Can’t locate my muse but I’m working on it…

G

Look at the NAR monthly numbers: every year, December and January are only 8% off from August and September in the housing industry.  2008 is an outlier. Probably still time to do one of 2 things: crank 2 transactions out of this year or have an amazing January, or both.  But “shutting it down,” and waiting, and coming into the office in the role of listless mope in adult failure spiral.  If you are going to fail, stay home and don’t infect the office.

But that’s not really the point of this post.  The point comes from a tawlk with Bawld Guy I had last night.  He pointed out that a blog was well intentioned but had vague unactionable advice.  I see it too.  Because being told to “work harder, and be careful” is the sole substance of most of the Social Media, or Investing advice you see these days.   “Connect more, be authentic and transparent, and use common frolicking sense.”  And then wait and you’ll get to join the Twitterati.  Buncha crap.

That’s the rub, nobody gets really specific about what “works” and what doesn’t work.   A lot of this you have to learn on your own.  What works for Brian Brady may not work for Greg Swann.  You have to create your own system.  Try things  and go to what you are good at. The key part of the equation.  From Always Be Testing (my new Scriptures):

1. It’s OK To Not Know.
2. It’s Not OK to Assume
3. What Works For Them Doesn’t (necessarily) work for me.
4. There’s always room to improve
5. There are no sacred cows.

This Stuff Works For Me

OK, so we’ve got a little direction.  Try a bunch of stuff.  Real good.  Well, let’s get more specific:  have you tried one new, scary and risky idea this week? Write that down.  Make it a commandment.  I call people, and have connected all the way up to some unfathomable talents.   I’ve got about 3 things that work, and I try to find something better each week to bring in business to replace one of the 3 things that works for me.  Most of what I try fails.  I’m 100% oK with that. because of the above.

That said, let’s get to basic blocking and tackling and get kind of specific.  A site/social media presence oughta have:

1. High quality “Free” giveaway with no strings.  Like, say the consumer’s guide to Divorced Real Estate Commissions. Even blog posts or a “series” can qualify.
2. A High Quality quid pro quo giveaway, something in exchange for registration or an email address.
3. A demonstration of virtuosity: the point of blogging is to give a customer a preview of what will happen when they work with you.   If your blog is half assed, so will the experience that the customers have.
4. A plan to follow up with the people that endorse you via commenting!

Beyond that, let’s get into social media a little bit.  The goal of mine is to make a real connection.  Not to have a following with “10,000 people mostly ignoring you on twitter”. Twitter is permissive and promiscuous enough that each day I have between 10-25 people that add me.  I don’t often add others–I’m not against it, I just don’t currently need to.  About 1/3 of them are spambots, and another third make it hard for me to reach them.  That leaves between 3-8 people that I can find, call and offer to help.   That process can easily be repeated everywhere.  My rule is that if someone follows ME, then that’s permission to market to them.  I didn’t ask for them to come to me, they chose to, and thus…they get marketed to, befriended and helped in any way that I can.

I process my Twitter people once a day.  Takes 30-45 minutes.  I call everyone I can find and see what’s next.  Local people, I try and have coffee with.   I try to get in front of 10-12 people a week, and I often fail.  I’ve taken to deliberately having zero agenda on the call or meet.   That allows me to get to know people.  I follow up using sequences in Heap.   The other, tacit quid pro quo is simple: my contacts for yours.  If you strike me as a quality human, I’ll give you my contacts for yours all day long, provided that you honor them.

I wanted to be “famous” on social media for a time, but now I wanna be effective.  The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they have different MOS.  The “effective” goal allows you to ignore FB friend counts, followers, and everything else, provided that it doesn’t directly influence a sale.

I’ve got one more post in me for 2009, these last 50 days or so matter a lot, and it’s time to get after it.

Just to refresh our memory:

• Goldman received $10 Billion in Tarp Money
• Goldman received $12.9 Billion of government money through AIG
• Goldman received $20.9 Billion in FDIC debt guarantees
• Goldman, restructured as a “bank holding company” borrows at the Fed Window (at basically no cost)

Oh, and one more thing: Goldman will be paying $21.9 Billion in bonuses for 2009.  I don’t begrudge them bonuses, after all: they’ve had a helluva year.  Although some of that might be due to their oligarchical position within the federal government.  It would be nice - every once in a while - if Goldman would send a little thank you nod our way; maybe a quick wave or even a wink.  I guess I’m saying that when you’re screwing me this bad, a little dinner wouldn’t hurt.

John Lennon stirred up quite a spot of bother when he said: “We’re more popular than Jesus now.”  Have to admit though, that seems like such a trifle compared to the CEO of Goldman Sachs.  I mean, who cares if you’re more popular than Jesus?  Mr. Blankfein is angling to BE Jesus.

