Lest I be accused of being a Redfin-basher, I have to say their “citizen bloggers” are doing a bang-up job.  Several times a day their “Sweet Diggs” posts appear on my blog reader, and they’re always a pleasure to read, and are sometimes downright entertaining.  “Real estate listings” and “good writing” are uncommon bedfellows as we’re usually subjected to linguistically challenged gems like, “Grt valu! LotsOfLight! Recent remmodel. Firplace.”

Check out this description by blogger Anna McCain of a home on Bainbridge island:

Could the Seabreeze be my very favorite new project on the Bainbridge condo scene? Would this have anything to do with the impending arrival of Bon Bon–a chocolate shop slated to open here between Christmas and New Year’s–alongside what will reportedly be a tea house? Chocolate and tea? On Bainbridge? I say yes to that.

…

I couldn’t purchase a condo here personally or I’d end up sitting in bed surrounded by mutilated glossy chocolate boxes, like someone out of Stuart Saves his Family.

I understand a squad of Redfin citizen bloggers are about to be dispatched in the Bay Area, and I’m looking forward to reading their descriptions of listings here too.

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This just in from the “Google Adwords” crazy advertising department…

Do a search on Google for the phrase “Redfin Reality” and the only sponsored link you get is this one:

“The site Realtors don’t want you to see?”  Now that’s a way to spread the love…

Glenn Kelman has just got to stop the complaining about the attitude of traditional agents towards Redfin as long as they’re doing this sort of thing.  He can either

a) Position himself as being against the traditional industry
or
b) Expect the traditional industry to embrace him with open arms
…but not both.

Mind you, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the ad.  In fact, I think it’s pretty clever, actually, and a great way to hook in the type of client Redfin wants, namely those who don’t have much good to say about the traditional industry.  But it’s pretty disingenuous for Redfin to complain to complain about not being loved while simultaneously being somewhat, um, hostile itself.

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I just got back from a champaign toast celebration at my clients’ new Mountain View home, a wonderful re-modeled 2-story 2400 sq ft place near downtown. We reminisced about the ups and downs of the transaction (there are ALWAYS ups and downs!) and how we put the deal together over the Thanksgiving holiday, while my clients were at the Grand Canyon. Thank you Docusign! (No, I’m not on Docusign’s payroll!)

A day or two before Thanksgiving, an interesting Mountain View home came on the radar screen of some clients. I showed it to them the day before Thanksgiving, after which they headed to Las Vegas for the long weekend and I headed to the in-laws.

After mulling it over for the night, my clients decided to make an offer. By this time they were en-route from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, which under normal Real Estate 1.0 circumstances might have presented some logistical issues. No worries this time, however.

I put together the offer documents, including several dozen pages of disclosures and put them through Docusign’s electronic signature process. When they were ready, I called my clients, and they stopped at the next Starbucks, whipped open their laptops (I tend to have clients who, just like me, take their laptops with them on vacation), jumped on the T-Mobile wi-fi network and e-signed the documents before they were halfway done with their double-mocha-lattes-with-room-for-cream-and-a-dash-of-cinammon.

They hit the road again, and I presented the offer. The next day we received a counteroffer, which we decided to counter back on. I put the paperwork together and my clients signed it, this time at their hotel’s Internet cafe, and then went on with the rest of their day.

We got in contract, my clients enjoyed their holiday, and not so much as a branch of a tree was sacrificed to make it happen.

—-
(Images courtesy of okalrel.org and atpm.com)

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Lying across the San Francisquito Creek and just to the north and west of its bigger, brasher neighbor Palo Alto, Menlo Park is the epitome of upscale suburban Silicon Valley living. Bounded roughly by Highways 101 and 280 and the cities of Palo Alto, Atherton, and Redwood City, Menlo Park is as well-manicured as it is wooded.

Apart from its natural beauty, Menlo Park’s denizens are proud, and rightly so, of its school system, which include the eponymous Menlo Park Elementary School District and the Las Lomitas School District (both of which it generously shares with Atherton) and the Sequoia Union High School District for the older students.

