REreflections.com

It seems that everyone is always trying to improve on the poor old “For Sale” sign.

I was reading a recent Blog at Sellsius which speaks about  Custom Fit Realtyin Wisconsin who  is using Matrix codes on its house for sale signs to reach mobile users. The company’s new technology allowing buyers to take a photo of a “For Sale” sign on a house, and then get taken to the property information through their smart-phone browser.

I’ve got to say I was underwhelmed. While this latest piece of technology is pretty neat, and one that I would want to try just because I like to play with toys. I don’t think it ie unique or even new. People have been inventing ways to disintermediate the salesperson as long as there have been sales signs. Without thinking deeply I can think of…

• “Talking” Houses - FM transmitters that play the property information for the potential buyer. This is actually more efficient since almost every auto today has an FM receiver, while not every phone is a smart-phone.
• Property Brochure Boxes - OK , so this is a little Lo-Tech, but come on, its doing the same thing isn’t it? And it has the advantage of being a little more durable and easier to share than the site on a cell phone.
• Marketing Voice Mail Boxes which use a code number on the sign to allow people to call for property information. Again, every mobile phone user can do this, while the smart-phone, though more common is not yet ubiquitous.
• Single Property websites posted on the property sign
• MLS number and Company Web site printed on Yard Sign Riders

All of these marketing support systems have one thing in common however. You need to have located the property, and be sitting in front of it to utilize them. So the marketing system that worked here is obviously the Yard sign - the original real estate technology to advertise a property for sale. (In all fairness, they might have located the property through print advertising, but if they had called the office or seen the property on a website, they would have already had the information these systems provide)

 We need to remember that the purpose of a real estate brokerage is to make money, and that under the most common current business model, that means that our sales associates need to interface with consumers at the earliest possible point in the sales curve. So why would we want to provide them with yet another method of avoiding contact with a sales associate , who should  be able to provide them with better information than a website , pre-recorded message or property flyer?

I found this fascinating quote today in a blog published by ELYAC Realty Los Angeles Real Estate Agent, Home Loans, Mortgage Brokers:

Here’s a surefire way to start an argument: Suggest that the housing market has reached bottom. To be sure, the near-term outlook is still grim, and nobody is forecasting a rapid nationwide rebound. But there are signs that the overbuilding and speculative pricing that inflated the bubble are working their way through the system. In October 2005, near the peak of the boom, the median sales price for a U.S. home reached 7.3 times per capita income; by this May it had fallen to 5.7, in line with historical norms. Nationally, the rate of decline in sales is slowing, and in some regions sales numbers have actually perked up. “The indicators are starting to look better,” says Adam York, an economic analyst with Wachovia.ELYAC Realty Los Angeles Real Estate Agent, Home Loans, Mortgage Brokers, Oct 2008

It sort of amazes me that it takes a broker in one of the most challenged markets in the country to write about how the market may be turning around, and talking about how the market in Philadelphia has been listed as one of the 7 markets in the country poised for recovery. Just goes to show that though the real estate market may be local, the real estate media is certainly national in today’s world.

You should read the whole article.

Image via CrunchBase

A Couple of days ago, a press release was sent out that said , in part

NEW YORK, Nov. 12, 2008 – ForSaleByOwner.com today announced that it has become the nation’s first “by owner” real estate website to enable home sellers to advertise their home on Realtor.com without appearing on a local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). This new direct access to Realtor.com follows the May 2008 settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors.

“The DOJ-NAR settlement benefited consumers by giving them access to Realtor.com without the expensive cost of a commission fee,” said Greg Healy, Vice President of Operations at ForSaleByOwner.com. “We’re proud to be the first to offer this new consumer-friendly access to Realtor.com. In today’s challenging housing market, sellers need cost-saving ways to sell their homes.”

“Our typical home seller saves nearly $13,000 in commission and this new access to Realtor.com will help even more people sell their home without using the services of a real estate agent,” added Healy.

Realtor.com is a popular real estate website that attracts nearly five million monthly visits. The new Realtor.com Showcase Listing service from ForSaleByOwner.com will allow sellers to have their homes marketed on Realtor.com, and interested buyers will be able to directly contact these sellers.