Google Voice is a free, invitation-only service.  They recently gave me two invitations that I can give to the first two people who contact me at bhb@chetson.com.  I believe you need to use GMail as your webmail provider in order to take full advantage of Google Voice.  The two services work together.

Easy Reference Youtube Embed Codes and Tweaks For Your Website

Using Youtube’s standard embeds you end up with something like this:

Notice the White “Brainstorming Domain Names” in the header? Ugly, right?

Well strip them out by adding “&showinfo=0″ to the url. And you’ll end up with something like this:

Or maybe you want to make the vid bigger? Just change the dimensions in the embed code and you’ll end up with something like this:

Or, maybe you’d like to start the video at a certain point? Use “&start=(insert seconds here)”.

Or, maybe you want to “loop” the video so it keeps replaying? Just use “&loop=1″ in the embed code. Trust me, this, coupled with “&autoplay=1″ can come in very handy, especially if you’re trying to have some fun with a friend. I’ll spare you the demo on this one, because the Bloodhoundblog home page would end up streaming my “toilet humor” over and over again until this post gets buried in the archives by newer posts.

Or…maybe not? Which leads me to my favorite trick. Coupling all of the above with a minimized 1 x 1 pixel vid featuring some unsavory audio. (If you pull out a magnifiying glass maybe you can see the video below this line?

Excuse Me!

Practical applications for real estate? Well, stripping the white title line could make your site look a lot cleaner and more professional? Or maybe you want to take a real long video of a home tour, then link directly to different rooms by using the “&start” thing. Or maybe you’re confident a little “silent but deadly” offer could help your conversion ratio. Example: You could embed a tiny 1×1 and say something like “pssst… give me a call, I have an opening this Saturday morning at 10.”

Freak em out a little, they’ll either love you or hate you for it… but at least your site’ll be memorable?

It’s about that time of year again. The kids have just gotten through their annual Halloween candy coma, Thanksgiving plans are either being made, debated, or negotiated, and signs of Christmas are beginning to show up in the cultural background. If you’re in real estate or a related field, it’s also about the time you see the office population begin to thin out a bit. While we sit somewhere, unawares, that little voice with whom we have a love/hate relationship begins whispering less than subtle hints about sitting down to review the year’s production vs the goals you so enthusiastically and meticulously set.

You sigh. Not just cuz you know this year’s production will probably make you look like a slug who came to work late and left early every day, but also due to all those other goals you simply gave up on, hoping they wouldn’t come back to taunt you at the end of the year. I especially like the physical goals like ‘lose 30 pounds’, knowing that even if you go on a juice-only diet ’till New Year’s Eve you’ll still weigh more than when you wrote the damn goal down.

Why do millions of us set so many goals and fail so miserably so often? Is there a common denominator? I think there is, and have been making use of the principle since the 1980’s.

I’d just become a father for the first time, and was visiting Grandma and Grandpa who lived just an hour or so up highway 15. Grandma had spent her alloted time with her new grandson (Um, alloted time is code for as long as she dang well felt like.) and found me sitting alone in her old school country sized kitchen. I’d grabbed the still warm raisin bran muffins she always made when she knew I was comin’.

I just asked her straight out, “Grandma, how come I fail so miserably at most of my goals?” Her answer became a pivot point in my life.

“Daddy told me the success of any goal I set for myself would first hinge upon its congruency with who I was, and what my purposes in life were. If the goal was aligned with one of those purposes, it would almost be impossible to fail.”

Really? It’s that simple? No way. But Grandma had never steered me wrong.

In retrospect, it sure explained a lot.

It filled in some blanks for me about why my real estate production goals never quite got traction — until I moved from selling houses to the investment side. Then I took off like a rocket. But why? Specifically why?

Again — simple as pie. I hated selling homes, as I couldn’t stand the irrational subjectivity of it all. I mean seriously, the color in the rooms is all wrong? Someone get me a gun. Yet dealing with sellers for me was a blast, even in homes. They were much more rationally results oriented, and tended to recognize reality when it bit ‘em in the ass.

So when I (lucky for me) began a farm by door knocking, my goals became reality, and much sooner than the deadline I’d set.

Then there were the physical goals I’d been making for years, though Lord only knows why. They wilted on the vine by Valentine’s day. How lame is that?

Yet my goals in bodybuilding as a teenager were regularly met and surpassed. What the hell? I asked Grandma about it. She said as a teenager I had an almost unquenchable purpose in life to excel in something. Bodybuilding was not just losing weight, or eating better, cuz I was thin then, and ate pretty well too. It was my purpose to become excellent at something, and know in my heart I’d in fact become excellent.

What happened? Within three years I was approved to compete in the Mr. Teenage SoCal (California?) contest. Didn’t get within sniffin’ distance of winning, but seventh was plenty fine for me.

Do you recognize this truth in your past? Maybe your present?

Some points to ponder.

