Before:

After:

Why?

I dunno. Why not? The old site had been around four plus years, and was just… getting old.

I was running the site on the Point 2 Agent platform, which I still think is one of the better real estate template site providers out there. I’ve met many of the people at Point2 and respect them professionally, and consider several of them friends. Through no fault of theirs, I’d let the site fall into disarray, and it needed a facelift.

Obviously I went with the Wordpress platform for the latest incarnation. There is still much work to be done, but the bulk of the pages I wanted to keep are there, the 301 redirects are in place where needed and now we sit back and see what happens.

Listing Syndication

One of the things that keep me with the older system was the excellent listing syndication that Point2 provides. For those that don’t know, listing syndication is (basically) putting your real estate listings out on other sites. You can manually enter them site by site – just remove all sharp objects from the room before you go that route. A syndication system lets you enter them once and it propagates the information out across the far reaches of the world wide web.

I’ll spare you the pro and con arguments of third party listing aggregators in this post, but suffice it to say that with most of the planet looking for homes on the Internet, it seems prudent to get our listings on as many sites as possible.

Point2 did that very well. (Albeit it was quite tiresome to enter listings into the Multiple Listing System (MLS) and then re-enter them into the Point2 back end).

Enter ListHub. They pull listing data directly from the MLS and syndicate them to 30 different property sites. Cost? Free. (Unless you want reporting – and you probably should – but it’s not all that expensive).

Benefits of Wordpress

For me, I know Wordpress fairly well and can make it do pretty much what I want. Your mileage may vary. But using it over a template provider gives me complete control, and if you know me, you know I’m a control freak.

There also appears to be a significant performance improvement. Here are load times taken before and after the switchover (courtesy of Pingdom):

Before:	After:

Templated sites contain a lot of “overhead” to allow for ease of editing. Wordpress is pretty lean and mean. (Plus, I left a lot of stuff in the gutter of the Information Highway.)

So, was it painful?

It was excruciating. There is no easy way to switch over files from a provider where I have no server access. We’re talking good old-fashioned cut and paste. And stripping out a lot of formatting code. And reformatting. And placing 301 redirects. And uploading photos and files and whatnot to the new server. Then there is all that DNS and email MX record propagation jazz to consider as well.

Yeah, it pretty much sucked.

What’s next?

I fully expect to get slammed in Google and see a drop in traffic. I dropped out a lot of content that was stale, but it was still content and would land long-tailish searches. Fortunately, I rely more on this very blog you are reading (assuming you’ve stuck with me so far) for prospecting than on the traditional site, but it still did quite well. I think suspect hope that over time the traffic will return. And I think over time that the Wordpress platform (and the amazing Thesis theme) will ultimately do better in the search engines. If nothing else, it’s easier to add new content on this platform, and between Thesis, Wordpress and the nature of a blogging platform all bodes well for the SEO future of ThompsonsRealty.com.

Only time will tell I suppose.

I’d love to hear any thoughts, suggestions, or criticisms. If you are industrious / curious / bored you can still see the original site at JayAndFrancy.com, and of course the makeover at ThompsonsRealty.com.

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It’s not all about the money my a$$, rents are up and dumb agents fall for silly scam…

Here I sit, waiting to catch the red eye flight cross-country to New York City where I’ll be speaking at Inman News’ Bloggers Connect — part of a biannual real estate conference hosted by Inman Real Estate News. I’ll be right smack in the middle of Times Square through Friday, so posting may be light.

There’s a small corner of the real estate blogiverse that seems to have a fundamental problem with this particular conference. It’s a curious thing as the main nay sayer has never attended to my knowledge and I know he at least hasn’t been to the last three (including this upcoming one).

Whatever.

I’m not a huge fan of conferences either. Rarely will one attend a conference of any sort and walk away with some stunning revelation on how to be a better agent, broker, father, person, whathaveyou.

