Early in my real estate career, one of the gurus I was learning from preached the gospel of the hyper-local and highly focused.  The idea was that it would be better to focus on a clearly defined and finite geographic area and a clearly defined type of client. 

It was heresy.

Most real estate agents will market to everybody – home buyers, home sellers, real estate investors, foreclosures, short sales, rentals and on and on and on.  Most real estate agents will also agree to go anywhere their license will allow them (in my case, that’s the entire State of Maryland). By casting this wide net, the thinking goes, there is a better chance of attracting business and, in turn, creating an income.

So far, so good.

The real downside to this, of course, is that you can’t be all things to all people and a lot of people will just pass you by anyway.  It also makes you one more real estate agent that potential clients have to filter through a lens of mistrust and skepticism.

What Would Seth Do?

Seth Godin is a marketing guru with a large following. He has a ton of books, highly paid speaking engagements, more highly paid consulting gigs and is widely recognized as the father of Permission Marketingwhich also happens to be the title of his second book. This concept is responsible for the common ” double opt-in” approach:

Me: I’d like to send you all my great marketing stuff.

You: That’s great. Go for it. (1st opt-in)

Me: Are you sure? I want to make sure you really want it.

You: Absolutely, Ken. You’re the best. Send me your stuff. (2nd opt-in)

Seth Godin also writes a marketing blog that’s kind of like the daily “brain dump” for Seth and one piece in particular caught my attention — Trying to Please.  It’s short, like a lot of Seth’s blog posts, and to the point.

It’s useless to try to please everybody. Most of the time we’re trying to please the wrong people.  People who won’t use our services. People who won’t be fun to work with. People who, to put it kindly, are mismatched to our own personality and business model.

It’s time for me to stop trying.

Some people teasingly give me a hard time for “being all over the Internet”.  There’s a reason for it.  People have changed the way they interact with each other.  This may be a good thing or a not-so-good thing.  No matter. It is what it is.

Check out this video to see if you still think social media may be a passing fad (a little over 4  minutes long)

This is the week for the yearly get together for the National Association of Realtors in Washington, DC.  This is their “mid-year” meeting which really has to do more with internal governance issues of the Association combined with some lobbying on The Hill.

The National Association of Realtors also holds another conference — the Big Daddy of all conferences — sometime in November moves around from city to city.  In 2010 it’ll be in New Orleans.

The Mid-Year meetings are great for me because a) I can commute, if I want to go to anything and b) they’re free.  Yep.  That’s right.  Free.  If you’ve ever been to a trade association governance meeting, you’ll know why.  Huge committees that come together twice a year to decide what direction to move the Association in and what initiatives to begin.  We also do a bit of lobbying by visiting our representatives and Senators to voice our concerns about real estate.

Still, it should be fun to catch up with people and, this year, I’ll probably meet with people I only know through social media like Twitter and Facebook.

I’m heading down on Wednesday for the lobbying on The Hill and Thursday I’ll take in the Trade Expo and take part in a focus group I’ve been selected for.  Wooooo! Hoooo!  Hopefully, I’ll get together with some folks during a tentatively planned Tweetup.  Who knows?  If I don’t get killed on the Metro it might be fun.

It’s like Christmas for mothers.  Breakfast in bed, cards, gift.  What a deal!

Hey, we all have mothers and it’s only right that we take a day to remember their contribution to our own life and to the lives of our friends, family and the world, in general. So, today we take a minute to honor the women who bought us into the world and to treat them just a little more special than the rest of the year.  This is their day.

• A History of Mother’s Day
• Mother’s Day Cooking Ideas
• Julia Ward Howe

Maybe it’s just me.

Lately, I’ve been running into potential home buyers that want a “good deal”.  That’s all well and good.  The thing is: a “good deal” is something different for everybody.  Of course, I’ve always thought that living in a house was a good deal anyway.  Roof over my head, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, a place to rest my head at night and indoor plumbing.  What could be a better deal than that?

When I try to dig into what a good deal might be it’s different for everyone.  Most people, of course, want to feel like the got the home so cheap they could flip it the next day and make $50,000.  Others want the seller to kick in for all the closing costs and such so buying the house costs as close to nothing as possible.  Still others are looking for good schools, low crime, two blocks from Metro and a half acre of land.

Nice, if you can find it.

An Old Real Estate Joke

The real estate agent is driving around with his client looking at houses.  The client keeps finding something wrong with each one.

Finally, the client tells the real estate agent that he’s just really looking for a good deal.  So the real estate agent asks the potential home buyer,”If I knew of a home in excellent condition that meets your criteria and can be demonstrated through objective data to be selling at least 25% less than market value, would that be a good deal?”

The home buyer gets very excited and says, “Absolutely!  I’d buy it in a minute!!”

The real estate agent smiles and replies, “So would every real estate agent in the area including me.”

The Point of The Story

The moral to this story is that real estate professionals look at homes all the time, scour the market for a variety of different clients seeking homes that match a large array of criteria.  We look at everything from condos, to townhouses to modest single family homes and McMansions.

