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November 1-15 is time to Brainstorm! October 30, 2006

images 1 2By Thanksgiving, I try to have my next year’s business plan in place.

I find that using the first two weeks of November to brainstorm, and pretty much carve in stone a plan and strategy for implementation, I can begin “setting up” the new year.  Setting up includes adding new technology as needed, beginning the activities that will create business in the first quarter of the year, and getting rid of anything (or anybody) that didn’t work well in the current year. 

I learned that any agent who didn’t have the first quarter set up in the previous last quarter, was losing the first quarter along with the opportunity to grow adequately for the rest of the year.  Taking time from March to September to meet with vendors costs way too much money, as that is what we call “A” time to be spent with clients.  November and December is “C” time, meet with vendors, and “B” time, doing those things that will create the most “A” time come 1/1 through 9/30.  For me, “C” time pretty much shuts down on 1/2/07 and “B” time has to be set on an automated time release basis to keep feeding the “A” time through the season. 

My personal challenges this year include:

1) Finding the means to connect with the internet from anywhere and anytime.  Connecting means connecting to the forms available to write contracts, not just a blackberry thingie.  So I need my laptop to have it’s own, anywhere, internet connection.

2) I need to be able to print contracts AND make copies with signatures from anywhere.  So I guess that is some kind of portable printer that connects to the laptop.  Do I need a “notebook” vs. a laptop?  Do I need one of those huge cases with wheels to carry my technology around with me?  How do I print a contract and make copies of the signatures (scan and print?) from a vacant house, for example.  Is there a laptop that also prints all by itself without a separate printer AND makes hard copies of signed contracts?

3) I have enough to handle my photography needs.  I don’t want to advance beyond my current capabilities in that regard.  I’d rather hire a photographer when needed for advanced efforts.  So simply finding a photographer that meets my needs before 1/1 is my only chore here.

4) I found the perfect GPS device, but the person who has it, built it himself.  It was a GPS that connected in his car via an ipod and played music until it was time to do something.  The GPS interrupted the music and said “You will be making a left turn ahead at x street” and then the music resumed.  Best bet is to get that person to build one for me.

5) This is the first year that blogging will be part of my business plan.  I just had to wing it last year and see where it fit naturally, since I started the day before 1/2/06.  This year I have to place the blogging activities into the business plan, with both a sense of purpose and a timeframe. Since no one else seems to be getting as much business from blogging as I am, I think I’ll consult with myself on that one.

6) I’ve decided not to participate in lead generators.  Never have.  See no reason to start now.  So HouseValues can stop calling me for the $750.00 a month plan.  I have a different idea to target market, in areas I want to cultivate more business.  Paying for leads would cut into my ability to negotiate fees, so $750 x 12 or $9,000 gets added to my client kickback fund.

7) I can’t keep winging my fee negotiation strategy, so I’m going to implement a more transparent commission model for both buyers and sellers.  I am studying the fees I charged and didn’t charge this year to formulate the model.  I’ve run enough experiments with both buyers and sellers, including the unheard of negotiating the other agent’s fee :0 to make up my own innovative schedule.

8) I want to implement podcasts with my own voice (as opposed to the robotic Sellsius type podcast) beginning Jan 1.  I want to record and post tutorials to buyers, sellers and agents.  This way my blog readers can either read or listen or both and I can forward the podcast posts to clients and agents as needed throughout the selling season without the need to repeat myself for every new transaction or every newly hired agent.

9) Since I am a multiple site blogger, my needs are somewhat different from the needs of the average real estate agent blogger.  Setting a plan in place for consistency for all of my blogs is imperative.  Having them dovetail into one another is the goal.  But putting ALL of my eggs into the “blogbasket” is not good either, so I am setting up some hard and fast rules for blogging in 2007. This year I dropped other activities out of my schedule, like reading the King County Jornal every day, in order to fit blogging in.  But I don’t want to continue that through next year.  Doing my own stats consistently will be ultra important, as no one knows where this year is headed, and I don’t trust anyone’s opinion out there better than my own.  So I need to stay on top of the market, on a weekly basis, by doing my own stats and personally visiting the properties that are and are not selling.  By blogging on the topics I need to follow, I can kill two or more birds with one stone.  Multi-tasking is the key to blogging.  Blogging needs to be part of what I do, and not something i do in addition.  So far this year, that strategy has worked well.  In 2007, I need to time manage the blogging, so it stays focused.

