Author Archives: Dustin Luther

About Dustin Luther

Founder and original blogger on Rain City Guide, Dustin has since started #InterestedIn Marketing where his team provides content and social media services that helps industry experts earn recognition as thought leaders. You can find me on Twitter (@tyr) and LinkedIn (/DustinLuther)

10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle

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Where do you find inspiration?

Out of all the places to find inspiration for a blog post, my current favorite is deep within the RCG stats where I can find the search terms that people use to reach this site. Today, someone came to RCG looking for: [things+you+should+know+before+moving+to+Seattle], and while we likely disappointed that particular visitor, I would like to make amends by offering up this list of ten things you should know before moving to Seattle:

rain in Seattle1) It rains.

2) No really, it rains a lot here. Despite what they say about it raining more in Atlanta, Boston, or D.C., the rain in Seattle can be like a slow trickle that never turns off. But the rain is okay… really… because one day… some day… it stops. And on those first few warm, sunny spring days, all of life is good in a way that Californians will never understand (unless they move to Seattle).

3) Seattle isn’t always comfortable being a high-tech town. Sure we design operating systems, sell stuff online, try to appraise every home in America and stream lots of music and movies, but a substantial portion of the population relates much more to the art of building airplanes.

4) Consensus Rules. Just agree with me on this one or I’ll never be able to get to #5.

5) Traffic Rules. People in Seattle talk a lot more about traffic than the weather. Depending on where you are moving from, traffic will either be horrible or a non-issue. Most blue-state people will laugh at Seattle traffic because you can normally get between any two points in the City in under a half-hour at all times of the day. Red-state people see the parking lot known as SR 520 and wonder why we haven’t build another bridge yet (see #4 for a hint at the answer).

6) Seattle is not that big. We have all the stuff associated with life in a major city: Theaters, traffic, ballets, sports teams, traffic, skyscrapers, music, etc., but you really don’t have to travel far to feel like you are in rural America.

7) Seattle is closer to Asia than Mexico. If one of the staples of your diet consists of cheap and tasty Mexican food, then you will eventually replace that staple with Pho. The sooner you accept this (and the sooner you stop saying “The Mexican food is so much better in California”), the sooner Seattleites will let you know about the good Asian restaurants. (And by the way, since we’re talking about good food, I feel obliged to mention that the Mexican food I remember growing up with in California was so much better than anything you can find in Seattle…)

8) The intersection of NE 50th St and 40th Ave NE is about a mile away from 50th Ave NE and NE 40th St. In the Seattle area, all the street names are numbered and given one of nine directions (NW, N, NE, SW, S, SE, E, W or blank). The numbers begin at 1 in downtown Seattle and radiate out wards. The directions also radiate out, but are city specific, unless, of course, they aren’t… Like at the intersection of 244th St SW, 100th Ave W, N 205th St and 8th Ave NW. There is logic to the entire street system and if you live here long enough, you will understand. Until then, you will be confused and miss appointments, meetings, birthdays, etc.. On a related real estate note, if you are new to Seattle, do not attempt to search for a home without a real estate agent. The street system was designed by a committee of real estate agents who wanted to ensure that you need their help to locate a home. 😉 Also on a related note, Redfin has proposed new street names (featuring real names) for all streets in a effort to ensure the viability of their business model, but at this point, they are still very far from getting consensus on their proposed naming convention.

9) Paul Allen.

10) Despite what you might have read in Wired, Fremont is the Center of the Universe.

Have I covered everything?

ShackPrices is Filling in the Blank…

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The ShackPrices’ blog (run by RCG contributor Galen) just announced some slick new features for their site:

  • Permalinks. Makes it possible to email/link to specific results
  • Address Search. Easier to zoom into a specific property
  • Condo Information. Not just homes anymore…

So what is ShackPrices? ShackPrices is a King County specific Home Price Evaluation site. Operating in true Web2.0 spirit, these guys have taken King County sold home data and mixed it with Google Maps to create a map-based home valuation tool. By focusing on the Seattle area, locals might find that ShackPrices is a more useful tool than the obvious huge white elephant in the room. It is also worth nothing that others have had online home valuation tools for a while (and we recently released our own!), so it is nice to see that Galen takes stuff in perspective:

So is this the future of real estate search? I sincerely doubt it. I believe that online real estate search is a sliver of what it could be today, let alone what it could be tomorrow. We’re in the “glorified book

Revolutionize Your Business in Only 3 Days with Blogging!