1. Though we’ve all accomplished goals incongruent with our life’s purpose, they often are hollow and disappointing. The ‘Is that it?’ feeling comes when it was a goal you really hadn’t bought into at your core.

2. Is your goal something you want? If not, they’re much more likely to fail. Stop setting goals pressed on you by others, regardless of their good intentions.

3. The only worse thing than setting a goal inflicted upon you by others, is assuming a purpose for the goal that is unrelated to any of your life purposes. An imposed purpose is almost infinitely more failure prone than an imposed goal.

4. When you set a goal in perfect harmony with one of your purposes in life, the process of attaining that goal energizes and excites you. You approach the necessary goal achieving tasks with relish instead of dread.

Goal setting begs the question then, doesn’t it? What is/are your purpose(s) in life?

That is, until you know exactly what your purpose(s) in life is, setting goals is a waste of time and energy, at least in my experience. Even if I’ve accomplished a goal that didn’t align with a known purpose — a purpose I created — it was a hollow ‘victory’ and almost always a daily death march in the process.

Next up — What Grandma had to say about figuring out my own purposes.

Now I feel dirty.

The elections this past Tuesday were not a referendum on President Barrack Obama or his plans and policies. How do we know that? Because everyone associated with the Obama administration loudly insists that this cannot be so. They ought to know, right?

Senators and Representatives from states and districts that supported John McCain in the last election might have second thoughts, though, and this is very far from being a bad thing.

Americans insist to each other that they want a government that gets things done — except when they happen to be suffering under a government that is getting things done. If this election was not a referendum on Obama, it was a loud, angry shout about what the government has been doing lately.

The last time voters repudiated an over-ambitious president — the last six years of the Clinton administration — the nation experienced a period of tremendous growth and prosperity. The American people recoiled in horror from socialized medicine, and the resulting government — liberal president, conservative congress — was amazingly beneficial for the American people.

How? By getting nothing done, that’s how.

For free markets to work at their best, entrepreneurs need to be able to plan for the future. If they can surmise that prices and credit terms will not swing wildly over the next few years, they can plan their investments with a sense of security.

And if not? Not.

The Obama administration’s herky-jerky dance of currency inflation, stimulus programs, emergency bailouts and tax credits not only cannot stabilize the economy, they do exactly the opposite: They convince entrepreneurs that now is not a safe time to make plans for the future.

This goes for the real estate market, too. Buyers sit on the sidelines waiting for new tax credits. Sellers live in dread of future interest rate hikes. The Cap and Trade bill promises to complicate life for every homeowner.

So how might these elections have helped us all? It’s simple. If Senators and Representatives are afraid to act, nothing will change. And when nothing changes in Washington, everything changes, usually for the better, for everyone else.

Steal this book: I’ve written over 200 of these real estate columns. They are consistently one of the most popular features on our blogs. Many of them are dated and/or entirely Phoenixocentric. But many others are timeless and generic. If you want to use any of my columns on your weblog or web site, feel free. Three rules: Don’t change my text, credit me as the author and give me a link back to http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/ with appropriate anchor text. Something like this, perhaps:

<a href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/" target="_blank">
Phoenix Realtor Greg Swann</a> suggested I share this with you:

Am I link-baiting? You bet. The quid pro quo is free content for your site that pulls eyeballs and excites interest.

You can read the press release and imagine the nightmare yourself so I’m not going to recount it here, but I will point out one of the less reported aspects of this program that has the potential to cause a whole lot of those pesky unintended consequences our political leaders are so loathe to anticipate:

… (the borrowers or tenants) lease back the house at a market rate… Borrowers or tenants interested in a lease must be able to document that the new market rental rate is no more than 31% of their gross income.

Interesting wording there at the end.  It’s not clear at first glance, but what this means is that if the borrower - who has generally endured a financial hardship to begin with - doesn’t make enough money, they’re still eligible… the rent will just have to drop to below market.  Well what could go wrong with a government/landlord artificially lowering rents throughout the nation… That shouldn’t bother anyone who works with real estate investors should it?  Anyone here, reading BHB, work with real estate investors?  I didn’t think so.  Sorry to have brought it up.  I’m sure the people who paid $70,000 for $30,000 trailers that are STILL housing people post Katrina know exactly what they’re doing.

I’ll go through the PayPal records tonight to make sure everyone’s money is refunded.

Meanwhile: If you see any NAR grand poobahs, be sure to kick ‘em in the shins for shifting all your November move-ups into December. Christmas may be good, Thanksgiving not so much…

Out of one side of their mouths, Republicans wish to portray themselves as tax cutters, red-tape slashers, champions of liberty fearlessly hacking away at the slimy tentacles of the leviathan state. Ignore for the moment that they’re spineless jellyfish when it comes time to cut, slash or hack; this is how they wish to present themselves.

