Baron Briefs

… 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.

For several months, I’ve been working on a new listing product for Realtors. An important component is listing distribution. RealtyBaron already syndicates listings to Vast and allows agents to publish to Craigslist. But our listing product launching in early 2008 will require syndication to each and every listing destination site that accepts bulk feeds. And while RealtyBaron was early early-ish to the distribution game, we’re certainly not alone.

Listing distribution has become ridiculously easy. In just a few hours, I added feeds for CityCribs, Citylist, CLR Search, Oodle, Propbot, Propsmart, Trulia, Zillow, and Google Base. Once the feed format is known, it takes less than a few minutes to start churning out an XML file to feed a destination site.

All of which has me thinking about a future where listings seamlessly flow around the web. Can any one destination site gain a competitive advantage and win the listings race once real estate listings are ubiquitous? Probably not, me thinks. Instead, big destination sites will likely continue squeezing more search, more filtering, more analysis, and more data (sales data, demographics, etc.) into the same 1024 by 768 pixel space in an attempt to make sense of it all. Additionally, make room for more banner advertising to pay for the development of aforementioned features. Which brings me to…

Many Realtors continue to fear losing control of their listings. However, I can imagine an ironic outcome in which losing control of listings produces an explosion of information which eventually overwhelms and/or confuses the consumer. As a result, buyers and sellers who once went to Realtors for access to information increasingly use Realtors to slog through and interrupt the overly abundant data.

Q: The prices of U.S. homes fell by 3.2 percent in the second quarter, the steepest in 20 years. What do you think?

You’re probably thinking a snoozer, right? Wrong. PBS’ Paul Solman does the improbable by breaking down mortgage-backed securities and keeping the viewer engaged. This is the single best explanation of modern day mortgages I’ve ever seen or read. And honestly, I had never fully understood the inner workings of a mortgage-backed security until now. Excellent work, PBS.

Part One

Part Two

Clearing Title gives us an eyewitness account of the far-reaching effects of belt tightening in the mortgage industry. Everyone involved in a deal—real estate agents, loan officers, buyers, sellers, etc—is merely a bowling pin once a lender pulls the funding.

The following data was taken straight out of the Baron database. It compares the average time a home spends on the market (reported by our agents) versus the average final bid of listing auctions:

It’s quite simple when you think about it: the longer a home sits on the market, the more costs a Realtor incurs.