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Feng Shui For Homes: Yep, There’s An App For That Too!

I was chatting with a friend of mine from India the other day and, as is my habit, the conversation turned to real estate.  He mentioned to me that his father is a big proponent of Indian “Feng Shui” — how the home should be laid out, its orientation, its colors, and so forth.  Over the last few years I have become modestly familiar with the Chinese version, which is, of course, completely different.  (Given how large and diverse both China and India are, I have to assume that there probably isn’t one single Chinese Feng Shui or a single Indian one either.  I also assume that in India, this concept is not called Feng Shui.   Work with me here!)

In Chinese Feng Shui, there are many things to watch out for.  You don’t want a home to be at the top of a T-junction.  You don’t want the front and back door to be in a straight line, lest fortune and good luck come in the front and slink out the back.  You want certain colors and lighting in certain rooms.

The Indian version is equally complex.  The kitchen window needs to be facing east.  There is a different orientation required for the master bedroom, and there are certain considerations for the layout of the other bedrooms and for the locations of the bathrooms.  My friend said that before considering buying a home, he’ll email his father a map of the home’s layout, along with its orientation, and get his father’s verdict before deciding whether to continue or not.

That got me thinking — wouldn’t it be cool if there were an iPhone app for that?  Kitchen.  Windows facing East.  Check!  Bedroom.  Check!  You could advertise your listing as being Feng Shui friendly.

Well, it turns out — surprise!  – there is one.  MobileTechAddicts recently reported on an iPhone app that apparently does pretty much that for the Chinese version of Feng Shui. No word on an Indian version.

(Photo courtesy of MobileTechAddicts)

The Innovator’s Dilemma in Real Estate Redux: Redfin Proves You Can Turn a Profit Even With Lower Commissions

In Redfin CEO’s Glenn Kelman’s inimitable “Aw Shucks” writing style, he announced recently that the discount online hybrid brokerage has turned its first monthly profit.  While one month certainly a trend does not make, it is an important milestone in the company’s development.  If Redfin can make money while a) charging a lot less than its competitors and b) serving a market segment that the traditional industry is wary of … then Redfin’s prospects going forward just got a whole lot brighter.

Exercising my blogger’s prerogative to quote myself, here is what I said some two years ago, applying Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s thinking on “The Innovator’s Dilemma:”

His theory, put forth in his books The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution posits that new entrants into an industry often take advantage of a disruptive technology to enter the marketplace at the lower end, catering to the low-margin customers that the established players aren’t that interested in serving.

…

If the new entrant succeeds, it starts to take market share from the incumbents, who finally wake up — often too late — and discover that the “cheap, undesirable” part of the market is both larger and more lucrative than they previously thought.

…

Even more interesting is that as the new entrant grows, its clients’ needs often change over time — to the point where the new entrant now also provides more of a “traditional” experience. Think back to Charles Schwab: its early customers were drawn in by the prospect of significantly less expensive stock brokerage services. The Charles Schwab of today still provides that, but also provides a higher-touch, higher-cost service, akin to that of the Merrill Lynches.

Exercising another of my blogger’s prerogatives — that of making wild generalizations — many of Redfin’s clients are tech-savvy, data-hungry, 30-ish first-time home buyers for whom Redfin’s data-rich site is like crack cocaine … and for whom the company’s 50% buy-side rebate is like, well, crack cocaine on steroids. These folks are do-it-yourselfers who think — rightly so — that much a traditional Realtor’s tasks (educating clients about neighborhoods, taxes, the transaction process, etc.) can be done on their own, in their pajamas, in the comfort of their home office, on their favorite Macbook.

Think about these same folks five to ten years hence … they’ll be wealthy(ier) tech-savvy, data-hungry customers, perhaps with a kid or two in tow … looking to sell their existing home and buy a newer, larger one.  They’ll probably be more pressed for time, perhaps less concerned about getting a rebate … and voila! Redfin will be there to hold their hand again, perhaps operating like a traditional brokerage, charging more.

Prediction:  Within 2 years, Redfin will launch a “Redfin Deluxe” service which will look and feel an awful lot like a traditional full-service real estate experience, with no or little rebate.  If they can make a profit giving back half the commission, imagine their bottom line when they apply those efficiencies to the full-service market!

