360Digest

Bring back the good times with this “Pimp Your Cubicle” kit that contains everything you need to pimpify a bland and uninspired real estate office: a dollar-sign paperweight, gold push-pins, leopard print fringe to run around the edge of your cubicle, a disco ball, and “Bling” mousepad. But, if that doesn’t quench your thirst for individuality, check out the accompanying book for more design Pimp My Cubicle schemes. From a beach front theme to the Taj Mahacubicle, you’re sure to find something that appeals to your inner pimp. See Newsweek Periscope’s Style: Very Niche Marketing

Wanna Pimp Your Crib on a budget? Try J.C.Penney’s Cribs Decor

Pimp is not just another word for Your Baby’s Daddy. For a list of All Things Pimpin’ see That Fat Bastard or Blender Magazine’s Guide to the Best Bling Ever.

The Real Estate Rap Song

Real estate bling for Realtors, real estate agents and all the real estate playa’s.

HOUSE BLING!!!

Sell real estate in style

Some folks are likening Realtwhores to pimps and prostitutes. Perhaps it’s time for Realtors to take that word and make it their own.

Pimp My Roll

Pimp my 4-door American land yacht Real Estate Ride

Gay Ghetto

Ghetto Real Estate Goldmine

Ghetto Fabulous Real Estate Co.

Jack a Crib

Pimp your Real Estate Blog

Yes, Virginia! There is a Poncho Claus! We spent a lovely Xmas with Elvez, the Mexican Elvis. www.Elvez.net

¿Mamacita Donde Esta Santa Claus?

Max, Jack, Sam and Elvez wishing you Feliz Navidad!

Freakonomics ( You know,“How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”) was named as one of the most over-rated books of 2006 in Prospect Magazine. Nominated by Dr. Diane Coyle, a freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury, she says,

Economics as freak show. Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the empress of the social sciences, other than multinational bashing.

And Realtor bashing too, of course.

Zillow’s Carnival of Real Estate is up over on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s “Seattle Real Estate Professionals” blog, moderated by yours truly.

I was tagged by Christine Forgione of NY Houses 4 Sale.

Being the contrarian and curmudgeon that I am, I was not content to just list 5 things others may not know about me. I had to list 10.

1. I had a radio show on KRAB-FM in Seattle called “Surfin’ Those Cosmic Waves” and played music by the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Surfari’s, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

2. I taught English in Japan. Tokyo is my favorite city in the world.

3. I’m a member of Northwest Con (Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans and Conventioneers) and at the last convention was asked to show author Harlan Ellison around Seattle.

4. I went to art school in England at the West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University College for the Creative Arts) and received a Fellowship at the National Endowment for the Arts in D.C., before returning to Seattle to finish my degree.

5. I made a pilgrimage to the Vatican to meet Pope John Paul.

6. I used to own a mobile home park. I nick-named it “Upwardly Mobile Homes”, but no one who lived there got the joke. It was condemned by the Port of Seattle for the 3rd runway at Seatac Airport in 2004.

7. I also used to own a Bed & Breakfast on Capitol Hill. However, it didn’t have any snotty or mocking nickname. I abandoned that business model for a less labor intensive “Furnished Executive Guest Suites” (so, more like “Bed & Kitchen”. Make your own damn breakfast.)

8. I helped build appropriate technology cement water cisterns in East Africa.

9. My very first job out of college was as the PR Director for the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra.

10. Second to surf music and Prince, my favorite musician is Weird Al Yankovic.

I’m tagging Beau Betts and Phoenix Ruddner. You’re it!

Russell Shaw writes brilliantly on Zillow and disintermediation of real estate agents by digging up some old quotes of by Rich Barton.

Says Barton:

“People want Realtors, he said. But is it rational to pay Realtors what they are paid? He says he thinks they are overpaid because customers are doing more of the work themselves.

Zillow, for instance, has a number of other features that do the work of the agent. Someone wanting to compare properties can use pull-down menus to estimate the value of remodeling projects that are not reflected in the price. Because of the Internet, agents are spending less time with clients, Mr. Barton said. Agents have to ask, What kind of value am I adding?

Mr. Barton does not exclude the possibility that the role of the agent, and his site, may change.”

As Mr. Shaw points out, Rich Barton wants us all to earn less, but he is willing to let us keep our jobs. At least for the time being. That’s so nice, isn’t it?