The press release generated a ton of interest in real estate circles. Agents were stunned, and the connection between the National Association of REALTORS and REALTOR.COM (the official Web site of the National Association of REALTORS® operated by Move Inc) generated astonished and angry reactions from real estate professional all over the country.

In fact, the press release was inaccurate, self-serving, and misleading. It referenced the NAR/DOJ settlement earlier this year as if that was the source of the relationship between the company and REALTOR.COM, indicating that unrepresented sellers would now be able to list their properties through the company and have the properties exposed on REALTOR.COM. The truth was forthcoming shortly when the following information was provided by NAR, but the RE.Net being what it is the truth has to battle back against the first onslaught of inaccurate information.

Here are the clarifications NAR and REALTOR.com published to set the record straight 

1) The settlement agreement between NAR and the U.S. Department of Justice made no provision to allow unlisted properties, such as “for-sale-by-owner,” to be posted on REALTOR.com.

2) ForSaleByOwner.com does not in any way enable home sellers to advertise their home on REALTOR.com without broker representation; every property on REALTOR.com must be listed by a licensed real estate broker.

3) REALTOR.com has not authorized ForSaleByOwner.com to resell REALTOR.com’s Showcase Listings Enhancement package.

4) There is no relationship between ForSaleByOwner.com and REALTOR.com.

5) There are no unrepresented homes on REALTOR.com. Every property on REALTOR.com must be listed by a licensed real estate broker, and unrepresented properties would not qualify to be submitted to a REALTOR®-owned and operated MLS.

REALTOR.com® has asked ForSaleByOwner.com to issue a retraction. ForSaleByOwner.com did not discuss in advance the statements in its press release with REALTOR.com® nor did it request or receive permission to use the REALTOR.com® name in its press release.

I would be more upset about the misrepresentations made by Forsalebyowner.com if I did not have a low personal opinion about their marketing strategies to start with. However I guess that if they position themselves as some sort of consumer advocates, the truth isn’t as important to them as it is to the rest of the real estate practitioners around the country.

I love the book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing“.

I like it because it doesn’t try to be more than it is, it makes sense, its a quick read, and each time I read one of the 22 laws, I have a Duh moment.
One of the 22 laws is Marketing Rule # 3 The Law of the Mind which says;
“It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace”

The books uses examples like Dumont (first commercial television set) Duryea (first automobile) and Hurley (first washing machine) to indicate that being first to the marketplace with something is not as important as being the first association in the consumer’s mind.

To me real estate related examples come to mind like Red Carpet (first real estate franchise) who lost the battle to become first in the consumer’s mind to an upstart company named Century 21 that took the idea and became almost synonymous with real estate in the consumer’s mind.  Or another great real estate related example is Realty Executives, the first 100% concept franchise, which was quickly overshadowed by the second to the market first in the mind positioning of ReMax. Does that mean that the second company to seek a position has some advantage? I don;t think that’s the case. It merely seems that since marketing (IMHO) is basically about perception, the battle for the mind of the consumer will take precedence over the battle to be first in the marketplace.

Traditionally the battle for the consumers mind was fought with the ultimate business weapon - money. Cash spent to build resources to capture the attention, interest and desire of the intended market. Today, with the advent of Social Media, I think that this weapon might be challenged by content. Though content doesn’t come without cost (in time or some other resource) it can be much more affordable than ad campaigns or print marketing materials, allowing smaller brokerages ( a relative term - most brokerages are larger than some and smaller than others)  to compete with companies that are much larger and may have more resources. The size of the company behind the Blog or website is not immediately evident to the consumer, and clever positioning may prove more effective than a large budget. So go forth and lay your claim to the mind of your customer or client. Become their first choice  for relocation, or foreclosures, or short sales, or for a specific price range or age group or geography, because you provide the best source of trusted information to them in the manner they want to receive it, and reap the benefits of your victory for the battle of their mind.

Book cover via Amazon

I’m tough to buy gifts for. It drove my wife and son nuts. But they have always racked their brains and come up with some outstanding things for birthdays or Father’s day. This year my son and daughter-in-law got off easy.

Knowing how involved I had become in Blogging and social media, they bought me three terrific books for Father’s day. The New Influencers by Paul Gillin, What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Ted Demopoulos, and Blogging Heroes by Michael A. Banks. I started on Blogging Heroes first.