This will be my third Inman Connect and in my humble opinion, it is the real estate conference to attend. Granted, I never attended the big annual Century 21 conference when I hung my license at a C21 brokerage. Saw some video though — it was a sea of gold jackets and an awful lot of cheer leading and  back slapping. Not really my cup of tea. I did attend the 2007 NAR (National Association of Realtors) Conference and Expo. It was quite interesting to see 30,000 something Realtors converge on Vegas. What struck me as odd about that conference was that even at 47, I felt like I was one of the youngest people there.

Inman is different. It’s not geared only to agents and brokers. A significant portion of those attending are real estate technology vendors, and typically there are a few new product announcements made. Some of these are good, and some not-so-swift.

The best part of the conference, for me, are the hallway and after-hours conversations. There are a bunch o’ smart people that attend Inman, and that smart has a way of wearing off. Talk to enough smart people and something is bound to stick.

The networking opportunities are extraordinary. Agents, brokers, Technology Officers, CEO’s, you name it and they are there. And they are willing to talk. And to listen. It’ll be great to re-connect with old friends, get to know some folks I’ve only previously known online and meet new people.

An added benefit of going to Connect this year will be RE Bar Camp New York — an “unconference”. No set agenda, no hidden agenda. Just lots of mulit-way discussion. I attended an RE Bar Camp prior to Connect San Francisco in July, so this will be my second iteration. We need to get an RE Bar Camp in Phoenix (and it’s been discussed).

Well enough rambling about the conferences. Suffice it to say that I’m pumped about attending. There will be video, photos, and written musings forthcoming.

I’ll post from there if I can. If not, we’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming on Saturday.

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Get a huge discount to Inman Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2009!

Upcoming Real Estate Happenings

I have no idea.

I don’t even have one.

But, if you do have an iPhone, your Phoenix Real Estate Guy blog experience just got better. I know, hard to believe it could get any better isn’t it? But it did!

Here are some screen shots…

Just navigate to PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com, and you will see this:

Press the title for the full post, or the down arrow for a excerpt. The number in the little red circle indicates the current number of comments. See the “Menu” link? Press that…

How cool is that?

Of course you will want to add the iPhoneish Phoenix Real Estate Guy to your home screen. Just click the “+” link at the bottom and press “Add to Home Screen” (go ahead and email it to your buddies too while you are there):

And wha-la! You’ll have a spiffy little custom TPREG icon on your iPhone for easy access. Now all you iPhone users have no excuse for getting behind on your Phoenix Real Estate Guy reading!

With gratitude to Todd Carpenter at Lenderama for the plugin info, testing and screen shots.

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A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.

Despite the fact that on multiple occasions I wanted to put either his head or mine in an oven, the guy really did teach me a great deal about the power, both good and bad, of statistics.

Now there is no way that six credit hours of statistics makes one an expert. Nor does sitting in meeting after meeting listening to semiconductor engineers drone on about F-tests and kurtosis. Been there, done that, made the charts. (Fair warning, don’t click those links without a bottle of aspirin handy.)

But having a little exposure to statistics does help one sift through the daunting pile of real estate stats that are published on a regular basis out there on the world wide web. Some real estate data analysis is very well done, some is not good but harmless in the grand scheme of things, and some is just flat out wrong.

Lately there seems to be a resurgence in the not good to bad category of real estate statistical analysis. I ran across a chart similar to this a couple of days ago:

What is this chart trying to tell us? The text said that it shows “units sold” in Phoenix, and that the upward trend was “happy news”. OK, I’ll buy that generally speaking, increased sales are a good thing.

But what does this chart really show us?

Absolutely nothing. Conspicuously missing is the Y-axis (vertical) scale. If you want to change the visual impact of a line chart, adjust the scale. Without a scale, we have no clue as to whether this chart means anything. Did sales go up by 10 units or 10,000? Isn’t that knowledge just a wee bit important if you are going to try to draw any conclusions from this data set?

Sadly, this chart (well, not THIS chart, but THIS one) wasn’t done by an individual who simply doesn’t know better. The chart I saw (but can’t copy without permission) was produced by REality, a company that claims to be “the leading provider of real estate market intelligence in North America” (an interesting statement given I’ve never heard of them — wonder if they have any data to support that claim?).

