Case in point:

Yesterday there was an article on Realtor.org – a site many would think could be trusted. It is after all, the home of the National Association of Realtors. They cited another source – U.S. real estate values present opportunity to Canadians from the Sierra Vista (AZ) Herald, a newspaper that has been published for over 50 years. I’m sure it’s a fine paper, but…

Here’s part of the story in Realtor.org:

Canadians Seek U.S. Property Bargains
Canadians are snapping up property in the United States. The Canadian “Loonie” is at par with the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976—an exchange rate that makes homes and condos in the U.S. look like a real deal. (my emphasis)

And here is where R.org got their information from the Sierra Vista Herald:

What’s the strong attraction among the Canadians? For one thing, the Canadian dollar is currently at par with the U.S. dollar, something that hasn’t happened since November of 1976. The Canadians are experiencing the best exchange rate in nearly three decades.

Fact: The Loonie is not currently at par with the U.S. Dollar. “Par” means that one Canadian Dollar (a “Loonie”) is equal to one U.S. Dollar. The current exchange rate has one Canadian dollar equal to $0.86 USD. That’s 14% below parity. (source)

 
Fact: The Canadian dollar was not last at par with the U.S. dollar in 1976. On July 21, 2008 the CD/USD exchange rate was 0.9983 – that is parity (or close enough), and it happened 32 years later than “reported”. (source)

One would sincerely hope that no one is making a decision the magnitude of purchasing a home based on what’s reported in either realtor.org or the Sierra Vista Herald. But people do read this sort of nonsense and they trust the people reporting it to do their jobs.

It took me literally 4 minutes to verify these facts. That professional journalists can’t be bothered to do this is rather… disturbing? Frightening? Surely today’s journalist has access to the Internet, and surely they know some blogger somewhere is going to call them out if they make ridiculous and wildly inaccurate claims.

Surely.

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I recently got approved by the Arizona Department of Real Estate to teach Continuing Education hours. In and of itself, that’s not so different. There are a gazillion people certified to teach real estate classes.

What is a little different is the fine folks at First American Title’s Eagle University have helped me get a class on electronic media approved for 3 continuing education hours in the Commissioner’s Standards category. We’ll be integrating how to “do social media” with bits and pieces of how to stay within State and Department advertising and disclosure guidelines, professional conduct, broker supervision and control, and more.

I promise it won’t be as boring as it sounds.

Plans are to teach the course at various locations across Arizona. We’ll also be developing other credit-hour courses as well.

A big thanks to First American for working with me (and having faith that I won’t say anything to get us all fired). Hopefully we’ll spread a little knowledge and have some fun in the process.

The first class will be delivered sometime in late July, date to be determined.

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Thinking about going to the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco in August? (If you’re not, and you are in real estate, you should be.)

Want to save over 50% on the conference registration?

Well of course you do.

Here’s your chance. Just click on the graphic in this post (or click here) and sign yourself up! Be sure to go through these links, and enter the code “PhoenixREGuy” to get your discount. Hurry, this greatly discounted price is only good through June 12 EXTENDED TO JUNE 19!. EXTENDED INDEFINITELY!!!

Why would you want to go to Inman Connect?

Well to meet me and hang out in cool San Francisco bars and restaurants. What other excuse do you need?

Why that may would indeed be fun, there are far more important reasons to attend Real Estate Connect.

It’s a  fact that Connect may just be the single best real estate conference for networking. I’ve got a stack of business cards literally 4 inches tall from the people I’ve met at three previous Connect events I’ve attended. From agents, to geeky developer types, to CEOs of real estate tech companies. We’re talking smart, very well connected people. And they are fun to hang out with.

Don’t want to meet a whole bunch of people that can change the way you do business? (Whatever.) Then how about conference sessions that cover everything from technology to branding to the MLS to brokerage breakouts, and more. Much more. You can attend a workshop session on blogging, internet marketing or technology (sure to be a geek fest). Want to hear from branding visionary Alfred Lin, Chairman, COO & CFO, Zappos.com? How about Craig Newmark, Founder of that little site known as CraigsList?

Be sure to go a day early (August 4) and hit up the second incarnation of RE Bar Camp San Francisco to be held at the Headquarters of Trulia! (The whole RE Bar Camp “movement” started in San Fran last year prior to Inman). You can RSVP here for RE Bar camp, and see who is coming here.

Here’s your chance to do all that, and more, for less than half the regular cost.

