A quick four-hour drive east of Seattle, a very unique property for sale on 57 acres. $3.9M with $300K down, balance at 7% interest only with a balloon in 3 years.

Must submit offer with $10,000 earnest money deposit into escrow subject to inspection. There are no tours so, luckily, there are photos.

"Real Estate" is in bad shape these days, originally uploaded by Frank Synopsis.

Here’s a photo submitted from my friend “Frank Synopsis”. Thanks for the pep talk, Frank!

Ok, now there’s no excuse. Take this free course and learn to build iPhone web apps from Creative Techs.

We need an iPhone app that will also open the Supra keyboxes, so we’re not carrying around a bunch of different devices. I can’t believe that in 2010 we can’t get one device to listen to music, make phone calls, take pictures and open a $&#^!! keybox!

Spotted recently on Capitol Hill:

Model Remodel, a Seattle design/build firm, looks to be remodeling the old Skillet Restaurant space on 12th Ave.

I loved the old Model Remodel website, featuring the owner, fashion and glamour model Jason Legat. Referring to himself as “The Smile Builder” he had a double-duty site, offering himself for both modeling and RE-modeling. Remodeling, get it?

The years will take their toll and I guess Mr. Legat was tired of being just another pretty face, so he has a new website now, but we will always fondly remember the old Model Remodel.

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Velocity Dance Center has gotten one step closer to realizing their dream of a new long term home on Capitol Hill. One of the may non-profits being dislocated from the Oddfellows building- they have found a beautiful new home at 1621 12th Ave- the old Capitol Hill Arts Center space.

Seismic upgrades and a needed change of use by building landlord Elizabeth Linke took some time over the summer and early fall. In the last week, Velocity has gotten the go-ahead for the city to being their demolition and construction work.

The new Levitt and Dubner Freakonomics book has come out (called, of course, Super Freakonomics) and the buzz has already started. The two authors are making the talk show circuits and they have a scheduled appearance tonight at Town Hall in Seattle.

With the first book, they pissed us off with the “How are real estate agents like the Ku Klux Klan”. But now it gets better with “Why pimps have a greater financial impact than real estate agents”.

“Just as you can sell your body with or without the aid of a pimp, you can sell your house with or without a Realtor,” they write. “While Realtors charge a much lower commission than the pimps — about 5 percent versus 25 percent — the Realtor’s cut is usually in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single sale.”

And more:

“A Realtor and a pimp perform the same primary service: marketing your product to potential customers,” Levitt and Dubner write. “As this study shows, the Internet is proving to be a pretty powerful substitute for the Realtor.”

Of course, the problem with Super Freakonomics is it prefers an interesting story to an accurate one.

It is in the authors economic self-interest to promote sensational and controversial stories, whether or not they are true. Like an intellectual Rush Limbaugh or one of the Fox News toadies, it’s interesting and sensational stories, not accurate ones, that pump up ratings and sell the books.

Making claims that will likely not stand up to serious scrutiny won’t matter after the personable authors sell thousands of books and make the talk-show circuit at $30 a ticket.

Why are residential real estate agents compared to pimps? Why not commercial real estate agents? Why not stockbrokers? Why not retail shopkeepers who act as middleman between wholesalers and the general public? Why are residential real estate agents, mostly women, targeted by these two authors? It’s interesting to note too, that in their new book they bend over backwards not to make any moral judgments about the prostitutes they write about, but wonder why more women don’t make the “career choice” to turn to prostitution. Who knows? Maybe that will be an easier choice for some women if Levitt and Dubner are successful in eliminating real estate sales as a career option.

There approach to their subject isn’t so much research than reducto ad absurdam; it takes the complexities of economics and reduces it down to a simplistic and meaningless vision. It takes the most obvious of targets, in this case residential real estate agents, and attempts to prove their uselessness. Because, after all, that’s how the authors make their points, by proving “conventional wisdom” is wrong, by finding something people believe in and playing the role of contrarian. With the down economy, Realtor bashing and whack-an-agent is popular now days and Realtors make a convenient punching bag.

The Shoddy Statistics of Super Freakonomics

Journalistic Malpractice From Leavitt and Dubner

Does “Superfreakonomics” Need A Do-Over?

Super Offend-O-Nomics

Superfreaky idea pits pimps vs. real estate agents
(Ex-pimp turned preacher gives his take on Freakonomics theory)

A couple weeks ago on one of my afternoon walks I happened upon this For Sale sign:

Oh! And then I remembered this:

Kendra Todd has left Florida and was moving to Seattle and joining Keller Williams.

