Tag Archives: real-estate

Duvall – Single Family Home – $350,000

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WOW! Robbie’s new super duper Zearch site is very, very COOL! But let’s put it to the test. I checked my listing in Duvall and I didn’t have a light blue dot. Seems to me a single family home for $350,000 should have a light blue dot, no? Now I’ll do a post on it and see if the post link shows.

[photopress:1.jpg,thumb,alignright] First error is that the photo that shows in Zearch is not the photo that shows in the mls as the main photo. This is a glitch in the mls system and not in Robbie’s search tool, so I have to go into the mls and erase all of the photos and reload them to correct it. Even though when I pull up the mls, I see the photo shown here of the actual house, downloads, including Robbie’s, pick up the OLD photo number one. The only way I know to fix this is to empty the entire photo cue and start from scratch. Let’s see if that works.

[photopress:2.jpg,thumb,alignleft] One of the problems with all of the available public sites is that people who are looking for reasonably priced single family homes think they do not exist. If you are not familiar with Duvall, for example, and do not realize that it is within “target range” of Microsoft and other densely populated areas, they might never search Duvall. All search engines should allow you to put in a radius of where you WORK!

[photopress:3.jpg,thumb,alignright] Here’s a question. I took this great photo of the flowering plum tree on the front lawn before I listed the property. A couple of weeks later when I put it on the market, the flowers were gone. Early spring flowering trees sometimes only bloom for a few weeks. But I love this tree in bloom! Do I have to go take a picture of the way it looks now with all reddish leaves and no flowers?

[photopress:4.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Also, I took a lot of the photos before it became vacant and before I listed the property. Do photos need to show the way it looks today, without that table and chairs?

[photopress:7.jpg,thumb,alignright] This was my “original” photo number 1, which is the view FROM the house, not a picture OF the house. I have since changed that some time ago to photo number 7 or so. But the dowloads, including Robbie’s, show it as photo number 1 as if the mls has some kind of memory bank that doesn’t update when I change the order of the photos in the mls, and only remembers that this is photo number one when doing a download.

When agents pull up this listing they see a completely different photo (the first one above) than the public sites. Again, I think this is a Rappatoni glitch, and not a Zearch glitch. I also think I know how to fix it.

Woohoo…I feel like a techie fixing download problems! Not bad for a “Granny”!

Inman asks – Not Allowed to Blog?

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3/23/06 “Hi Ardell — I was reading the RCG today and noticed a comment of yours under Russ Cofano’s blog entry that I thought was really interesting and something I’d not given much thought before. You mentioned about joining the big brands and said they won’t let you blog so you’re not jumping on board right now.. is that true? Do brands really dictate stuff like that? If so, I think Inman News might look into this more. With all the push for blogging in the industry lately, this seems peculiar..Just wondering.. thanks! Jessica Swesey, Inman News.”

While I told Jessica almost a month ago that I would do a blog post on this topic, I have to admit I thought the question was a little naive. Almost every truly vocal person in the industry is either a designated spokesperson for a company or a “one man show”. The people I know who have been on Good Morning America or quoted in the paper, are usually the owners of the company. This is true in every industry. If you are an employee of a large company, you are told that if anyone from the press contacts you, you have to refer them to the one person in the company who is designated to speak with “the press”. There are exceptions, especially if your are spouting out only GOOD things, like “There has never been a better time to buy a house!”

So the question isn’t can everyone blog, but who can pull your plug? This goes back to blogging being public and in many ways a form of adverstising. Under State Law, in every state in the country, an agent must have the name of the broker/company on every “advertisement”. Consequently an agent either has to have an anonymous blog where the agent’s name does not appear, or a blog with both the agent’s name and the broker’s name. An agent, though an independent contractor, cannot be a “cowboy” and do things on their own without supervision. The broker retains the right to both see anything that the public can see, usually in advance, and also retains the right to veto its printing.

So how do you blog everyday if the broker doesn’t have time to review and OK your content every day? You can have an insipidly bland blog that simply backlinks to other news items. Even then, many companies do not want you to “advertise” their “competition” or “discounters”, by mentioning them by name. So all of the HOT news on Zillow and Redfin and Lending Tree, could be off limits, because they don’t want one of “their own”, boosting the popularity of these other companies by mentioning them at all.