Oh, and the after-hour parties are epic.

NOTE: Special pricing is available for new registrations only. Inman is not able to issue refunds to those who have already registered and might have paid a different price. Sorry!

Disclosure: This discount is an “affiliate” program. I get a small payment if you click through and register. Trust me, it’s nowhere near the amount you save. I combine it with other affiliate programs and donate half of all funds collected to charity.

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Off to San Francisco

Upcoming Real Estate Happenings

Off to Inman Real Estate Connect and RE Bar Camp NYC

I don’t know who is crazier, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) for asking me to serve on the Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee, or me for accepting their offer…

Someone out there is reading this and thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

At least that’s what I initially thought. But it’s true. Last week I got a call from Steve Brown, NAR Vice President & Liaison to Committees, asking me if I’d be willing to serve the remainder of the year on the national MLS Policy Committee. Apparently my rather outspoken opinion on various blogs and at the NAR’s Midyear Legislative Conference in Washington spurred someone within the NAR to suggest putting me on the committee, and presumably the “work group” being formed to address IDX policy.

Now I will be the first to admit that I’ve never been what anyone would call a “NAR Poster Boy”. To be frank, sometimes the NAR drives me insane. It’s often cited as the largest trade organization in the country and as such is often mired in politics and bureaucracy.

I’m not a big fan of politics and bureaucracy. Had enough of that over a couple of decades spent in Corporate America.

But whether you love them or hate them, the NAR helps set policy and direction and greatly influences how real estate agents and brokers can run their business. And that is really important to me, politics and bureaucracy be damned.

This latest flap from MIBOR ruling that the indexing of listings by search engines violates policy is a big deal. The potential ramifications are enormous. So rather than just sit back and bitch and moan about it, I’m going to do whatever I can to get the policy clarified. My stance is clear – search engine indexing is not evil, it’s good for agents and brokers and more importantly real estate consumers.

I do have to give credit to the NAR for offering up a spot on the MLS Committee. It says they are at least willing to try to get things right, and this has not always been the case. I thank them for the opportunity to represent my fellow like-minded agents and brokers.

I’m just one guy on a committee of one hundred, and one realtor out of a million plus. I don’t have any grand visions of fundamentally changing the NAR. Yet. Let’s take some baby steps and see if we can get silly policies clarified first. As Todd Carpenter, the NAR’s Social Media Manager, once said, “the way to eat an elephant is one bite at time”.

And I’m hungry.

—–

Have no idea what the “latest flap from MIBOR” is? Read these posts and comments:

• Did Google Scrape My Website? You Be The Judge. Rules Threaten Realtors & IDX Providers. (the seminal post)

• NAR Responds in DC- The MLS Committee to recommend Google policy change

• MIBOR Blocks Change, NAR Committee Agrees- Politics Beats Agents In DC

• Can’t We All Just Get Along?

• Online Home Search Technology Heading Back to the Ice Age if NAR / MIBOR Ruling Stands

• Calling @crtweet for clarification, please!

• NAR and MIBOR at odds with reality of what Google is

• Real Estate’s Deep Dark Secret: NAR (and Many Brokers) Don’t Want You the Public to See the Data

• Newspapers and Realtors

• NAR’s IDX Rule Changes Need More Study

• Cliff Niersbach NAR response to Google spidering listings in Mibor

• MIBOR and NAR need an internet education

• Lots of links on Google is not a scraper dot com

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Hey Realtors, Answer The Phone!

Today, I took down the forum.

Why?

F’ing spammers.

They swiftly over-ran the place and it became too big a time sink to monitor and delete forum posts.

I could likely fix this problem by requiring approval before a forum account is created, but there is that time problem again. We are insanely busy and I just don’t have time to heavily moderate and approve everything right now. The user database and real posts are saved, and may (or may not) be resurrected at some point.

To the 39 legitimate users that joined, I thank you, and I’m sorry this didn’t work out as we were starting to get some nice discussions going.

To the spammers that wrecked it for everyone, about all I can say is “get a life” and “bite me”.

If you are looking for a good real estate related forum, here are two that are very good, with lots of great users:

BiggerPockets Forum: a great forum for all things real estate.

Real Estate Webmasters: has very good general real estate stuff, but really shines in the internet/SEO/real estate website tech space.

