360Digest

Scary real estate marketing tactics get plenty of attention in an election year.

I had written before about the Home Price Comparison Index compiled by Coldwell Banker Real Estate that allows one to approximate how much your home might cost in different areas around the U.S.

For instance, here in Seattle, $800K-900K might buy you a 100-year old house in a nice in-city neighborhood with 1800 sqft and 3-4 bedrooms and 2-3 baths and a 1-car garage on a 3000 sqft lot.

Just 50 miles South in Tacoma, with the same amount of money, you can buy a newer 4BR/4Bbth home with 5000 sqft and a 3-car garage. On 20 acres.

In Colossal Castle or Humble Home, Neha Grey finds similar examples of home values all around the world.

Being a Tiki fan, Aloha-aficionado and keeper of the flame at Seattle Tiki, I was excited to see Trader Vic Bergeron’s first home on the market. The listing notes that 965 Mendocino Avenue has been a landmark and focal point of North Berkeley since it was built in 1925. Trader Vic Bergeron and his wife Esther were the first owners, and the authentic Chinese roasting brick oven still stands in the backyard. Nothing else Tiki is left, however

Open House this Sunday.

Trader Vic’s Photo Tour

I think all of us have a story like this.

The House That Got Away by Sarah Jio and Gabi Campanario

Since Redfin has announced that they were including unlisted bank-owned property on their website, it’s raised a lot of questions about foreclosures, short sales and distressed property in Washington State.

The Distressed Property Law was passed during the 2008 Legislative session and signed into law by the Governor on March 30 for the purpose of protecting vulnerable property owners from scam artists who seek to steal the property owner’s equity.

An unintended consequence of the law has the potential for dramatically increasing the duties owed by a real estate agent to a distressed homeowner. The law defines the term “distressed home consultant” as anyone who helps or offers to help a distressed homeowner in a variety of ways. For example, if an agent offers to save the distressed home from foreclosure by selling the home prior to foreclosure, it is possible that the law will be interpreted to mean that agent is a distressed home consultant. If the seller is a distressed homeowner and a real estate agent contacts the short sale lender to obtain a reduced payoff or to delay a foreclosure sale, the real estate agent is a distressed home consultant. If the agent writes an offer on a distressed home and the transaction will close within 20 days of a foreclosure sale, buyer’s agent is a distressed home consultant, and the buyer is also a distressed home consultant.

There are many interesting dimensions to this new law, including the fact that if a property owner fits any of the definitions of a distressed homeowner, then the law protects them as a distressed homeowner even if they never communicate that fact to anyone and even if they do not realize themselves that they are a distressed homeowner.

Obviously, this is messed up.

How was this law passed without intervention?

The Washington Association of Realtors monitored the legislation as it was proposed by the Attorney General as the legislation progressed through the House and the Senate. Both WAR and the AG were satisfied that the Bill, as proposed and intended by the AG, did not include the adverse language now causing the problems. However, after the Bill was passed in one form by the House and in a slightly different form by the Senate, it moved into a process that occurs outside the arena where public comment or influence are allowed. It was at that stage that the adverse language was added and the Bill was immediately voted out of the Legislature without any opportunity for the AG or WAR to testify about the problem.

No one’s sure if this will be resolved before the new law changes on June 12th.

All of the listed distressed property in our area is listed on our MLS and supplied to brokerages in their regular feed, but Redfin has specifically decided to include UNLISTED Bank-Owned properties, and also continue to do limited short-sales that meet certain criteria.

From their website:

Redfin supports buyers pursuing some types of short-sale listings ……(however) in many cases, Redfin will not be able to represent you in a short sale. In the first quarter of 2008, we handled 65 short sales but only four were approved by the bank.

I wonder how much money those 61 lost sales cost their firm? Each one must have represented at least several hours of paperwork and negotiation. The nature of their business model would be inclined to attract bargain-hunters, low-ballers and others looking for “a deal”. If I made 65 offers on property with only 4 closings, I’d be really depressed. Not to mention, really poor.

Because of that, Redfin’s made very specific rules about how and when they’ll present an offer on a short-sale. However, even then, it’s a crap shoot if they’ll close or not and there might not even be enough of a commission to cover their minimum fee, as banks have been known to renegotiate the commission at closing.