According to this article in The Wall Street Journal,

Mr. Barton said major change in home selling is inevitable over the next five years or so because there’s an unsustainable disconnect between the commissions charged by most agents and the value of their services.

So they’re going to let us keep our jobs, but apparently, they’ll be the ones deciding how much we should make.

There are so many new real estate sites out there now. Some have ties to brokerages, such as Blue Roof and Redfin. Others are disconnected to any actual real estate sales, but serve as portal sites to sell advertising, such as Zillow and Trulia. Others are “skimmer” sites, that try to sell leads to real estate agents, such as HouseValues, Homegain and RealEstate.com.

Most of these new businesses are not started by real estate brokers or anyone actively involved in real estate. Or if they are, the founder/brokers are soon fired, asked to leave or bought out. Most of the founders and CEO’s are business school graduates, software engineers, venture capitalists or have backgrounds in high-tech. They had nothing to do with real estate and chances are don’t now either. They could just as soon be selling widgets as real estate, and the ads or leads they sell could be for cars or computers, just as easily as they are for real estate. Again, it doesn’t matter to them.

Taking a quick look at these companies information, 100% of them were founded by men, and, by looking at their mastheads and “about” pages, most are run by men.

And isn’t it funny that, according to the National Association of Realtors, a majority of residential real estate agents are women.

A lot of these women have entered the workforce after their children are grown. They are people-people, not strategists, not computer programmers, not business school grads. They are attracted to the business for a variety of reasons but if you ask them, a lot will say they like to help people.

So, I can just see these Real Estate 2.0 guys sitting around a table talking: “We went to Harvard Business School and are only making $XXK a year and these real estate agents just went to some public university or even worse, a community college, and are making just as much as we are! And most of them are the same age as my Mom! Let’s use our superior intellect and design a better website and skim their customers off the top and then sell their clients back to them, for a price!”

Are these business school and IT grads going to schlep around from house to house in the evening and on Saturdays and Sundays, in the rain, perhaps with the Buyers kids in tow, week after week, month after month, searching for a dream home? No. But real estate agents do it, and those business school grads and real estate repackagers and website designers and computer programmers want a cut of the agents labor.

What stupid women! Silly housewives! They should have been busy learning html and computer programming and search engine optimization and java script and stuff like that, instead of driving people around to look for their dream home!

These Real Estate 2.0 managers and CEO’s want a cut of the agents labor, in the form of commissions. But one thing everyone should keep in mind is that if you don’t make it worth an agents time to be available 24 hours a day to go run out and preview the latest listing or to write up a sales contract or hold a first-time buyers hand through the whole sales process, the good ones will leave the business and you’ll be left with those not up to the task.

One can’t buy a house over the internet like one can buy a book or a new IPod or a pair of slacks. Someone has to get the Buyer into the house, probably into lots of houses, over the course of many weeks or many months. They have to be tour guides, educators, counselors, financial advisors, entertainers, sometimes babysitters, negotiator, and friend to many people. To say that has no value is wrong.

The subtext of what these real estate repackagers are saying is that the average real estate agent makes more money than she deserves, and they want a cut of the pie. And they know how to get it, by building websites to lure the new, young buyers who are entering the real estate market and who are used to researching and ordering everything online.

I don’t have a ready answer to this or a solution except to urge active brokers to keep up with technological advances as much as possible. Inevitably, the wired buyer will migrate towards the wired agents. However, there will always be those who require and need the assistance of a warm caring “people-person” to assist them in an important financial decision. Agents have a responsibility to keep themselves educated to deliver service and value in this changing marketplace. The business may change naturally as the agents and the customers and clients move through life. The average real estate agent is right around 50 years old. Yes, about the age of someone’s Mom. And the business will change. But to continually harp on the idea that these women (and yes, I know, some residential agents are men!) don’t bring value to the real estate transaction is underestimating the value that many do bring through caring and compassionate assistance on one of life’s important decisions. I don’t want to reduce this to a sexist or ageist argument. It’s more about a morphing business culture in the face of technological change and how best to adapt to these changes. But none of these advances and changes exist in a vacuum and there are real world consequences and meaning behind all parties actions, and it’s just something to keep in mind as we move through the process.