Blog experiments are fun. Some work, others don’t. This one wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last. Stay tuned…

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If you look very closely at the photo above, you may notice that it has been slightly altered. This subtle change to a classic movie still shot, and the clever play on words of this post’s title, both provide clues as to where I’ll be this week.

That’s right kids, I’m headed off to Washington, D.C. to attend the National Association of Realtor’s (NAR) Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo.

Why in the world would I do that?

Well, I’m not real sure what happened here. A post last week on Agent Genius set off quite the shitstorm brouhaha controversy when it reported that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Board of Realtors (MIBOR), with input from the NAR, ruled that Google was a “scraper” site and so sent a Realtor a Cease & Desist notice to change her web sites home search.

Now this is so utterly ridiculous that yours truly had to chime in on the discussion (which currently stands at 349 comments on the Agent Genius post and more on the dozen or so other posts that have sprung up across the real estate blogiverse).

Apparently my “passion” on the subject (some would say my big mouth) got the attention of some in the NAR and they were gracious enough (and I say that without sarcasm) to invite me to come give my concerns directly to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) Committee at their meeting in Washington.

So off I go. I’ll be back on Friday. It should be interesting.

Anyone remotely interested in why it’s not good when local and national trade organizations stomp all over a dues paying member should go read the AG post. And if you are a Realtor and are concerned about this (and you should be) then please take action as noted in the post and comments.

Below is the update from what occurred in the MLS meeting:

The meeting went very well. 75 or so MLS committee members were there and I don’t know how many in the audience — three hundred? It was crowded. Paula Henry, who’s original post on Agent Genius brought this to a LOT of people’s attention spoke first and did great, I followed with my thoughts. We spoke in the open forum portion of the meeting.

During the forum, Cliff Niersbach, NAR’s Vice President of Board Policy & Programs, put up some proposed changes to the language of the IDX policy that addressed the search engine indexing issue. A couple more people spoke, and the open forum portion of the meeting ended shortly after that.

At that point, the Committee entered into the portion of the meeting where they discuss and vote on motions.

The proposed changes to the search indexing language were formally proposed and voted on.

And the changes passed!

So the policy that said this:

2. Participants must protect IDX information from misappropriation by employing reasonable efforts to monitor and prevent “scraping” or other unauthorized accessing, reproduction or use of the MLS database. (with clarification from NAR that read: “Consequently, NAR staff responded to questioners that the requirement to prevent scraping includes indexing.)

Was changed to this:

Participants must protect IDX information from unauthorized uses. This requirement does not prohibit indexing of IDX sites by search engines.

This change still has to be voted on by the NAR Board of Directors on Saturday, but people I talked to expect it will pass.

Personally, I’d like to thank Todd Carpenter, and everyone at NAR that made it possible for Paula and I to fly to Washington and address the Committee, and a very special thanks to Cliff Niersbach. Trust me, without his support in the forum and MLS Committee meeting, this change would not have happened.

Here is Paula Henry’s take on today’s activities.

I’ll have more later. My head hurts, my feet hurt, and I need an adult beverage or three.

Update #2 - Well, the proposed change was NOT passed by the NAR Board of Directors. Apparently the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of REALTORS® (MIBOR), the archaic board in Indianapolis that started this whole mess, proposed an amendment to refer the changes back to the MLS Committee for further discussion, and that’s what the NAR BOD voted to do. My understanding (and I could be wrong on this) is that it won’t be discussed until the NAR convention in November. Very disappointing that a 100+ member committee can pass something and one disgruntled and clueless local board can shove it back down again. I won’t stop fighting!

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Recent reviews by Jay T.

What’s this?

This is just what I need, another addictive web site.

Yelp is a great place to get user reviews on all sorts of things. Usually when you talk about user reviews, two things come to mind – restaurants and Amazon.com books.

Love Amazon’s user reviews. They are a great way to find new authors.

And I like to eat out, so reading other people’s thoughts is always a good way to get the feel for a place.

But Yelp is more, much more than just restaurant reviews.

It is also a social network. You can “friend” people, compliment them, add photos, send messages, ask and answer questions, and more.

The cool thing about Yelp though is it is much more than just people ranting and raving about restaurants. Virtually any business or service you can imagine has been (or can be) reviewed on Yelp. Hotels, parks, auto shops, public services, retail outlets, you name it. Heck, in theory you could even review Thompson’s Realty (which could lead to a discussion on Yelp for Business Owners, but we’ll leave that for another day).

So check out Yelp, learn about new places, write some reviews. And friend me up!