In real estate forums, when agents want to talk about Zillow, they call it “Z”. Theory is that by even whispering their name in private, you send out spiders into the search engines that cause Zillow’s name to be spread and the website’s popularity to be expanded exponentially.

Anyone who wants to truly discuss the future of the industry in a way that does not simply spout out accolades and full service fees, cannot blog via first person in a blog unless they do it anonymously. But is this NEWS? Can an AT&T employee blog about the future in a way that points out that there are improvements to be made by their employer? Can even a Microsoft Employee be quoted in print that they think Google should win the Inman Award for Innovation? Very naive of someone to think that the First Amendment applies to the little guy who has a “BOSS”.

Back around March 23rd, I interviewed with a company that treats their agents as employees. They weren’t sure if I could blog, but they were sure that I couldn’t “talk to the press” ever. Since your blog entries can be lifted and quoted by the press…they felt that it was possible that blogging activities would be limited or possibly even prohibited.

So the question isn’t whether or not you can blog, the questions is what are you allowed to say in the blog? I’m sure even Jessica has to run her content by someone to be approved, before it can be “printed” and available in the public eye.

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT!

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OK Rain City Guide Contributors! It’s time to PUMP UP THE VOLUME! IT’S “SWEEP’S WEEK”!

[photopress:puv_1.jpg,thumb,alignright] Actually it’s “Sweeps MONTH!” Everyone start posting away to show those Inman judges what a multi-faceted group we are!

And RCG FANS, go into that Inman site and nominate away!

I’ll have to come up with some insider juicy stuff…or controversy…what do you think will get the judges attention?

Nominations for Real Estate Innovators?

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Ever since I accepted the position of Director of Consumer Innovations a few weeks ago, I’ve been paying a little more attention to the concept of innovation. Innovation seems to imply something more than simple “ideas”, and mean something much closer to a new way of thinking. While flying to LA two weeks ago, I was happy to see BusinessWeek take on the topic of innovation until I realized that now I’m involved involved in two fields that will quite possible suffer the Curse of the BusinessWeek Cover: Blogging (Blogs Will Change Your Business) and Innovation (The World’s Most Innovative Companies). (I don’t think their recent cover on real estate, Buyer (and Seller) Beware, counts since they seem to advocate running away from this insane industry, whereas I’m jumping in!. 😉 )

This ramble on Innovation is meant to introduce a series of innovation awards that Inman is going to announce at their Real Estate Connect 2006 in San Francisco.

Here are the categories Inman has included and the sites that I would nominate (Do I need to mention that this is a very biased list?).

Most Innovative Real Estate Blog

  • Rain City Guide. First to figure out a way to bring a group of real estate professionals together to market themselves by providing unique and interesting content.

Best Business Models

  • Redfin. Like it or hate it, someone was going to light a fire under the bums of real estate agents to ensure that agents are providing value to tech-savvy clients.

Most Innovative Real Estate Data Site

  • Zillow wins this hand’s down just for their uber-confidence in a complete data-centric solution.

Most Innovative Technology

  • It looks like Google Earth won this last year. If Google Earth won out over Google Maps, then Inman should “right” a clear “wrong” and give this award to Google Maps this year. Google Earth may have more “wow” factor, but nothing sparked more innovation in real estate in this past year than Google Maps.

Most Innovative Mortgage Companies/Services

Most Innovative Brokers/Franchises/Realtor

Most Innovative Web Service

  • I’m not sure what this means… However, if I had to describe the innovation that will most change real estate over the next year, I’d keep it simple and vote RSS.

Most Innovative Media Site

  • No one site should get this award. Instead it should go out to all the real estate bloggers who are creating their own diversified media through blogging (Inman included! 😉 ).

Best Rental/ New Home Online Service

  • I’m really not too familiar with this category, but I’ve seen some of the stuff that Move is developing, and it seems quite impressive. I’ll hold off judgment for the time being, but welcome your suggestions.