Blogging Heroes is described as a set of interviews with “30 of the worlds’ top bloggers”. The book was fascinating to me because of the diversity of the people interviewed and the blogs they ran. I’ll spend more time talking about that another time.

One of the first interviews is with Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of the Long Tail. In it Chris says “There is no one blogosphere. There is an infinite number of blogospheres. My 220 feeds are not your 220 feeds”.

In our business blogs seem to fall into a number of categories. There are the peer to peer blogs, the vendor to Real estate professional blogs, the real estate professional to consumer blogs, and some consumer to consumer blogs. Each one of them has a different message for their reader, because each of the writers has a different ax to grind, and each set of blogs creates a different blogosphere that may not give any credence to , or even acknowledge the existence of the others.

In the peer to peer arena, there are examples like the blog you are reading, Teresa Boardman’s Real Estate Weenie, and of course the large players at AgentGenius (winner’s of Inman’s 2008 Innovators Award) and BloodhoundBlog. All of them are written by active real estate professionals, though AgentGenius and BloodhoundBlog are both written by multiple authors. Each of these blogs have unique personalities. Reading each of them would provide the reader with a different perception of the real estate industry, its key players, and the roles and motivations of real estate’s professional organizations.

With the exception of the views and opinions in this blog, all of these blogs have some bias generated by the position of the authors and their experience in the real estate industry. All of them (current author excepted) have opinions that are based on their experience in the industry, and unless you have held every position in every company and professional organization, that leads to a bias built around the limits of your experience. For example, a real estate professional may not truly understand the consumer’s point of view, and their stresses and issues if they have never bought a home. An agent who has never owned a company may not understand the challenges facing the owner of a brokerage. Some one who has not participated in a professional organization may not have any idea of the actual workings or motivation of that organization. But still they write - and pontificate in some instances about what they think is wrong, or unfair, or needs to be corrected.

There’s part of me that thinks that’s OK. Everyone has the right to an opinion, and to voice it. And they don’t even need to be right (though I prefer to be personally). However the problem comes in when the posts get read. The reader may not have the knowledge to dismiss an inaccurate statement, or to differentiate between a well supported opinion and an unfounded one. All too often something is taken as gospel because its on the Internet and therefore it must be right. And that’s where knowing who’s in your blogosphere becomes crucial.

You can choose to live in a blogosphere that is full of rhetoric and bombast, where the light shines all to infrequently. Or you can choose to live in a blogosphere where positions are supported by facts and discourse can lead you to change your mind, or you can change the minds of others if you make your point well. Me, I know where I choose to live.

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• Resources for Bloggers

Image via Wikipedia

Maybe I’ve been around the real estate industry for too long.Or maybe I’m just not bright enough to get the economics “du jour” - in any case, when I saw an Inman News article entitled “A new set of real estate fundamentals” I was annoyed.

When I look at the current market, I see the same fundamentals that were in place when I started to sell real estate in 1971 - to wit;

• Housing is still a basic need.
• Real Estate is not a liquid asset, and should be bought understanding that it is a long term investment
• Everybody with a periodic housing expense is probably paying a mortgage for someone, and would usually benefit more if they pad one for themselves.
• When you buy real estate that is affordable and fits your housing needs, over the long term, you will create additional financial stability for yourself and your family.

These to me are fundamentals - and have been the bedrock of our industry, and it bothers me when people assume that there are “new fundamentals” - which are actually variations on these themes - some of which have short term validity, and many of which do not.

So I started reading the article with a chip on my shoulder - but after reading it through, I felt a lot better. The article actually was looking at the statements and assumptions made at a 2003 Inman conference on the “Housing Bubble” which generated some theories and suppositions about what was fueling that real estate market among which were growing Immigration, Unlimited Market Liquidity, and Consumer Confidence. In my opinion these are not fundamentals of the real estate market, but are moderating influences, as we have seen them play out.