The bottom line is that if there is a “deal” to be had out in the marketplace of homes, someone else — either a real estate agent or a real estate investor — knows about it and has probably moved in for the kill.  Thinking that there is some special “deal” out there waiting for you is a myth.

The Real Deal

The real deal is finding a home you can be happy living in because it pretty much meets your criteria, is in the neighborhood or area you want to live in and is being offered for a fair price. If you find it and you get terms you can be happy with then you have gotten yourself one helluva deal.  You can take that to the bank.

Let’s take a ride in the WABAC machine into the year 2000. Everyone was freaked out about the Y2K bug.  Remember?  It was supposed to bring the world, as we knew it, to an end.  It didn’t crash every computer in the world but I think it rewired people’s brains because right about that time was the beginning of the infamous and notorious housing bubble.  No one knew it then but house prices were about to start climbing straight up like the proverbial “hockey stick” graph.

It started slowly but as new mortgage products became available and people started seeing their friends, family and co-workers get rich, rich, rich from owning real estate (and then selling it pretty quickly) everyone wanted to own a house.  It didn’t matter what it cost or what condition it was in. People wanted it and the financial services industry saw to it that anyone who wanted a house could have a house even if they was no godly way they could repay the mortgage.

The Crash

Then house prices began to fall.  Slowly at first and then like the proverbial “upside down hockey stick” they fell off a cliff with cement shoes.  People started freaking out.  They couldn’t pay the mortgage anymore because the interest rate adjusted from 3% to 6%.  They couldn’t sell their house for what it was now worth.  People that had bought homes at $500,000 were now living in $300,000 houses…but still had a $500,000 mortgage (stated income, 100% financing, interest only).

Short sales, foreclosures, abandoned properties everywhere.  Responsible home owners are trying to hold on and continue to pay their mortgage. However, a lot of people are a paycheck of job downsizing away from quitting their payments.

The Government stepped in with some relief and some incentives for people who could qualify for a mortgage.  The tax credits, the artificially low interest rates, pressure on the banks to provide loan modifications. Now, though, the party is about to end.

Normal?

The tax credit program ends on April 30th. The Federal Reserve has stopped buying mortgage backed securities so rates are free to move with the normal market forces. Banks are still being slow to provide relief and credit is still extremely tight. So we might be going back to the “good old days” when people actually had to save money to buy a house, have a good job and have good credit.  You know?  Normal.

My guess is that it’ll take a few years for people to settle in and really adjust to home prices that don’t shoot up like a rocket or plummet like a rock. Houses will be something you buy to live in for awhile because you like the house and the neighborhood. Sure.  There will still be real estate investors. These will be the people buying the houses so they can rent them to people who can’t afford a house or otherwise don’t want to buy one.

At least, I think that’s what “normal” will look like for the housing market.  I could be way off.  It’s happened before.

Easter Sunday.

Kick back. Relax. Have a chocolate bunny. Go to brunch with friends.

Created by Online Education

The snow began one day last week.  I can’t even remember the exact day any more.  It went on for 18 hours and dumped 20+” on us.  It took my wife an I about two hours to shovel out about 20 feet of driveway.  We would have still been at it if two entrepreneurial types hadn’t come by to help.  Then it snowed again.  This time, luckily, not as much.  Still it took the two of us all morning and we still haven’t finished.

Meanwhile everything or almost everything is closed.  The US Government has been closed since Monday.  It turns out that they’ll open tomorrow under their delayed arrival or Unscheduled Leave policy. That means don’t come in if you don’t want to. Heck, for all we could tell the entire world was closed because we couldn’t get out.

So we when we weren’t shoveling we were watching TV or reading or eating or napping.  I played around on Twitter and Facebook. I uploaded some videos to the blog here.  I watched webinars and I talked or e-mailed a few clients.  Real estate, needless to say, came to a grinding halt.  No one was looking at houses and no one was talking to Realtors about listing their homes.  No one sane.

I often imagine what it would be like if I was retired.  I sure as hell hope it isn’t like this. Don’t get me wrong.  I love “quality time” with my wife.  But there is only so much quality time you can spend cooped up with a person and not want to get out and see and talk to other people. The grocery store will do.  Maybe retired couples have a lot of fun doing things and going places.  I hear it’s a real gas.

I hope it’s not like the last week.

Check out the Real Estate Market Trends for your area .  Just click here.  You will get a totally FREE report e-mailed to you.

In this short video the snow has stopped, the sun is out and the temperature, while cold, is not unbearable.  This is especially true after you’re out there shoveling for awhile.  My wife, Jan, was definitely throwing off some heat and when you’re in the sun it’s downright balmy.

Lucky for us about a half hour after this video was made two strapping young entrepreneurs came by to offer their services.  Needless to say, we jumped on it.  We scraped together all the cash we had, raided all the cookie jars and looked under every couch cushion.  The bottom line, though, is that the driveway is now clear and we can get in and out.

Yowsa!