The market has changed. Has your strategy for pricing listings changed? Does it even need to? I have devised a simple formula, and I want to run it up the flagpole of the blog zone here at Active Rain. I'm also interested to see what other agents have put together as a strategy for pricing listings now. To read more about my strategy visit the blog post. Is your strategy going to bring the buyers and make them stick, or are you the type of agent who would rather avoid having your clients breathe down your neck?

I was shocked with the mild mannered High School student who answers the phones in our office. She was telling me about how well my online marketing efforts work because she said that she ran across my name when she was doing a Google search on something local to our area. Then I started to ask her advice on things like MySpace, after a short exchange she mentioned how I need to pay much more attention to Facebook, and "Get your profile out there." Amazing with all of the seminars and people offering to teach you networking and how to make contacts in real estate, I think that she put it very simply. When it comes to social networks, you need to put yourself out there. Active Rain is no doubt the epicenter of real estate social networking and online referrals, but that doesn't mean that website traffic, referrals, and other great stuff are absent from the other huge players. Maybe AR is just better because everyone is so nice. Was it Brian Brady that told us about the strategy of puking your profile out there everywhere? Well here is to my reforming my use of the Social Networking strategy. For those of you that don't already use twitter, I think it is worth checking out. It is fun, because it allows you to follow your friends.

Hello everyone,

It has been a while again. It just seems so strange that I get a weird bout of writers block every time I cruise on over to Active Rain. I know it is my loss too. Anyhow, I have been working pretty hard on reworking my Laguna Niguel Real Estate Blog, and I wanted to jump back into the rain to talk about some stuff with all of my old pals.

The market: Current status in Orange County = Flabby. Sellers who say they don't have to sell are still around in big numbers. Buyers who say they don't have to or want to buy are all over and growing in numbers. Lenders are out working their beats like cops doing damage control, and CNBC says that a rate cut is already priced into the market. God forbid that something else should happen.

The Real Estate 2.0 community: Is now like a juggernaut compared to 2 years ago. Ahh the time when only about 10% of the industry professionals "got it" when it came to topics related to to technology. It seems like there is always another meet-up or conference taking place, a very exciting thing.

The offline community: Agents have jumped ship for a while now, trying to eek out every last advantage possibly under a different broker. When the market it tough, it usually has nothing to do with the broker. The good news is that the high-end market keeps plugging along. Many of the coastal buyers and sellers remain unaffected by mortgage woes because for them financing is mostly a thing of convenience. Here's to AR. I'll be back soon to tell you more about some new business tools that I'm developing for your benefit. - Rory For more information, please visit, Laguna Beach Real Estate

Brace yourself, but everything in the headline of this blog post is absolutely true. It was corroborated by several independent eyewitnesses.

The story goes like this, an associate agent has moved out of the area, but retains a listing as part of her former team here. The owner of the property lives elsewhere in the area (not in the listed property), but was out of town at the time of this event. His listing is staged, perhaps with his own items, but he also allows missionaries to stay at his condo from time to time.

The location of these condos is in Laguna Hills, and the neighborhood is called Quail Creek. It is very interesting because there is a running creek that goes right through the development, complete with small zen-like bridges that bridge over and back across the creek. The creek itself had some fast running water that wasn't at all stagnate. Apparently, in this running creek wild ducks are natural visitors.

Flash forward to the emergency call that we received last night at 8pm. Neighbors called the listing agent to tell her that several people "Dressed as Nurses", were carrying "Buckets" while rushing into this condo unit. Then the neighbors became alerted and curious as to what was going on, they went around to the back side of the unit that faces the back patio. This is when the nurses uncovered the buckets to bring out 5 white adult ducks.

Needless to say, I was dispatched to the scene to investigate. I accessed the key from the lockbox, and I was halfway protecting my head from the blows of a crazy nurse wielding a baseball bat. I was able to turn on the lights. I looked across the room and through the patio door, I saw 5 adult ducks huddled up together. I realized at that point that I might not be in the condo alone, not being trained in law enforcement techniques, I still opened the closet doors to see if in fact the waterfowl smugglers were still possibly in the vicinity. I didn't see any perps in the condo, but I made sure that the ducks had access into the creek if they wanted. They were on the back patio, but only some landscaping separated them from the creek, so my work there was done. After all, I definitely didn't have any buckets to bring the ducks back out.

For more information on Quail Creek, visit: Laguna Hills Real Estate

While on Broker Preview today, I noticed an unusually long line to enter the gated oceanfront community of Lagunita.  This long line of cars turned into a full bore cluster while the parking rent-a-cop waited in his patrol car to wag his finger at people who were parked in one place for under 15 minutes. Imagine a traffic jam heading into a cul-de-sac, and that is exactly what I was up against.

The reason that agents were all in a rush is because of the 2 listings that were on preview today, one was a true ocean front property.

That property is 24 Lagunita in Laguna Beach. The listing agent is John McMonigle of Coldwell Banker.  John is what we call a celebrity realtor, having appeared on Oprah, and he currently has the highest priced listing in Orange County, the Portabella Estate.

What does it cost to live on the sand in Laguna Beach? In this case, $14,650,000.  Remember this is actually someone's second home.  Don't worry though, you can get an Ocean Front condo for $2,500,000.

How many people can buy this home that is almost 15 million?  Well it turns out, quite a few.  In the last year, I have been contacted by more buyers looking for ocean front homes than those looking for first time condos, or homes.

Do you think that the buyer for this home needs financing?  Do you think that the credit crunch in the market makes any difference at all at this price point? ~ Not likely.