10) Hiring and firing, less of the former and more of the latter :-)  In 2007 the original plan, which was to have 12 agents who contribute $10,000 per to the company, is key.  I may up that to a $12,000 cap.  Agents need to be innovative in their client commission schedules.  Agents need to make more, while at the same time charging the consumer less.  The key is for all agents to have the ultimate authority to negotiate fees with their clients, and to pay their brokers less.  It’s the only way for consumers to win.  More of the commission needs to end up in the consumer’s pocket.  Less of the commission needs to end up in the broker’s pocket and none of the commission should be funneled into a lead generator’s pocket.  If we are heading into the market we all predict we are, or at least that I predict we are, lower commissions will be key to the success of both buyers and sellers in 2007.  If appreciation goes down by 1% or 2%, the consumer has to make that up somewhere to stay moving in an equal upward trend.  Businesses that plan for that change are the ones who will succeed for both themselves and for their clients.

I have two weeks to revise my list of ten as needed and then start ticking them off the list before 1/2/07.  If anyone has any info to help me with items #1 and #2 up there, I would much appreciate it.  The rest I pretty much have down already.

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You can’t tear them ALL down October 28, 2006

tdfWhen we were talking about Popcorn Ceilings, Redmondjp asked, “if new houses two blocks away are selling for $1M, at what point does my 28-year-old rambler 2 mi from MS become a teardown? Somebody could buy my property,build a McMansion and put it on the market for $1M….td

at what point do you decide just to keep the roof from leaking and nothing else? This would be an excellent topic for a separate post, and I’d be really interested in your thoughts on this. There are hundreds if not thousands of older houses just on the Eastside where this same issue comes to bear…”

Excellent question Redmondjp.  The simple answer is: When the price a buyer will pay for the house to live in it, is less than the price a builder will pay for the lot to build something new on it, it reaches “tear down” value.

Take the Redmond house shown here. It went on market in November of 2002 for $467,000 and sold in June of 2003 for $380,000.  Today it is on market for $650,000, Zillow values it at $820,652 and the tax assessor puts it at $557,000.  When it sells, we will know the rate of appreciation for land cost in Redmond :-).  If the cost of $380,000 represented the value of the lot back in June of 2003, the land will have appreciated at a rate of 18% consistently since that time, to be worth $650,000 today.

The question isn’t, how does the value of the house decrease to the same degree that the value of the lot increases, until the two meet and we tear them all down.  The question is, if all of the splits and ramblers reached lot value and builders did put them all “on the market for $1M”, at what point do you saturate the market with too many houses that cost $1M or more?  Contrary to poplular belief, not everyone who works for Microsoft can easily afford to run out and buy houses close to work if they all, all of a sudden, became new houses priced at over a million dollars.

From the minute I hit this crazy town, besides wondering why everyone was giving full price per square foot value to finished below grade basements,  I started tracking the high end.  This market is not going to fall because of the $390,000 ramblers or the $475,000 median priced homes.  This market is going to fall from the top down.  It is my premise, that the market will topple based on an oversupply of $1M+ premises.

As of last night”

1) There were 28 homes for sale in King County priced at $6M or more, NONE in escrow and only 10 sold in the last 12 months.  That equals a 2.8 year supply on market IF no others come on market in the next 2.8 years.

2) There were 49 homes priced at $3.5 to $6M, 7 in escrow and 34 sold in the last 12 months, a little over a one year supply.

3) $3M to $3.5M - 40 for sale, 2 in escrow, 27 sold in the last 12 months, a 1.38 year supply.

4) In the $1M to $2M and the $2M to $3M, over a year’s supply on market.

Hundreds and hundreds of homes on the market priced at over $1M.  At what point do we have more houses priced there than we have people to buy them?  And when do the builders stop building them?

Some people say, “Who cares what is happening at the top?  Why is ARDELL always running stats in the million plus range?”  Because lots of these properties are new or vacant, which means they MUST sell at a lower price some day.  And when you can get a $2M house for $1.5 and a $1M house for $900, the $900 houses drop because who is going to pay $900,000 for the house now that they can get a house that used to be $1.1 for $900?  No one.  The pressure will come from the top down, so stop talking about the bottom up crowd.  When you have a glut of homes priced at $1M and up, and the builders keep building them…something’s got to give and the effects will trickle down. 