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain

Zillow announced with great fanfare, new features designed to capture more eyeballs. You’d think it was the end of the world with bloggers, agents, commentators and pundits declaring the end of real estate sales as we know it and the beginning of a national MLS, predicting the end of commissions, the end of real estate agents and the end of such companies as HomeGain, HouseValues, Trulia and Realtor.com.

Well, today is a new day, the birds are singing, the sun is shining (well, metaphorically anyway), and life goes on in our little real estate world.

I’ve had fun trying out the new Zillow, which is part Craigslist, MySpace and Wikipedia, reading what other have had to say about the service and what this means, if anything, to the “industrial real estate complex” as we know it.

HomeGain’s General Manager. Louis Cammarosano, says “free listings (are) a big threat to the MLS”. Elizabeth Rhodes says “with Zillow offering free advertising, pressure may be put on real-estate agents to cut commissions“. Annette Haddad of the LA Times writes, “Zillow was launched in February amid much hype about its potential to reshape the real estate transaction process into something more transparent and less costly.” With this turn of the screw Galen and Greg are having a field day predicting the end of the real estate industry as we know it. IT professionals and bubble bloggers alike are positively gleeful with the prospect of the real estate agents demise.

At this point, Zillow was and remains an advertising portal with its hook being real estate valuations, home sales prices and now homes for sale. So, while its original audience was homeowners (a great demographic) it’s now also appealing to homebuyers.

From the Zillow employees I’ve spoken to, they originally thought they’d be selling ads to real estate brokerages, companies that were looking for leads. So far, most of their ads seem to be from lenders and mortgage companies, hotels, luxury cars and a few discount or rebate brokerage houses like Redfin and Zip Realty. I was told that unless you have a budget of several thousand dollars a week, they don’t want to talk to you. You can view the details of their advertising program here. A Zillow rep said that they will begin rolling out a less expensive agent advertising option in March, and perhaps it will be sold via zip code or neighborhood, not sure and perhaps they don’t even know yet themselves what form it will take.

From reading the commentary on the new Zillow offerings, I come away with the impression that many of these writers think that now, since Sellers can post their homes for sale on the site, there will be no need for Buyers Agents. Of course, Sellers could always place their own ads in the classifieds or put their own sign on the lawn or put their own ads on Craigslist. FSBO’s and listed homes have always existed side-by-side, both in real life and in the newspaper and now online.

“Years ago I used to say one magical business model will transform real estate, but that has not happened at all” –Brad Inman (9/18/06)

So will Zillow change the traditional real estate business model? Right now, they’re saying that they wish to partner with the real estate brokerages. If they’re asking for each listing to be downloaded separately, then they need real estate agents listings for content. When asked why they just didn’t use their MLS feeds (as Zillow is licensed in Washington and other states too), David Gibbons told me that this defeats their purpose of making the site interactive. (Though I suspect it may be that using a feed somehow will violate MLS rules, as they’re selling advertising on the site.) The more times people have to come to their site, the more eyeballs they get, the more ads they can sell. So, to have a feed just defeats the purpose. The purpose then, is not to be the encyclopedic list of all homes for sale everywhere in the entire universe. It’s to attract as many eyeballs, visits and clicks that they can, from anyone they can, real estate agents and the general public alike.

Many brokerages mistrust Zillow and wonder if it’s friend or foe. Some liken it to a drug dealer who gives away the first couple of hits for free. Once you’re hooked, then the dealer can start charging whatever they want. A few point to Craigslist. What was once free (real estate and job listings) are now being charged for. And several other Seattle agents remember Redfin’s about-face, as it started out as a referral business for agents, but quickly alienated them by setting themselves up as competitors and as Tech Crunch noted “doing their best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers from at least half of a home sale.”

So far, Zillow is very popular but the challenge will be turning that popularity into profits. They probably still have a few million dollars left, however, and can probably go many years without having to actually make any money. If they can remain innovative, stave off the competitors, attract eyeballs and keep everyone happy, perhaps those early stage stock options will be worth something someday.

Well, I’m sure last to the party on this one. It’s after midnight, I just got home, and look what’s hit the fan…..

Reading everyone else’s comments, it seems that everything’s already been said and I hate to be repetitive, but I will point out that a variation of the “Make Me Move” feature has already been tried on another website, with not any publicized success, and the opposite of that feature is offered on Reply, where they allow a Buyer to make an unsolicited offer on an unlisted property. Again, no published success rate for that. If it WAS working, I’m sure they’d have some process to get the word out.