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Four years ago today the first post here was published. To be honest, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, or even why I was doing it.

Four years later, I’m still not exactly sure what I’m doing. And sometimes I wonder why.

But do it I must. Over the years, this little corner of the Internet has gone through name changes (we started out as the “Arizona Real Estate Blog”), a domain name change (I bet no one remembers that we used to be at BuyGilbertHomes.com), hosting changes and Lord knows how many theme changes and modifications.

I distinctly remember the first time TPREG got 100 visitors in a week. I wondered then why in the world almost 15 people a day would come by to see my ramblings. That over 1,000 unique individuals will stop by today still blows my mind.

And really it is for you, “Oh avid reader”, that I continue down this path. Don’t get me wrong, I love the business this thing generates. And certainly that is a large chunk of the answer to the “why do you do it?” question.

But that’s not the only reason. As corny as it sounds, this silly blog is a part of me and my life.

I can’t begin to describe how much I’ve learned in the last four years from this endeavor. For that I thank all the other bloggers, in real estate and beyond, those that comment and email, and those I laugh and share with “In Real Life”. Hopefully I’ve been able to pay a little of that knowledge forward. I’ve met so many people, and experienced so many things as a result of doing this that I can’t fathom ever giving it up.

On this fourth blogiversary, I want to express my sincere appreciation for everyone that’s ever stopped by. Ever read a post, ever left a comment, searched for a home, or ever linked to something I wrote. And of course to those that found us here and trusted us to help you buy or sell a home, you have my deepest gratitude. A lot of people have stopped by this blog and your support, contributions and readership over the last four years has made this one remarkable journey.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. And hang on, because the next four years ought to be a wild ride!

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A lot of the changes are “under the hood”, but I was able to make the primary content column a smidge wider. This provides a couple of advantages: 1) I’ll be able to add wider charts, tables and pictures; and 2) I was able to bump the font size up a tad to compensate for my aging eyes…

Widening the blog also gave me some space up in the header area to add some subscription and social networking icons.

You’ll see the RSS subscribe, subscribe by email, Twitter, and Flickr icons there. Clicking them does what you’d expect.

If you don’t know what these things are, stay tuned as I’m working on a page explaining them (and will be adding more as time permits). Update: more icons added, and a brief description page is at What’s This?

And of course, if you’re reading this in a feed reader, you won’t see any of these nifty changes…

Also way up at the top of the blog you’ll notice a place to join the blog through Google Friend Connect. This has been in place for awhile now buried in the sidebar (and still is, I just added the thing across the top as well).

What does this do? Not a whole lot yet. But given Google’s plan’s to take over the planet, I’m sure they’ve got ideas in store. Right now it’s another networky thing and a place where you can keep track of different sites, leave comments, “friend” people, the usual social media stuff.

Another feature added is the ability to have “threaded” comments. All that means is you can reply directly to an existing comment. Often on posts that generate a lot of comment activity, it’s tough at times to keep track of the conversations. Now if you want to reply to a specific comment, just click “reply” under that comment and your comment will be posted immediately below what you’re replying to, instead of way down at the bottom of the entire comment list.

It’ll look like so:

Comment replies can be nested 5 deep. Any more than that just seems silly to me. (But I can change it if I need to). Personally, I’ve never been a real big fan of threaded comments, but can see the need at times so it’s there if someone wants to use it. It’s one of those things that sort of has to grow on you.

That’s about it for the changes. For now.

As always, if you see something goofy or broken, let me know please!

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Update: the Forum has been removed. Blame it on the spammers. Details here. Sorry!

I’m a forum junkie, have been since the old Bulletin Board and Compuserve days.

Forums can provide a lot of interaction, similar – yet different – than blog comments. And I love interaction. Often the format of a forum is better for back and forth exchanges.

So enter The Phoenix Real Estate Guy Forum. You can find it by going to the navigation bar under the header graphic, or just click here to enter the forum (see update at top of post).

Honestly, I have no idea if this thing will ever gain any traction. If it does, it’ll stay. If it doesn’t, it won’t. It is really yet another blog experiment (happens a lot around here, thanks for bearing with me).

Good idea? Stupid? I don’t know, you tell me. I don’t recall seeing a forum integrated into a real estate blog. Surely someone has tried it. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

The forum runs SimplePress, a Wordpress plugin. I’ve customized some of the CSS to make it match the blog styling. No question it will be evolving over the coming weeks.

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