Out of the other side of their mouths, Republicans offer American voters an alternate set of slimy tentacles for the same old leviathan. The state they promise to shrink will simultaneously promote a nebulous family values agenda and forbid abortion. Republicans will simultaneously dismantle the Department of Education and supplant ecosocialist indoctrination with theocratic indoctrination. The leviathan state will lose the power to ban cancer drugs but gain the power to ban rap records.

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold…

Whatever the Republican party seeks to be in the states, in the counties, in the towns, what it cannot be at the national level is the party of both smaller and larger government. It can’t because as a strategy it makes no sense, and it can’t because there is no common ground between the liberty-seeking Republicans and the theocracy-seeking Republicans. Those two wings of the party can only fly apart in the long run.

But: There is a way around this: The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If the national Republican party were to concentrate solely on shrinking the Federal leviathan to a strict adherence to the Constitution, devolving all of the usurped tentacular powers to the states to do with — or do away with — as they choose, the party could achieve these goals:

• It would actually deliver on a promise, prompting universal amazement.
• It would present to both of its contradictory wings the opportunity to achieve at the state and local levels what they cannot hope to achieve nationally.
• It would result in something much better than campaign finance reform: A Federal government that’s not worth buying because it has nothing to sell.
• It would result in something much better than tax reform: A massive reduction in the Federal tax burden.
• It would give Republicans a lasting national agenda. Moreover, it would protect American voters from the predations of the Democrats even when Republicans are out of power.

I myself am a libertarian, and I suppose it’s important to answer the libertarian objection: Fifty small tyrannies is not preferable to one large one. This is false on a number of grounds.

First, the only devolution of power that can be effected by the Federal government is the devolution of Federal power. Whatever else you might hope to do at other levels of government must be done there.

Second, tyranny is most onerous where escaping it is most costly. So long as free-thinkers can easily move to New York or California, it doesn’t matter as much what happens in Iowa or Alabama. Moving from the U.S. to New Zealand is a much higher hurdle.

Third, the irrationality of bad laws is most obvious where comparison is easiest. If it turns out that the Iowans scare away their best and brightest with irrational laws, the Iowans will either change their ways or pay the consequences of failing to.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution anticipated that the states would comprise laboratories of democracy, each seeking to find the best balance between individual rights and collective authority. Devolving political power from the Federal government to the states, and from there to the counties and municipalities, most closely mimics the grand idea expressed in the Declaration of Independence: The consent of the governed.

In effect, I am offering to the national Republican party the choicest cut of the libertarian steak, the insufferable confiscatory Federal nanny-state. What Republicans choose to do on the state and local levels is their business. What they will stop trying to do is to find a common national ground between Connecticut country-clubbers and Texas bible-thumpers. There is none.

Cut Federal agencies one by one, and cut taxes in lockstep. Sell Federal assets to reduce the national debt. Pass Constitutional amendments that clarify the meaning of the Preamble to the Constitution, the Interstate Commerce Clause and other clauses that weasel-wording lawyers have used to feed the leviathan. Repeal the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to restore to the states their power over the Federal government. Do everything necessary to give us the Federal government provided for in the Constitution, and then start whittling away at that. Ecosocialists and theocrats can impose their views on those who share them. Those of us who don’t can get on with the business of building a civilization.

That is a national Republican agenda that can win. It gives the liberty-seeking Republicans the liberty they seek. It gives the theocracy-seeking Republicans a fighting chance to achieve their goals locally. And it will appeal to many, many Democrats, Independents and Libertarians, each for their own reasons.

This can win. And nothing else will.

 
Further notice: I wrote this in November of 1998. Nothing has changed since then, alas, and nothing will now, either, I’m afraid.

Under the housing program, people seeking to own a home for the first time in three years would receive an $8,000 tax credit if they sign a contract by April 30 and close on it by June 30. Current homeowners who are buying a new primary residence would be eligible for a $6,500 tax credit starting Dec. 1 if they owned their home for five consecutive years in the previous eight.

The timing is more lenient for military families who have been deployed overseas for 90 days or more in 2008 or 2009. They would have until April 30, 2011 to sign a contract.

But the measure limits the purchase price of the home to $800,000. It also imposes income caps so that people who make more than $125,000 annually and couples who make more than $225,000 would not be eligible for a refund. Anyone who collects the tax credit but sells their home within three years of buying it must return the refund.

The program is estimated to cost $10.8 billion.

The passage of the tax credit provision was a huge win for the real estate industry, which has been lobbying aggressively to extend and expand the program. They say the tax credit has helped boost sales and clear out a glut of lower-priced homes, especially foreclosures, and that ending it would be a blow to the housing market’s recovery.

But critics of the program, including some economists, say the program is far too expensive. They say that most people who used it would have bought homes anyway. They attribute the uptick in home sales in recent months more to low prices and record low interest rates.

Questions for the lenders: The tax credit for move-ups doesn’t commence until 12/01/09. What about first-timers? Can they be under contract now, or do they need to wait until after the end of the month.