Some commentators have been talking about this being the dawn of a national MLS, but again, Zillow’s going to have to get a feed from each and every MLS to make that work, and I doubt that will happen.

By relying on individuals to input, to keep their listings accurate, they also have to rely on individuals to REMOVE their listings when sold. If they don’t keep up on it, they’ll have an unusable database full of expired and sold listings, like Yahoo Real Estate.

Other than those few things, I’d have to say I like what I see and look forward to exploring the new features Zillow has to offer. Knowledge is power, after all.

Alan J. Heavens wrote an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer that was re-printed the last few days in the Seattle Times, The Denver Post, the ContraCosta Times, The Detroit Free Press, The Mercury News, The Milwaukee Journal , and other newspapers around the country. Each newspaper writes their own headlines and they ranged from “Agent commission coming under fire from consumers” to “Commission system attacked — Consumer groups say agent fees are inflated”.

It must have been a slow newsday as the article was basically a rehash of the June report from the Consumer Federation of America that accused the residential real estate industry of functioning “as a cartel that tries to set prices and restrict service options.” (“New CFA Analysis of Real Estate Cartel Explains How It Can Set Prices, 06/19/06“).

So, this article comes across the wire and I’m assuming each editor independantly decides this is hot news and decides to reprint it as a lead story.

Being familiar with this 6-month old report, I wonder why does this catch the imagination and interest of these editors again and again?

I think we all understand that the advertising and the editorial departments are completely separate and it’s important for the integrity of journalism that they not be allowed to influence each other.

However, there is a difference between “news” (which this is not) and sensationalism, which this borders on. If you reprint the same old tired story every few months just to manufacture controversy, it seems more like sensationalism. Like the tabloids who trot out a Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton story with regularity, that’s what this could become, and the story gets legs of its own.

Last year Rupert Murdoch predicted the end of newspapers as we now know them.

We’ve all heard these predictions and many advertisers are looking at other mediums to sell their wares, especially as newspaper advertising gets more and more expensive.

It would just seem to me that a prudent newspaper editor might give this some thought and make some connections.

Many of the new internet-based real estate firms are jumping all over themselves to herald the end of the “industrial real estate complex” and are throwing out words like “disruption” and “disintermediation” and are making allegories between real estate agents and travel agents.

Travel sections in the newspapers have shrunk in half as travel agencies have disappeared…..

Uhmm… I am not suggesting that editors censor real news in the real estate sector. But I do question increased and continual hammering on the industry, its commission structure and the people who are employed in the business. If real estate editors hasten the demise of real estate agents, who will be left to advertise in their newspaper? Homesowners? They’ll just turn to Craigslist and Google and other free services.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average real estate salesperson makes $52,000 a year. This is considerably less than the average stockbroker ($87,990) and about the same amount as insurance (56K) and advertising (50K) salespeople. All of these jobs have minimal training requirements and none require a college degree. Sales representatives in wholesale and manufacturing, technical and scientific products might require a background in the field before selling, but those jobs pay more and average $68,940 a year.

A salesperson has always played two primary roles that add tremendous value. One is convenience. Convenience for the customer is helping the customer get their exact needs met when they want them. The other role that the professional salesperson has always played is that of an advisor, or a broker of expertise. Helping a customer to understand the real estate market, the ins-and-outs of the buying process, escrow, title insurance, mortgage options, home construction methods, and other issues.

To continually beat up on the workers in a particular industry without balancing the story with “the other side” is irresponsible journalism and becomes “Realtor-baiting” that only creates hostility and rancor towards a segment of society gainfully and honorably employed in a service sales business.

I look forward to more upbeat posts from this cheerleader of the real estate industry…… Buzz Saw’s Miter Box.

As I discussed several months ago, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service is discontinuing its feed to Realtor.com. Audrey Cohen of the Seattle P.I. did an in-depth story about this, and Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing comments upon this move.

I have such mixed feelings about this, as I would really, really like to support my trade organization, the National Association of Realtors. However, I just wish Realtor.com was a non-profit website rather than a separate money-making venture, functioning more like our local public MLS site, just there to serve as a congregator, and not an advertising vehicle and means and method to sell more ads to us Realtors and our leads back to us.

