Notorious R.O.B.

I was reading some Facebook status updates — signifying that obviously, I’m not a total social media moron who hates all things social — when I came across an interesting little comment:

The post that Eric Bryant and Maya were talking about is this one by Jeremy Blanton. His conclusion:

I think in the case of these three the message is clear, social media can take your business and explode it to a whole other level. People realize the importance of social media in their business plan and it was evident by the packed classes that had anything to do with social media.

A lot of conversations — eternal ones, it appears — about social media as marketing is about whether it’s effective.  Maya Paveza, a good friend of mine who was on that panel, threw down on Mike Ferry recently because Mike disparaged the efficacy of things like Twitter and Facebook (well, and she thought he was rude).

But let’s have a different conversation, because I’m sort of bored with the “social media works/social media is fool’s gold” stuff. Let us take as given for this discussion that social media is the single most effective marketing strategy ever invented for real estate. Let’s assume that it will take a real estate agent’s business and explode it to the next level.  Okay? Okay.

My next question: should social media techniques be taught to everyone or kept secret for the chosen few?

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Okay, maybe 1930 is going a bit too far back...

One of the most insightful set of comments I’ve ever read on this here blog (remember, I usually learn more from writing this blog than I ever “teach”) is to my last post about technology-loving agents. As it happens frequently around these here parts, at the same time I was being enlightened by you, the commenter, I was also looking at two other things.

The first is this Mike Ferry vs. Mike Ferrara Smackdown debate (ht: Chris Smith, @TechSavvyAgent) at Coldwell Banker’s recent convention. Watch at least the first 20 minutes or so; it’s pretty engaging, entertaining, and enlightening:

The second is this incredibly well-written post by Jeff Brown, who also takes me to task periodically and teaches me things here on Notorious.

Here’s my point/question: Where is the broker in all of this conversation?

In the entire 32 minute long debate between Ferry and Ferrara, has either gent used the word “broker” even once? I missed it if they did. In all of Jeff’s wonderful post, does he mention the word “broker” at all? No.

Quite a few of the commenters on the technology and agents post expressed all sorts of reasons why technology was so important. And they make some great points. I agree with many of them. But did any of them ever mention the broker? No. And some of them are brokers or managers themselves.

This conversation about technology and the REALTOR reveals that what is at stake is the notion of the real estate agent as a professional saddled with, and deserving of, fiduciary duty. One of two things has to change: the dominant business model of contemporary real estate, or the idea that real estate is a profession.

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I forgot an angle on this post about agent ratings and consumers that’s more in line with the light and snappy flow of this blog.

As the NAR survey, flawed as it might be, shows, consumers overwhelmingly want these skills/qualities in a REALTOR:

• Honesty and Integrity – 98%
• Knowledge of purchase process – 96%
• Responsiveness – 93%
• Knowledge of real estate market – 92%
• Communication skills – 85%
• Negotiation skills – 84%
• People skills – 79%
• Knowledge of local area – 79%

The one quality that majority of consumers don’t care about? Skills with technology, at 40%.

So here’s my question.

The REALTORS who love, love, looooove technology, and spend most of their time talking about and studying/learning Facebook, Twitter, SEO, QR Codes, augmented reality, mobile technology, iPhone apps, and the rest of it… should I be assuming that y’all have the top eight skills/qualities mastered?

When I go to a REBarcamp and see literally hundreds of young REALTORS who couldn’t possibly have more than 5-6 years of experience in the business, should I assume that they’ve learned all they can about the local market, knowledge of purchase process, and negotiation skills, such that the only thing left to learn is technology skills?

If the answer is “Yes”, then followup: Is real estate really that easy? Why does a consumer need to pay tens of thousands in transaction fees if it is?

If the answer is “No”, then followup: Why would a professional spend so much time and energy learning things that their clients have said they don’t care about?

What do you think?

-rsh

More dangerous than a pack of feral bloggers...

In my continuing quest to get something positive out of Zebragate, I would like to offer some tips on how you could survive attacks by the feral Internet attack mobs who dare post hurtful things on blogs and Facebook and such. Some of the things that The Lones Group has done in response to the “cyber-mob” provide us with real lessons for online reputation crisis management, and for being willing to provide such examples, I believe we owe them — and their supporters — a real thanks. It isn’t every day that we find such selfless giving from a marketing consultant apparently willing to show all of us how not to react to online criticism.

