Everyone stand up and CHEER!
In an industry marked by “we’ve always done it that way” insanity – not to mention dozens of people on my blog telling me recently that their calendar and magnet mailings still paid off – there is HOPE for the future!
I just received an email and it contained a copy of a – gasp! – newspaper ad from a real estate company that is about to enter “Real Estate, the Next Generation.” Find out how this company is boldly going where few of their competitors will ever dare go themselves…
Yesterday, Chrysler announced it was going to suspend production at ALL of its North American factories until mid January. This was excellent news - for those of us who believe business is a rational process of allocating scarce resources to meet consumer demand. Others may think it’s just a political ploy to get politicians to fork over taxpayer money for the “poor, hardworking (?) UAW laborers” who will go be furloughed over the holiday. Regardless of your stand on the auto maker bail out (would just one new outlet please interview Honda or Toyota during this debate?) there remains a solid, clear lesson for the real estate industry within Chrysler’s decision to halt production.
Well, Bailout Nation (as CNBC’s Larry Kudlow calls it) is at it again – this time trying to jam a $34 billion dollar “loan” with “conditions” through Congress but with a twist. Rather than just giving the money to the Little Three American Auto Companies (who, by the way, we could purchase for less than 15 billlion) and especially because we don’t want their greedy, evil CEO’s giving themselves bonuses with it, we’ll appoint a Car Czar to oversee the money and their plans to “become viable.”
Interesting plan. Considering the real estate industry is also looking for a bail out, should we consider asking for a Housing Czar?
I think I’ll apply for the job as Federal Treasurer next month. Apparently, all you need is an abacus and a few simple thoughts and you can at least blow a trillion or so taxpayer dollars. If you’ve actually studied economics, – well, hey, maybe consumers can just fix this mess by making one small change in their approach to purchasing a home…
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Fantasy Island – (US) - The Federal Reserve today unveiled yet another plan to distort the housing industry and stave off a rebound in the marketplace by using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage banks to offer mortgages as low as 4.5% - nearly a full point lower than what ‘unencouraged’ banks have currently priced the risk of mortgage lending in the free market. Undaunted by the volume of empirical data indicating that this very policy of offering below market rates to sub-prime credit borrowers originally caused the over-extension of consumer credit and sharp inflation in housing prices in the last decade, Treasury officials said today (with a straight face) that lowering the cost of lending would halt the slide in housing by enabling consumers to borrow larger sums of money. Read more…
One of the most exciting roles our company plays for real estate brokers and agents worldwide happens when we are called upon to do Strategic Planning with them. It’s fascinating to see how planning energizes people - even though many of them have been operating for years without a written plan (:>) Here are some of our tips for your planning for the Future! Read more…
Many of us think we know the story about Thanksgiving. Some starving Pilgrims meet some generous Indians and somebody cooks a turkey, corn and cranberry sauce. Instantly, everyone’s good friends and two hundred years later, America has created the most wealthy, healthy and wise country mankind has ever known.
Yet the Pilgrims almost starved to death. Why?
Recently, some readers of my blog have commented that I continue to take the mickey out of the REALTOR industry for its marketing use of postcards. No mention that I’ve offered alternatives to the postcard marketing option for twenty years. Oh, let’s see. EMail. Blogs. Websites. Phone calls.
Maybe it’s just time for a collective postcard scream?
Here’s a question you’re unlikely to hear asked in real estate companies these days: Is the stock market drop a GOOD or BAD thing for the housing industry’s current slump? At a time when nobody seems to have the answers – not the Fed, not Congress, not the Detroit auto makers – to turn around the economy, could it be that the market itself has found a way to revive the housing industry and jump start the economy.
And all it takes is a good, old fashioned market crash?
After spending five days in Orlando, Florida with the National Association of REALTORS Annual Conference, I thought it might be helpful to provide the 99.95% of the Association who didn’t go to the event with a few take-aways from what we saw. With trainers, consultants and trade show booth staff in every corner of the Conference, Matthew Ferrara & Company easily saw a little of everything going on. Here, then, are ten take-aways of what you missed.
Sometimes, you just have to learn the hard way. That seems to be the real estate industry’s preferred method of implementing technology tools – at least for the last twenty years or so. A herald comes over the hill, the masses become excited, everyone just starts doing it: And that’s when the highest risk to sound business principles usually occurs. Which is exactly where we are today with IDX – the “sharing” of listing inventory between competing brokers’ websites. It sounds like a good idea, except for one small snag:
Your million dollar website now looks awful because the data from your friendly cooperating brokers sucks.
What separates the great agents from the rest of the pack? Is it fancy training, an incredible manager or the latest tech tools? Why does the top 25% of the business earn an average of $200,000 in commissions, while the next 25% segment only earn $46,000 each year? Never mind the bottom half: They’d do better as Starbucks Baristas. Ask agents and they’ll tell you it’s luck, being in the right place at the right time, or even the power of statues buried upside down in the corner of the yard.
We think, however, that it only takes six words to make a huge difference in agent productivity.
Let’s pretend for a moment that reality doesn’t exist. That effect doesn’t follow cause. That reason is simply an “alternative” approach to how the world works. That everything means nothing. And that history is useless. If any of this sounds like the way people think today about money, the government and their lives, then maybe that’s all we need to construct a non-housing-market-based theory of why stock markets are crashing worldwide.
So let’s at least be fair and stop blaming it on the real estate and mortgage industry.
Graduates of our Integrity Selling course learn a very important principle in the world of sales: You always get paid what you think you are worth. It’s how the great sales people in real estate always earn the top dollars – because they believe they are worth them and won’t settle for a second-rate pay for the first-rate service they provide to their clients. The principle of “getting what you believe you are worth” is usually applied to commissions, but lately, with our clients, we’ve been taking this to a whole new level:
Are you achieving the success you believe you deserve?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
If at first you don’t succeed, try to destroy the economy again. That seems to be Congress’ motto these days, as they prepare to vote on the “revised” bailout bill.This, time, however, the proposed bill is so full of spending pork – from exempting children’s wooden arrows from excise taxes to increased cover of rum excise tax revenues – that proves Twain’s other saying that there was nothing a Congressman knows that couldn’t be taught to a flea.
What a scam!
