We’ve been hearing about tracking devices and GPS systems for your cell phone, but I am so glad to see these take off for very selfish reasons (can keep track of my kids and my hubby…..not that I have to)

Seriously…. for all of us that do the social networking thing, it could be cool to know where we are and can see people already using systems like brightkite to “check in” - it could also be annoying, depends if you are OCD or not.

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But interestingly enough, I started thinking about Real Estate Applications for Buddy Beacon that can benefit a lot of us:

• Real Estate Teams staying connected
• Big office applications for broker’s opens or caravans (yes a lot of office still do those)
• When showing properties to clients
• To see how far away a colleague is from a particular appointment

I’m sure you can come up with a lot more applications. This whole GPS thing can be a little scary and you have to be careful who you let “in” to check your location but it is all a matter of CONTROL.

Buddy Beacon is not a tracking application. Your location is only updated when you set your location. Buddy Beacon is currently available on select mobile phones

Now HERE’s where it gets interesting - uLocate (the maker of Buddy Beacon) has teamed up with Garmin (The GPS company) to make this application take off and really be a useful tool. According to our friends at Mashable,

As Garmin creates standalone GPS devices, there is some overlap between Garmin’s capabilities and those found on other devices like the iPhone, so integrating with social networking and providing ways in which people can use Garmin’sGPS devices to connect with each other offline means that Garmin is increasing its value and moving towards the support of a more inclusive ecosystem for the use of its devices.

Integration is the key, especially when using different systems that we are all into. Now to figure out how else to apply it to our real estate business to make our lives easier and more productive.

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Post by Ines Hegedus-Garcia

Image source

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Glued to the TV

As I am glued to the TV every evening, watching the Olympics, putting everything aside to enjoy and cheer for all the athletes participating in the Olympics, it got me thinking. My real estate business is certainly not in Gold Medal contention, heck not even a Bronze contender.

So what can I do to improve my business? I need to focus, remain committed and be determined that this business will continue to support my family.

I need to have the attitude and the commitment to learn and sharpen my skills to adapt to the changes and challenges of current real estate market.

A Shift in Focus

In 2005, a short sale was not a part of the real estate vocabulary, but now they are a huge part of the Real Estate Market all over the country, I look at them like a gymnast looks at a fall off the beam. What can I do to make sure that the short sale transaction stays on track to close and does not fall out leading to a possible foreclosure for my client.

REO homes account for a large portion of the homes for sale and are not without risk for my current and future clients- so I need to learn, train to make sure that I know the pitfalls of REO transactions and that I am protecting the interest of my clients to the best of my ability.

What About You?

Olympic athletes have coaches that push them, teach them and help them remain focused and accountable. Are you an track to achieve your goals for 2008? What skills do you need to ensure that your business makes it to the finish line? Do you have a coach or someone to hold you accountable or that pushes you to meet your goals?

I am going back to the gym to work on my skills, evaluate my goals and looks to see how I can become a gold medal winner in my own little Real Estate Olympics.

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Post by Jamie Geiger

Image Source

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Please set aside your understandable and well founded and frequently reinforced cynicism, doubt and thoughts of futility for a moment. The NAR is apparently seeking ways to increase Realtor Professionalism.

(Dick Gaylord) recently appointed a new Presidential Advisory Group to consider how we can raise the professional standards for membership in NAR.

Like NAR or not, they are at least putting on the facade that they are trying. In fact, they may actually be trying, and I’m hopeful. My limited experience with the NAR is that the individuals fundamentally believe that what they are doing is right - and on an individual, even group or committee level, they often are right. The breakdown and disconnect happens once the bureaucracy - the machine if you will - takes hold. I for one, have reasonably high expectations for what the Group will accomplish and much more tempered expectations for what will come of the Group’s efforts, once they have completed their charge.