Other commentary on this event:

• Techcrunch, predictably, painted the event as causing “shudders” in the real estate industry.  Even more predictably, the post attracted the usual scrum of Realtor-hating consumers, with Reba Haas pretty much single-handedly keeping them at bay.
• Nearly-the-same-last-name-as-mine Brian Boero of 1000 Watt Consulting notes that Redfin works by concentrating on three things that many traditional brokers ignore:  talent, transparency, and technology.

Which Job Would Be More Frustrating: Social Media Manager at NAR, or Clothing Manager at a Nudist Colony?

I’d say it’s a toss-up.  At least at the nudist colony there might be some, uh, ancillary job benefits, while the NAR position would require moving to Chicago.  And that’s just a start.

Alerted by several folks, including those at NAR Wisdom, about NAR’s new “Social Media Manager” position, I find myself puzzled.  NAR and its state and local brethren are, at heart, finely tuned political action machines — that’s what they’re built for, it’s what they do best, and it’s what you would expect from a trade union.  I remember a year or so ago a small local town — Atherton, I believe — thought a good new revenue source would be to tax Realtor (r) commissions at the point of sale.  Dozens and dozens of Realtors showed up for the town hall meeting — practically more Realtors than the town had citizens!  These Realtors came from far and wide, and very few of them had anything to do with Atherton.  They came to show their extreme displeasure at this move, afraid that if it passed, the idea would spread like a cancer to neighboring towns.  Needless to say, the measure got voted down.

NAR is also great at getting out its message — very consistently — that it’s a great time to buy to sell to buy and sell to buy, sell, skip, and jump!

What exactly would a social media manager do at NAR?  Send out Twitters about NAR’s latest rosy forecast?  Alert everybody that Lawrence Yun is about to send another update?  There is simply too much of a disconnect between NAR’s stifling corporate culture and the social media world.  I imagine all blog posts would need to be cleared by a hundred-person NAR subcommittee.

I know they’re well-intentioned, and I give them credit for trying, but give it a rest, guys!

If somebody does get this job, I’ve got $50 that says they don’t last any longer than Mr. Luther did at move.com  Any takers?

The Tweet-Cops — Law Enforcement’s Use of Social Media

Despite being a late adopter of technology generally, the real estate industry has embraced social media better than most industries have, and arguably behind only politics and technology.  Here’s an interesting use of social media from a completely different industry:  law enforcement.

Joanne Fraser, who sells real estate in Los Altos CA, informs me that a local police department (Mountain View) is now on Twitter.  (See here.)  They don’t have a lot of followers or updates yet, but kudos to them for embracing social media as a way of staying better connected to the community.

Turns out the Scottsdale police department is also in on this.

Neither Scottsdale nor Mountain View, however, are still quite “there.”  They’re using Twitter right now only as a way of disseminating information:

14 year old takes seizure medication. It is unknown when she took it last. She has long brown hair and is wearing green shirt, blue jeans.

SPD in area of 28000 N. 59th Place in reference to a missing juvenile female. It is beleived she is on foot in the desert area to the east.

Here’s where they’re missing out:  they could also be using Twitter to receive information from the public about law enforcement issues.  The Scottsdale PD is only following some 18 Tweeters (mostly local news stations), and Mountain View isn’t following anybody.  Think of the increased power of the medium if they both followed all Tweeters in their area!

Twitter could become a supplemental 911 system:

Help!  My house at 123 Main is being broken into!

I’m in the parking lot on Main & 1st.  Lights are out.  Suspicious looking guys are walking around, flashing lights into the cars.

Twitter could also act as a neighborhood “early warning system”:

What’s with all the boarded-up houses over on the West side?

Traffic is backed up on Marsh all the way to 101!  Accident?

Of course, if a local police department were to follow 500 local residents, it’d be difficult for them to keep on top of all that content, especially with looming cutbacks in government services.  Solution?  Create searches in search.twitter.com for key words like:  Help … Accident … Break-in … Robbery … Broken window …

Twitter is rapidly growing up.  It’s no longer just an interesting way to spend time:  it’s now becoming a credible and powerful way for organizations to disseminate and receive valuable information.