Then yesterday I received this notice of a REO/Shortsale Panel talk featuring, who else but Kendra Todd:

I don’t know Kendra, but she sounds like a busy gal. Her website for Keller Williams, the Kendra Todd Group, is under construction, but her other personal websites are up and appear up to date. She doesn’t seem to have any active listings right now, but perhaps she’s just hanging her license at Keller Williams and not actively working there. I gave her a call and haven’t heard back yet, but wanted to get this posted in case anyone wanted to attend her panel discussion tomorrow.

She’s currently the host of “My House is Worth What?” on HGTV, a show that I was on a few years ago when I was asked to talk about an unusual in-city home built by artist James Nowak.

She has two other websites, KendraTodd.net and KendraTodd.com. The .com website lists dozens of personal appearances, so I doubt she really sells real estate herself. According to a Keller Williams press release, she joined the Keller Williams Realty Greater Seattle market center as the head of their Luxury Homes Division, so perhaps she just lends her name to the group.

Kendra, call us! Let us know what you’re up to in Seattle!

(Ok, Kendra called. She said she was living in Florida and is filming “My House Is Worth What?” on the West Coast and was tired of spending all of her time on an airplane. She didn’t want to live in California, so came to Seattle and fell in love with the place, so she moved her a few months ago.

Is there an online class divide? The research, and our own use, suggests that there is.

In “Does your social class determine your online social network?”, author Breeanna Hare found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

Even more affluent are users of Twitter and LinkedIn, as almost 38 percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year.

They also found a strong overlap between those who use Facebook and those who use LinkedIn.

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Stats
Users with household income above $75,000
Facebook — 41.74 percent
MySpace — 32.38 percent
LinkedIn — 58.35 percent
Twitter — 43.34 percent

Users with household income under $50,000
Facebook — 28.42 percent
MySpace — 37.13 percent
LinkedIn — 17.34 percent
Twitter — 28.36 percent

Rumor has it that Playboy was quietly being shopped around for $300 million and Apollo Capital Partners who owns Realogy, Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Better Homes & Gardens, has been approached to purchase the floundering dirty magazine business.

Former CEO Christie Hefner would have received $1.7 million, on top of her $2-million severance payment, if the adult entertainment company had been acquired by another company before March 31, according to a company filing last week.

The battered company’s market capitalization is now around $100 million and nobody has been willing to pay the substantial premium that it would take to persuade Hef to sell.

Sources said the sellers are looking for far more than the company’s market capitalization because that would ensure Hef has enough on hand to maintain his lavish lifestyle.

The Playboy bunny ears are one of the most famous trademarks in the world, but the empire has fallen on hard times as the Internet and video-on-demand have eroded its core brand, the magazine.

Hefner, now 83 years old, said recently that one of his biggest regrets was taking Playboy public.

Other Playboy/Real Estate news:

Coldwell Banker Charitable Foundation holds fundraiser at the Playboy Corporate Headquarters in Chicago.

Hef’s new girlfriend, Crystal Harris (no relation!) is a real estate agent!

Birds-eye view of Playboy Mansion on Zillow.

Who Bought Hugh Hefner and Playboy Wife Kim’s House for $18 Million?

When staging a home for sale, no Playboy Bunnies!

It’s always been a good idea and the right thing to do, but now the Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers, but the commission stopped short of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

I have often questioned some blogs shady practices of citation, quotes, reviews and fawning, and welcome this new rule, though I can’t figure out how it will be enforced.

Though not specified, I’m assuming there will be a dollar threshold, but perhaps not. Greg Swann has written about his displeasure with real estate bloggers accepting gifts and hasn’t hesitated to share his disapproval.

Though I don’t think it’s a huge problem in the real estate blogs, other game and tech blogs and so-called “Mommy Blogs” may have to change their tactics.

It could be that technology will trump all of these new NWMLS rules, and blogging/comments/AVM restrictions will become ineffective and impossible to enforce with the new Google Toolbar application called Sidewiki.

Sidewiki is part of the Google Toolbar and is built directly into Firefox and IE and will be in Google’s Chrome browser in the future. Users activate the service by clicking on a button and a sidebar appears to the left of whatever website is being viewed. The user can then leave a comment on the entire page or a selected piece of text, and share the URL via email, Twitter or Facebook.

This will mean that anyone who installs the Sidewiki will be able to add comments to your real estate webpage, including individual property pages that you may have created to help market your properties.

There is no “opt-out” tab, no way to eliminate the sidebar comments, no way to edit out objectionable material, porn, spam links, comments on the personal character of the sellers or the agent or the home or the neighborhood.

While the owner of the page will be able to have the first comment viewed, other users can read and vote comments up or down. All those votes will create a user ranking for each individual that will determine where their comments fall on the Sidewiki. The higher the ranking, the higher comments appear. So if allowed by the tool, website owners will have to spend time voting down the bad, spammy, untrue or inflammatory comments, just to get them to the bottom of the page.