More: Do I read this right? Can you “move up” after having rented for the last three years?

I hate this, of course. The real estate market can’t shake out if we won’t let it. But as listers of higher-end homes… Thus does the legislature make whores of us all.

Can’t pay the mortgage? You still might be able to stay in your home. Government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae is going to give borrowers on the verge of foreclosure the option of renting their homes for a year.

The change announced Thursday could give a temporary break to thousands of homeowners, but critics question whether it will only add to the mushrooming losses at the company, which has received billions in taxpayer money.

The new “Deed for Lease” program will allow homeowners to transfer title to Fannie Mae and sign a one-year lease, with potential month-to-month extensions after that. It also helps save money because the lender does not need to complete the often lengthy and time-consuming foreclosure process.

The program helps “eliminate some of the uncertainty of foreclosure, keeps families and tenants in their homes during a transitional period, and helps to stabilize neighborhoods and communities,” Jay Ryan, a Fannie Mae vice president, said in a statement.

It also does less harm to the borrower’s credit record.

“It shows that you put your best effort to work out a solution,” said Gabe Del Rio, director of homeownership at Community HousingWorks of San Diego.

However, Mike Himes, director of homeownership services at NeighborWorks Sacramento, said the industry should push harder to modify loans at lower monthly payments. “The preferred option is allowing people to retain ownership,” he said.

Fannie Mae executives said the rental program is designed to help delinquent homeowners who don’t qualify for a loan modification, but still want to stay in their homes.

To qualify, homeowners have to live in the home as the primary residence and prove that they can afford the market rent, which will be established by the management company running the program. Rents are based on current market rates.

The plan is expected to be particularly attractive in places like Phoenix or Orange County, Calif., where homeowners are stuck paying large mortgage bills on properties that are now worth far less than they originally paid. At the same time, rents have been falling in those areas and homeowners may find they are paying far less to live in their home.

In Orange County, for example, the average monthly rent for all apartments was about $1,450 in September, down nearly 8 percent from a year earlier, according to research firm MPF Research. In Phoenix, the average renter paid about $720, also down about 8 percent from last year.

Still, based on a similar program, the effort is likely to attract a relatively small number of homeowners.

In the first nine months of the year, Fannie Mae took ownership of nearly 2,000 properties through a process known as a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. That pales in comparison to the 90,000 foreclosed properties the company repossessed in the period.

Deed-in-lieu works like the new program, allowing homeowners to turn over title to Fannie Mae, but rather than renting, the owners simply walk away.

While Fannie Mae executives say the company’s motives are community-minded, critics say the company is simply gambling that the properties will eventually sell for a higher price. That’s folly, says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in Darien, Conn., and a longtime bearish investor.

“Taxpayers are now going to own all these houses that (Fannie Mae) should have unloaded,” he said. “It’s going to cost a fortune.”

The issue?

Television.

I almost never make time for it, and then not regularly, but there are exceptions in my life (facilitated by on-line and on-demand re-runs).

Thus:

1. Glee. Incomparable harmonies. Preciously POMO, but still deliciously rude. Corollary: Baseball sucks. Cut it out.

2. Madmen. Will Donald Draper defenestrate this Sunday?

3. South Park. I have concluded that Leopold Stotch (”Butters”) is the glue that holds the show together.

I would like to have something of moment to say about Entourage, which we always enjoy when we see it, but I’m too cheap to pay for HBO.

Joel Burslem is no longer Director of Product Development at Vook

Means what, I don’t know. Deck chairs on the Titanic. There is no huge surging mass of sub-literates demanding even easier-reading access to the half-shouted profundities of Gary Vaynerchuk. Love him or hate him, the guys lives and dies in video. He cannot be caged by a page, no matter how stylish or expensive or electronic that page might be. The book is a dead letter, so how could the Vook not be an even-deader letter? You cannot even pretend to believe otherwise unless you are in the pay of Brad Inman.

But: None of that matters. The Vook is instructive because it teaches us a host of interesting lessons about how to fail in business. Big names. Big funding. Design budget. Attractive product that works. Fancy offices filled with bigfoot corporate types. Even Aeron chairs, I’ll bet. What could go wrong?

Only this: There is no market for the product.

Remember that “find a need and fulfill it” bit from Business 101?

Can you name even one person who has confided to you, “You know, I’d probably read more if books were more like television?”

“I’d sure like to read more books, but the books I want to read are interrupted at intervals by bad actors enacting bad scripts.”

“What I want from books requires a sub-woofer!”

That’s a disaster from day one, and I have been ridiculing the Vook since first I heard about it. But even now, I can see an actual use for this technology: How-To books: How to build a rocking chair in 24 easy steps or The Kama Sutra for Klutzes. Those could sell, because they answer a need that can be served by both text and video. Even then, though, they’d be better as web sites — easier to control, easier to revise, etc.

