Notorious R.O.B.

The most frequently pressed number in a voicemail system: "0" for Operator

Now that I am a consumer in the real estate market, having moved from New Jersey to Texas (like so many others) and therefore having placed my house in the hands of a Realtor, I get to have some cool experiences. I wanted to share one of them with you all, especially the real estate professionals, because it struck me that this is probably not a perspective you get often from your buyers or sellers.

Tools. They’re great. I know many of you use tons of them. But you are going to want to consider how the consumer on the receiving end might perceive them. I got an email today from my agent, Sue Adler — or more precisely, I did not get an email from my agent, Sue Adler — which triggered this post.

Done correctly, tools can and do help you work more efficiently, more effectively, stay in touch better, and improve customer service. But more often than not, tools can make you seem impersonal and distant, like you just don’t care. And that’s probably not a good thing in something like a real estate transaction.

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There are a few things that we all put up with, which puzzle me. Why do we tolerate computer crashes from our mobile phones? Why do we put up with rude government workers? And finally, why do we accept as normal that service providers of all kinds would not show up on time?

Consider my experiences connected to the recent move.

I call up and order new cable & Internet for my new house in Houston. Comcast is decent with things like this, but even then, they give me a window of four hours for when the installer would arrive. And the installer, as usual, doesn’t arrive until the very last minute. In the past, I’ve had the installer completely blow the window and show up three hours late, or not at all, forcing me to call Customer Service numerous times to check on where the hell the installer is.

I order carpet installed in my New Jersey home. The appointment is made for Friday, and I’m given a time slot of “between noon and 1pm” — which shocked me with how precise it is. Well, with 10 minutes to go to noon, I call the installer to see where he is, and he tells me, “I won’t make it on time, but I can get there by 5pm.”  WTF? Why give me a time slot of between noon and 1pm, and then not bother to tell me you’re going to blow it bigtime? Did you not know that you weren’t finished with the prior job at say 11am?

I order U-Haul storage pods for moving. Dropoff is scheduled for Monday. Monday comes and goes, and in the afternoon, I call U-Haul to find out where the hell my pods are, since I need them to actually move things into them. “Oh, sorry, we had a glitch in the system and won’t be able to deliver them until tomorrow.”  Tomorrow comes… and starts to go…. It takes three phone calls before I finally get a hold of someone who finally decides to drop off the damn pods.  Once finished, I call and schedule a pickup for Tuesday. Tuesday comes and goes. Wednesday comes and goes. I call, I call, I call. Finally, I’m told that they’ll pick up on Friday.

Why do we put up with this? Are we not paying these people?

I have a few suggestions for the service provider industry, including one for real estate.

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Farewell, And Thanks for All the Fish!

So tomorrow is going to be my last day in New Jersey as a resident, unless something really dramatic happens and I get incarcerated here. I have a bunch of random, somewhat conflicted, thoughts going on and figured I’d share four of them here with you.

This got long, partly because I’ve gone through quite a bit, and partly because I’m going to be driving sixteen hours a day for the next three to four days. So blogging will be difficult, to say the least.

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Just wanted to make a quick personal announcement coupled to a shameless plug. I have decided to take on a great little company as a 7DS Incubator client, but go well beyond the norm for such an engagement, because I believe this company has the potential to bring about real change to the industry. When I wrote that we will see no exciting new technology in 2011, I had to leave these guys out because of my relationship with them. Well, I can now say that this company will bring some exciting new things to the real estate industry, in 2011, and I am going to help them do it.

The company is National Buyer Listing Service, or NationalBLS. The founder and CEO, Duncan Logan, is one of the smartest guys in the business who few people know well. Hopefully, that will change soon. And as of this morning, I am the interim President & COO of NationalBLS, on a part-time basis.

What is NationalBLS? Well, the current company info says this:

NationalBLS is the first national database of prospective residential real estate buyers. We allow buyers to input their requirements for a home and anonymously broadcast those requirements to the web. Sellers in the market, or those thinking about entering the market, can find active able buyers and approach them privately through our system. We promote the use of real estate agents and brokers but also enable sellers to transact on their own. Our primary focus is to create a central marketplace to increase liquidity in the residential real estate market for everyone’s benefit. We intend to achieve this by partnering with all market participants.

Online real estate has always been property-centric: listings, listings, property info, public data, and more listings. Or, with the rise of social media, online real estate has incorporated marketing and promotion of real estate agents and brokers, as well as brands. The enormous missing piece has always been buyer demand. It takes two sides to complete a transaction, but as an industry, we have near-zero insight into what it is that the buyer wants until well after the fact, through the actual closed price transaction.

I believe that NationalBLS is a potentially transformative technology. I believe that its products and services can be modified to fit in neatly to how the industry works, and should work. And I can’t tell you how excited I am to be helping a brilliant entrepreneur like Duncan with achieving his vision in a hands-on, more-than-advice, way.

I will still be working through 7DS Associates for my consulting clients. There may be some clients I cannot take on, and some issues I cannot work on, due to my role at NationalBLS raising conflict issues, but as of now, I am confident that no conflicts exist.

I wish I could tell you all more, but there will be plenty of time for that sort of thing. But it’s some pretty exciting stuff.

Thanks, and definitely, more later.