Some of the ideas bandied about over the years to raise the bar of entry have been to require higher levels of education, apprenticeships, increasing dues - for all levels of Association membership, production requirements (there may be some anti-trust implications here), more ethics training (although I don’t believe one can learn ethics or honor through a class) … the list goes on.

The NAR does, for better or worse, have some say in how we do our business; working from within may have its advantages. If you could implement one (or two or three) policies/requirements/whatever that would help our collective profession to increase its professionalism, what would it be?

*Full disclosure - I have been selected to sit on this PAG, and having looked at the list of those who comprise the group, see a lot of Big Broker and CEO representation; I’d have liked to have seen more “grunts” like myself.

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Post by Jim Duncan

Creating a Blog Post

As most of you know, Darren Rowse is kind of my go-to guy when it comes to blogging and his recent article regarding blog creation hit home. We talk to people every day here on AG that range from pre-blogger to veteran-blogger and what we all have in common is that we’re interested in perfecting our blogging skills. Problogger suggests that when writing, there are 10 points in which you should pause so you can maximize the success of each article you write (not just your site as a whole which is where many blog advisers focus). We encourage you to read Darren’s entire article for awesome blogging guidance! The 10 Points of Pause are excerpted below:

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Post by Lani Anglin-Rosales

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How do I do it?

In my spare time, I teach people how to raise money for non-profit organizations.  Running a fundraiser is not an easy task, and takes a lot of planning.  I am often successfully multi-tasking and handling multiple events because I plan everything out.

The same thing can be said for your real estate business.  How many agents do you know that wing it?  They don’t know what they are going to be doing today, let alone next week, next month or next year.  Some agents are lucky to be successful by rolling with the punches, but I think it is rare (or lucky).

These are the steps that I teach to people trying to implement non-profit fundraisers and projects:

• Establish the project goal
• Prepare a written project plan
• Develop a written timeline
• Create a budget
• Implement the project plan
• Provide a written summary and of the project

How can you accomplish goals you haven’t set?

While flexibility is important in our business, so is having a plan, reviewing the plan and changing it up as needed.  How can you accomplish your goals if you haven’t set them?  How do you know if you are spending too much money if you don’t have a budget?  How do you know if you should continue to run that ad, spend time blogging, keep up those mailings, etc. if you don’t analyze what you did and how it works?  It is also hard to analyze results if you don’t know what you did along the way.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning- Winston Churchill

I know that I have gotten lax this year following my project plan for my real estate business.  Even more importantly, I haven’t updated my project plan in the last couple of months.

I have found that my most successful projects are those that I plan out in advance, review progress weekly, and change as needed.  Having mini-project plans within your Master Plan is also helpful. 

Deliver your project plan to your clients

I create a written project plan and goals for every listing that I take.  My clients love getting my detailed plan and timeline.  This plan is often what makes them sign the listing with me.  My clients know that I have thought through the process and are taking into account all the little details that most agents they interview haven’t even thought of.  They know exactly what to expect along the way, what I am doing, and what I expect them to be doing as well.  I actually assign my clients tasks in the project plan, which includes pre-listing preparation through closing.  Selling a home is a team effort -what better way to make your clients part of the team then to include them in the project plan?

Once you create your first project plan, the subsequent ones are a lot easier.  

Like a chicken with it’s head cut off…

Most agents are constantly worrying about where they will get their business from.  You get super busy in your practice, run around like a maniac, and suddenly everything closes.  What do you do next?  Where is the next deal going to come from?  I had a great year this year, but what if….

It is never to late to create a plan. 

All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination- Earl Nightingale

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Post by Ginger Wilcox

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He Made History

In the 112 years the Olympics have taken place, Michael Phelps was the first person to ever win 8 gold medals in a single Olympics.  The crowd went wild when he won the 8th but nothing was more remarkable than his 7th win.  He won that one by one one-hundredth of a second.  To me, it looked like the other guy (he has a name but isn’t it interesting from a marketing perspective how it doesn’t just roll off the tongue?), Milorad Cavic actually won.  1/100th of a second difference took 1st place.  That was the difference between Gold and Silver.  The difference between 1st place and last place wasn’t even that great.   Even the slowest guy is a world-class athlete.  So, just a little bit can make a huge difference.