Until then, I’m not going to “get my head out of the clouds”.  It’s the nosebleed section way up there that will determine where this market is utimately headed.   Ms. $1.4 who should have priced and sold her house for $1.1 a long time ago, may just pull up her for sale sign and decide to stay.  But the builders can’t run away from their finished products.  The vacant houses can’t cash flow by renting them out.  The high end has to move OUT or DOWN, and if down is the answer, the rest of the market will get pushed down by them and with them.

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The Future of Blogging According to Matt October 27, 2006

Matt’s up on stage with Liz Lawley of Microsoft Research talking about the future of blogging as the final session at the Blog Business Summit.

It has been a fun conversation with Liz and Matt taking different sides in terms of the importance of community vs. technology. Here are some of my favorite conversations (Some of these may only be paraphrasing).

Matt: “As technologies, we tell a Noble Lie.”

The idea is that the technologists are telling everyone the technology is going to rule the day, but in reality, the technology has been around for a while. What is new is that we have an audience to read the massive amount of content that has been created!

Matt: “When we look at the search engines like Google… and Yahoo and Microsoft… I feel bad like I have to do equal opportunity pimping when I’m on stage…”

Host: “What do you see as the future of the internet?”
Matt: “I don’t know… Don’t even want to guess at that. The reason I’m up here on stage is timing. WordPress is here because of timing.”

Host: “If you could buy any companies today, who would it be? Who is doing things right?”
Matt: “The companies I’m going to buy is Amazon and Sun. Sun is the only company that is innovating at a lower level. and Amazon is doing the same thing: they are making it a true grid… That is going to be the platform where the next generation of the web is being built.”
Liz: “I would agree with Amazon. I would also buy Six Apart. They recognize the way people are using the web and the way people network at these low levels.”

Matt also unleashed the news that the new version of WordPress (2.0.5) was just released. Note that the first released version of WordPress MU (1.0!) was also released recently. We used WPMU to build out the Move Blogs. The flexibility in design that this tool provides in terms of upgrades and design is awesome and I can’t wait until we get the chance to upgrade to this version!

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Ten Ways to a Killer Blog by the Scobles

The Scobles (Robert and Maryam) led a fun presentation which began as 10 ways to killer blog, but ended as a way to 15 fun (and potentially valuable) tips.

It was a fun talk and Maryam’s giddy attitude was infectious with the crowd playing along with fun questions.

  1. Blog because you want to.
    • “A story without love is not worth telling.”
  2. Read other blogs:
    • Blogging metaphor: linking and conversations.
  3. Pick a niche you can own (be different).
    • 2 kinds of bloggers: (1) People who blog to change things. (2) People who just want to talk to their friends.
    • It’s a google world. They would show me how they use the computer. They enter the world through the google interface.
    • TechCrunch came in late to the game, but he managed to go straight to #1. He was very focused on a specific niche of the market.
  4. Link to other blogs
    • Is there an A-list? Robert says “no”, but then admits that it would be hard for any blogger to quickly reach the level of the top 20 bloggers.
  5. Admit mistakes
    • Best way to gain credibility
  6. Write Good Headlines
    • A form of search engine optimization
  7. Use other media
  8. Have your own voice
    • Doesn’t look at his writing as a craft… Just talking to individuals.
  9. Get outside the blogoshere.
    • Go meet up with people!
  10. Market yourself
  11. Write well
  12. Expose yourself
    • If corporate types enter it very reserved, it doesn’t work. Press releases don’t work. It takes more than that to get people engaged. Some photos of kids or cats can expose the blogger as a real human.
  13. Help other people blog
  14. Engage with commenters
    • Don’t be skiddish on participating on other blogs.
  15. Keep your integrity
    • “You are what you appear to be!”
    • If you are taking advertising or accepting gifts, disclose that.

One of the interesting things to note is that Robert gave RCG our first link yesterday. In talking with Robert last night he asked how much traffic his link had sent, and I said I hadn’t noticed a spike (i.e. I hadn’t been “scoblized“). I just checked my stats and he’s sent 5 hits (one of them being me!). I think this low number speaks to the importance of “quality” links where the blogger (no matter who it is) actively encourages their users to check out a post! (Don’t get me wrong, I loved getting the link from Robert, I was just surprised to find out how little traffic it sent!)