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Maybe I’m becoming a blog snob, but I’m seeing more and more BAD marketing advice about blogs as they relate to real estate agents. A lot of people simply don’t understand the marketing potential of blogs and rather than giving useful advice, a lot of marketing “gurus” are stepping up to deliver advice designed to keep them in business. A good real estate blog is extremely cheap and costs much more in time than money. If someone is trying to sell you a blogging service that replaces time with money, they are likely trying to sell you a website with blog-like features. If your goal is to increase your presence on the web, then a website with blog-like features will get you about the same benefits of a typical website except you’ll end up with all the formatting restrictions inherent in a blog.

What got me started thinking about bad marketing (at least today) was when I read a comment on my 8 Mistakes article from an internet marketing expert who completely misses the marketing potential of blogs:

Some of the things this blogger wrote about were insightful and probably very appropriate guidelines for creating a typical blog. But on the other hand, there were a couple points that I just couldn’t look past:

* Don’t put your real estate listings on your blog
* Don’t “spam” your own blog with self promotion

Now, I’ve experienced a good deal of success in the real estate marketing business by executing a blog strategy that is not focused on being a “typical blog”. I’m not terribly concerned with creating a forum for discussion about Chicago real estate, nor am I terribly concerned with generating a loyal readership who will return to my site over and over.

If you keep reading his post, you’ll notice that the writer goes on to say that many people want to see homes when they search the internet for real estate information. He is right on that point, which would help explain the current bubble in new home search tools. However, even if people do want to look for homes on the internet, designing a blog around this is missing out on a large slice of potential home buyers who are looking to learn about neighborhoods, find appropriate real estate professionals, and research home-purchase advice.

However, the real kicker is that while there are some great ways to display a home listing on the internet, a blog entry is not one of them. Compared with the stuff you can do with a simple website creation tool like Microsoft Frontpage, let alone more advanced website creation tools, a blog post is down-right ugly. Blog posts are really geared toward text and they simply have limited graphic capabilities (while my blog software is top-notch, I have to dive into HTML code just to change the color or size of the font within the post!)

The author mentions the great success he’s had blogging about home listings. But does this typical listing on his blog come anywhere close to comparing to this beautiful listing that Joe put together? If your aim is to advertise a listing, then a webpage (or an entire website for that matter) is a much better way to accomplish this task than a blog entry!

However, I suspect that the author (who consults as an internet marketing expert) is under the assumption that because the home listing is in a “blog”, there is some type of search engine optimization benefit over a standard website. Not only that, but I’ve heard this logic said enough that I suspect this notion is prevalent in the real estate community (i.e. blogs show up better than websites in search results!). But this is a myth. Search engines do not even try to tell the difference between a blog and a typical website (after all, they both just appear to be a collection of HTML code to a search engine).

The REASON blogs tend to perform better in search engine results than typical webpages is a direct result of the community that has created them. When done right, a community of bloggers share links with each other and not just any links, but deep links associated with quality content. To create a blog without the intention of creating community (or loyal readers for that matter) is to completely misunderstand the marketing potential of blogs.

I also believe the authenticity of the author when he says that he has had success marketing homes through his blog. However, I think the success has a lot more to do with the fact that the author has created a community around providing interesting advice for buyers despite his lack of care for these readers. When I said it was a mistake to put listing information on a blog, this is because there are better ways to display listings than in a blog post and too much self-promotion inhibits creating a community.

I actually remember noticing, and then unsubscribing, to the author’s blog a long time ago because of all the self-promotional stuff. Interestingly, I would never have even found out about his post or linked to him had he not linked to me! By linking to me and taking part in the larger real estate blogging community, he has earned some backlinks to his site that will help him score better in search engines! A blog without community is simply a website that is organized chronologically and will be treated as such by the search engines.

If you want to see this bad idea taken a step further, check Ubertor’s latest product where they sell a self-updating blog of featured listings. What could possibly be the benefit of a blog (with all it’s ugly formatting restrictions) if it is self-updating? If an agent doesn’t think it is worth their time to select a few featured listings for their blog, do they really think it will be worth anyone’s time to read it? Let alone comment and link to these posts? Sometimes understanding whether or not an idea is a good marketing strategy takes little more than common sense.