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On my 7DS blog, and on AOL, I wrote about the phenomenon of super-rich people paying cash for expensive ($5m plus) homes in California. And I wondered what it is that they knew that the rest of us didn’t. Here’s the post on 7DS, and here’s the one on AOL.

Well, turns out, the rich do know things we don’t. The largest bond fund in the world, PIMCO, is dumping U.S. government bonds:

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., eliminated government-related debt from his flagship fund last month as the U.S. projected record budget deficits.

Apparently, Bill Gross thinks the interest rate is too low on Treasuries given the risks. Risks? Aren’t US Treasuries supposed to be “risk-free”?

Not when you’re running monthly deficits in excess of $220 billion and printing money to deal with it.

Turns out, what Gross is expecting is inflation. He is quoted in a March 4th radio interview on Bloomberg as follows:

Gains in so-called headline inflation matter more for the U.S. economy than Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke suggests and rising oil prices may cut U.S. gross domestic product by a quarter to half a percentage point, Gross said March 4 in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene.

“Bernanke tends to think this doesn’t matter — at least in terms of headline versus the core — we do,” Gross said.

I speculated that the reason why the rich were paying cash was that they were expecting significant inflation. The super-rich are far more likely to have access to people like Bill Gross than you and I. Higher interest rates would be the result, and declining value of cash. Since mortgage rates (like all bonds) track US Treasuries, we all can expect higher rates at some point in the near-ish future to compensate for the effect of real inflation.

Turns out, now IS a great time to buy a house. But only with fixed rate loans or with cash. Failing that, gold, ammunition, canned food, and anti-biotics.

Cheers!

-rsh

As you may have heard, the whole Zebragate scandal appears to be coming to a close, with Daniel Rothamel offering to settle with The Lones Group. Once again, I am totally uninterested in weighing in on the legal issues themselves, unless someone wants to retain me as legal counsel, but this settlement will provide a rare, totally unexpected, learning experience for those of us interested in interactive marketing and things web-related.

See, in the settlement, Daniel has offered to surrender usage of the URL RealEstateZebra.com under which he has been blogging since October of 2006.

Within segments of the real estate marketing circles, we’ve been having a lot of speculation of late about the SEO value of blogs. There is significant suspicion that the older blogs have a major advantage over the newer ones because it is suspected that Google counts the age of the URL in its ranking algorithms. Thus, we theorize, blogs of people like Jay Thompson, Daniel Rothamel, Heather Elias, and others are solid lead generation sources because of the SEO value they provide, while the newer bloggers won’t see nearly as much benefit simply because of the age of the URL.

With Daniel, one of the oldest and most prolific members of the RE.net, having to surrender that URL, we’re about to see what the impact is on SEO and on lead generation.

I assume that Daniel will migrate all of his content over to the new blog/website. So all of the longtail keywords should remain exactly the same. I assume he’ll maintain the same blogging platform (WordPress), so there can’t be much of a difference there.

The major wrinkle in this is that all of the inbound links will likely break, unless Daniel somehow undertakes the significant effort of contacting everyone who has ever linked to his posts and to his site and gets them to change the linking URL. But if there aren’t thousands of such inbound links, he may even be able to get those replicated in due time.

The only factor that will have changed, then, is the actual age of the URL. This is a fantastic, rare learning experience. I hope Daniel will keep careful track of web stats over the next several months. In fact, I call upon Gahlord Dewald of Thoughtfaucet to work closely with Daniel, in exchange for that data and that insight.

I suppose you gotta look for some positives out of this whole mess. Might as well be this one.

-rsh

Devastating for teenage girls, maybe, but for grownup REALTORS?

I’ve been assiduously staying away from Zebragate, except for stating my support for my friend Daniel Rothamel, because the issue is a tough one. All trademark cases tend to be, where two parties both believe they have the right to use a particular trademark in a particular way. Unfortunately, the dispute/debate/whatever has turned a corner and entered a Twilight Zone where logic and reality get suspended in the heat of partisan passion, and there is now something to discuss, about which I feel strongly.

Inman News reports on the “chain reaction” response from the RE.net community in response to the Zebragate lawsuit, and has this:

[Denise] Lones, whose company provides marketing and other business services to real estate agents, says supporters of Rothamel launched “one of the most aggressive online bullying campaigns I’ve seen,” after a Feb. 25 story about the lawsuit published by Inman News.

And later, Frances Flynn Thorsen (whom I consider to be an active, valuable member of the RE.net), is quoted as saying:

“The issue is not about the lawsuit anymore, it’s about cyber bullying and the mob mentality,” Thorsen told Inman News, elaborating on a blog post she wrote in Lones’ defense.