Immigration for example was (and still is a powerful) force impacting demographics, but is impacted by both the economy here and abroad, as well as the political climate here and in other countries. As a result, this is not fundamental to real estate as a commodity, though it might positively or negatively impact demand in the market. The limits which we have seen placed on the “unlimited” liquidity of the mortgage market  also impacts the ability of consumers to act on their desire for housing, again acting as a moderating influence on the market (though certainly not fundamental to real estate) and finally, the lack of consumer confidence has been an important factor in limiting demand for real property as people find alternative investments, diminishing the “serendipitous” buyer, though the impact of those issues was important to that market, and changes in those sectors of the market are among the reasons for our current real estate market

My niece and nephew called today to talk about whether they should buy a house i- they moved to California form the East Coast, and the price of housing , even in today’s market is pretty high.  There is a house on the street where they live that has just come on the market. They like the street and the neighbors, its close to libraries, playgrounds, schools, and highways.  And they plan to be in the area for the next several years. So based upon their needs and wants, and their desire to build some financial stability for their family through their monthly housing expense, they are going to make an offer to purchase. The offer will be aggressively low (so they feel protected if the market continues to go down rather than up) but since they have good credit, a substantial down payment, and good employment, the terms of the offer are pretty good. Since the seller has a need to sell the property (and since she has lived in it for many years and has no debt) hopefully they will be able to reach an agreement. But whether they reach an agreement or not, at least both parties are motivated by what are truly the fundamentals of real estate and as a result will hopefully make decisions that benefit them -

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Technorati recently published their report on the “State of the Blogosphere / 2008″ , the newest version of an annual study which has been digging into trends in blogging since 2004.

I’ll actually be doing more of an analysis of their findings over at BuzzBuilderz, the social media marketing site maintained by my son Hal and me, but I did want to post some of the information that was interesting for people in real estate who are utilizing social media as part of their profession.

There is a great deal of discussion about what the “blogosphere” really consists of and how large or influential it is. Technorati defines it as ” the collective community of all blogs.” The size of the blogosphere seems to be harder to define however.

There have been several studies, and they have all yielded different results. Technorati mentions three of them in their report;

* comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US
o Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million
o Total internet audience 188.9 million
* eMarketer (May 2008)
o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)
o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)
* Universal McCann (March 2008)
o 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US
o 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US
o 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Obviously blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream, and the number of readers of blogs is constantly growing. As an aside, the impact of micro-blogging is not taken into account, and if Technorati’s definition of a blog were used “a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material ” the postings to twitter and Rejaw and Plurk, might actually need to be considered. - and then what would the size of the conversation appear to be?

Technorati Profile

business or pleasure

Originally uploaded by Will Lion

I had a conversation recently with my son Hal, President of BuzzBuilderz, our Social Marketing Company.

He had just met with a Commercial real estate broker about using Social Networking as part of their marketing plan. Hal had explained to him the benefits of building an on-line identity, acquiring a good reputation, and developing trust in the online communities to develop a base of potential investors for them to do business with. The Broker’s first question was “What’s the ROI?”

Hal explained to him that marketing is not an income producing activity, and that there is no direct, calculable return on investment for building a brand or exposing your self to a larger group of potential customers and clients. He also pointed out that the company’s present direct marketing strategy – targeted direct mail – could only reach people that the company already knew, while building an online presence exposed to the company to the much larger universe of people that the company had not yet met.

The Broker still didn’t seem to “get it”, and though he was sending out direct mail to only 600 people per month, created, stuffed, and mailed by his associates (who surely could have been doing something more productive) at a hard cost of at least $900 per mailing, the idea of using free internet exposure, was not, by itself attractive enough for him to consider.

Since you’re reading my Blog, it seems almost like cheating to ask you for your opinion – obviously the social aspect of the Internet has not been lost on you. But I thought all salespeople understood that buyers and sellers want to do business with people that they trust. And that they also trusted people they meet in non-sales situations more than they trust people they meet in the middle of a sales pitch. Press Releases trump advertising, and Social Networks trump press releases in the hierarchy of the consumers trust.

Me, I don’t have any calculate ROI on my Social networking, but I have met some great people, reviewed some interesting opportunities, been hired as a consultant a few times, and even had a couple of buyers and sellers contact me directly. And all of that while I was enjoying myself meeting new people, being exposed to new ideas and tools, and not having to lick a single stamp!