Talking about common sense marketing… In putting together this post, I came across this great video featuring Seth Godin where he discusses with Google employees how much of their amazing success is related to how they have marketed their products (Thank you Grow-a-Brain!). The 48 minute video is so darn instructive for understanding how marketing should be done (and I believe that real estate agents are either in marketing or broke) that I’m going to experiment with including the video below so you can watch it directly from this site:

Who is Trulia Serving?

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It was wonderful to have some quality time with the Trulia last night and I had a blast chatting about real estate search with them.

Sami and Kelly were great sports and the group ended up spending about an hour and a half discussing Trulia’s business plan and how others (like RCG!) might plug into their “platform”.

Seeing as how I posted the invite to the “chat” a few hours before the event, I didn’t expect too many people and was pleasantly surprised at the turn-out:

Interestingly, we dived into some questions I had about their business model pretty darn quickly and because I would completely fail if I tried to articulate the opinions of each of the participants. Instead I’ll only give my take on the Trulia’s place in future of real estate search (and welcome other participants to write up “meeting notes” if they are interested).

Most of my questions revolved around how Trulia planned to serve these four main groups (I’ve also included the ways they might serve these groups):

  • Brokerages: with (1) exclusive listings and/or (2) enhanced placement.
  • Agents: with (1) great branding opportunities and/or (2) tools to increase the agent’s internet “presence”.
  • Buyers: with (1) the most comprehensive listings, (2) the cleanest search interface, and/or (3) connections to the best real estate professionals.
  • Sellers: with (1) reasonably priced listings and/or the (2) widest possible exposure.

In talking with Trulia, it became clear that these guys have every intention of serving the brokerage community very well. They’ve opted to sign agreements with many of the largest real estate brokerage firms in order to get a live version of their feeds. In return, they’ve agreed to limit the type of listings they show (read: No FSBOs) and they’ve agreed to send people to the listing brokers website for detailed information on a home that is for sale. From what I can gather, they definitely have won over the largest brokerage firms and seem to be serving them well.

For agents, they offer some tools like one that allow agents to put a Trulia search on their site and another tool that allows real estate sites to list the most recently added homes. While the tools are interesting, I do not see anything that would make most agents jump at the opportunity to work with Trulia, especially since their search results will send potential buyers to the listing broker’s website if they find a home they are interested in. We discussed how a few forward thinking brokers realize that they best serve their clients when they give them the maximum amount of information, I don’t see that logic prevailing in the industry any time soon.

Trulia logo
Exmpl: “Palo Alto”, “94114”, (but not Seattle yet!) 🙂

It is with buyers that I’m seeing the largest weaknesses in their business model. They have no plans to get a complete listing of “MLS” data (actually, it sounds like they may have completely ruled out the opportunity through contracts they’ve signed with large brokerages). In somewhere like NY where there is no “one” MLS, this strategy allows them to include listing data from a majority of the brokers and will quite possibly allow them to have the largest database of listed homes. However, in somewhere like Washington (and Oregon, California, and I think most of the country), this strategy means that they will never have the most complete database of homes (at least not under the current MLS system). Maybe I’m missing something, but I simply cannot see how this is going to win buyers over… Even an ugly search interface is better than a snazzy Trulia search if it includes a larger selection of homes that are on the market. In other words, if I’m interested in a home in Sunset Hill and there are three homes available in my price range, I want to see all three, not just the two that are represented by brokers who have signed agreements with Trulia.

INSERT_YAHOO_MAP

So, that addresses the issue of the most comprehensive listings, but how do they fair in “(2) the cleanest search interface”, and “(3) connections to the best real estate professionals”?

They definitely have the cleanest home search interface around and considering they put a lot of effort into making their searches lightning fast, they definitely serve the buyers best interests in this respect!