Also, I noticed that Randy of Stewtopia (sitting next to me) has already hit post on his commentary from this session!.

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Tear Downs October 26, 2006

One of the commenters, Redmondjp, asked about tear downs. Kirkland is famous for new homes being put where old ones used to be. But our conversation stemmed around whether or not Bellevue and Redmond ramblers built in the 50s and 60s will go the way of these Kirkland teardowns. I know of a few in Bellevue. I don’t know any in Redmond.

Here are a few recent tear downs, before and after, from Kirkand. What do you think?

Should the old ones have stayed?

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Building Communities Online

Out of all the sessions at the Blog Business Summit, the session on building online communities held a special place of interest for me. In many ways, I simply happened upon the community that I’ve built at RCG, so it was refreshing to hear the speakers articulating thoughts I’ve had on how to build a community. In many ways, building a community feels somewhat intuitive (i.e. respect your users), but it turns out that the details often lead to tricky minefields. In many ways, this lesson highlighted just how far behind the real estate sphere is in creating effective online communities.

The three panelists, Elisa Camahort, Tara Hunt, Betsy Aoki, have all spent time on the front lines dealing with the good and bad of building up an online community.

Tara Hunt’s background includes running the grassroots marketing of Riya, which launched with a tremendous amount of buzz. On a high level, here are some high level tips for building a community:

In particular, I really like the advice she gave with how to deal with gadflys (i.e. troublemakers). She said one very effective method is to put them in positions of power! (“kill them with kindness!”) Her experience was backed up by Elisa (of BlogHer) who said one of the most effective tools in moderating the group blogs has been to make the most vocal (often troublemakeing) members as group moderators. That process of putting them in the position of enforcing the code of conduct effectively changes their view! Interesting stuff.

Another interesting topic Tara hit upon was to describe how Flickr’s first grew their community. Turns out that Caterina (one of their founders) acted as a first-class host when Flickr launched and reached out to each and every new user to tell them (based on the photos they were submitting) the different groups that might interest them.

Betsy Aoki (aka the Microsoft Blog Queen) gave a nice overview of some of the community building efforts she has been part of at Microsoft (most notably building up MSDN and QnA. I found it particularly interesting that by blogging about a product in development (QnA), Microsoft was able to get 300 sign-ups a day for the public beta (even before there was anything for anyone to see!). In addition to the sign-ups, a strong community was built (before the product) to the point that at launch, community members were on the front line defending the code of conduct because they had taken part in its creation. However, her most memorable line (of which I’m only able to paraphrase) was when she compared creating a community to throwing a party: “There is an organic nature to it, but if you don’t provide a place, organize the food and drinks, prepare the music, etc. the party is not going to happen”

The third panelist was Elisa Camahort of BlogHer, a huge community with a special emphasis on issues important to women (but it was made very clear, men are still welcome there!). A lot of her comments focused on the need for the community organizers to “respond”. In addition to speaking and listening, community leaders need to respond to issues. Being responsive has been a common theme at the conference and is constantly touted as a key differentiators of blogs.

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Enjoying the Blog Business Summit in Seattle

I’m currently attending the Blog Business Summit at the Bell Harbor Conference Center at Pier 66 in Seattle. It’s a beautiful facility (and wifi works well!).

The first session led by Jason Calacanis was a great and very personal history about blogging. If I had to summarize his talk in a few words, it would be about the importance of authenticity. With a great list of speakers, (including Robert Scoble whose blogging about Jason’s announcement of a new podcast on PodTech) it should be a great couple of days!

As I learn stuff at the conference, I’ll try to put together updates of things that I’m learning!

(By the way, I randomly sat down next to Drew Meyers of Zillow,and I’ve already ran across Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems)

UPDATE: Just noticed that Drew has a personal blog where he has a great summary of Jason’s talk.

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Add-ons and a new Firefox

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First, if you haven’t upgraded yet, Firefox 2.0 is out. It’s a quick and easy download and will update itself from that point on. Some of the new treats include a spell checker, faster speeds, and an improved rss handler.