Business Week blows it too

The well-regarded publication Business Week provided an interesting example today of statistical analysis gone bad. In this brief article, BW tells us that traffic to certain markets on Realtor.com has increased and, “What this tells you is that a lot of people are starting to bottom-fish in these markets”.

Really?

Maybe that’s true, maybe not. To take one statistic — increased traffic — and conclude that means something in particular is quite the leap of faith. Traffic to this blog has increased dramatically this year, does that make it safe to say the Phoenix real estate market is booming?

What the BW article fails to explore, completely, are alternatives to why traffic may have increased on Realtor.com. Could it be due to a site redesign (which R.com went through), increased advertising in those markets by either local agents or R.com, a change in searcher demographics, a change in Google’s algorithms, or some weird shift in the space-time nexus? Who knows, all are plausible (well, maybe not the nexus thing, I pretty much made that one up).

“So what is the point Jay?” a bored and weary reader is likely saying right about now.

The point is, very few real estate agents (myself included) are well versed in statistics. Dare I say, neither are most main-stream media writers. Apparently neither is North America’s leading provider of real estate market intelligence. And you know what? The typical person looking for information about real estate is probably not all that familiar with statistical analysis either, though I have no statistics to prove that.

As a real estate agent building charts and tables filled with stats, keep in mind that conclusions you draw based on statistics may, or may not, be accurate. Do you really understand the difference between average, mean and median home price? Do your readers? Do you want to make predictions and draw conclusions from data you don’t really understand.

As a real estate “consumer”, be careful letting other people interpret data for you. You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet — unless it’s on this blog of course, he says dripping with sarcasm. In fact, it’s probably safe to assume the conclusion someone reaches from their “statistical analysis” is nothing more than their opinion that is loosely based on some data set. There is certainly nothing wrong with expressing an opinion, just be aware that’s what it is — an opinion. Do your due diligence, seek out varying opinions and analysis before reaching your own conclusions.

Hat tip to Ines at AgentGenius for the BW link.

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Are you going to the ARMLS Tech Fair tomorrow or Friday?

I’ll be in the booth by our esteemed IDX provider, Diverse Soultions, chatting about blogging and social media type stuff.

Stop by if you’re there and say howdy!

ARMLS Tech Fair
When: Thursday and Friday, August 21-22 — 9:00am through 5:00pm
Where: Monterra at Westworld, 16601 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85260

The Tech Fair will be held concurrently with ARMLS training on the advanced features of flexmls in the same facility, so feel free to drop in after class!

View Larger Map

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In the blog category five fabulous blogs were nominated:

1000Watt Blog
AgentGenius
Big Picture Blog
FBS Blog
Homegain Real Estate Blog

I may be slightly biased in that I contribute to two of these blogs (AgentGenius and HomeGain). Benn and Lani are responsible for much of the success of AgentGenius, and while I can’t speak for them, I’m sure they’d graciously contribute the success to the AG contributors. Louis at Homegain would follow right along. It has been my pleasure to work with Benn, Lani, Louis and all of the AgentGenius and HomeGain contributors.

Biased as I may be, I can attest that the other three nominees are all more than worthy to be named finalists.

Marc Davidson (and Brian Boero) at 1000Watt are brilliant writers and innovative thinkers. I’ve had a couple of conversations with Marc and can tell you that he’s as nice a guy as he is smart.

Speaking of nice and wicked smart, Michael Wurzer at FBS fits that mold to a T. For those in the Phoenix area, Michael is the CEO of the company that is bringing us our shiny new FlexMLS system.

I don’t know Barry Ritholtz at Big Picture blog, but I can tell you one thing for sure — if it’s financial info you are looking for, you need look no further.

Congrats to all the Inman Innovator Finalists in the Blog category! (and all the nominees in the other categories too, several of which I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and/or corresponding with.) Whoever ends up winning it will be deserving, and beating out some very tough competition.

See you all in San Francisco!

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The LA Times on Real Estate Blogging

Congrats Rudy!!