In terms of the issue of connecting the buyers with the best real estate professionals, I think they are missing the boat. Sure the listing broker’s website may have the most information available about a listing, but if their set-up encourages buyers to contact the listing agent (as oppose to a buyer’s agent), I do not think they are serving the buyer very well. To give an example, imagine if Google sent everyone who was looking for information on a iPod to Apple’s website (it is an Apple product after all). Sure Apple might be the best source of information on an iPod (assuming they share all the good and bad that they know), but is Apple’s website really the best place to research (let alone buy) an iPod? To bring this back to real estate buyers, the best way they could serve buyers would be if they could hook them up with an agents who had their best interests in mind (as oppose to an agent who has the best interest of the seller in mind).

One of the weaknesses in my Apple example is that Trulia includes a vast amount of awesome stats available directly on their website so that a buyer can find out information like comparable homes on the market without ever turning to the listing agent’s site for more detailed information on the listing itself. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t plan to have the most comprehensive database of homes (at least not in areas with one functioning MLS) and they do not offer a way for a buyer to hook up with a good agent, but rather, they guide them to the listing agent.

For Sellers, they mentioned that they do not offer much. They are focused on working with brokerages, so the best they offers sellers is that if they use a real estate professional, they will indirectly benefit from the exposure on Trulia.

In reading over my text, I can’t help but notice just how negative I sound on Trulia. In reality, they are a great group of people and I’ve enjoyed EVERY interaction I’ve ever had with them. Along those lines, I decided to go back and remind myself of why I found Trulia so inspiring when they launched:

  • The search interface is as simple as entering a city name or a zip code! The UI is beautiful.
  • The filtering by other features like Price, Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Price is fast and very intuitive!
  • When clicking on more detail for a listing, you get the VERY useful information like the price per square foot, the days on the market, as well as details for other recently sold homes and similar homes in the area!
  • The color coded recently sold homes is awesome!
  • I really like that the the location of my search is stored in the url. This allows me to easily save and or send an area of interest. For example, here are the homes for sale in the part of Los Angeles where I grew up: http://www.trulia.com/CA/Eagle_Rock/90041/. (Also notice that it has neighborhood facts on this page.)
  • It has RSS feeds so that I can subscribe to my zip code and be updated each time a listing comes on the market.

All of these points are still valid and represent reasons that I still think Trulia is a fascinating and innovative company. My hope is that my comments in this post, especially when negative, will provide some food for thought to the people I’ve grown to really like over at Trulia. Their UI (user-interface) is a beautiful thing and blows away the UI of any other home search tool that I’ve seen. It is Trulia beautiful thing! 😉

Cancel Your Plans And Join us for a Trulia Chat Tonight!

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I just spoke with Sami Inkinen and Kelly Roark of Trulia. They are currently making the rounds in Seattle, and we all agreed that it would be fun to spend some time talking “real estate technology” while they are in town! (Why aren’t they in Seattle yet???)

However, knowing that I’m not the only person interested in learning a little more about Trulia, I’ve cajoled them into attending a “Trulia Chat” tonight at a local coffee shop.

So, here’s the plan… Sami and Kelly are going to be at Fremont Coffee (459 N. 36th St.) at 7pm for an hour of informal chat. Anyone interested in welcome to attend and there is no need to RSVP (although a comment if you plan to attend is welcome!).

INSERT_YAHOO_MAP

If you’re a real estate professional interested in learning about one (very interesting) team’s view of the future of real estate, then I recommend that you cancel your current plans for tonight and attend this free event.

Without a doubt these guys have one of the nicest home search interfaces around and when they finally do decide to launch in Seattle, they will be sure to drive a lot of traffic to the websites of a few local (and lucky) brokers.

Actively Searching for Another Zillow to Announce in March

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[photopress:unique_visitors_1.jpg,full,centered] [photopress:total_visitors.jpg,full,centered]

And following John’s lead, here were the five most popular posts on Rain City Guide (in terms of total hits) in February:

The five most popular posts (in terms of comments) for February:

8 Common Mistakes Made By Real Estate Bloggers

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In putting together Rain City Guide with Anna, I think we’ve made every blogging mistake that is possible… [photopress:lots_of_banners.jpg,full,alignright]In the spirit of learning from our mistakes, here are the top 8 mistakes that are made by real estate bloggers:

