Baron Briefs

This morning, RealtyBaron began posting AgentRank™ activity to the popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter. Specifically, an agent’s sale transactions, client reviews, market forecasts, and new ranking value is posted when captured by the system. You can subscribe to system-wide activity by following AgentRank™ on Twitter.

More importantly, however, agents can “tweet” their own AgentRank™ activity to their “tweeple” by providing their Twitter account credentials.

Twitter is only the beginning. I plan to add other notable social arenas as time permits. If you’d like to request a specific platform, please let me know.

Imagine your parents are retiring, moving to Florida, and have asked you for help with “meeting a nice Realtor®” in Naples. Unlike the client referral I sketched in scenario #1, this referral is very personal. A referral fee is your least concern. Your parents are aging and they need to be handled by the best. However, you don’t have contacts in or near Naples, Florida. Here’s how a ReferralAuction™ can help:

#1 - Like I said above, a referral fee is your least concern. Therefore, all three bids—opening, reserve, and stop—remain at 0%. Basically, the first agent who meets the minimum required AgentRank™ gets your parents’ business.

#2 - But submitting a bid in this scenario is easier said than done. The minimum AgentRank™ in this case is 10—the highest ranking available—which means unless an agent has an impeccable sales history and glowing client reviews, he or she will be unable to bid for your referral.

Any questions?

Imagine you have a client who is moving to Dallas. You have the listing in California but the client has not yet made a connection with a buyer’s agent. The client asks for a referral, but you don’t have any contacts in Dallas. You want to ensure your client is handled properly, but you also want to fully monetize a client referral that will almost certainly result in a sale for the buyer agent. A ReferralAuction™ can help you achieve both objectives. Here’s the play call:

#1 - The auction opens bidding at 0%, but the “Reserve Bid” ensures a bid of 20% is received before the client’s contact information is revealed to a buyer’s agent. If the auction ends with a bid less than 20%, your identity and that of your client remains hidden from any potential buyer’s agent.

#2 - Assuming the “Reserve Bid” is satisfied, the “Stop Bid” ensures bidding doesn’t exceed your idea of “fair value”. When bidding reaches the “Stop Bid” amount, the referral auction immediately closes and the referral is awarded to the highest bidder.

#3 - The “Minimum AgentRank™” guarantees bidding is available only to agents who have a proven history of closing sales and pleasing clients. In the scenario above, only agents with a ranking of 8 or above are allowed to bid for your client referral.

Any questions?

….as I outlined almost two years ago in our discussion group:

1. Agents/Brokers can leverage our ZIP code notification system to instantly alert agents of an available referral and don’t need to seek out individuals on the Web/mailing lists.
2. Agents/Brokers can leverage AgentRank(TM) to ensure they are handing the referral off to an agent/broker with a proven track record.
3. Agents/Brokers can maximize their potential referral fee by leveraging the auction platform.
4. Agents/Brokers can utilize our feedback system to rate brokers/agents who both offer and accept referrals. Similar to eBay, a feedback system can be nice leverage to keep both parties of a referral transaction honest.

Today, we’re expanding our patent-pending auction platform to include business referrals among Realtors®. The new product, ReferralAuction™, allows real estate brokers and agents to efficiently find and qualify out-of-town agents to handle their referrals.

As a Realtor®, you likely already swap referrals both on-line and off. However, when referring your client to an agent whom you’ve never met, two questions remain:

1. Is the agent qualified to handle the referral?
2. Will the agent pay my referral fee if a deal is done?

A ReferralAuction™ uses the AgentRank™ algorithm to ensure a referral is awarded to an agent who has a proven track record to make a sale.

Both the referral source and recipient have the opportunity to review the performance of each to discourage deceitful behavior.