What I found most fascinating was Michael Phelps’ decision prior to the event to win 8 Gold Medals.  He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to do exactly that.  And that is exactly what he did.  It would have been easy to mock him with, “That’s impossible!” prior to the event.  To most people it would have seemed impossible too - just like the goals and dreams they have for themselves.  Why that is just out of reach.  A pipe dream.  There is an aspect of what he did (his 7th Gold Medal) that to me beautifully illustrates the Power of a Decision. 

When a person really decides on something, really decides and strips off all of the “maybe” - with just that clean simple, exact postulate to do “that”, it seems as though the physical universe shifts around as needed so as to be in alignment with that postulate.

In the mind, “maybe” is “yes” and “no” fused together.  It is common for a person to have conflicts with regard to what they hope to accomplish.  All of the counter-intention (thoughts that oppose your goals) that a person carries around causes dispersal: where the person will attempt to go in different directions at the same time.  They “do want” and “don’t want” the same goal at the same time.  Every single unresolved problem a person ever had or has - has a “maybe” (yes and no combined) sitting at the base of that problem.  Get rid of the maybe and you just “solved” the problem. 

What is it you secretly dream about doing?  If you knew you would succeed what great thing would you attempt?

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Post by Russell Shaw

 

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The MLS 5.0 (as Saul Klein and others are calling it) is being pitched as a much-needed, national parcel-based repository of data controlled by NAR with an “easy” single point of entry. There is talk of a consumer-facing side in addition to the back-end Realtor-only piece. There is also talk of “standardization” and easier/greater access to developers and software designers for API’s, etc.

These things and the MLS 5.0 in general are being pitched in ways that marketing companies will tell you work well - they’re supposed to give you that warm and fuzzy feeling, especially if you’re a Gen X’er or Gen Y’er. But should you trust everything you hear even if it comes from such intelligent and respected people as Saul and the powers-that-be at NAR? Definitely not before you look at the fine print and the overall picture…

Who’s really in control?

• NAR is a membership controlled organization. But it’s not really the agent members that have control, it’s the brokers. The brokers with the most amount of agents and market share have the most say.
• There are about 15 major brokerage firms that comprise the majority of control of the US real estate market because they have the majority of the agents and transactions in the US. To give you an example, Keller Williams International which has 70,000 agents only has 4 percent market share. It’s really the top 3 or so brokerage firms in the US control the majority of the market and agent count.
• Within these 15 major brokerage firms, there are about 50 top brokers that have the most say (aka control and power). In essence, it’s these 50 brokers that control the NAR and the RE industry in general. Since NAR will have control of the “MLS 5.0,” it will in fact be these top 50 brokers that have control of it.
• Is NAR concerned about money or about control? Control. And controlling the flow of data is just as important as controlling the data itself. The MLS 5.0 gives the NAR not only control of the data itself, but the flow of that data. This is exactly what the big brokers want because it helps ensure their survival.

“Sure, we’ll give you back the leads you deserve”

• That’s great and I’m a fan of giving the listing agents the buyer leads they deserve. But if the top brokers control the MLS 5.0 and the leads that come through it, only the top brokers will benefit. This goes back to the control issue discussed above as well as the commission and split issues discussed below.

