Notorious R.O.B.

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

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

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

First of all, Merry Christmas, everybody.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6

Of course, I would also like to wish everyone a wonderful end to 2010, and a happy new year, as we gird up to face 2011.

Second, to all of my readers who put up with overly long posts filled with wonkish Eeyore-like doom and gloom, as well as off-the-wall wackiness, I’d just like to say thank you. As I keep saying, I don’t blog for you but for myself, but I’d be lying if I said you don’t make writing this blog more fun and more educational. I learn more from your comments, both on the blog and via email/twitter/Facebook, than I have ever “taught” through a post. Thank you.

Third, I will be making some significant changes to this my personal blog. I started in January of 2008 with a post that sadly remains as applicable today as it was then:

The Real Estate industry has gone tech-crazy.

Here’s a wakeup call: all that technology does is make your existing processes more efficient. If what you do is crap, it makes crap more efficient. If what you do is valuable, then it makes that more efficient.

Notorious R.O.B. was then, and has always been, my personal blog. It’s where I work out my personal frustrated-writer tendencies and engage in speculative conversation about topics I love discussing: real estate, technology, marketing, and now, public policy. But over the past three years, as many of you have blessed me with visits, with your attention, with thoughtful commentary, I felt like this was becoming more than that. Some of my posts over the past year have been… shall we say far more “authoritative” at least in approach if not in result. Part of the reason, of course, is that I started a consultancy in 2009, changing my relationship with the industry as a whole.

What I’ve decided to do starting in 2011 is to do more of my heavier writing on the 7DS Associates blog. I’ve even redesigned the site, by hand even (which explains any flaws in design and navigation, since I’m no web designer). I’ll keep writing about whatever strikes my fancy here at NROB, and much of that is likely to be real estate related, but I’m going to try hard to keep NROB more personal, more “bloggy”, and reserve some of the heavy-duty stuff I’ve been doing of late requiring hours of research into esoterica of real estate for 7DS.

What you should expect, then, are shorter, more frequent updates to NROB, some of which may have little to nothing to do with real estate. I may end up talking movies, politics, fantasy football, or the Jets. Who knows. The weightier, 3000 words posts you all have come to expect will likely live over at the 7DS blog. If you dig on that sort of thing, well, go on over there and bookmark the 7DS blog. I’ll be doing far more writing over there in the new year.

Thanks again, and see you all on the Internet in 2011!

-rsh

Just wanted to let my readers know that as of sometime in January of 2011, I will be yet another Yankee who has fled to Texas. My wife has just accepted a job at a company based in Houston, and since I can do what I do from just about anywhere, we said… what the hell. Everyone else seems to be going to Texas, why not us?

Of course, they want her at her desk early in January. It’s now middle of December. Not a whole lot of time. So I’ll be a bit busy and preoccupied with the move. Blogging might take a hit, and I may be even more difficult to pin down, but it should all be over and done with by the end of December.

Houston, you’ve been warned.

-rsh

Quick housekeeping note… you’ve probably already seen that I’ve made some design changes around these parts.  I’m still working on some things — like rendering iframes in Chrome, cross-browser compatibility issues, etc. — but I’m reasonably happy with this so far.

So… what do you think?  And if you run into problems/issues, please leave a comment here for me to fix/look at.

Thanks,

-rsh

A quick housekeeping note. I realized the other day that there are a fair number of you who read this blog via email.  Which is great, even though I’d much prefer if you’d come by afterwards and share your thoughts, opinions, and so on.  So I’ve decided to make a small investment and give you all “professional-looking” emails of my posts.

Those of you who are already subscribed via email will be receiving a Confirmation Email from me (by way of Aweber) in the next couple of days.  This is to make sure that I’m not spamming you, and that you do in fact want to read my over-long posts in email, thereby possibly causing irreparable harm to your Outlook or other email application.

If you have not subscribed by email, that’s fine too — you’ll noticed a brand spanking new subscription box to the right in case you do.

Finally, a quick little poll to see how often these emails should be going out.

Thanks!

It’s a beautiful early fall day here in the New York City area.  There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and the bright sunlight pouring down on my quiet suburban street seems exactly like the happy rays of sunshine that fell on a younger, more innocent version of me in New York City on September 11, 2001.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time, y’all.

Given all of the energy and action of late around housing, housing finance, and future of homeownership by the Federal government, I think it’s time the RE.net (and others!) put together a Carnival of Real Estate Policy.

I’ve organized one and will host the first one here on Notorious.  Submission deadline is 8/31/2010 and this inaugural edition will be posted on 9/5/2010.

I’m looking for blogposts that address the intersection of housing, housing finance, and government policy at all levels: Federal, state and local.  The posts can be mostly about housing, impact on price or sales, impact on consumers, impact on the industry, etc. but should at least address housing policy questions.  They can also be more about the politics — whether such and such a policy is a good idea or a bad one, or whether this policy or that one has a chance of success, or wider political implications, whatever.

This is the first edition; if there is enough energy around the topic, I’ll look to make this a regular monthly carnival, hopefully with other blogs hosting it as we go forward.

How to Submit

First, write a blogpost and schedule it for publication around 9/5.  Then email me the post and the permalink to .  I’ll read it to make sure the post is on-point, then include it in the actual Carnival Edition post.  Readers will be sent to your blog to read the actual post.

Let’s get the conversation going on this all-important topic.  Looking forward to your thoughts.

-rsh