Those Freakonomics guys are back again with a new book called Super-Freakonomics, where they continue their Realtor bashing with even more outrageous comments directed towards real estate agents.
With the first book, they posited the question How Are Real Estate Agents Like the Ku Klux Klan?
They're actually NOT like the Ku Klux Klan, of course, but their position was that when light was shown on the modus operandi of the KKK, they became irrelevant, as will the lowly Realtor.
In their new book Super-Freakonomics they comb the depths of intellectual dishonesty by declaring that prostitutes with pimps make more money but that home sellers with real estate agents actually net less.
In arriving at their conclusion that a pimp provides more value than a real estate agent, the authors analyzed two completely unrelated studies.
The first study found that prostitutes working solo in Chicago earn $325 a week while performing an average of 7.8 tricks, while prostitutes with a pimp working the same area earn $410 a week while doing only 6.2 tricks.
Even after paying a 25%, the authors say, prostitutes with a pimp "come out ahead on just about every front."
They contrast this with a study out of Madison, Wis., that concluded that houses sold by owners over the Internet fetched about the same price as those sold by real estate agents.
Why even compare pimps to real estate agents? Because it's outrageous, of course.
The average real estate agent is a 53-year old woman. Not the kind of person likely to be involved in prostitution on any level.
But isn't it fun to insult nice hard-working folks and won't it sell a lot of books!
"A Realtor and a pimp perform the same primary service: marketing your product to potential customers," Levitt and Dubner explain. The go on to say: "once you consider the value you get for each of these two agents, it seems clear that a pimp's services are considerably more valuable than a Realtor's."
It's Day 4 in the 2009 Advanced Access debacle, and I am still amazed that their lack of transparency over the issues affecting the services they provide to their customers.
They were updating and moving their data over to new servers, but that was last week and we haven't been able to access our back "virtual office" since last week. No emails. And no way to reach their corporate offices. They don't answer their phone or emails.
It’s about 2:30 PST, and I still cannot access my website to make needed updates and add new listings. I've written more about it here at www.360Digest.com
I checked the Advanced Access website, and there is nothing on there about the outage, except an advertisement to entice new customers. (http://www.AdvancedAccess.com)
“We’re sorry. We’re messing up. We’re all working on it as hard as we can. We’re so sorry we didn’t answer the phones all weekend or respond to any of your emails. We will immediately hire someone to monitor emails and/or the phone on the weekend THE TIME WHEN MOST REAL ESTATE AGENT ARE AT WORK. We will never again make a move like this without having some sort of contingent back-up plan. Please don’t bad mouth us. We’ll give you all a month of free web-hosting if you just stay with us. It’s so much easier and cheaper to keep the clients we already have than to try to lure new clients in, especially with such poor public relations. Please forgive us!”
I've had an Advanced Access website for 10 years and was very happy with it the first 5 or so, until the company was sold to Dominion. Since then, Customer Service is a disservice and the product continues to suffer.
They've had periodic outages almost every month, and this last week, they've announced several "down times" late at night, but this weekend, the sites are out without explanation, we have no access to our "Virtual Office" to make needed updates and changes to our listings for our Open Houses on the weekend and no one is replying to emails and "Online Chat" is closed.
And, to add insult to injury, no one is in the office and you can't even call because the mailbox is FULL!
Just a week after announcing lay-offs of 25% of its workforce, Redfin had this ad posted on Craigslist. Why not just re-hire the people they let go? Does it really make more sense to re-hire contract workers so they don't have to pay benefits? Why not just hire traditional agents who work on commission? Or is that what they're going to do?
Very mysterious.
Stephen Rotella, who was president and chief operating officer of Washington Mutual when it failed last month after being battered by mortgage losses, has listed his house on Capitol Hill for $6.25 million.
Rotella, who was president and chief operating officer, is entitled under his current employment agreement to a cash severance of $12.7 million if he is terminated or quits with "good reason."
He and his wife Esther bought the house for $3.78 million a few months after Rotella arrived in Seattle, from KING-TV newscaster Jean Enerson, in June 2005. It's a 7,430-square-foot house and has five bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, a wine cellar and a fountain in the yard. It's located on almost an acre of land on the top of Capitol Hill, right behind Lake View Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is buried. Quiet neighbors.
The good news is that Coldwell Banker Bain is hiring. They are the 8th largest residential real estate company in the nation, employing more than 1,000 real estate professionals with 21 branch offices in the Pacific Northwest. Other brokerages throughout the nation are also hiring good and competent real estate agents.
No salary, commission sales only, but the sky's the limit. Unlike salaried agents, Coldwell Banker agents (and Century 21, Remax, etc.) have unlimited high earning potential and enjoy unparalleled training programs and vast marketing power. You can set your own hours and choose to work only on referral if you wish. No more meeting strangers in vacant homes if you don't want to do it or writing up pointless offers for bottom-feeders.