Have you been frustrated with your posts to the carnival of real estate going completely unnoticed?  Is this just yet another way to experience rejection in the real estate industry?

Here are some thoughts about what is wrong (and what's right) with the real estate blog carnival.

1) The carnival currently gets way too many submissions for all of the quality posts to get mentioned.

2) Of the submissions there are still way too many people willing to spam the carnival hosts with poor submissions that distract from the quality.

3) The carnival should be further subdivided, and perhaps split into submission categories to make it easier to have a few quality posts in a greater number of focused topic areas.

4) Posts submitted to the blog carnival should be well crafted, well thought out, and dare i say, spell checked.

5) Persistence pays.  If your post doesn't make it, the key is to keep trying.  Don't shun the carnival just because your deserving post didn't show up.  Try and try again.

Any other thoughts and advice of how to be a success in the carnival?

Megan over Trulia asked me if I might sit down and write a guest blog for them.  That post is now available for your blog viewing pleasure.  It was a great thing that ActiveRain taught me everything I needed to know about blogging.  That's the only way that I ran into all of these great bloggers.  So I have to give my hat's off to the ActiveRain community for making that work.

When you read that post over on the Trulia Blog, realize that that pizza was actually in my kitchen (and later in my hand) during the process of writing that post.  That may give you some idea of what served as the inspiration for the content.  On a related note, the pizza was cold. 

 I guess the post is filed under "geek corner" for a reason, but I think that means that the author is a geek.  However this is most likely with respect to Real Estate technology, which is  a good thing to be a geek about.  I'd shudder to think that it is geek, as in the term "geeky" ascribed to by the starts of "Beauty and the Geek".

Anyhow, I think it is good that all of us "Rainers" are helping one another stay on top of technology, and so far some really great things have grown out of it! 

I ran across this website the other day, HungryAgents.com.  It is a site that allows agents to provide "Full Service Real Estate" services while under-cutting one another's paychecks for a change.  This saves the whole ugly step of having potential clients ask for a cut in your paycheck and sanitizes the experience for them.  Look at their cute logo.  Yep that lapdog represents you, a REALTOR(TM) because they will only work with REALTORS(TM) since REALTORS(TM) have great ethics.

So we only want to hire ethical people, but we force them to pay for your business in a most unethical set of circumstances for the opportunity to meet you.

But don't stop there, after you buy business by cutting your paycheck, thereby fitting into the "Hungry" category, then they have the gumption to require a $795 flat referral fee, this is the final insult that puts you all the way down into the "Starving" category.

I have nothing against other Real Estate business models that offer variable service, and variable pricing structures.  This concept to me is not what that is, this is a business built on top of the Full-Service brokerage model that ruthlessly double bills the agents, who have the tightest margins of anyone in the business.

This puts a whole new meaning on "putting the squeeze" on somebody.

 

Thoughts? 

A couple of days ago, I read an article on the Trulia Blog, that made me feel bad for the trulia folks.  I know that plane tickets and business trips are a tax write off, but going all the way to San Diego just to get stonewalled is harsh.  I'm speaking of course, of the run-in that trulia had at our recent convention.  Anyhow, it did generate some attention, after all, Sellsius, Inman, and my blog have some interesting stuff to say about the topic as well as Trulia themselves.  

It would be nice if they didn't have to go buy plane tickets and fly down the coast to have all of that take place, but what are you gonna do?  I say make the best of it, and head to Sea World. 

I'm going to divulge something that is near and dear to my heart.

Since only a year or so ago, Real Estate WAS and (may be still) considered severly behind in terms of technology comprehension.

I haven't found anyone on ActiveRain lacking in the technology department, also, you are the leaders of the intersection of the two mediums.  I have been so annoyed by spam email lately, that I just wonder if real estate professionals suffer a larger amount of spam than other industries.  The reason this thought is valid is that there have been prosecutions of spammers in other industries such as the medical field.  Like any other criminal act, how much does jail time and a fine translate to some prevention? You decide. I just know that I'm tired of it, and if a local lawyer asked for money to prosecute spammers, I'm sure that he'd get plenty.

 

With that, here are the steps that you can use to find the home address and phone number of some spammers:

 

1)  You get an email from: ExtremeOffer@FakeRealEstateSpamDomain.com :

Saying,

Dear, [First Name] buy our stuff.

blah blah blah Viagra blah.

WHAT YOU DO, go to an internet WHOIS service, such as www.WHOIS.SC  and type in the domain name, in this case, FakeRealEstateSpamDomain.com.  There are other whois services, just google whois to find them.

It will either tell you who registered that domain, or their phone number, or it could be blank, but in any case, DON'T Give Up

2) Go to the company home page: www.FakeRealEstateSpamDomain.com ... most likely they will have a "Contact Us" or "About Us"  page. That page may give you an email address, a name, or a phone number, if it does, then google that information until you get a cross reference. If it does NOT give you that information, just inspect each page carefully, there may be a bunch of links back to another website, or some other telling information.  If there are links back to another website, just repeat the process from step 1 with that domain name.

3) Finding a spammer is like peeling away layers of an onion.  All spammers are idiots, and therefore, they think that they can't get caught, and they think that they can hide, but they are wrong.  The more you peel at the layers, the more you are bound to end up at their website, IP address, phone number, fax number, email address, home address, first name, last name. etc etc.

4) Any business built on deception should be actively shunned by professionals at large, so if you get spam emails suggesting that you use or subscribe to their services, I strongly suggest that you decline their appeal, and do not support their unethical business practices. 

5) Any spammers that originate from this site will be tracked by myself and other dedicated users, so I also suggest that if you are considering using this platform to spread your irrelevance, that you refrain.