I have to say that I don’t have much experience in short sales and after reading their statistics, doubt I’m going to make that the focus of my business anytime soon.

Our local news/entertainment magazine had a heartwarming story about Zillow and their “Make Me Move” feature. Some guy was able to sell his house for significantly more than it was worth. Capitol Hill Triangle seems to think it was poor form not to disclose that the seller was an ex-Zillow employee. And the new owner may be having buyers remorse, as it’s now on the market for $15K more than they paid for it. $15K won’t even cover closing costs in our state

Galen Ward is my new hero for publicizing the fact that Trulia blocks Google from following their links.

Ben Kakimoto discovers a competitor is conducting a deceptive Google Adwords campaign by buying Google Adwords with his name as the keyword search term as well as the title of the ads themselves.

The Seattle Times reports that the live-in manager of a fancy Queen Anne condominium building with multimillion-dollar views has been accused of stealing from her well-to-do neighbors.

Redfin announced that it was showing ALL the houses for sale, including FSBO’s and foreclosures. According to the site, Seattle, a city of over 500,000 people, has only 23 foreclosures. Either we have the smallest foreclosure rate in the nation or that site has a way to go before being complete. Plus, there seems to be some debate as to whether or not mixing up these listings on the same website with an MLS/IDX feed is even legal.

Evening Magazine video

Because of UnusualLife.com, I get frequent inquiries from television producers and magazine editors about unusual homes, and 3 of the houses I’ve written about were featured this week on Evening Magazine.

This castle house is located in Winthrop, WA in the Methow Valley.

The custom home is designed to look like a medieval castle, complete with moat and battlements.

A labor of love on over a acre, designed by Ken Cramer.

Another interesting home is this church and art gallery in Sultan, Washington, on HY 2 on the way up to Stevens Pass.

It features an art gallery, a frame shop, a beautiful atrium, studio and shop space, plus living area. This would be a great place to have a little espresso stand too, and is a great stop on your way over the Cascades.

Several years ago, the Hunter’s bought this old bank in Douglas County, in the town of Waterville. Mr. Hunter restored the bank to run his law firm and he lives there with his wife. They converted one of the vaults into their guest room.

An added plus is it’s cool in the summer and very quiet!

Unusual Homes for sale in the Pacific Northwest

In February of 2008, the Oregon Legislature passed SB1080, a bill that prevents illegal immigrants from obtaining an Oregon driver’s license. This bill was passed to prevent driver’s license fraud, as well as to comply with the first steps necessary for homeland security regulations.

Basically this bill requires that prior to issuing, renewing or replacing a driver’s license, driving permit or identification card, that Oregon’s Driver and Motor Vehicles Services Division must ask license seekers for proof of U.S. citizenship or permanent legal status

According to property manager Clifford A. Hockley, President of Bluestone & Hockley Real Estate Services, some landlords are upset that this could lead to huge vacancies in their rental property. He believes that the vast majority of the illegal immigrants in this country are renters and if they can’t get a drivers license, they won’t be able to drive to work and get a job and therefore, these renters will move to another state where there are less restrictions and leave Oregon landords in the lurch.

Not sure what to make of this. I find it hard to defend the rights of those who are in this country illegally. Are landlords so desperate for renters that they would rather rent to criminals and illegal immigrants than have a vacancy? That just doesn’t seem like good business practice.

While reading Real Estate Webmasters forums, I came across a fellow named Ron Park from Tuscon who was enamoured with the Redfin site, so he hired a tech company in India to try to re-create Redfin’s mapping technology and cababilities. He wanted a Redfin clone for the Tuscon real estate market, and it’s unclear if he just wanted the mapping capabilities or if he was also going to copy their business model too, but he’s unhappy with the final product.

By hiring a discount off-shore company and Google maps instead of MS Virtual Earth, he got a pale imitation of the actual Redfin technology, and the map is slow and buggy.

It looks like, from his comments on the forums, that he paid about $10K for a site that probably would cost about 10 times that to develop, but now he wants to dispute his bill and he wants his money back.