Ex-Redfin agents, think you'll miss that exciting atmosphere of building a start-up? If you've got the drive, help yourself get ahead instead of assisting some start-up VC-funded company that's just going to fire you as soon as times get tough. You can't fire yourself! Nothing is more exciting than working for yourself and keeping your own counsel. Aren't you tired of working for people who aren't as smart as you are? Liberate your life by being your own boss.
Think you'll miss the high-tech diddles and doo-dads you had at Redfin? Staying on the cutting edge of technology, Coldwell Banker and ReMax leads the pack in high-tech real estate. In fact, Coldwell Banker is the first real estate website to launch video in their marketing efforts for agents and properties (Go ahead...take a peek at your peers!). Additionally, Coldwell Banker is the first real estate company to list an actual home for sale in the virtual community of Second Life.
Where Redfin may have a failing business model, Coldwell Banker just recently celebrated 100 years in the real estate business. Good luck. And give us a call if you want to chat.
For the first time in it's ten year history, the annual Treehouse Conference will be held in Fall City, WA (25 miles east of Seattle), at Treehouse Point on October 10th, an events facility owned by Pete and Judy Nelson, the folks who own Tree House Workshop. (Peter Nelson is the author of a series of great Tree House books.)
Treehouse Workshop offers full design and build services for your treehouse project, but they also help you if you want to design and build it yourself.
Their workshops will equip a homeowner with the skills needed to design and build your own treehouse, and they cover how to select a tree and evaluate its health, basic tree-climbing, tool safety, design, construction of your platform, and how to build and finish your structure.
Tree House Workshop is also a licensed and bonded contractor in Washington State, so if you don't want to build your own, they can build it for you. Peter's book is a fabulous peek at treehouses he's designed and others have built around the world.
Seattle's Floating Homes Association biennial houseboat tour will be Sunday, September 7, 2008 from noon to 5:00 p.m. This year's tour will feature 12 floating homes, 9 on the east side of Lake Union and 3 in Portage Bay. A mix of quaint and eclectic cottages and larger, more modern as well as historic homes with a variety of decor have been specially chosen to give viewers a chance to look at this unique water-oriented community and lifestyle.
Many of us have our own websites that we have created ourselves. They belong to us, not our company or brokerage or web host, right?
A few years ago, as an experiment, I purchased a "Connecting Neighbors" website. I was intrigued by the interactive nature of the site and I loved the automatic monthly newsletters that I could adapt to my own chosen neighborhood. It was a template site, yet allowed for a good deal of customization. I could create pages and content, including neighborhood photos, school info, entertainment, arts, events, recipes and local real estate.
And I did that. I added photos of local restaurants and shops, parks, schools and events. I added stories about neighborhood happenings and highlighted local fund-raisers, pancake breakfasts and lasagna dinners. I added new listings as they became available, and I added hundreds of links to local and neighborhood websites that would be of interest to those who lived in or who were relocating to the neighborhood.
The coolest thing about the website was that, theoretically, after it was set up, you wouldn't have to do anything. Because it was interactive, readers could add their own content without being registered, and Connecting Neighbors would monitor the content for anything that was inappropriate. Readers could add information about their church picnic or the winner of the local elementary schools soccer match. It actually worked pretty well.
The cost of the website with the automatic newsletter mailing was $39.95 a month, and I had thought it worth-while if I had been able to get a critical mass of readers together to keep it fresh and updated.
Alas, I could not, and it was up to me to continually add content.
When they raised the price in January to $59.95 a month, I thought it time to bail and just chalk it up to a lesson learned.
However, when I went to cancel, they kept the site live.
When I pointed out to them that I had cancelled the website, I was told by a representative of the company: "Please note the website still remains live online so it can be resold by our sales team."
I was shocked. They had removed my name, photo and contact information from the site, but kept the name and all of the original content and photos online and they were attempting to market it, fully customized, to another real estate agent.
Luckily, I also owned the domain name, so I was able to redirect that to another page I had created, but I'm guessing other unwitting real estate agents may not be able to do that and they may become a victim of this company. Respected names in the real estate industry, including Michael Russer and Allen Hainge, are partners with Connecting Neighbors, and I hope they will look into this unfair practice so other agents are not victimized by their actions.
Connecting Neighbors urges agents to purchase not only the website through them, but the domain as well. Hence, when the website is discontinued, Connecting Neighbors can just sell that site to another agent, even though it may be a very elaborate site, with a customized look, feel and brand, created by one particular agent. Nothing belongs to the agent, it's all owned by Connecting Neighbors, even if created by the purchaser. This is good to know if you're considering working with this company. It's potentially a valuable product, but may not be worth the cost in the long run since once you start with them, they can just raise the price and if you discontinue, all your hard work, branding and unique domain name can then be sold to another.
The right thing to do would be to just take the website offline when the service was cancelled and not try to resell the site to another before removing all of the custom content.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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