But let’s go back to the Vook’s original marketing problem and try to solve it in a better way.

Brad Inman is a choke-point dinosaur. His goal was to come up with a “blade” dispenser — a relatively cheap razor that could be used to sell higher-profit “blades” over and over again. Gillette’s razors, Kodak’s cameras and Amazon’s Kindle device are all examples of this very-common business model. Because he has worked his whole life in publishing — selling vast quantities of a publication no one reads — he naturally gravitated to publishing for his new venture. He has a background in video, also, and video — unlike paper — is not easy to produce, reproduce, exhibit or copy. If anything could make a book into a “blade,” it would be video.

Except that books themselves are dying as an information transmission medium, dedicated devices you have to schlep around are an anathema and no one is crying out in desperate need for badly-animated comic books starring Gary Vaynerchuk.

I had two words for this idiot product when it was announced: Market research.

The Vook is just a dumb idea, but the base idea — a dedicated device that people are willing to pay added-value fees to gain access to — that may not be completely off the wall. Or maybe the place for an idea like that is on the wall.

Look at this:

That’s a beautiful photograph. So it this one:

Those are just two news photos I found today on-line. There are hundreds more, just as striking, taken every day. And there are millions of other very striking photos that have been taken over the decades. And thousands of drawings, illustrations and paintings.

High definition video monitors are the perfect picture frames, and we are soon headed for the day of video fabrics that will work like wall-paper — and eventually like garments.

We are on the cusp of an age when the quantity of available video screens will be massively increased — and every one of them is going to need programming.

For now, a dedicated device could connect a big Aquous-like monitor to a net-based service that fed images to that huge screen.

This is programmable art as decor.

You already have big picture frames all over the place.

You already have a small USB-fed picture frame on your disk, filled with eight gigs of family photos.

A device like this combines the two: Huge, striking graphic images that change at intervals — an evanescent art far better than you can afford to purchase in atoms, but yours for pennies a day when sold to you as electrons.

You’re already paying for decor. All we’re doing is turning decor into “blades” — something you purchase continuously, rather than only when you change homes.

That’s a business.

Your mood is programmable — on the fly. The intervals, the arcs of the color wheel, the tone and tenor of the images themselves — all controllable by you.

This is something people would pay for. This is something I would pay for, and I hate everything.

And remember, the quantity of available video surfaces in our lives is about to explode. There are a lot of business opportunities in here, but there are a lot of Web 2.0-like options, too. What a DeeJay does is more than just records, and what an Image- or Video-Jockey does can be far more than mere images.

This could be huge…

But here’s the good news, from my point of view: Last night’s results may have the immediate impact of putting the brakes on all this tax-and-spend stupidity. The larger stupidities will endure, of course, but we just might have gotten ourselves shut of the home-buyer’s tax-credit last night. Surely this is an event worth celebrating.

This is Instanpundit.com’s Glenn Reynolds in today’s New York Post:

But [Obama] was right the first time about not being ready for the Oval Office. As president, he seems confused and a bit distant on the issues, leaving the details to congressional Democrats and an ever-growing number of “czars” while he golfs and launches attacks at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

With the economy tanking (unemployment is much worse after Obama’s deficit-swelling stimulus than Obama’s advisers predicted it would be with no stimulus at all), with the promised post-partisanship dissolving into witch-hunts against hostile media and the promised post-racial America devolving into the awkwardly staged “beer summit,” with the “necessary war” in Afghanistan the subject of endless dithering and the promised “smart diplomacy” materializing as a series of awkward missteps by Hillary Clinton, the froth has become a lot less frothy.

Republicans, who were prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt a year ago, now can’t stand him. Independents who voted for him are deserting in droves. And Democrats don’t seem that happy either.

The good news for Obama is that he doesn’t have to run for re-election for three more years, so he still has a chance to get his feet under him. But for Congress members facing elections in a year — including but not limited to the famous “blue-dog” Democrats — the lesson of this week is that Obama can’t save their seats if the public is unhappy (and, equally, that Obama probably can’t hurt them much, either). So what Obama wants is nice, but it’s what the voters in their districts want that will control.

That makes Obama’s health-care “reform” package look iffy and his other big plans for remaking America look even iffier. With the hope having faded, enthusiasm for change seems much diminished. From a mythic figure, Obama has shrunk to an ordinary politician — and, so far, not an obviously deft one. It’ll be politics as usual from now on, and we can thank Obama, at least, for making politics-as-usual seem not so bad after all …

As I write this, the entire real estate industry is on tenterhooks, waiting to see if the $8,000 first-time home-buyers tax credit is going to be extended.

It’s not really a tax credit, it’s a taxpayer-funded subsidy, a “gift” extracted by force from everyone who does not buy a house under the program. The money taken from taxpayers — either now or later by deficit spending — is money that cannot be spent or invested elsewhere.

