketing. ...