Second, if you’re using Firefox to avoid viruses (and for the spellchecking), that’s great, but you might be missing some of the best add-ons. My list includes:

Adblock - blocks ads from websites and makes the web a much more pleasant place. The drawback: you have to pick the ads. The fix…

Adblock Filterset.G - gives Adblock a huge list of ads to block and updates itself every time I open firefox

BugMeNot - lets me log in to free sites that require a login (like the New York Times) by right clicking and clicking “login with bugmenot.” Others have signed up with fake email addresses so I don’t have to.

Customize Google - tons of google choices, but my favorites are secure gmail and “Google suggests” from the search box as I type

easyGestures - lets little mouse gestures control the browser. (Pretty geeky)

Google Calendar Notifier - unobtrusively pops up in the lower right hand corner whenever I have an event on my calendar (they text message me too)

Google Send to Phone - highlight any text on a page, click send to phone and you have a text message. Very useful for addresses and directions. (they haven’t upgraded it to 2.0 yet!)

Viamatic FoXpose - shows me a snapshot of all of my tabs (when I remember it’s there)

For web development:

FireBug - javascript debugger. Yuck. Javascript.

ColorZilla - tells me the web color for any color on any page (web colors look like #6685AF)

IE View - opens any page in internet explorer so I can remember why it’s such a pain

Web Developer - lets me look at a page from many angles. My favorite use is to highlight a little text and clicking “View Selection Source” to see the html for a part of a page

Internet Exploder 7 just came out too. Reports say it’s much better than Explorer 6, but I’m keeping 6 so I can keep testing ShackPrices on it. If you don’t want Firefox, for security’s sake you should at least upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

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Buying wisely in any market October 25, 2006

segI find that most people who track countywide stats, looking for bubbles and market trends, are not people who are buying and selling property. Anyone who is actually buying or selling property knows, that countywide stats tell you both everything and nothing. It is in the small subsections of any given market that you will find the information you need to make wiser choices.

For instance, can you really compare ramblers built in the 60s to newer housing choices? Can you compare “too small for anyone” condos of 400 square feet, to the saleability of 2 bedroom 2 bath condos? Lumping everything together tells you nothing. Houses on busy roads, for example, will not sell as well, and will sell worse at times like this when buyers are being more cautious. I think of houses on busy roads when I hear comments like, “The market is getting weak! I see more and more for sale signs every day while driving to work!” Well let’s assume that most people do not drive on quiet 25 mi. per hour residential streets when driving to work. So what they are seeing is the weakness of properties situated on busy roads, not the market in general.

A good example is tracking newer townhomes, in the $300,000 to $500,000 range, within 3 miles of Microsoft. This is a market segment that is driven by its own forces and outperforms the market in general. In the last six months there were only 21 townhomes sold, built since 1990 and within 3 miles of Microsoft, between $300,000 and $500,000. Of these 21, 16 sold AT or better than full price in less than 30 days. Several in less than 10 days and most in less than 20 days. At the moment there are only 3 available, all on market less than 15 days and two at less than 5 days on market and there are 3 in escrow.

So of the total six month inventory, you can expect four to sell per month and there are only 3 on market, two of which have only been on for two days and three days, respectively. Those are some pretty strong market stats. What are the odds that these will start dwindling on market for excessive periods of time or go down in price? Slim to none. Making offers on this product, based on what you are reading about the King County market in general, would make no sense whatsoever.

So Chicken Little, maybe the sky IS falling for older ramblers built on busy roads with only one bathroom. But conversely the sky is still the limit in newer townhomes for sale within close proximity to Microsoft. There’s a whole lot of varied stats in between. Make sure you are making your choices based on the product and market segment that YOU are considering buying. Buying the biggest “bargain” on market, could lead you into buying in that segment of the market that will not appreciate, and will be difficult to sell later for at or more than what you paid.

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Popcorn ceiling removal October 24, 2006

popI really would like as much info as anyone may have about removing popcorn ceilings. Whomever invented those things should be drawn and quartered. Also called “cottage cheese” ceilings. I think they look more like large curd cottage cheese than popcorn.

1) How have you tested for asbestos before removing?

2) Any step by steps of the process appreciated

3) If anyone in the Seattle area has had them professionally removed, who did it and can you break down the cost per square foot? I assume without asbestos is cheaper to remove than with asbestos. Is there a cost per square foot?

Anyone know why they were popular? Anyone still like them, and if so, why?

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