Entries Tagged as 'Media'
I've been waiting for the right opportunity to really push the envelope of online real estate marketing, and, well, it's here!
I'm working on a listing in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood that fits perfectly into this new online marketing world: it's slick, chic, and contemporary, will likely attract a younger and web-savvy crowd of buyers, and the sellers simply love the idea of creating a buzz online.
We're passing on the normal full-color ads in traditional local media like the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and we'll be spending that money online instead. To hedge our bets, we will be placing open house display ads in print media.
I'll be collaborating with several real estate online marketing companies to promote this property. They'll be showing me — and, by extension, my readers — how to get the full benefit of their products. I intend to chronicle our adventures here and invite you to follow along. If you have some ideas, feel free to join in!
I'll announce the first collaborator tomorrow.
In the meantime, as part of our adventures, let's see how high this site currently ranks for the search, "San Francisco Potrero Hill Real Estate" — I suspect it won't be that good, since I've never written about Potrero Hill before!
Sure enough, on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, I'm nowhere to be found, not even in the top 100. 
Google:
Yahoo:
MSN:
Tags:
Advertising,
Buyer and seller tips,
Disclosures,
For sellers,
Google,
Media,
MSN,
Newspapers,
Online advertising,
Potrero Hill,
Preparing a home,
Real estate,
San Francisco,
San Francisco Chronicle,
San Jose Mercury,
Yahoo
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Tags: Advertising · Buyer and seller tips · Disclosures · For sellers · Google · MSN · Media · Newspapers · Online advertising · Potrero Hill · Preparing a home · Real estate · San Francisco · San Francisco Chronicle · San Jose Mercury · Yahoo
March 18th, 2007 · 1 Comment
The Seattle guys are on a roll…a post in today’s Redfin blog alerted me to today’s San Francisco Chronicle, which has a feature article on Redfin and Glenn Kelman.
While much of it is stuff we’ve all heard before — Glenn didn’t set out to become an industry maverick, the Redfin model isn’t new, blah blah blah — two specific items stood out for me.
First, it appears Redfin agents are paid “$60,000 or more [emphasis mine] based on their performance, which is tied to customer service rather than the number of sales completed.” For Rosemary Vo and the other agents, I can only hope that the “or more” bit is “a lot more.” I’m assuming this means a base salary of $60,000 a year, plus performance-based bonuses. If these bonuses equal a full 100%, that would mean a total compensation package of $120,000 — not enough to live a comfortable middle class life in the Bay Area, but certainly more than most agents net after paying their broker cut and other expenses.
[3/20 update: Just received an anonymous email tip that my estimates for Redfin agent pay are waaaaay off. My source says the base is $50K and the bonus is $20K. Not knowing who this person is, or their affiliation -- if any -- with Redfin, I can't vouch for the accuracy of these numbers. Anybody else have an idea?]
Secondly:
At the same time, his company also must play by the industry’s rules or risk losing access to the vital database of home listings that is the heart of Redfin’s service.
“It’s our third rail,” Kelman said. “We have no backup. If we lose access to the feed, game over.”
Many of us agree that the protectionist rules of most MLS’s are antiquated, but breaking these rules is indeed playing with fire. I personally crossed the line once while conducting a several-month-long experiment with Google Base, but when I got caught, I got caught good. Ouch.
Redfin was displaying information on sold content well before our local MLS changed the rules and made that legal, and it’s still against the MLS rules to display the days on market of a property — which is exactly what Redfin does. Well, not exactly…technically what Redfin displays is something like “Days on Site” — ie the number of days which a property has been displayed on the Redfin site. And hey, if that number by complete coincidence happens to be the same as the days on market number 99.9% of the time, who’s complaining?
Stupid rules lead to creative interpretation.
Tags:
Alternative business models,
Glenn Kelman,
Industry,
Real estate,
Redfin,
San Francisco Chronicle
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Tags: Alternative business models · Glenn Kelman · Industry · Real estate · Redfin · San Francisco Chronicle
October 25th, 2006 · 8 Comments
If there’s one thing I learned from my tenure in consulting (apart from the names of the cabin crew on the mid-Sunday afternoon American Airlines flight from SFO to JFK…) it’s that the numbers always tell a story.
Remember this neat little chart from our little “Frolick with the data” yesterday, provided by those whiz-bang numbers folks at Altos Research?
Statistically-challenged reporters (is there another kind?) look at this and concoct two dramatic headlines, depending on whether you look before or after July 2006: “Prices drop dramatically!” or “Prices increase dramatically!”
Both headlines are, technically, true — in the same sense that your favorite team’s one-game loss could be a “losing streak” and a one-game win could be a “winning streak.”
What’s behind these numbers?
Quite simple: The variation in prices this year in Palo Alto is due nearly entirely to the difference in home size. Put another way, home prices fell between January and July because smaller homes were selling, and home prices rose between July and October because larger homes were selling. Boring facts like that don’t sell newspapers, however, which is why you’d never get an explanation like that in the San Jose Mercury News.
Check this out:
From January to July, median prices dropped 17%, most steeply between January and May, and less steeply from May through July. From July till now, prices have increased 13%.
?RE: Any thoughts on the feds (in)activity this morning?? August 5 at 9:46 pm 
�Good news, your equity line and business line of credit rates remain the same as yesterday, as the Fed held short-term rates steady today. Why? Because despite unemployment concerns, the economy is doing fine (1.4% growth year to date-- thank you exports!), core inflation is under control at this point, gas prices have dropped over 6% recently and it's more prudent to maintain a steady helm when the economy appears relatively balanced. Eric T. Trailer, Principal