The shopping district centers around Santa Cruz Ave from El Camino Real to University Drive and boasts furniture stores, upscale salons, a toy store, numerous high-end restaurants (including The Left Bank), a wonderful 70’s vintage breakfast hangout named Anne’s Coffee shop (where one devotee has taken the time to upload a Youtube video), and Drager’s, which performs the amazing feat of making Whole Foods look like an inexpensive Safeway clone. Santa Cruz Ave is pretty quiet after 8:00pm, a sure sign that Stanford students prefer the glitz and glamor of Palo Alto’s University Ave.

While Palo Alto boasts the world-class university Stanford, Menlo Park’s contribution to Silicon Valley’s unique entrepreneur-laden business ecosystem is the venture capitalist heaven Sand Hill Road, an otherwise nondescript stretch of road running from El Camino Real to Highway 280.

The neighborhoods to the north and west of Menlo Park — Fair Oaks, Flood Park, and the Willows — are where you’ll find the city’s starter homes adjacent to Highway 101, with prices for a 1400 sq ft, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home starting in the mid-$700,000’s. Prices rise rapidly each block south and east of the highway, with the nicer and larger homes deep in the Willows running a tidy $1.6 million.

The Menlo Oaks neighborhood, bounded roughly by Bay, Willow, Middlefield, and Ringwood, boasts some of the largest homes and lots in this area of meandering streets and wonderfully old and large Oak trees. Crossing Middlefield, you come to the Allied Arts/Downtown neighborhood which includes the Allied Arts Guild. Further west brings you to the West Menlo and Alameda neighborhoods.

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Ok, class, today’s quiz has two true/false questions. No copying!

1. Zillow is like Cyberhomes
2. Zillow is like NBC

Time’s up…here are the answers:

So, how’d you do?

Much of the criticism of Zillow centers on the fact that its estimates are not the last word in accuracy, and in many cases can be far off. If Zillow were, in fact, strictly a home valuation site a la Fidelity’s Cyberhomes, that would be a pretty damning indictment. Zillow’s only hope would be to consistently have the best, most accurate estimates in the business, and Cyberhomes would arguably have a better platform to achieve that, since its affiliation with Fidelity gives it access to more data, more accurate data, and more timely data.

These criticisms are valid, but they simultaneously miss both a relatively minor and a crucial point, both of which can be illustrated by another analogy, this one between Zillow and Google, arguably the best known online media company.

1. 100% accuracy simply isn’t possible: When you type in a search on Google for, say, “Radish recipes,” what you typically get is a “good enough” set of search results to help you find the content you want. It’s an amazing testament to the brilliance of Google’s search algorithm engineers how often within the first page of results you find what you’re looking for. Sometimes, however, the answer isn’t on the first page…or the second or the third…or it simply isn’t found on Google. Somewhere out there on the Internet is the answer, but Google hasn’t found it or classified it or interpreted it correctly for your particular needs. A computer algorithm, however sophisticated, simply can’t always give the right or best answer. Similarly with Zillow, what you often get is a “good enough” estimate. The home’s true value might be $400,000, but Zillow might say $370,000 or $440,000. For many purposes, that’s a “good enough” answer for people to keep coming back, and when they need a more accurate answer — say, they’re planning on selling their home — they bring in an appraiser or a Realtor to give a more accurate estimate. As with Google’s search, sometimes the Zillow answer is way off. As frustrating as that is, it’s just the nature of the beast: A computer algorithm, however sophisticated, simply can’t always give the right or best answer…no matter how smart the engineers, no matter how many data points, no matter how powerful the computer.
2. Successful media companies are all about content and entertainment Google monetizes its search pages by selling relevant ads — just like NBC monetizes Saturday Night Live by selling ads. Google’s “content”, its “entertainment” is the search result and experience.Zillow’s content is all real-estate focussed. During its first season, there were two shows: “Home Value Estimates” and “Sales Prices and Details of Neighboring Homes.” We’ve just entered the second season with the release of a few more shows: “Make Me Move”, “Homes for Sale”, and “Real Estate Wiki.” Just like NBC, some of Zillow’s shows will be hits, and some will be flops. With any enough hits, Zillow will become successful.Don’t get hung up on the fact that Zillow’s “Home Value Estimates” show has inaccuracies in it. These estimates will improve, but they will never be 100% accurate, not only because they can’t be, but because what Zillow is providing is real estate entertainment, not the be-all and end-all of real estate valuation.