The speed this client mentions is really all predicated on the use of electronic signatures. We use DocuSign as our “e-signature processor”, which enables us to send, sign and receive real estate contracts and documents at the speed of email. It’s convenient for all involved — the clients, the agent and their clients on the other side of the transaction and the title companies. If you’ve ever tried to read a document that has been faxed repeatedly, you’ll quickly realize there is another benefit to digital signatures — the documents don’t degrade in quality every time they are sent.

Over the weekend we submitted an offer, and it was countered by the seller with this as one of the counter terms:

XXXX Realty needs to see live signatures within 72 hours of completion of contract.

A conversation with the listing agent leads us to believe that he doesn’t seem to think electronic signatures are legitimate or legal.

My first reaction to that was, “This is 2008. Get with the program.” But rather than making some snide remark, it seemed better to take the high road and present some info to the listing agent to prove to him that electronic / digital signatures are indeed legal.

To wit:

From Realtor.org

President Inks Electronic Signatures Bill
President Clinton signed S. 761, the “Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act,” into law Friday, June 20, 2000 in Philadelphia, PA. This law becomes effective on October 1, 2000 for electronic transactions and March 1, 2001 for electronic records.

This law simplifies the real estate transaction by allowing two parties to treat electronic signatures with the same legal standing as “pen and ink” versions. It also establishes the legal validity of electronic records. This law includes protections that ensure consumers who wish to conduct business using the traditional pen and paper method may continue to do so.

The Electronic Signatures law provides the legal certainty and national uniformity necessary for consumers and businesses to:

Contract electronically for the purchase of goods and services, as well as the sale and lease of real property;

Process mortgage loan transactions electronically;

Receive related state and federal disclosures online;

Transfer promissory notes electronically;

Notarize transactions electronically; and

Obtain and maintain electronic records of transactions.

Note the President and the year… Clinton, 2000.

Arizona Specific Law:

The Arizona Electronic Transactions Act 

The Arizona Electronic Transactions Act (the “ETA”) creates statutory authority for creating contracts electronically, via computer, by adding A.R.S.§44-7001 et. seq.

As a result of this legislation, a contract formed by an electronic record cannot be denied legal effect and enforceability solely because it was formed electronically. A.R.S.§44-7007(B). Similarly, a signature in electronic form cannot be denied legal effect and enforceability solely because it is in electronic form. A.R.S. §44-7007(A). An electronic record and electronic signature satisfies any law that requires a signed writing, such as the Statute of Frauds requirement that a contract for the sale of real property be evidenced by a signed writing to be enforceable. A.R.S.§44-7007(D).

Here is A.R.S.§44-7007 in its entirety:

44-7007. Legal recognition of electronic records, signatures and contracts

A. A record or signature in electronic form cannot be denied legal effect and enforceability solely because the record or signature is in electronic form.

B. A contract formed by an electronic record cannot be denied legal effect and enforceability solely because an electronic record was used in its formation.

C. An electronic record satisfies any law that requires a record to be in writing.

D. An electronic signature satisfies any law that requires a signature.

Here is the catch with electronic signatures (at least in Arizona, it may be different in other states).

The ETA applies only to a “transaction between parties each of which has agreed to conduct transaction by electronic means. Whether the parties agree to conduct a transaction by electronic means is determined from the context and surrounding circumstances, including the parties’ conduct.” (A.R.S. §44-7005(B)).

So technically, if one side of the party doesn’t want the other side to utilize electronic signatures, they can make that demand.

But why in the world would you?

Yet this is exactly what happened in this transaction. Our buyers signed their offer digitally. The sellers countered requesting “live” signatures.

What a brilliant idea. You’re trying to sell your home in the middle of a buyer’s market, so you make a demand via counter offer that will inconvenience said buyer.  Is that because you don’t know electronic signatures are legally binding, you don’t believe it, you just don’t like them, or you want to make it as difficult as possible for the people attempting to buy your home?

(Of note, these same sellers also countered the closing date the buyers requested. Our buyers wanted to close on July 31. The sellers countered with a closing date of…. July 30. This prompts a response along the lines of, “WTF?!? Are they just attempting to be as difficult as possible?”).

