Google recently acquired 25k square feet of office space in downtown Austin. They have been advertising for engineering positions, and expect to employ 125-150 people. Personally, I think that Google & Austin are a perfect fit…Austin, as a city, encourages creativity, and Google does the same.

So…tickets went on sale for Viva Aerobus! Check it out, mi amigos - muy facile y economico! The site is in Spanish, but even if you don’t speak, it’s fairly easy to navigate. Looks like, after taxes & fees, you can go round trip to Cancun for ~$150.

I’ve noticed that more than a few commentators are leaving 3 mediocre comments & leaving. I’m assuming this is to get the link juice. So…I’m bumping up the LLL settings to 4. This will make it even more obvious when people are just trying to game the blog for PR, and it will also add the nofollow to people who’ve done it in the past.

I appreciate all the genuine comments, and to the spammers, “please go away!”

So my original blog “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots” drew quite a bit of attention. Most readers thought it was funny, but it drew some criticism, as well. The negative attention was so heated that the word “lawsuit” was thrown around quite a bit (more on that another day.)

In order to avoid suit, I had to pull the original post, but one broker contacted me & asked that I put his headshot back up.

Frank is proud of his headshot. He loves it. In fact, he sent over 2 more.

and….

No one can argue that these are some of the cheesiest Realtor business cards out there. Why in the world would he put these out?

It turns out that Frank has the same ideas about Realtor headshots as I do - they’re unprofessional & cheesy. As you can see with his over the top cards, Frank decided to make his point about the industry in a slightly different way – by pointing out the absurdity through caricature.

A friend of mine in CA sent me some sold comparables to Marty Ummel’s home in Carlsbad, CA - you can click on the image above to see the full sheet. For those of you not familiar with the story, she’s the woman who is suing her Realtor because she feels she overpaid for her home. All of this information is in the public record in California:

Marty Ummel’s property is 1657 Amante Ct. She paid $1.2m for her property, which is $325/s.f. If you look at the comparables, she did pay 6.5% over the average price/s.f, but the the range in the neighborhood is $882k to $1.36m, and $242/s.f. to $389/s.f.

Whew! This can get confusing! Good thing she got an independent appraisal on the property!

Now…here’s the interesting part. According to these comparables (also public record) her house hasn’t gone down in value:

Think what you will about the validity of the lawsuit, the role that personal responsibility needs to play in people’s decisions, or what constitutes puffery vs. expert opinion. Regardless of those issues, these figures are compelling.

By DAVID STREITFELD
THE NEW YORK TIMES

CARLSBAD, Calif. — Marty Ummel believes she paid too much for her house. So do millions of other people who bought at the peak of the housing boom.

What makes Ummel different is that she is suing her agent, saying it was all his fault.

Ummel claims that the agent hid the information that similar homes in the neighborhood were selling for less because he feared she would back out and he would lose his $30,000 commission.

Real estate lawyers and brokers say the case, which goes to trial in North County Superior Court on Monday, is likely to be the first of many in which regretful or resentful buyers seek redress from the agents who found them a home and arranged its purchase.

“When your house appreciates $100,000 in the first six months, you’re not quite as concerned that maybe the valuation was $25,000 or $50,000 off,” said Clifford Horner of the law firm Horner & Singer. “But when your house goes down, you ask: ‘Who might have led me astray here?’ “

Agents representing buyers rarely had the opportunity to make mistakes during the last real estate boom, in the late 1980s, because the job hardly existed then. For decades, residential transactions almost always involved brokers who, whatever assistance they gave the buyer, legally represented only the seller. The long boom that began in the late 1990s put an end to that one-sided world. As prices spiked, buyer’s agents and brokers became popular as sounding boards, advisers and negotiators. The National Association of Realtors estimates they are now involved in two-thirds of all residential purchases.

That makes this the first housing collapse in which large numbers of buyers had a real estate professional explicitly looking after their interests. The Ummel case poses the question: In a relationship built on trust, where promises are rarely written down and where — as in this case — there is no signed contract, what are the exact obligations of these representatives in guiding their clients through a sizzling market?

“Agents have a lot of fiduciary duties, but they don’t make money unless they close the sale,” said Joel Ruben, a real estate lawyer in Manhattan Beach, Calif. “In an inflated market, there are built-in temptations to cut corners.”

The defendant in the Ummel case is Mike Little, a veteran agent with ReMax Associates. He will argue that Marty Ummel, who brought the case with her husband, Vernon, is trying to shift the blame for the couple’s own failures of research and due diligence.

“They simply didn’t do what is expected of a knowledgeable, sophisticated buyer, and are now looking for someone other than themselves to take responsibility,” Roger Holtsclaw, an agent who was hired by Little as an expert witness, said in a court deposition.

Horner, the lawyer, said valuation is a tricky area for brokers.

“Brokers aren’t appraisers,” said Horner, one of the writers of a guide to suing brokers. “They have no obligation to opine about value. But once they do, it becomes a gray area whether it’s puffery or a misstatement of a known fact.”

Most people who made a bad real estate deal might wince and move on, but people who know Marty Ummel describe her as unusually determined. She spent a year picketing ReMax offices on weekends.

Vernon Ummel, an administrator at Dominican University, gave her his permission to pursue the case, on one condition: “Don’t tell me how much the legal fees are.” So far, the bills come to $75,000, more than Marty Ummel’s annual salary as a fundraiser at California State University-San Marcos.

“I do not think I’m obsessive-compulsive, but I am 114 pounds of absolute perseverance,” Marty Ummel said.