… from 6 to 7%. Can i do better?” – a Baron Briefs reader

Your current Realtor is likely offsetting the additional costs she incurs in marketing expenditures and overall risk as homes sit on the market unsold. If you want to keep her as your Realtor, here are some suggestions for getting her back down to 6%:

1. Consider passing on expensive services that rarely sell homes such as newspaper advertisements and open houses
2. Offer a “tiered” commission. For example, at $200,000, agree she’ll be paid 6% on any dollar up to $200,000 and paid 10% on any dollar above $200,000.
3. If you’re moving within the same local market, ask her to represent you on your purchase, too. Typically, Realtors will reduce their commission by up to 33% if they have a hand in both transactions.
4. And finally, if all else fails, we obviously recommend using our own service to help find the most competitive sales commission in your area.

Anyone have additional tips?

There’s a been a media feeding-frenzy over foreclosure bus tours of late. Started by Stockton real estate agent, Cesar Dias, foreclosure bus tours have spread across the country….including the Dallas-Fort Worth area which, to my knowledge, doesn’t have a high foreclosure rate but whatever brings in clients, right?

Now, the Sac Bee is reporting on Stockton’s next foreclosure start-up, the Greener Grass Co:

Owner Nick Terlouw, who formerly had a window-cleaning business, sprays dead brown lawns with a “deep green water-based dye that makes that turf look good enough for a golf course or a professional football stadium.”

Clients include real estate agents selling foreclosures. The cost is $175 to $225 to do a yard.

….is coming soon and it’s going to be BIG!

I’m recruiting volunteers from the RE.net to sit on the inaugural board of governors. A summary of the AgentRank™ Board of Governors:

1. Responsible for maintaining the data point composition and weighting of the AgentRank™ algorithm.
2. Eighteen (18) high-profile real estate professionals located in the United States actively serve on the board of governors at any time.
3. Six (6) high-profile real estate professionals located in the United States sit as alternates in the event any sitting governor cannot perform duties, i.e. leaves real estate business, conflict of interest, etc.
4. Governors are granted an undetermined amount of quasi-currency each quarter of active duty which can be redeemed for stock options equity in RealtyBaron, Inc. in the future.
5. Initially, governors are appointed by RealtyBaron, Inc. but will be elected by the community in the long-term.

If you’re interested in volunteering, please contact me for more information: mdugger (at) gmail (dot) com

I’m sorry about the tech-ladened posts from my other blog appearing in the Baron Briefs feed. The two feeds got crossed last night.

But, hey, what Baron Briefs reader didn’t want to learn about Java errors and Aspect programming? (Okay, you can all put your hands down now.)

Many Real Estate 2.0 websites allow visitors to comment and review real estate agents. Those reviews are displayed on the website for all to see and can even show up in search engine results. An obvious downside to online reviews are fakes from agents crowing about themselves or sand bagging the competition. But what if a fake review is really funny? Humor is frequently used in radio and television ads to push products. Is humor just as effective in an online review? The following review posted yesterday to IncredibleAgents.com sure worked on me:

(Warning: objectionable material ahead)

“My new home is novel-worthy. Larry is an elegant figure whose politeness and intelligibility shine like a glorious supernova in the dark night of smoggy Mordor-esque Houston. After losing my previous home and family in a freak gasoline fight accident, Larry walked me across the sea of my despair into a glorious heaven of warmth. Larry is always at my side, or behind me. Not only is Larry a great man, but he is of great lineage, spawned from the fertile seed of David Gimour and Lars Ulrich. He surfed with Jerry Garcia, and l****oed tornadoes with Pecos Bill. If only my legacy were size of Larry’s pinky toe, and if only my legs were as shiny as his extraordinary buttocks, I would start my own religion. One Realtor to rule them all, one realtor to bind them, one realtor to make me come, buy a house, inside him. Produced by Melvin Goldfarb Written by Kookie and or Crissy Taylor-Jenkins”

I have no doubt it’s a fake. But more importantly, it left me wondering if Larry wrote it himself. If so, I bet Larry’s a likable guy who I’d like to work with. Well done, Larry.