Gone Wiki

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A little less than a month ago, I released the Rain City Guide Wiki and I’ve been very impressed with the results so far… I’ve had quite a few local real estate professionals add themselves to the (free) directory that I’ve set up and even a few, like Grier Smith and Chuck Reiling, add their own pages.

Interestingly, I figured it would take some time before Google caught up with the wiki site, but I’m pleased to say that it really didn’t take much time at all! A search on Chuck’s name shows that the wiki page he created for himself is the number one result, even above his writings on Rain City Guide, which kind of surprised me.

[photopress:wiki_screenshot.jpg,thumb,alignright]Because creating a page on the wiki is as simple as putting text in brackets: […], it seems like a no brainer for real estate professional who want to kick start their internet exposure. All you have to do is add your name (in brackets) to the Seattle Real Estate Directory. After you save the page, you will be prompted to create your own page where you can write about yourself and add photos to your heart’s content.

However, I think the real benefit of the wiki will come as people fill in more details about the home buying process. Grier did a great job starting up the discussion with a page on the Home Buying Process. If others are interested in adding to his description, editing the wiki page is as simple as clicking on the link that says “edit this page”! And if you are making a meaningful contribution, I highly recommend you add yourself as a source!

Here are some of the areas of the wiki that I’ve put some time into updating recently:

  • Innovative Real Estate Search Sites. I get a steady stream of emails from people who want me to add their new real estate technology site to my list of innovative sites. My latest response is to say “feel free to add yourself to the wiki page because I’m in the process of moving the list over there anyway!” On the wiki, each innovative real estate site gets their own page and I’ve added lots of cross-links making it easy to see connections between companies. There is still lots more that could be added, so I welcome your contributions!
  • Seattle Real Estate Blogs. This is another wiki page I feel pretty good about because I’ve seen a bunch of local real estate bloggers add their sites recently. I keep learning about new sites thanks to this page!
  • National Real Estate Blogs. Similar to the Innovative Real Estate sites, whenever a blogger emails me asking to be added to my blogroll, I send them to this wiki page where they can add their own site. After I complete adding all the real estate blogs that were already in my blogroll to the wiki, then I’ll completely move my blogroll over to this wiki page so that I don’t have to do any work at all! 🙂

I’ve definitely gone wiki, and if you care to join, it can be a lot of fun!

INBOX: Best Brokerage in Seattle to Work For?

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I just received an email from a Seattle investor who has recently earned his salesperson license and is now interested in finding the best place to hang his license. I began by sending him to the list of brokerages I’ve compiled on the wiki, but I imagine there are some readers who could do a better job focusing his search.

I know him well enough to say that he has more than a little bit of experience investing and he is interested in focusing his energy helping other investors.

Is there a brokerage that does better with this segment of the market?

What questions should he be asking as he interviews brokers?

What a week!

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[photopress:view_of_santa_monica.jpg,thumb,alignright]My family and I spent the past week scoping out appropriate neighborhoods in Ventura County! No matter where we choose to live in Southern California, it will definitely be a major change from our way of life in Seattle…

As I spent most of the week away from the internet (I did have a BlackBerry, but that doesn’t really count!), I’ve fallen way behind so I’m going to play a quick catch up here by mentioning a few of the things that have caught my eye this evening as I returned to the web:

  • Dan Green, ofThe Mortgage Reports Blog, let me know that Rain City Guide received at least one nomination for the Most Innovative Real Estate Blog. Very cool! Thank you Dan!
  • There has been some buzz around a new real estate blog featuring a large group of real estate professionals. I look forward to following the site…
  • I received emails from people at both Zillow and Move on how to better use their systems to find appropriate neighborhoods, so I’m going to have to revisit my post on the home buying process.
  • Ardell published a great article that has been very well received by other bloggers!
  • For the first time since the inception of RCG, I’ve not read EVERY single comment that has been posted on RCG! AHH!!! I’ve got some more reading to do! And on a very related note, my inbox is over-flowing with emails that are worth a quality response, so don’t be surprised if it is taking me a while to respond!