Home sellers — think, really think about what you want to counter. If you’ve got a ready, willing and able buyer that has submitted an offer on your home this is a good thing. Pissing them off with petty demands is just silly. I’m not saying you should blindly accept any offer you receive — of course you shouldn’t. But to counter items that in the end run make absolutely no difference to your bottom line is putting a great deal at risk. Our buyers have hundreds of other homes to choose from. Making petty demands is a sure-fire way to make their decision to look elsewhere a whole lot simpler.

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Should be interesting…

Inman Connect is one of the largest real estate technology conferences (maybe the largest) in the country. I attended my first one last January in New York City and had a blast. Looking forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones, learning and sharing.

The speakers line up is impressive, and growing daily. Mr. Dalton over on the west side will be speaking on the “Tapping the Global Real Estate Market” panel on Thursday. Sadly, that conflicts with the “Real Estate Brokerage of the Future” session. Looks like I’ll be bouncing between the two…

Inman is currently offering special “Blogger Pricing”. Hurry…

The day before Blogger Connect is the
“RE Bar Camp” – an “unconference”. It too should be most educational and entertaining.

If you are planning to attend Inman Connect, you have to come a day early for Bar Camp. And that evening, you can mosey over to Zillow’s “Beer with Blogger’s” Reception. Trust me, the Zillow people know how to throw a party…

Drop a comment if you’re planning to attend and we’ll Connect at Connect!

Here are some of my photos from Connect NYC in January.

Closer to home, some of us Phoenix real estate blogging / Twittering fools are planning to do lunch this Tuesday (May 6). Let me know if you’re interested. Seating is limited!

May 29 should bring around another session of the AZ Real Estate Blogging Network. Details forthcoming.

And on a yet to be determined exactly date in June, I’ll be conducting a real estate blogging workshop sponsored by First American Title.

And there’s a three-day to Rocky Point coming up too! Ahhh, Corona’s…
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Some Local Phoenix Blogs — That Are NOT Real Estate Related…

Our current MLS / IDX search provides RSS feed capability. And we are working on a Listings RSS Feed page to make it even easier. The page is up, and is currently pulling in feeds for all changed listings in Gilbert, Chandler and Mesa. (Follow the link, or click on “Listings RSS Feeds” under the header banner).

I’m working on the structure and it will be much better organized over the weekend.

Not familiar with RSS feeds? Here’s a great overview (3:44):

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For a long (long) time, the number of choices a Phoenix real estate agent had for implementing a map-based home search was woefully limited. Fortunately, the leadership at ARMLS (Arizona Multiple Listing Service) recently joined this century and new MLS/IDX search options are becoming available.

And we’re just tickled to be the first (of many, I’m sure) Phoenix area real estate web site to implement the search technology supplied by Diverse Solutions.

I’m still exploring, but this property search is wicked cool, and powerful.

From the user perspective, you can search to your hearts content, with no fear of being hounded by an agent. No calendars, no sports schedules, and no unwanted email will clog your mail box, fridge or in-box.

But, should you be so inclined, you can register and save searches, get notified of new listings on the market (daily or weekly — your choice) and more.

Want an RSS feed of listings? No problem.

Need specific info on the neighborhood, schools, or demographics? Check.

See a home you can’t live without? Make a PDF file of the listing, book mark the link, email it to yourself and your friends.

Need more info? Contact us directly from the listing page, initiate a chat, or schedule a showing. All just a click or two away.

Fully integrated Google Maps, including Google Street View (where Big G has filmed) allow you to search for and map right there with the home listings things like shopping, pizza joints, Starbucks, churches, schools and more.

It takes a little getting used to compared to our old home search solution. Chiefly because our old solution was lame. Some (OK, me) even said, “This sucks!”

Not any more. I’ve watched some folks go into the new search for the first time and swiftly search and locate homes that fit their criteria. The more you play with it, the more you find it can do, and the easier it gets. And hey, if it’s good enough for Kris and Steve Berg, it’s good enough for me.

Feel free to give it a whirl right here on the blog, or on our “traditional” site.

For the agents out there, the back end of this thing is slick. You can set up unlimited “filters” (WAY better than KillerIDX filters) and there are some cool tools you can use, like this:

Or this:

There’s more to come. Much more.

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