Are Digital Cameras And PDA’s Really The “Latest In Advanced Technology”? That’s What CAR Thinks!

From the “What decade are we in?” department, comes this choice gem of a promotional email from our good friends at the California Association of Realtors.  They’re running an Expo next week, and a promotional email just arrived in my inbox, from which I quote:

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn the latest advances in technology such as text messaging, picture messaging, camera phones, PDAs and many other technologies…

And in the next room, we’ll be talking about fax machines, rotary phones, and photocopiers!

The full promo:

	Take home MAX’S TOP TIPS A Technology Survival Guide for PDA-Smartphones and Digital Cameras Technology is evolving, and it is affecting our lives and our profession. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn the latest advances in technology such as text messaging, picture messaging, camera phones, PDAs and many other technologies that agents are using to maximize their marketing and communication. Sign up to attend the REALTOR.com® Workshop October 15
	You must register separately to attend the C.A.R. REALTOR® EXPO Oct. 14-16, 2008

Let’s End The Housing Crisis Here And Now … A Modest Proposal For How To Spend The $700BN

Even us “glass half-full” types have to admit the news these days is bad.  Any day Congress passes a $700BN and has to tag on only another couple billion or so of Christmas ornaments to get it passed, well, on that day, you know things were urgent, and they had to act fast.  Wooden arrow manufacturers, Caribbean distillers, and certain other recipients of congressional largesse pork may be quite happy now, but hopefully the remaining $700BN will be spend actually trying to solve the problem.

And that’s where my modest proposal comes in.

Fundamentally, this crisis is about housing values, or more specifically about uncertainty around housing values.  Behind most of the bankrupties, the bailouts, the CDO-thing-a-majiggies … lies a portfolio of mortgage loans whose value is … 3 cents on the dollar? A dime?  A quarter?  47 cents?  Nobody knows, and therein lies the problems.

Our fearless leaders have proposed spending the $700BN largely on buying these “non-performing assets.”  By some financial wizardry, the exact same folks who could not determine the value of these assets in the private market, are about to get hired by Uncle Sam to determine these assets’ values on the taxpayer’s dime.

So here’s what we do instead:  Let’s spend that $700BN buying not the mortgages, but the underlying homes themselves.  Let’s say homes in the US have an average value of $200K.  [Pause for my west and east coast readers to chuckle.]  $700BN divided by $200K is … 3,500,000 (three million five hundred thousand.)

That’s right.  With $700BN we could buy a couple of million homes.  We’d start by buying, say, 75% of the inventory on the market right now.  That should restore confidence in the market pretty quickly.

Presto!  Problem solved.

And Another One Bites The Dust…

Apparently at least a handful of government financial regulatory employees were doing something today other than figuring out how much money Wall Street needs to keep from further imploding…

The New York Times reports that JP Morgan Chase has taken over troubled lender Wamu.

What next?

What’s Happening In This Market? A Liberal Dose Of Mixed Metaphors To Help Us Understand It

Movies.  Shoes.  Phases.  What do they have in common?  All have been recently used as metaphors describing the economy or predictions of where the economy is going.

On the day that the Fannie and Freddie s$#@ hit the fan, Sherry Chris of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate quoted Realogy CEO Alex Perriello, “I feel like I am in Imelda Marcos’ closet – the shoes just keep dropping.”  Indeed.

Fast forward a few days and we get the Bawld Guy, America’s foremost maxim-generating machine, reassures us that we ain’t all gonna die.  He’s seen this movie three times before, and the asteroid doesn’t hit earth.

Finally, Nikcolai Kolding, also of Better Homes and Gardens, brings out an interesting diagram explaining the phases of the real estate market:

["Sides", for the uninitiated, refers to each of the two "sides" of a transaction.]

The diagram suggests that transaction volume, not price, is the best leading indicator of a change in the market.  In a future article I’ll see how well our local data fit into this model.