The YES, NO, MAYBE tour for relocating buyers

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I invented this back when I was doing a lot of relocation work for Coldwell Banker on the East Coast.  I thought Dustin and Anna might like to try it when looking at homes in California.  It comes in very handy when you are touring a lot of homes the first day in a new area.

It’s pretty simple.  You each have three little cards (kind of like Richard Simmons’ Deal a Meal – yes, it was that long ago when I came up with this.) One card says YES, one says NO and the other says MAYBE.  You can only use ONE card in each house.  Anna has a set and Dustin has his own set. 

At each house you are not allowed to say a word to one another until you make your selection from the three cards.  If you are touring homes with an agent, you hand her one of the cards as soon as you know your answer, not how you think your spouse will feel about the house.  Since there is a MAYBE card, this should be a fairly quick procedure for most people.  If the agent gets handed two NO cards as soon as they walk in the front door, you can all get back in the car.  Unless the owner is home, in which case you do a “pity” pass through.  Easier than saying we already know we hate this house.

If you have all NO cards played at the end of the day, what you don’t like is your price range, and you may have to go back to your new employer and say, “what you offered to pay me is not enough to live here”.  If you have three YES houses where you both said YES, you may as well toss out the MAYBE houses and go back at the end of the day to the three YES houses and spend more time in them.  I usually ask people to rank their YES choices as they go.  First YES, no ranking.  Second YES, you have to label one #1 and the other #2.  This way if you have 7 yes houses at the end, you can go back to #1, #2 and #3. 

Why did I feel the need to invent this system?  Can’t people know if they like a house without a little card? 

Here’s why. 

1) Sometimes the relocated spouse feels guilty about making the family move and says “Whatever my sweetie wants will be fine with me” until it is time to sign the contract and wants to offer 80% of asking price.  That’s called saying yes and meaning no.  It’s a passive/aggressive thing some people do 🙂

2) The wife walks in first and starts saying things like, “well, we could take this wall down over here and we could add a master bathroom…”, take it from experience, that’s a NO.  Before they start arguing over how they are going to afford the time and money to do all of that stuff…get a NO card and GET OUT!  Otherwise they will be crying and fighting before you get to house number 4.

3) When they both hand me a YES card and find out that the other party agrees, they can move through the house really evaluating whether or not they should actually buy it, instead of discussing whether or not the other likes it.  And you will be amazed at how happy they both are when you tell them they both said YES.  Sometimes one spouse is afraid to say they like the house because they don’t want the other spouse to buy it just because THEY like it.  It is a great moment when they both hand over a YES card.

Of course the client that keeps handing me all three cards at every house drives me nuts 🙂  Some people just don’t like to be pinned down.

The Mind of a Seller

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So we’re moving…

This seems like a very appropriate place to discuss some of the things that are going through our minds as we prepare to sell our current home and buy a new home in a new city… Interestingly, my knowledge of “good” improvements to make is very limited and probably much closer to the typical home owner than an experienced real estate agent. With that in mind, I’m going to throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see what sticks.

So where to start?

[photopress:tree_house.jpg,thumb,alignright]We have a wonderful Tudor in North Seattle that we’re going to be selling. The home is not perfect, but it has some features that make is pretty darn desirable (Good size, big backyard, a good school district, great access to Downtown, great neighbors, etc). However, it is an old home, so I’m thinking that we could add some value and make the house more “marketable” if we made a few improvements.

Here are some of the potential improvements that come to mind.

Electrical:

  • Elimination of old wiring. There are some remnants of the original knob-and-tube wiring in the house. As far as our inspector could tell when we moved into the house (two-and-a-half years ago), the old wiring only supplied power to one light in the attic. I have no idea what it would cost to simply eliminate this wiring, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be much if combined with some additional electrical work. My guesstimate for the cost: $1000.
  • Ground the computer room. At some point, someone went through and grounded the outlets in the kitchen. I think it would be good to do something similar in the computer room (which is very close to the kitchen and directly above the electrical panel which is located in the basement). My guesstimate for the cost: $1000.