“FU…FU…you’re cool”

• The NAR bylaws clearly state that it will not and can not be involved in offers of compensation between brokers. Because of that, the MLS 5.0 will not have offers of compensation. With the MLS 5.0 having all the information and data that local MLS’s once had, there is no use for the MLS as a data source/repository. Rather, local MLS’s will be used to communicate what one broker will offer another for selling their listing.
• Should the local MLS’s switch from an “offer of compensation” to an “offer of cooperation” (there is already talk of this), what will stop one large brokerage firm from offering another large brokerage firm ”300 chickens” while only offering other smaller firms (aka competitors) only “100 chickens”? Nothing… (And no, it’s not illegal)

The “good ‘ol boy” network versus innovation

• Once agents see that they’ll make 3 times the money by switching to the larger brokerage firm(s), they will. That will cause the small, up and coming (and typically revolutionary) brokerage firms and brokers to go out of business almost overnight.
• This is a horrible proposition for the RE industry because it’s typically the new, forward thinking people and companies that lead the way into the future and revolutionize industries. Without them two things will most likely happen - the larger firms will have all the power and say and there will be much less innovation within the industry.

Take it or leave it

• If the larger firms have all the power and agents, they can adjust the splits to increase their profits while diminishing the profits of their agents. If their agents don’t like it, oh well - there’s nothing they can do about it. The larger brokers know that the smaller split on “300 chickens” is still more than a larger split on “100 chickens.” In a nutshell, it’s an instant pay cut for agents and more money for the brokers.

Can’t afford a Ferrari? Too bad, so sad

• Much like the MRIS (the local MLS in the DC metropolitan area) charges between $1,500 to $50,000 for its data feed, what will stop the MLS 5.0 from charging for its data feed. And they could charge whatever they wanted because they’re the only player in town-from whom/where else will you get the data from? If you’re big and profitable enough to pay the fee, great. If you’re a small to medium sized firm that can’t, oh well.
• Yes, there is talk of “one standard” that will make it easier to design API’s, etc. But what will stop the MLS 5.0 from charging whatever they want for that just like they could for the data feed?

That little thing called consumer sentiment

• Consumers hailed when Zillow, Trulia and other listing sites came about. These companies came at a time when consumers thought about Realtors in the same light as they did used car salesmen. Consumers were happy to feel as if Realtors no longer controlled the information and the flow of it.
• Having multiple places to find information about real estate (including listings) is what consumers want. They want to be able to question a Realtor by throwing other data points and information at them. This make the Realtor earn their credibility versus just acting as if they’re omnipotent. This is what consumers want and we have to learn to work with consumers, not against them.
• What will happen when consumers see that Realtors and NAR now have control over all the information on one single platform and are trying to get rid of Zillow, Trulia and others? (Remember, Zillow is a parcel-based type platform as well)
• Is NAR trying to improve our perception with consumers or make it worse?

Is there a solution?

• Get one or several agent-centric, new-way-of-thinking brokers with national presence that haven’t drank the Kool-Aid into the upper realms of NAR power and control and throw a wrench into their evil plans
• Many of you will say there’s no way to do that. Some of you will also say that the “good ‘ol boys” will never let that happen and squash such a thing even if there is a way to do it. I say that you’re right about them not wanting that to happen. They will do anything and everything they can to stop anyone from getting in their way. But just because you and I don’t have the money, power and control in the same way as they do doesn’t mean it can’t be done. (If you haven’t read it yet, check out “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky) 

Call it what you will…MLS 5.0, Gateway, TREC, the greatest thing since sliced bread…I believe that this could potentially be the single worse thing to ever happen to the real estate industry (except for the very few elite at the top of the food chain and those that get into bed with them). If you’re an agent or small to medium-sized broker like most of us, then you should be seriously worried about your livelihood and future should this project materialize.

But then again…you probably shouldn’t listen to just me either. Do your own research and digging and come to your own conclusion. Just don’t confuse opinions and sales-pitches with facts. And dig deep - the truth is sometimes buried many layers down.

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Post by Danilo Bogdanovic

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You Said What

Have you ever been asked to compromise your reputation for the sake of closing a transaction? Or, do something you know is not lawful according to the contract and documents your clients are signing?

What would you say to an agent who told you “the seller can just give the buyer cash for repairs at closing”. Or… yeah, the lender and the title officer just leave the room and the seller pays the buyer for repairs. We can put it on an addendum and the lender won’t see it. WHAT?

