360Digest

This happened late last year, but I thought it was worth noting. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which hosts a innovative section of professional reporters and readers blogs (including my Seattle Real Estate Professsionals blog), suspended a blogger for being a little too generous with quotes from another source.

Blog Suspended

In a press release today, TheHomeBuyingCenter.com is seeking angel investors and venture capitalists for a new online real estate brokerage.

To make their case, they write that $50 million was invested in real estate related businesses on the internet by angel investors, private equity companies and venture capitalists and they cite 3 other web-based real estate firms who have received venture capital in the last few years, Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin.

However, none of those firms are profitable yet.

Probably not the best examples to give while trying to raise funds. Anyway, who wants to invest in other people’s misery? Building a business model whose success lies in our economy being in the toilet is not something I would think would garner a lot of support.

I received an email last week from a guy inquiring about an ad he saw on Craigslist:

Are any of these units for rent? There is currently an ad on Craigslist for one of these units, http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/601697121.html

Is this a real ad? I’ve replied to a few ads recently that end up being fake, and I thought I’d check with someone that seemed legit before I bothered this time. It would also be good for you guys to know if someone is out there misrepresenting your property.

Thanks!

-Drew-

I clicked on the ad link and what I saw, instead of a rental house, was one of my “For Sale” listings being advertised as a rental house. It had my verbiage, my photos, but someone else’s contact information.

Weird!

So I wrote a little warning on the Seattle PI site and before I knew it, dozens of people started writing in and calling complaining they too had been victimized by the same scammer!

King 5-TV did a short interview about the scam and then the phone started ringing off the hook. Apparently, after the potential tenant contacts the Craigslist advertiser, the criminal dance begins, with plenty of emails going back-and-forth until the potential tenant give in and mails the guy a check, supposedly to get the keys.

There’s no telling how many potential tenants have been victimized, but I imagine that at least one person must have sent the guy money for him to keep it up. And it’s not just my properties he’s “stealing”, as I got a call from Kim Knowles at Windermere that her Blaine Street listing is also being advertised “for rent’. Which, she tells me to tell everyone, it is NOT!

The things that make the internet so cool and accessible also make it susceptible to criminal abuse and scams.

If those scammers spent as much time working at a regular job or legitimate business as they spend thinking up and executing these petty crimes, they’d probably be rich.

Email transcripts from Craigslist scammer

I had written about EPerks before, noting their odd campaign of paying bloggers to say nice things about them and wondering about their effectiveness.

The post received several comments, including one from a Vlad Zablotskyy, discussing his concerns he had with the firm. Several months later I received a request from Mr. Zablotskyy asking me to please delete his comments, as he had received a Cease-and-Desist letter from attorney representing EPerks, and he didn’t want any further trouble.

It’s been a few months now, so perhaps Mr. Zablotskyy’s got his own attorney now or he’s just got a little braver, but he’s finally written about his ordeal here:

Chilling Effect: How A Behemoth Company Can Silence A Blogger

Un-Realtor Pimps Out Tiger with Sales Pitch :

A Realtor is said to be pimping out Tiger Woods — and his wife and kid — to help sell a $4 million house across the street from the golf god’s Jupiter Island compound.

“I have a FABULOUS piece of property for sale DIRECTLY across from Tiger Woods new property on Jupiter Island (Being built) When a tabloid pays JLO $6mil for photos of her first born, I would think that $4mil for a fabulous piece of property for unlimited photo opts of Tiger would be quite valuable!”

True or urban legend? Though I”ve read that here, and heard about it on the news, I haven’t seen the ad or any other proof.

Many of us have our own websites that we have created ourselves. They belong to us, not our company or brokerage or web host, right?

A few years ago, as an experiment, I purchased a “Connecting Neighbors” website. I was intrigued by the interactive nature of the site and I loved the automatic monthly newsletters that I could adapt to my own chosen neighborhood. It was a template site, yet allowed for a good deal of customization. I could create pages and content, including neighborhood photos, school info, entertainment, arts, events, recipes and local real estate.

And I did that. I added photos of local restaurants and shops, parks, schools and events. I added stories about neighborhood happenings and highlighted local fund-raisers, pancake breakfasts and lasagna dinners. I added new listings as they became available, and I added hundreds of links to local and neighborhood websites that would be of interest to those who lived in or who were relocating to the neighborhood.