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A viral meme that escaped into the wild somehow found its way to Paul Chaney of Strategic Blogging, who passed it on to Mary McKnight of RSS Pieces. From there it split into several strains, two of which attacked me yesterday:

• Douglas Heddings of True Gotham
• Tony and Danilo of Real/diaBlog

What is a meme? It’s an Internet-based “game” in which, if tagged, you reveal five things about yourself that others probably don’t know, after which you tag somebody else.

So, here we go…

1. Though Dutch by ancestry and name, I speak very little Dutch. The only time I lived in the Netherlands was for a year when I was four years old, and apparently I spoke it fluently then (at the expense of English.)
2. I’ve spent about 60% of my life in various African countries: Nigeria, Botswana, and South Africa — the first while growing up (my parents worked for a church organization), and the last two while working after college. I’ve also lived in Amsterdam, Vancouver (B.C.), Grand Rapids (Michigan), New Haven (Connecticut) and, of course, the Bay Area.
3. When I was a teacher in the Peace Corps in a village in Botswana, I once had to carry several hundred exam papers across a usually dry stream bed that had become a waist-deep fast-flowing 300-foot wide river after 10 straight days of torrential rains. Living in a mostly dry climate, few people were willing to brave the river, so the students who lived across the river from the school couldn’t get to the school to take their exams. I felt pretty heroic…until I realized my “bravery” meant the students would actually have to take their exams that day instead of getting the day off.
4. I had many adventures during my time in southern Africa. One of the highlights was Christmas day, 1995, when a friend and I took ultralight flights over Victoria Falls.
5. My main hobby during that time was paragliding, and my most memorable flight was a gentle three hour-long flight back and across the dunes of Wilderness, South Africa. My second most memorable flight was in the same location…it involved landing in the top of a tree — shaken, but not stirred — and spending three hours untangling the lines of my paraglider.

Here’s how the meme got to me:

Drew of Drew’s Marketing Minute

Starbucker

Trevor Gay of Simplicity

Phil of Make it Great

Kammie of Passion Meet’s Purpose

Success from the Nest

Dave of Rothacker Reviews

Andrea Learned of Learned on Women

Ann Handley of the Marketing Profs Daily Fix (MP Daily Fix is one of my very favorite blogs)

Nedra Weinreich, Spare Change

Toby Bloomberg, the Diva Marketer

Paul Chaney, Strategic Blogging

Mary McKnight, RSSPieces

From there it split into two strains, equally virulent:

Strain 1

Mary McKnight

Jim Cronin at the RealEstateTomato

The boys of Sellsius

Teresa Boardman of StPaulRealEstateBlog
CondoDomain

Maureen at miOaklandcounty.com

Ola at Realtio

Tony and Danilo of Real/diaBlog

Me

Strain 2

Mary McKnight

Drew from Zillow

Douglas Heddings of True Gotham

Me

I now pass this double strain on to the following folks:

Mike Simonsen of Altos Research

Pete Flint of Trulia

Glenn Kelman of Redfin (take 2; Mary McKnight memed him, but he may have been too busy…ah, running a company or writing Redfin’s entry for the Yankee Blog Swap

Nigel Swaby of Salt Lake Real Estate Blog

The White African

Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas Athol!

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One of the hidden treasures of Menlo Park is the Fair Oaks neighborhood, nestled between Middlefield Rd, Marsh Rd, and a seldom-used industrial rail track. Squashed between the three neighboring towns of Atherton, Menlo Park, and Redwood City, it nonetheless manages to have a character all its own.