And it’s not as though this were a zero-sum game. The actual marginal sales — the home sales that would not have happened without the subsidy — may have cost taxpayers from $40,000 to $75,000 each. And as huge as those numbers are, they ignore the interest cost of the borrowed money, the opportunity costs of mal-investment and the compound interest value of those opportunity costs.

Government action cannot create wealth. At best, it moves wealth around. At worst, government destroys wealth by taking it away from the very people who have new ideas and new technologies to invest in.

But as bad as this tax credit is, it’s only temporary. Someday it will end. The mortgage interest tax deduction — which almost no home-owners actually get — is forever. The government dominance of the secondary mortgage market — FannieMae, FreddieMac, GinnieMae, etc. — is forever.

And here’s the real kick in the head, given all we’ve been through in the real estate market over the last eight years: The National Association of Realtors reports that 59% of all new home loans this year were underwritten by the Federal Housing Authority, the Veterans Administration or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What this means is that a huge number of homes will have been sold this year with down-payments ranging from 3.5% to -5%. Six out of ten new mortgages are essentially nothing-down loans.

The U.S. government wants to buy your vote by making home-ownership easy. But the net effect of government intrusions in the real estate market is to create a standing wave of foreclosures amid steadily-declining home values.

 
Steal this book: I’ve written over 200 of these real estate columns. They are consistently one of the most popular features on our blogs. Many of them are dated and/or entirely Phoenixocentric. But many others are timeless and generic. If you want to use any of my columns on your weblog or web site, feel free. Three rules: Don’t change my text, credit me as the author and give me a link back to http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/ with appropriate anchor text. Something like this, perhaps:

<a href="http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/" target="_blank">
Phoenix Realtor Greg Swann</a> suggested I share this with you:

Am I link-baiting? You bet. The quid pro quo is free content for your site that pulls eyeballs and excites interest.

What I think about those rules when I lay my head down at night is quite distinct from how I earn a living.

Whether you’re a lawyer or a real estate agent, a lender or a widget maker, you add value to the world by solving other people’s problems: keeping them out of jail, finding them a home, helping them finance a purchase, or selling them some widgets.

How you conduct your business - how you treat people and honor your commitments - matters.

What you think about whether they take a tax credit, or borrowed from 2003-2006 at Fed subsidized mortgage rates, or have benefited for decades from the mortgage interest rate deduction does not matter.

And if you’re so concerned about an $8,000 tax credit that you’d turn away customers, I think, quite frankly, your priorities are confused.  There are some deep injustices in the world, and in this country.  An $8,000 giveaway, however stupid or smart a policy that may be, is not one of them.

Technorati Tags: First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit, Government Bailout

The government over the past year has slowed the pace of foreclosures through moratoria and the drive to modify mortgage terms to keep more borrowers in their homes. It also has pumped up demand for housing by giving tax credits to many first-time home buyers and by driving down mortgage interest rates. As a result, home prices in some areas have risen in recent months, particularly for homes that appeal to investors and first-time buyers. Bidding wars for the more attractive bank-owned homes have become common.

But these artificial props won’t last forever and may have created a false bottom in the market. “The risk of renewed home-price declines remains significant,” Goldman economist Alec Phillips writes in the report, “and our working assumption is a further 5% to 10% decline by mid-2010.” - WSJ

If they’re right, rather than a healthy market heading into 2011, what do you think we might actually have?  We could be looking at falling home prices, rising interest rates and a government whose currency is faltering.  Does it sound like a double dip?  Will you be happy that the functions of the market were tampered with once you realize the misery has been extended, for years? Remember to say thanks to the NAR, thanks to the NAHB, thanks to the Feds and most of all, thanks to us realtors who supported the larceny.  But, at least you may have universal access to a health care waiting list.

What are we doing with that noise? Hello.  Call them.

Objection #1 “But I Can’t Find A Numba”

OKAY, fine.  You can’t find a number.  Sergey and Eric made this little website, it’s a good starting point.  So is linkedIn.  So is Twitter.  Search your lists.  Search everything you do, and yeah, you can “find a numba.”

It’s not hard.

Some hints:  a lot of people are in the 90 and 9 in your fb list.

A lot of people are in linkedin.

A lot of people are attached to someone else.

Objection 2: But, Daddy, They’ll HAAAAAAAAAATE me.

Twice, maybe.  Twice I’ve called people and gotten some sort of jerk face.  Offense that I’d dare call them.  I call  about 15 people a day.  75 a week.  I have had a bunch of people I got no interest in, that’s for sure.   I have a bunch of people that I can’t stand…another given.   And a bunch of people that want the free stuff.  No sweat.

More often, I call people, decide that they are morons and don’t pursue anything.  With them.  I call, they’re not interesting….to me.  See, calling about 75 people a week gives me options.  I don’t need to chase every imbecile or get anxious about stuff.

