In his book entitled The Road Ahead, published in 1995, Bill Gates said about finding homes for sale on the Internet:

“If you put your home on the market, you will be able to describe it fully and include photographs, video, floor plans, tax records, utility and repair bills, even a little mood music. The chances that a potential buyer for your house will see your ad are improved because the information highway will make it easy for anyone to look it up. The whole system of real estate agencies and commissions may be changed by the principals having direct access to so much information.

At first on-line classified ads won’t be very attractive, because not many people will be using them. But then word of mouth by a few satisfied customers will entice more and more users to the service.

There will be a positive feedback loop created as more sellers attract more buyers and vice versa. When a critical mass is achieved, which might be only a year or two after the service is first offered, the information highway’s classified advertising service will be transformed from a curiosity to the primary way private sellers and buyers get together.” (pg 173)

I have an unusual listing for sale, it’s an American Institute of Architects-award winner and was featured in Pacific NW Magazine, so I’m excited about the property and wanted to share the details.

I just did an interview with NPR and it’s featured on their website. There’s a short article about light and how it affects Seattle home prices. You can read the interview on the NPR website, or you can listen to the Podcast and my interview starts at minute 10.00. It’s on the local channel KUOW. It’s always so weird to hear yourself on the radio. Why do I sound like Minnie Mouse?

I also did an interview for the television show “What You Get For The Money” on HGTV. You can watch the clip on YouTube and have a laugh.

And in case you’re particularly intrigued about this home, you can view the website here: http://BarclayCourt.SeattleDreamHomes.com

Buzz Osborne wastes an unidentified real estate agent’s time in this amusing little video. Agent to Buzz: “Go back to Seattle!”

Boing Boing writes of a survey of the 1.9 million accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking to cheat on their spouses, and come up with a list of the most would-be infidelitous.

Transcribed from the radio and the Hellickson website:

“Hi, it’s Glenn Beck. You probably know how I feel about real estate. I have too many family and friends who have lost their savings, college fund, retirement money, even their own home. But here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to end that way, because not all Realtors are created equal. There are some who put a sign in some yard, put your home on some endless list and then cross their fingers.

But then there are others that go another way. I’m talking about real estate agents like Michael Hellickson.”

You can hear the entire transcript of the Glenn Beck ad on the Hellickson website.

What kind of a company is Hellickson?

I would love to tell you, but I’ve been censored by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. I noted the rule-breaking and fines that this company has received over the last few years and received a request that I remove this information from my website.

Marc Davison on the 1000 Watt blog recently wrote an article entitled “A pulse, a passing grade and a business card: raising the bar on real estate agent qualifications”, imploring brokerages to raise their hiring standards.

I’m really torn about this idea. On the one hand, I would love to raise the professionalism of my chosen career. On the other hand, I love the idea that for someone who has common sense and wants to work hard, the sky’s the limit. It’s one of the few jobs a woman can do while raising children, it’s schedule is very adaptable. It’s also a great 2nd career for many people. Why should we look down our noses on those without college degrees or make it again another job that requires a degree, when it really is not necessary.

Neither Air Traffic Controllers nor Nuclear power reactor operators nor commercial pilots (all life-or-death/serious jobs) need a college degree…. why should this one? The definition of a professional is a prescribed course of education, a code or set of rules and regulations, and membership in a professional organization, and membership in the National Association of Realtors fulfills these requirements to raise real estate agents to the level of a professional. Why put a college degree on that requirement, too?

The reality, however, is that many Realtors have college degrees. But you can’t teach common sense and you can’t teach someone to be clever.

According to the NAR, Realtors are well-educated, with 44 percent holding at least a bachelor’s degree, which is about double the national average of degree holders in the U.S.. They are active in the political process – 95 percent are registered to vote; 91 percent voted in the last national election and 81 percent voted in the last local election.

In addition, many Realtors hold at least one professional designation, with the most popular being GRI (Graduate, REALTOR® Institute), held by 19 percent of respondents; ABR® (Accredited Buyer Representative®), 14 percent; and CRS® (Certified Residential Specialist®), 10 percent. Smaller percentages hold one of 14 other designations.

In addition, twelve percent belong to the Council of Residential Specialists, 11 percent are members of the Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council, 5 percent the Women’s Council of Realtors and 3 percent the Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers; smaller percentages belong to five other affiliates.

Why all this lamenting about lack of professionalism? It seems to me that there are plenty of folks working hard to take continuing education classes after they get their license.

Yes, some agents and Realtors act unprofessionally. Not sure how to stop that. I can only hope they fail miserably and go back to practicing law or whatever else they were doing prior to becoming Realtors, sales agents and real estate brokers.

Unbelievable story out of Florida, about BOA seizing the wrong house in a foreclosure. These poor homeowners weren’t even Bank of America customers, as they had paid cash for their home.

Link HERE

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:

The sign was on an older house, run-down, with bad gutters and a mossy roof. (It could probably use some new aluminum siding too.)

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