Bank of America announced this morning that they plan to purchase Countrywide for $4b in the third quarter of 2008.  It will be a stock buyout.  It’s highly speculated as to why BOA would choose to take on the troubled mortgage corporation.  Some speculate they are doing so for the loan servicing software, and some speculate they are doing so to “save face” after their $2b bail out of the company earlier this year.  Bank of America has announced plans to shut down Countrywide’s failing sub-prime department.

Hi Eric!

I want to THANK you for having the GUTS to post The 10 Worse Page. It is a sad, but true message to all of us who work so hard to be viewed (in the consumer’s eyes) a professional. Keep in mind, I’m NOT talking about consumers we ‘know’, I’m talking about consumers we have NEVER met - after all, they are who we need to meet in order to build meaningful relationships to grow our SOI (sphere-of-influence) which is our primary source of business.

Unfortunately, the sad reality is that consumers can’t tell one Realtor® from another. Let’s be honest, real estate school teaches people how to pass a state exam so they can get a license in, typically, less than 90-days. With a license, most people can get hired by almost any real estate local or national brokerage and HIDE behind their company’s name. (So, to the CONSUMERS we DON’T know all Realtors® look and sound the same.)

While we all make fun of our favorite attorney’s and we certainly know their doctors and CPA’s make “upper middle to upper” incomes, generally, all of us (we are all CONSUMERS) expect to pay and will actually ‘let’ these professions make the money they make.

So, why do CONSUMERS resent Realtors® getting paid? When you read all the blogs, you’ll learn that, clearly, CONSUMERS hate that we (as an industry) flaunt the commissions we earn in their face. Too often, our advertising message says “Look at Me”.

Pick up most any real estate magazine or newspaper ad and you’ll see advertising themes that ‘position’ us in an ego-centric way; Top Producer, Sales Volume, Winner of this and that and the list goes on and on. When you add to ’salt to the wounds’ like the luxury cars and what CONSUMERS feel is ‘lack of value for the commissions we charge’ and, well, you can figure it out; as an Industry, we don’t look real great.

In fact, according to the recent Harris Survey, Realtors® are at the bottom of their ‘Most Respected Occupations’ lists. (Funny, the MOST respected are teachers, fireman, policeman, military, ministers, etc. Aren’t these the ‘former jobs’ of many Realtors®? It’s sobering to realize how the word Realtor® can change an otherwise good image.)

Sadly, like it or not, CONSUMERS have a perception that ‘all we do’ is stick a sign in the ground and walk away with big commissions, buy fancy cars. They have no idea that what they are really paying for is experience. The one thing that real estate schools don’t and can’t teach. Who’s at fault? WE ARE. Our industry has actively promoted these arrogant, self-promoting, ‘old school’ sales and advertising tactics for years.

As an industry, prior to PRC, there was NO BRAND that promotes VALUE. It seems to be ‘understood’ that CONSUMERS should pay the same commission to an agent who got their license a week ago as the agent who has 20-years of experience. (It really shouldn’t be a surprise that the ‘discounters’ are proliferating. They are an example of how members of our own industry ’see’ little to NO value in what a REALTOR® offers.)

For my background, I invite you to visit:

http://www.parentrelocationcouncil.org/team/stephen.php

So, Eric, not only do I feel you were within your legal rights to publish that which has been in the public domain anyway, I feel NAR and other professional organization should show some GUTS like you have so that the general agent population can get their heads out of the sand, stop being in denial that this is the IMAGE by which Consumers (we don’t know) are judging ALL of us.

Again, I applaud you!

Stephen O’Hara

I recently published a piece on my website titled “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots.” As a Realtor, I constantly think about real estate marketing, and the headshot issue is something that I have a pretty hot debate with my business partner about - he thinks that headshots are great, and I think they’re cheeeeesy. Kinan (my business partner) did talk me into putting my mug on the front page of my site for a bit, but it was only there for a couple of months before I received negative feedback from friends, and I decided to take it down. Here’s the old site:

Super cheese - right?

So…I was thinking about it a little before the new year, and I started running searches for Realtor headshots using the Google image search tool. There are tons of them everywhere! I began bookmarking some of the headshots/marketing pieces that I found particularly absurd, and before I knew it, I had ~20 in my bookmarks folder.

I started writing a blog post rating & commenting on what I thought were the most absurd of the bunch. I’m a younger guy (28) and I write pretty freely - I read quite a bit of contemporary literature, and am a bit of a standup comedy aficionado. Before I knew it, I had a full-blown commentary that read like something out of a lad mag.

I posted the blog, and got a ton of response. For the most part, I received emails commending me on highlighting the absurd marketing in our profession. Some people felt that it was extremely harsh, and asked why I would personally attack people that I don’t know. These people missed the point entirely.

I don’t know the people on the post, and I’ve never spoken with any of them. I wasn’t commenting on them or their personal lives - I’m sure they’re all great people. The title of the post was “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots.” The post was about their marketing choices. Some people chose to steal the “Got Milk” campaign, one chose to market his dog, one wore a pretty provocative outfit, and more. My post was merely my opinion that the marketing pieces I highlighted are pretty absurd.

Some people were also upset about the general public’s response (blog comments.) I ask, “Doesn’t that indicate that we need to think about how we market ourselves?”

Realtors used to be key holders - you weren’t getting any information unless you came through us. Before, an absurd marketing campaign might have resulted in name recognition, and more phone calls.

Now, market information is in the public domain – market inventory is publicly displayed on IDX feeds, and sold data is public information in many states. This means that we, as Realtors, are moving away from the “key holder” position, and we must move towards the role of professional advisor. Predominantly, Realtors are extremely professional, and do excellent jobs helping people buy & sell homes. Now, more than ever, we need to brand & market ourselves as exactly that.