New Appliances:

  • [photopress:dishwasher.JPG,thumb,alignright]Dish Washer. There is a small dishwasher in the kitchen which as never worked. It definitely get electricity and water, so I’m thinking we simply would need to find another (small) dishwasher that fits in this space. I see this as an improvement that makes the house more “acceptable” rather than one that really adds value. My guesstimate for the cost: $500 to buy and install.

Windows:

  • New Windows. We’ve got single pane windows throughout the house. They’re really old, more than half of them are painted shut, and cold air leaks in through cracks on many of them. Would we be best off fixing these before we sell? My guesstimate for the cost: $10,000.

Floors:

  • Refinish Wooden Floors. The wooden floors through the living room and hallways have potential to really shine should we refinish them. My guesstimate of the cost: $2000.

Basement:

  • Finish Basement. Our basement (which includes a separate bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, game room and utility room) has been 95% finished. However there is one wall that needs to be finished (i.e. add drywall) and I think a few other small projects (like adding a door to the closet in the bedroom) could make a big difference in making it feel “finished”. My guesstimate for this cost: $2000

Of course there are some other things on our mind as we get ready to sell:

  • Contractors? Would it be better to hire specialists for each of these jobs (i.e. contract with a window replacement firm, an electrician, etc) or just hire one contractor?
  • List in the MLS. Of course, Anna would list the house under her name, so we will really only be paying 3% of the typical 6% fee if we listed the home in the MLS. But do we really need to even go there? I’m telling Anna that we need to put the home on the auction site I installed on the back-end of Rain City Guide, but she’s not ready to be that “innovative”. 🙂
  • Time. We’d obviously like to get everything done relatively soon. My hope is that we can complete the improvements we decide to make relatively soon, but that is probably asking too much…

Also, if you are, or know of, a contractor interested in this high visibility project, definitely feel free to contact me.

I think my next post will be “The Mind of a Buyer” where I talk about some of the things that is going through our minds as we look to buy a home in a new city. Either way, look for frequent updates on our move.

MOVE.com – a strategic shift

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We, here in the Seattle area, are in the unique position of seeing first hand, the coming of change. There is no place in this country on a parallel path with technology and the future, like the Seattle area. The hiring of Dustin Luther by Move.com is as significant as Realtor.com BECOMING Move.com It is a sign that the butterfly may finally be springing from its cocoon. MOVE hiring Dustin Luther as the Director of Consumer Innovations, is the starting bell we have all been waiting for, announcing the metamorphosis to come, in an industry long overdue for change.

Back in October, when Realtor.com hired Allan Dalton as President of Realtor.com http://www.realtor.org/realtororg.nsf/pages/realtorcompres?OpenDocument it appeared to be simply another dose of “same old; same old”. I attended Allan’s recent “seminar” in Bellevue earlier this year, and left with the feeling that he was somehow chastising the industry at large and its professionals in the room. It was as if he were screaming “embrace change or BE changed!”

I am sitting here with my signed copy of “REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY GUIDE” authored by the “Tres Amigos”, Saul Klein, John Reilly and Mike Barnett of Internet Crusade. These three men have almost “single handedly” moved the real estate industry into the present with regard to technology, since they met one another in 1995. And yet it would seem that they too are screaming “embrace change or BE changed!”

The hiring of Dustin Luther by “MOVE” is a huge pendulum swing from the hiring of Allan Dalton by “REALTOR.com”

It is a sign that the movers and shakers of this industry may be attempting to “moult from their skins”. For too many years they have lain constrained in the hardened cocoon they themselves have weaved. Like the “constrainedness of the caterpillars and chrysalises, their range of activity and movement has been very little as they have been cumbersomely tied to their food source”, the REALTOR organization.

[photopress:dustin_1.jpg,full,alignright] Time and again we have seen the cocoon harden around the “would be” innovators. Will the industry escape? Is the hiring of Dustin Luther and the Title: Director of “Consumer Innovations”, a sign that the largest and most powerfull conveyor of national home listing info, may be willing to shed its REALTOR shackles and MOVE into the consumer’s long awaited public venue? With the hiring of the white butterfly, instead of another caterpillar needing a food source, I am hopeful. I am very hopeful.