Maybe cyberbullying — otherwise known as being mean to someone on the Internet — is a soul-crushing devastating thing to teenagers with fragile, developing egos. But to employ it in the context of a couple of grownups having a commercial disagreement is intended to silence dissent, stifle debate, and take a moral high ground where none exists.

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Time for another Top Five, coz, well, this here is my personal blog. And because I love music. And because I’m listening to some of these while working.

I blip (see sidebar) and I like dance music. I often think about what it would be like going to the wedding of a friend’s son or daughter (mine are too young, but some of my buds have procreated earlier and have kids in their teens already). So you have a bunch of 50-something, out-of-shape, now-dignified Gen-X’ers sitting in the ballroom with a bunch of twentysomethings who grew up on Ke$ha and Justin Bieber. What would get these moms and dads out of their seats and hustlin’, like I saw my parents’ generation do at my generation’s weddings when disco came on?

Here are my top five choices.

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Over at 7DS, I wrote up a little treatment on NAR’s finding that 1 out of 10 REALTORS has a blog. But here’s what makes me curious. Why are there so few equivalents in commercial real estate? I did a Google search on “real estate blog” and got about 187 million results. Did the same search for “commercial real estate blog” (with “commercial real estate” in quotes) and got 17 million results.

What’s up?

I would think that content/knowledge-based marketing would be far more effective in the commercial arena, where even sophisticated businesspeople get rapidly confuzzled and turned upside down. Porter’s Wage? Rentable square footage? Triple net leasing? WTF? If you get into commercial financing, of course, now you’re in a whole different universe.

Any theories on why there are so many residential real estate blogs, and so few commercial ones?

-rsh

I'm gonna make more money selling real estate! YAY!

Or so says NAR:

More interestingly, however, the Member Profile shows that REALTORS® with a college education earn higher income. It indicates that across all levels of experience, NAR members with at least a bachelor’s degree earn higher gross personal income than those without formal college education. For those REALTORS® with 10 years of experience in real estate or less, having a bachelor’s degree increases their income by at least 18 percent compared with those with the same tenure in the business but without a degree. For members who have been in the industry for 16 to 25 years, the difference jumps to 23 percent. The difference in income is greatest for those who have been in the industry the longest. While the typical agent without a college education earns $47,600, those with a college degree earn 44 percent more or $68,500. Put differently, almost half of REALTORS®, or 48 percent, who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher earn higher income than those without a college degree. Fifty-nine percent of those earning $150,000 or more have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 44 percent of those earning less than $50,000 have a degree.

Interesting. I wonder if this factor has been isolated. Because it doesn’t add up for me that a college degree earned 20 years ago (the 16-25 years experience category) would make that big a difference for a real estate agent. Is the Joe College REALTOR somehow introducing advanced calculus into his home pricing schemes? Or leveraging those four years spent studying the poetry of John Donne into writing copy for houses? Does that degree in sociology or political science somehow translate to improved negotiation skills? I’m not sure I see it.

There can be only three reasons why a college degree would be indicative of such disparity in income.

One, one might surmise that someone who earned a college degree is simply smarter than the non-college grad. Being smarter translates into getting more clients and doing more deals. Since real estate is not exactly quantum physics, I’m not sure on the role of book-smarts on being good at the business. In fact, some of the most successful real estate agents I know would be the first to tell you that they’re not academics; they have street smarts, people smarts, but hardly love delving into math equations for fun.

Two, one could assume that someone who spent four years earning a college degree is more disciplined, less likely to quit, and more focused than the non-college grad. After all, she actually got her degree; her colleague did not. This greater endurance, capacity for commitment, translates into more deals, more income. Maybe.

Or third, it could be that having a college degree means one lives in better communities with higher home prices, and therefore have higher incomes simply due to higher GCI from selling higher priced properties. They’re not any better than a non-degreed REALTOR; they just happen to live and work in higher-price point areas. Considering that most real estate agents enter the business as a second or third career — often as a result of having children — is it really that farfetched to think that the college graduate started out in neighborhoods where other college grads, all earning higher income, tend to live?

So here’s the question: was the college-graduate statistic corrected for average selling price of the area in question? Or compared to other REALTORS working in the same market? Has it been corrected for things like military service (which tends to impart far more discipline than four years at college partying it up every weekend)?

Inquiring minds… uh, well, this one inquiring mind… want(s) to know.

-rsh