When I hear stories like this, I assume these things used to happen on a regular basis and some agents just don’t know this is NOT legal. I prefer to believe this is an innocent request and not a blatant attempt at working the system. Of course, I tend to believe the best about people until proven otherwise.

Keeping it Legal

Whether you claim ignorance or stupidity, neither is a valid defense when facing a court or the possibility of losing your license and reputation. As agents, we must know how to protect our clients and ourselves. The only thing worse than having to face disciplinary action would be dragging our clients along. They expect us to protect their interest. Believe me; they are not interested in going to court.

How does an agent know what is acceptably legal? Education and broker supervision! Of course there is our internal BS meter, which says this doesn’t sound right.

With the rampant changes in lender requirements, we must be aware of those who will try to navigate loopholes. When faced with a request to exchange money outside of the contract, remember these words:

If it’s not on the HUD-1, it isn’t done! It’s really that simple.

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Post by Paula Henry

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Knowledge is Power

If knowledge is power, then community knowledge is even moe powerful.  Blogging is a great way to illustrate and practice community knowledge.  I’m not talking about displaying your knowledge of a community, but using the community of blog readers and commenters to make the entire community more knowledgeable.

Blogs=Communities of Knowledge

I recently wrote a post about the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 REvealed, wherein I highlighted a downside to the change in capital gains tax rates.  The post was widely linked to and over 30 comments came in about the findings.  Then at comment #31, a reader brought to light some exceptions I had overlooked.  Linda Dvorak deserves a ‘community knowledge award‘ for digging deeper than I had and unearthing some great insight into the realities of the law.  This type of knowledge sharing is invaluable to a blog’s community.

Scientific Methods of Blogging

Blogs are like social science experiments.  I had put forth the characterizations (observations, definitions, and measurements of the subject of inquiry) and the hypothesis (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject).  I even went deeper in the method by providing predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from the hypothesis or theory) and tests (tests of all of the above).

However, I left out one critical step to a science experiment..RETEST.  Fortunately, a blog’s comment section is the perfect forum for retesting.  Now, the community has a greater knowledge of the new law and we all owe it to each other for pushing forward, questioning hypothesis and retesting the experiment.

My wife will be proud I used the Scientific Method in a blog post (she taught 7th grade science and kept a blog before becoming a mom 3 months ago), but she’ll be disappointed that I failed to retest my earlier work.

Does your blog foster a community of shared knowledge?

Sources used to create this post: Wikipedia, Agent Genius, The Power of Science

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Post by Brad Nix

original image by boboloo

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Ack, it’s a Hack!

According to BlogStorm, “Every month thousands of websites get hacked into and have hidden links inserted into the pages by people wanting their spam sites to rank highly in the search engines.” That’s a pretty big problem.

When this happens, the majority of site owners aren’t even aware of it and suddenly Google traffic is completely gone. Why? MickMel says that “if you get hacked, Google will stop sending traffic to your site but they won’t tell you about the problem.” Ack!

How to Save Your Site

Google Alerts to the rescue. Get notified instantly if you’ve been hacked because a majority of hackers use some common terms in their inserted links. It’s actually really simple. First, go to Google Alerts:

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Under “Type” select Comprehensive so all types of sites are searched. For “How often,” select as it happens so you’re emailed immediately. Be sure to enter an email address you have open on your desktop so you don’t miss out. For “search terms,” create alerts for the following terms (which I’ve made in image form so Benn doesn’t have 10 trillion spam comments for this one post!):

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TIP: don’t set up 100 alerts, do it all at once by using “OR” in caps between each term, so it’ll look like this: “bugs OR dogs OR cats OR fish site:yoursite.com” (make sure it says “site:yoursite.com” so it searches JUST your site, not the entire interwebs)!

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Hooray!

So now you’ll know if any icky hackers have planted their flag in your site, hooray!

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Post by Lani Anglin-Rosales