By doing a little research he could have had an acceptable mapping feature to frame on his website using Real Bird, for $19 a month, that integrates listings from his own MLS. I use Real Tech and get an adequate mapping tool using Microsoft Virtual Earth and I pay $10 a month for that, and I’m able to put it on Seattle Dream Homes for a seamless home search. It even comes branded with my photo and contact information, and there are some great features that allow a shopper to save their favorites and forward those to me for future viewings, plus they can save their search criteria and have new listings forwarded to their in-box everyday.

The folks from India, taking the directive to make a Redfin clone seriously, even added a “Sweet Digs” section and a “Redfin Forums” feature. No Kelman-type PR master was included, however.

Considering how bad the market is supposed to be, I sure am busy. I haven’t had time to write even though I’ve been trying to keep up with the news.

Did you hear that LendingTree has told its customers that former employees helped unauthorized mortgage lenders hack into its systems and steal customer information? Unbelievable.

And it’s been interesting reading about the Redfin misstep with Ms. Berg. Great shark footage from Sellsius.

Speaking of sharks, this guy at RCG may have jumped it with this one.

Hats off to Galen Ward for getting some big dough to help expand Estately. And the mention by John Cook was a nice plus.

Cindy Zetts, long-time real estate editor at the Seattle Times has a new blog, The Real Estate Deal.

And look at this cool castle for sale in Eastern Washington. It even comes with a moat.

A day doesn’t go by when I’m not contacted by a real estate agent or a new blogger who wants to exchange links. I even get requests to add a link by webmasters of sites that have nothing to do with real estate. Knowing how Google views such reciprocal links, I’m tempted to remove even my blogroll. At the very least, I’ll think twice about adding anyone else.

Be careful before exchanging links with anyone, and avoid it if possible. Make your content so compelling that people link to you, and keep your outgoing links, especially on your homepage of your static site, limited.

What it Looks Like to Be Hit By Google’s Real Estate Reciprocal Link Penalty

Algorithm March

My main website is currently #1 in Google, in organic results, for the search terms “Seattle real estate for sale“, before Realtor.com, Trulia or any local real estate brokerage. It also is in the top 10 for “Seattle Homes”, “Seattle Homes for Sale” and “Seattle, Washington Real Estate”, and I try to update the site weekly. However, due to an old penalty, my site is practically non-existent in Yahoo. Though the penalty has been lifted, I’ve had a hard time getting anywhere or regaining my past placement.

Being penalized by Google for excessive and/or spammy reciprocal linking can take affect in several different ways. One of the most common ways is the -30 effect where your website is immediately dropped 30 ranking points. If you have experienced loss of rankings within Google and you have questionable spammy reciprocal links (especially Realtor to Realtor linking), you may be penalized. If you do believe you have been penalized, you will need to follow the Google reinclusion instructions after your site is cleaned up.

Top 10 Bad SEO Ideas

Complete list of best SEO Tools

How to Tell if Your Domain is Banned in a Search Engine

(NOTE: 4/15, the site is #2 for “Seattle Real Estate for Sale”. I wonder what I did wrong today??)

My favorite toy on the Coldwell Banker website is the Home Price Comparison Index.

Just enter the market value of your current home and the location, along with 3 other comparable cities, and you can see what your home would sell for in those other places.

For instance, if you live in a $1M home in Seattle, that same home would cost $3,962,121.00 in Beverly Hills, but only $303,030.00 in Houston, TX.

HousingPANIC has come up with a list of nominees for most f*cked up builder, lender, real estate agent and others working in the monumental Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Sadly, I was not nominated in any of the categories.

But it’s not too late! I’ve never won anything in my life. Please help me fulfill a dream….

It turns out that death by blogging is greatly exaggerated, but New York Times writer Matt Richtel is concerned that bloggers are often paid based on how much they write and whether anyone reads them. He likens this to a “sales commission,” a comparison that evokes Alec Baldwin chalking “ALWAYS BE CLOSING” onto a blackboard in the real estate movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross. (”First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”)

EPerks is still reeling from the bad publicity for paying bloggers to write about their company. (Even now when you Google Eperks, most of the entries are paid posts.)

Redfin continues to seek paid bloggers and is offering $40 a post.

PayPerPost is paying bloggers $28 this month to write about Renuzit Home Deodorizer.

Housing Predictor is paying bloggers $65-$75 per entry.

And I’m doing this for free?

Apartment complex uses dancers in window to sell units