The coolest thing about the website was that, theoretically, after it was set up, you wouldn’t have to do anything. Because it was interactive, readers could add their own content without being registered, and Connecting Neighbors would monitor the content for anything that was inappropriate. Readers could add information about their church picnic or the winner of the local elementary schools soccer match. It actually worked pretty well.

The cost of the website with the automatic newsletter mailing was $39.95 a month, and I had thought it worth-while if I had been able to get a critical mass of readers together to keep it fresh and updated.

Alas, I could not, and it was up to me to continually add content.

When they raised the price in January to $59.95 a month, I thought it time to bail and just chalk it up to a lesson learned.

However, when I went to cancel, they kept the site live.

When I pointed out to them that I had cancelled the website, I was told by a representative of the company: “Please note the website still remains live online so it can be resold by our sales team.”

I was shocked. They had removed my name, photo and contact information from the site, but kept the name and all of the original content and photos online and they were attempting to market it, fully customized, to another real estate agent.

Of course, I couldn’t let that happen. Fortunately, I was still able to access the site, so I could delete all of the photos and original content and add my own disclaimer to alert any unwary agent in the future that the website contained content that I had compiled and created.

Luckily, I also owned the domain name, so I was able to redirect that to another page I had created, but I’m guessing other unwitting real estate agents may not be able to do that and they may become a victim of this company. Respected names in the real estate industry, including Michael Russer and Allen Hainge, are partners with Connecting Neighbors, and I hope they will look into this unfair practice so other agents are not victimized by their actions.

Connecting Neighbors urges agents to purchase not only the website through them, but the domain as well. Hence, when the website is discontinued, Connecting Neighbors can just sell that site to another agent, even though it may be a very elaborate site, with a customized look, feel and brand, created by one particular agent. Nothing belongs to the agent, it’s all owned by Connecting Neighbors, even if created by the purchaser. This is good to know if you’re considering working with this company. It’s potentially a valuable product, but may not be worth the cost in the long run since once you start with them, they can just raise the price and if you discontinue, all your hard work, branding and unique domain name can then be sold to another.

The right thing to do would be to just take the website offline when the service was cancelled and not try to resell the site to another before removing all of the custom content.

The original founder of Redfin has founded a mental health website for, uh….. people with mental health problems. Of course.

Mindsite, from the brain of Redfin’s founder

Gawd, we’re idiots. Why did we let that film crew into our house?

See Marlow and husband Jodavid act like trained monkeys for your viewing pleasure, on national TV.

Offbeat America AIR TIMES:
• March 03, 2008 6:00 PM ET/PT

I was interviewed over several weeks by a Seattle Times reporter, Kirsten Grind, for an article that started out being about popular architectural styles through the decades, and turned into a how-to on updating your home to sell in a slow market.

It’s funny how 3 weeks of correspondence and a half-a-dozen phone calls and emails turned into 2 quotes, but I guess the direct link to Seattle Dream Homes makes up for it all. That’s some link love for ya….

Update your house to sell in slow market by Kirsten Grind

If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, typcial suburban living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more Americans move into urban communities, families may find that some of the suburbs’ other big advantages—better schools and safer communities—have eroded.

As conventional suburban lifestyles fall out of fashion and walkable urban alternatives proliferate, what will happen to the obsolete suburbs? Are they the slums of the future?

In Seattle, we already have more gang activity in the suburbs than in the inner-city.

Christopher B. Leinberger in The Atlantic discusses these trends in The Next Slum. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods that began their decline in the 1960s consisted of sturdily built, turn-of-the-century homes, some even considered mansions, by today’s standards. By comparison, modern suburban houses, even high-end McMansions, are cheaply built. Hollow doors and wallboard are less durable than solid-oak doors and lath-and-plaster walls. The plywood floors that lurk under wood veneers or carpeting tend to break up and warp as the glue that holds the wood together dries out; asphalt-shingle roofs typically need replacing after 10 years. Many recently built houses take what structural integrity they have from drywall—their thin wooden frames are too flimsy to hold the houses up.

The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.