…I don’t have any Boiler Room Jedi Mind Tricks.  I don’t even currently have a script.  I’m not that good…I step up to the plate and take my hacks.   And that’s enough to make me a living that has been six figures 9 out of 10 years 2006, friends was the bad, bad year  I know you all were laughing, but I was rocked hard by the IRS, my own ego, and a bunch of rental properties that were imbecilic.

Objection 3:  I shouldn’t have to sell.  I’m such a great blogger that they should come to me.

Okay fine.   Look, they did. They came, saw and commented.  They gave you love, they gave you some confidence.  Now pick up the phone, and close the deal.  They are BEGGING to give you their money.   Go grab it.  They voted yes, checked that box.

You need to call and CARE ABOUT THEM.  Give ‘em some value, sell to help, do the best you can.  Nobody’s perfect.  Not one soul.  The Nazarene gave us all some grace because nobody’s perfect.  Look, I like people that I pick.  I picked my wife, I picked most of my best clients.  Hunting people down gives you options.  Finding and serving the best people you know how to serve…is the surest path to riches.

Now, I’ve done some dumb stuff, I’ve had well intentioned process screw ups, and this year I was too slow to react and have a good customer service pattern.  Fixed that now, mostly.

Objection #4: But I hate Cold Calling!

Dude, stop.  This is not cold calling.  You’ve served helped and added value.  This is nothing like cold calling.   At all.   This is followup.  You introduce yourself, politely, assume nothing, and call to connect and to help.  Don’t be attached to the outcome.  You’re following up.

Hell, they might have been to embarrassed to call about their question and you’ll be helping them…doing them a favor.

Just don’t be attached to an outcome, be there to help not to make a sale, and focus on them, not you.  Amazin’ what happens if you do this.

To extend the tax credit is simply going to increase the national debt load beyond what taxpayers can already afford to pay, yet weakening the economy even deeper.  Simply put I’m sick and tired of Realtor’s wanting the extension of the tax credit because it only benefits a few parties to a transaction instead of bettering the country.  We need to look at the big picture.  The fact is the tax credit must end at some point in time; that is a fact!  Realtors need to put their own personal interest aside and do what is best for this country, not themselves!  Extending the FREE money tax credit will only increase the pain of debt until the US dollar is worthless.  So the FACT is…Americans must be willing the do the tough thing!

What is the tough thing you might ask? well, for me,  I have refused to work with buyers looking for the tax credit!!! YES, you heard me correctly.  I know that if I am against the tax credit, then I must ACT as I believe.  I BELIEVE the government should not be handing out any of my money “tax payer money” to try and stimulate an economy that is FALSELY INFLATED in the first place.

How about this for a thought.  How about Americans need to live their WAGE so no tax credit is needed!  Here is my thought for the day.  WHAT IF, your home cost 125k instead of 300k?  what if you drove cars 10 years old with no car payments?  Could YOUR WIFE be a stay at home mother for her CHILDREN if this were the case?  Would the 10% unemployment rate drop to near zero if Americans lived their wage so mom could stay at home if she chose to with her babies!

Your thoughts?

(Incidentally, if you want for your political communications to have maximum force, you have to do more than write a check. You’ll get double the impact is you make a photocopy of your check — and then mail the photocopy to your candidate’s opponent. This should be very effective over the next two years in “purple” districts.)

I’m now free to do that.  I was constrained by subordinating everything to someone else’s “best practices.”  The Caples stuff, other people’s methods, best practices, and the Fortin stuff that you see working.  I am Japan.  Like Bawld Guy. Take ideas, appropriate…make ‘em mine, lather rinse repeat, and knock out another 5 of my 10,000 hours.

No more need simply copy.  Enter A/B Testing.  You can create a loop that corrects itself.  By not having your ego involved, by subordinating EVERYTHING to effectiveness, you can try ANYTHING and see what’s what. Wanna see if pink hippos sell?  Go.

Blog Consultant Michael Martine pointed this killer video out, and for those of us using WordPress and a Theme of some type that allows page level layout changes (for color scheme and suchlike) this is the cool.

Now, I can do 2 things: see if pink hippos sell , and see what sells better than what else.

Questions I am going to address:

• Does a highly produced video sell better or worse than a “Garage bandy” deal?
• Does 16×9 kill 4×3 like I think it does?
• Does asking for a sale work better than asking for an opt in?
• Does asking for a sale AND an opt in lower the chances of either one happening?
• Does leading or closing with testimonials work better?
• Do testimonials work at all?
• Should I have dense or sparse sidebars for the purpose of getting opts?

Heady stuff, and stuff that can let us run experiments to test it, and guard our marketing dollars.  This is an utter blast, if testing is part of what you do on a regular basis, you can constantly improve your marketing.

When you learn what people respond to in marketing…

…you can improve your salesmanship.

That’s why we do what we do.

How to do A/B Testing with WordPress from Carsonified on Vimeo.