Obviously, comments will be impossible to enforce and hapless agents and entire brokerages could find themselves in violation of their MLS rules regarding commenting on individual listings as mischievous websurfers write virtual graffiti on the wall next to their webpage.

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) recently announced new rule changes that will impact agents ability to blog about certain homes. There has always been a rule about not advertising another agents listings without permission, but this new rule specifically forbids blogging about a listing if the seller opts out.

The seller will also be able to opt out of having a AVM (Automated Valuation Model) listed next to their listing.

From the NWMLS bulletin:

NWMLS will add two new data fields to the listing input sheets that will give the seller the choice of whether or not to allow certain data to be displayed with the seller’s listing. The first data field is for automated valuation models (AVM) that estimate the fair market value of the property.

If the seller elects not have AVMs appear on the seller’s listing, then Members and subscribers that display the seller’s listing must not include any AVMs for that listing. The default selection in the listing input sheets will be to allow for AVMs.

The second data field will allow the seller to decide whether or not to allow blogging on the public display of the seller’s listing. If the seller elects not to allow blogging, then Members and subscribers displaying NWMLS data on their public websites may not allow blogging on the seller’s listing. The default selection in the listing input sheets will be to prohibit blogging.

If the seller elects to allow blogging on the seller’s listing, the Member may display a blog that allows commentary from the Member, other Members, subscribers, and the public. Members who maintain blogs must comply with certain requirements including removing inaccurate information from the blog and prohibiting profane or obscene content.

With the ability to opt out of AVM, gone will be these embarrassing listings, such as this home for sale for $849K but with a Zillow AVM of $645,000. The seller will now be able to opt out of this at their discretion. In this case, I think it would be a good idea.

Redfin will also have to discontinue their listing/Zillow mash-ups of listing info and AVM’s, if requested by seller and/or listing agent and also they’ll have to monitor their forums more for questions and answers that mention listed properties by address, such as this amusing exchange about a suspected meth hell-hole over on the coast.

These changes will be effective next week, on October 1st.

I don’t have a professionally-made website. I don’t have my own programmer or graphic designer. I have to use out-of-the-box solutions for mapping and search. But it’s mine and I worked hard to get it to rank in the search engines for Seattle Real Estate and Seattle Homes for Sale.

Why would anyone diss Seattle Dream Homes?

Jim Reppond noticed that Jim Cronin, Greg Swann and I were listed as answers for the question “Who is the current President of the National Association of Realtors?”.

I guess the author was hard-pressed to come up with the 3 most ridiculous contenders for the title of NAR President. Greg’s gotta love this….

You can take the test here:

Coldwell Banker today announced the launch of the first-ever international home search application for iPhone and Android-powered devices. The mobile application enables users to search for property listings and recent home sales in 28 countries and the results of these searches as well as the search itself can be saved in a personalized ‘My Coldwell Banker’ account newly created from the user’s smartphone or added to an existing account with coldwellbanker.com by logging into the site directly from the handheld device.

Features of the new application include:

1. GPS-based search to locate nearby homes for sale, open houses and recent homes sold.
2. Ability to sort recently sold properties by location, price and sale date.
3. Option to view search results in list form or on a variety of maps including street, hybrid and satellite that are marked with “clickable” Coldwell Banker Real Estate icons.
4. Detailed property listings that include images and a slideshow view.
5. Direct dial and e-mail functions from the user’s mobile handset to the local Coldwell Banker Real Estate listing agent associated with each property.
6. Real-time notifications of new properties and open houses identified through the user’s customized saved searches.

Cool facade projection on a building in Germany.

Jim Calabrese, owner of NY firm Real Estate Signs has been banned from Facebook for having too many friends that had the same characteristics, i.e. REALTORS. Apparently, according to FB, this is in an indication of spam, spamming or potential to spam.

His supporters say that Jim sent out messages to friends and customers such as:

“Dear Sally, Thanks for the sign order! You can reach out to me here on Facebook if there is any thing you need. Sincerely, Jim Calabrese”.

Those kind of notes to people (sending several in one day) and a few other activities (including making too many friends “who share similar physical characteristics”) may get you banned too.

You get what you pay for and one would be unwise to depend too heavily on FB or other social networking sites, paid or free. We’ve already seen them publish our wish lists, sell our demographics to advertisers and ban photos they deem inappropriate, such as new Moms nursing their babies. And while I’m at it, I think it prudent to mention that I hope you’re not saving all your photos to Flickr or videos to YouTube. I mean, you have copies saved on an external harddrive too, right? While unlikely, you never know when a server will go down or a company out of business, so better safe than sorry.