-rsh

A familiar sight for REBC veterans

So here I am sitting in my hotel room on Monday afternoon. I came in early because I had wanted to attend REBarCamp NYC being put on by the awesome folks at Lucky Strikes Social Media Club. You will notice the word “had” in the preceding sentence, because I just decided I’m not going to go to REBarCamp. This is not a knock on Patrick Healy, Scott Forcino, or the rest of the amazing, wonderful folks at LSSMC; I was involved with planning the REBCNY last year, and I thought we all did a great job. I’m certain, positive, that the crew of 2011 will do an even better job, and it will be among the best REBarCamps ever.

No, I just decided that I’m not attending because… let us be frank: the REBarCamps have become a more-or-less standardized affair over the last three years that is much less about conversation amongst equals and much more about social media and technology training for newbie real estate agents. Since I’m not a real estate agent, and not a newbie, I find myself looking forward more to hallway conversations and #lobbycon chats than the sessions themselves.

No reason to take up a valuable spot then. But I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Which is why I believe it may be time to reinvent the REBarCamp, and perhaps bring it back to the future.

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Yum, with a side of DOOOOM!

If anyone is attending the Inman conference in NYC next week, and have no plans for lunch on Wednesday the 12th, consider joining me, Mark Boyland, and others for a fun-filled (okay, maybe not, given the topic) informal lunch-a-ma-thingamajig. I figure we’ll go from around noon till about 1:45pm or so. We’re going to talk about foreclosuregate, folks, and its impact on real estate brokers and agents. Oh yay!

Mark is a pretty frikkin’ smart guy, who also happens to be a specialist in short sales and REO’s in Westchester county, NY. He operates this website, for example, and knows his shit.

I figure we’ll do some pleasant chit-chat, then get into frightening doom-mongering type discussions, and hopefully emerge out the other end with possible solutions and things that the every day broker and agent can do about the situation.

There’s no cost, except you pay for your own food and drink. This isn’t anything sanctioned by anybody — just a purely informal thing. But, hey, if any of you big title guys or mortgage people want to sponsor it and have the opportunity to explain to some very interested real estate industry people why they should or should not worry about this whole foreclosure mess, feel free to contact me.

I haven’t picked a restaurant yet, because I have no idea how many people might be interested. So, if you’re interested, leave a comment here, or ping me on Twitter or Facebook. I’ll announce where once I have a rough headcount.

Or, it could be just me and Mark having lunch and getting real depressed.

-rsh

Since not everyone who reads Notorious checks out my blogging on 7DS… I’d really like your thoughts on my last two posts. They’re scaring the crap out of me, and I’d love to get any counter-arguments or counter-evidence.

Here they are:

Title Issues in Foreclosuregate

Foreclosuregate and Systemic Risk

Thanks,

-rsh

Why yes, Don, I would love your office furniture!

I have decided that before 2011 is out, I will buy actual office furniture for my home office. Hitherto, I’ve been working on a folding table from Staples — which actually worked great, as it allowed me to spread out multiple computers, peripherals, papers, and such. I never got around to buying an actual desk. Although, I will confess that I invested in a chair a couple of years ago, which might have been the best $800 I’ve ever spent.

So I start looking around for desks. And quickly ran into something interesting. Read on to follow along these random musings.

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A new chapter...

It is not often a man has the opportunity to greet the New Year knowing that it is the start of a new chapter in his life. Tonight, with but a few minutes to go before the clock strikes midnight (Central Time, as midnight would have struck already in my old Eastern Standard life), I find that I have been given just that opportunity. All around me are the unsettled detritus of a move-in interrupted, as my family and I completed our migration from New Jersey to Texas just this afternoon. I greet the New Year with unopened boxes. I hope it is not symbolic of the twelve months ahead.

Farewell, then 2010. I did not know when I greeted you a year ago that you would have turned out to be so… interesting. You have brought me triumph and loss, hellos too numerous to mention and a few goodbyes as well. You’ve brought me lovers, haters, and those in between. You have taught me the wisdom of fools and the folly of wise men. I met unexpected friends, and discovered hidden enemies; both, I shall treasure, and seek to judge myself by them both. There were heights of inspired passion, and then depths of mundane disappointment. I have found things out, and been found out. You gave me dark visions of the future, but then reasons to hope in the midst of the storm. All of the deadly sins, all of the cardinal virtues, plus fear, plus death (Farewell, Joe), plus love, harmony, faith, courage… in short, all of those things that make human life so rich, so full, so tragic, so wonderful.

Yet, in these last minutes, I name you, 2010. You were the year of That Which Might Have Been, in all of its significance, of both tantalizing opportunities that did not materialize, and terrifying disasters that were somehow avoided.

But the New Year is here now, waiting to take the mantle from you. And for me, a new era, a new beginning, a new chapter that continues the story but in new and unexpected ways, starts. 2011, I think, will not be a year spent holding our breaths. That which might have been may come around this time. And I will be prepared.

Resolutions are beyond me; I have not the willpower for them. So instead, let me offer up a prayer for 2011 in the hopes that these things might come to pass, whether I am strong enough or not.

Give me a little more courage in my convictions, and a lot more humility. Let me never forget what should not be forgotten, and wipe from memory all that should be. Let me give more than I receive, learn more than I teach, listen more than I speak, and act more than I talk. Let me bring comfort and laughter to my friends, and destruction and fear to my foes, in equal measure. Allow me to focus on the important things while letting everything else wash over me. These things, I pray.

Happy New Year.

-rsh