Internet Porn

Originally uploaded by gillyberlin

Long the leading search item on the Internet, porn has fallen on hard times (no pun intended), as Social Networking trends to become one of the hottest searches on the web.

Bill Tancer,a self-described Geek, in his new book, “Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters”, said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.

“As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased,” said Tancer, indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn.

“My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don’t have time to look at adult sites.”

Who knows - maybe its just easier to type using two hands.

Source:Rueters

A year ago I had a vague understanding that there was something out there called Blogging that was creating a stir in the real estate world.

I’m a pretty techie type of guy so I found Blogger and created a small Blog that I named MovePhilly, but frankly, after a couple of posts I felt like a guy in a room talking to himself and I stopped writing. I guess without positive feedback, and no road map to eventual success, I just wasn’t interested enough to support the time and effort it took to think of things to say in print on a regular basis.

At NAR’s Professional Standards Committee, we had been discussing the applications of the Code of Ethics to internet marketing, and Blogging kept being brought up. There was a substantial amount of writing going on out there , and it seemed that there was little understanding of what , if anything, we should do to keep the Code relevant to this new method of communication. At a meeting in Chicago earlier this year, the Interpretations and Procedures sub-committee of the group listened to a presentation by Liz Luby and Jim Duncan who made a presentation about the real estate blogging community. They showed us their sites, and national opinion sites like agentgenius and NarWisdom.

We left the meeting and I began to read some of the blogs. Soon I was commenting on what I considered inaccuracies on some statements. Soon I was involved in a lengthy argument with another commentator, and the next thin I knew I was writing. Through this journey I was being exposed to a whole new world of interactive websites populated by large numbers of real estate professionals and consumers who didn’t move in the larger physical circles of meetings and association groups that I had become accustomed to over the years.

As I traveled back and forth to visit with my son and daughter-in-law in California over the next few months, I began to evangelize about this new marketing medium and its immense impact on my business. After 37 years in the business I had less then 500 mentions of my name on Google. After less then six months, I had over 15,000 mentions of my name on Google. In addition, I had been hired for several consulting opportunities (that came directly from social media marketing), had re-connected with a friend from 35 years ago, had consumers contact me to list and buy property,  and had been interviewed by local and national media about real estate and social media.  In addition, I had the oportunity to participate in several potential business arrangements. This was an astounding amount of results for a very short period of time.

I had found a new type of world wide web - the web effect created by linking interactive sites where an online presence could be built quickly and  inexpensively. The world of WEB 2.0 (or in our industry the RE.NET).  This was a place where every professional needed to be in some manner.

So why weren’t there more people in this arena?  The effort to do the  research on where you wanted to be, how you wanted to be presented to the public, and how you wanted your online presences to interact and support each other was immensely time consuming.People just didn;t know how to bridge the gap between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, or what to do when they go there.  The time to find all the sites, let alone register on all of them can be immense. Busy agents have the time to teach themselves even if they had the inclination.

It was when my son Hal broached the idea of creating a free lance marketing company to serve the real estate community that BuzzBuilderz was born. We created a short cut to insert agents and companies directly into Web 2.0? We designed an interlacing relationship of Web 2.0 sites to give a turn key solution to the agent?  BuzzBuilderz was a simple concept. For a nominal flat fee for we provide an agent with a ready to utilize Web 2.0 platform. An easy to drive marketing program that they could operate at whatever speed they desired. I knew it worked from my own experience.And I knew that it didn’t take much time. All I needed to do was to learn some simple short cuts that had huge impact - things anyone could do while they searched the MLS, or read their daily industry news.

Instead of spending lots of time and money on the same marketing that real estate people had been doing for the last century, I now had a free marketing machine that created signs pointing at my business, that never go away. every time I did something, I wasn’t sending out something that was being used once by one customer, I was creating a perpetual marketing machine that kep tgetting larger and larger and larger.

Not only had I received referrals, earned, consulting fees, connected with old friends ,clients, and consumers in only 6 months,  I was enjoying myself meeting new people and learning about new applications of technology! And I had access to all of this for little or no cost.The experience was terrific -

So now we’re prepared to share that experience. Please visit us at BuzzBuilderz as we try to mesh the world of real estate I grew up in with the newer technology being adopted by agents and brokers all over the country. Maybe we can enhance your online presence a little.