  • Mistake #1: Posting your listings. Treat your blog as a community resource and you will be rewarded. Treat it as an advertisement, and you will be unread.
  • Mistake #2: Too much stuff on the front page (See photo on the right!). In a previous iteration of Rain City Guide I noticed that the site was slow because I was asking users to load too much stuff when all they really wanted was the content! I’ve cleaned up the interface and I feel much better about the site.
  • Mistake #3: Create multiple blogs. Except for Jonathan Miller, I’ve never seen a good real estate blogger who could keep more than one blog interesting to read.
  • Mistake #4: Using a generic theme. Take the time to personalize the theme of your blog. Simple steps like adding your photo, editing the header graphic and changing around the colors can make a huge difference.
  • Mistake #5: Not reading other blogs. I built the original blog for Anna before I began reading other real estate blogs. No one ever linked to that site because I never linked to anyone else. Unless you were one of the originals, you won’t be able to get away with this and expect anyone to read your blog.
  • Mistake #6: Too much self-promotion. I stop reading blogs that include a paragraph about the author’s exceptional services at the bottom of every post (especially if this paragraph is filled with links!). Again, unless you were one of the originals, you can’t get away with this and expect anyone to read your blog.
  • Mistake #7: Expecting people to comment just because you asked a question. If you want a response out of your readers, you really have to make it interesting. Before asking a question, make sure you’re providing some content that is going to provoke them to respond!
  • Mistake #8: Writing a post inspired by another blogger without linking to them. The temptation to keep readers on your site is great, but the benefits of being a good linker are even greater!

As always, I’m interested in your feedback 😉 , and would be interested to hear if people could add two more so that we could come with a even ten.

Real estate blogs spark key industry debate

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Inman is running an interesting article on how blogs are changing the real estate industry (goes behind a subscription wall after today!). Once you get through a bit about Jonathan Miller of Matrix and Adam Koval of SocketSite, you might notice that they interviewed me as well. 😉

Probably the oddest part about a formal interview like that is that after 30 to 40 minutes of talking you know that they are only going to use a few quotes. Nonetheless, I was glad to see that Jessica picked up on the two most valuable aspects to Rain City Guide: (1) the great contributors and (2) the excellent home search tool developed by Robbie.

Coffee Shop
(photo credit: Mark Reibman)

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise…. The Property Grunt did a much better job summarizing the article: “Jessica Swesey does a kick ass job getting into the heart and soul of real estate blogging.“

Should RCG Allow Anonymous Comments?

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In my mind, the best thing about Rain City Guide is that the site has grown into a wonderful community with a constant stream of interesting posts and comments. In no way do I want to mess with this!

However, I’m a slightly concerned with the rise in anonymous commenters on Rain City Guide because I’ve seen a few blogs and forums where the discussions degenerate once people start leaving anonymous comments in bunches. So far this hasn’t been a problem on Rain City Guide, but I don’t want to let things slip to the point where anonymous people (like Bob Cat, el nino, Milton Friedman) make others feel uncomfortable posting their comments.

Here are the options I see in dealing with anonymous comments:

  1. No change… Leave all non-spam comments on the site (anonymous or otherwise)
  2. Selectively delete anonymous comments that are clearly meant to antagonize or bait people.
  3. Try to preempt any issues by requiring that all posts be from people with a valid email address. I could check this by emailing anonymous posters after they leave a comment and if they don’t respond in a reasonable amount of time, I would delete their comment.
  4. Require people to register with Rain City Guide before leaving a comment. This would include an automatic email address verification.

If I was going to make a change, the purpose of the change would be to discourage degrading comments (before they start to occur) and to encourage people to leave comments with less chance of harassment. What do you think? Am I making much-to-do about nothing? Should we just assume that only people with a think enough skin are going to leave comments anyway?

I’m definitely interested in your feedback! (and feel free to comment anonymously… for now.) 😉

You've got real estate questions, we've got answers!

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I thought I’d try something new and open this thread up to your real estate questions…

Do you have a question about the Seattle market? Real estate technology? Legal issues? Loan issues? Photography? Neighborhoods? Do you worry about Hanan? 😉 While there’s no guarantee we’ll know the answer, it is pretty rare that a good question goes unanswered on Rain City Guide.

Our current crop of real estate agents, mortgage brokers, real estate lawyers, real estate photographers, and real estate technology consultants are all motived to de-mystify the real estate industry, so hit us with some good questions and we’ll likely provide some interesting answers!

horse head statue