Cohen’s story quotes Mike Skahen, owner of Lake and Co. Real Estate and a Northwest MLS board member. He’s upset about the move and feels that it was done to shut out small companies like his. “Big real estate companies that control the Northwest MLS board want to impede competition on Realtor.com and, more importantly, Google”, said Skahen. He also said it would be “ridiculously inefficient” and more expensive to have brokers send listings on their own into Realtor.com.

I’m sure he’s a nice man, but I believe he is mistaken. Even if the larger firms have colluded and conspired to veto the MLS feed to Realtor.com because they think it will benefit them in some way, it won’t and he should rejoice, as he and his firm will now have a marketing edge. He can send his owns firms listings to Realtor.com, Google, Trulia or wherever else he thinks will benefit him, and then use that as an advertising advantage over the competition. For instance, Windermere will not send a feed to Realtor.com and Coldwell Banker Bain will not send a feed to Google and if Skahen’s firm sends to both, he can use that to his advantage when trying to get listings. It won’t cost any more, as I see his website already has a feed through Logical Dog. This is a non-problem for his firm and for any other firm out there. It’s MORE freedom, not less.

For even smaller firms than Lake & Company, it may take a few bucks, but if they don’t have a website yet and have been relying on Realtor.com to get leads, perhaps this will motivate them to get it together.

For less than $500 you can get a very nice, interactive, multi-page, customizable website from companies like Z57, Inc., Advanced Access, or Superlative. Or you can even get a free site from Ubertor.

You can add Real Bird to the basic site, as they use a integration of a Map-based MLS Search service with the Northwest MLS (NWMLS) IDX feed, and this could be an inexpensive way for a small firm to put an interactive map on their site without a lot of fuss. It’s only $159 a year and exports listings to Google Base, Edgeio and, it says, “1000′s of syndication partners”.

And Zillow had a little blurb about Mike Rice (Eferi Web Development) who has come up with a way to add Zestimates, charts, beds/baths and historical sales data to websites in a very easy way. Mike has offered to help web site owners add this functionality for $49 to the first 50 interested people.

Combine that with Logical Dog’s easy MLS feeds for about the same price, and you’ve got a great real estate website for less than $500 and at a cost of less than $100 a month.

Smaller firms should empower themselves and take their marketing and success into their own hands. Instead of handing their destiny to an outside entity, they should grab the reins and take control of their business and its future. Take the money that would be spent on buying leads or advertising on portal sites and build your own site and work your own leads. Learn or hire someone to assist with SEO. If it’s a small town you’re working in, you won’t have much competition and should rise to the top in organic search in a short period of time. Jump start your leads with some PPC, put your website URL on everything you print, publish and advertise in or on, and do some high-profile community programs with your new website prominently displayed. Create original content for your website, add some information about the local area and different neighborhoods in the towns served. Exchange links with other real estate companies around the state. Start a blog with real estate information about the towns you serve. Perhaps lease a moving truck with your website splashed across the side and drive it all around town and advertise that the use of the truck is free when they use your services. Join clubs and social service organizations and make sure all your agents do the same. It’s a people-to-people business, after all, and no website, no matter how cool or hi-tech will replace the personal touch.

If you take control, these changes are great opportunities to grow and build a business and forces you to assess the direction and vision of your firm. The larger companies may have more money behind them, but there will always be room for the small independent, locally-owned real estate brokerage.

So, with the down market comes lots of tips for selling your home quickly, including the stalwart suggestion of inviting the assistance of the Patron Saint of Real Estate, St. Joseph.

In my children’s school, Halloween is a quasi-holiday on October 31st, but so is the next day, November 1st, All Saints Day (and the next day, which is All Souls Day, a Holy Day of Obligation.) The children in my youngest son Sam’s class were asked to all dress up as their favorite saints and prepare a short speech on each one. There were fans of Saint Louis (Patron Saint of Buttons), St. Apollonia (dentists), Antony the Abbot (eczema), Nicholas of Myra (pawnbrokers) and several lovers of St. Claire, Patron Saint of Television. But my son chose to be St. Joseph, because “my Mommy is a real estate agent and he watches over us”. His teachers noticed some kind acts and last year he was chosen for as one of the children who was most “Christ-like” in his 2nd grade class. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess (Though one of my friends mumbled something about there being a mix-up in the hospital…..)

Buy your very own St. Joseph statue at Archie McPhee