Attention All You Crazy Drivers In The Fair Oaks Neighborhood: Those Traffic Circles Are There To Slow You Down

Having spent much of my life in former British colonies, I am well versed in various British-isms:  marmite (yuck), lifts (not elevators), sprinkling my words with extraneous u’s … and the correct use of roundabouts — or “traffic circles” as they’re commonly known on this side of the Atlantic.  Sadly, many of the folks here in Silicon Valley seem to have missed that part of driver’s ed.

To reduce the tempatation of using the streets of Fair Oaks (in Menlo Park) as a convenient shortcut to avoid delays on Marsh Road and on Middlefield Road, the local neighborhood installed roundabouts traffic circles a while ago.  Most drivers slow down as they navigate around these obstacles, but some of the more aggressive drivers see them as a handy and challenging obstacle course, careening around them at full tilt, seemingly on two wheels.  Both the fast and the considerate drivers, however, still don’t seem to understand the most basic rule of traffic circles:  if you’re in the circle, you have the right of way.  If you’re not in the circle, you don’t have the right of way.

Simple, really — or it should be.  Alas, nearly every day brings about a near collision as a rule-following driver makes a left turn around a circle, while a non-rule-following driver comes merrily towards him, with no obvious intention of yielding.

People!  Slow down!  Yield the right of way to cars in the traffic circle.

‘Nuff said.

900 University Ave, Palo Alto: Attention, Madam Secretary Rice: We Have The Perfect Home For You After January 20, 2008

Ms. Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State

Kevin Boer, 3 Oceans Real Estate
Chris Iverson, Ventoux Real Estate

Dear Madam Secretary,

We understand based on recent news events (include Mr. Obama’s pre-emptive European victory lap), and on the harsh constitutional reality that your present employer will soon no longer be needing your services, that you may soon be looking for a new residence, perhaps near to your past employer Stanford University.

It seems, in fact, that Mr. Bush has already begun his own search, so there may be some urgency to this matter.

Allow us to suggest a residence suitable for a person of your experience and discerning taste: the Squire House at 900 University Ave in Palo Alto. This property is currently on the market, listed by the local Alain Pinel triumvirate Carol, Rosemary, and Nicole, for only $12.5M.

First of all, this home is a leisurely 20 minute walk down University Ave straight into the heart of the Stanford Campus:

Secondly, the facade of the home may well remind you of a similar grand mansion on the East Coast, one in which you have spent a considerable amount of time in the last 8 years:

(Image courtesy of 900UniversityAvenue.com)

Thirdly, the home is over 6000 square feet, and has a lot size of nearly one acre. This will provide ample room for all your entertainment, parking, and security needs.

Should you wish to view this property, have your people call our people, and we’ll make it happen.

Best regards,

Mssrs. Boer & Iverson

P.S. Some of your colleagues may be in a similar situation. We are happy to provide them with good references for real estate professionals in their home towns.

Mr. Paulson, for instance, may return to Manhattan to work for Goldman Sachs. May I recommend Mr. Noah Rosenblatt as the ideal discrete broker to assist him.

Should Mr. Gates return to his former employer, I recommend he contact Ms. Lani Anglin, who, though based in Austin, not College Station, would be a stellar pick.

If Mr. Gutierrez finds the siren song of Miami irresistible, I highly recommend Mr. Kevin Tomlinson.

Perhaps you could also relay to Senator McCain that, should he decide to retire, the right person to contact is Mr. James Wexler, one of the best real estate brokers in the Phoenix area. We understand this move might happen this year, or in 2012 or even 2016; Mr. Wexler is patient and will be awaiting his call.

Update:

Curtis Van Carter, who sells real estate in Napa Valley, claims he’s trying to nab another high-profile soon-to-be-unemployed individual, none other than “W” himself. Apparently, said individual, while in Napa Valley on a fund-raising expedition, took a little side trip to see a certain castle. Alas, it’s not even for sale, and spouse Laura found it cold and uninviting.

At the other end of the spectrum, Los Altos Realtor Joanne Fraser suggests Condi may have to settle for a $1.6M Los Altos home because Stanford profs only make $175K per year. I completely disagree. First, she’d be the Provost, not a mere professor, which means her salary would easily be $250K. Secondly, I’ve heard she may be getting help for the down payment. Finally, there are rumors of a book deal in the works!

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