Real Estate Zealot

Inman Connect 2009-Metro Brokers Moe Giroux Sees Online Partnerships Increasing

Metro Brokers TV: Welcome to MetroBrokers TV. We are at the San Francisco Inman Connect in 2009 and I am with Moe Giroux and Moe is our past President at MetroBrokers and Moe welcome to the show.

Moe Giroux: Thanks Mark.

Metro Brokers TV: So how many of these Inman events have you attended now?

Moe Giroux: This is my fifth now, the third time in San Francisco, been in New York twice.

Metro Brokers TV: Well so you are a veteran?

Moe Giroux: I am and so it's very interesting.

Metro Brokers TV: And are you learning stuff every time that you come here or just as a junket?

Moe Giroux: No, no well a little bit of that too you know we have a lot of fun but definitely an eye opening experience every time there is always new stuff on the horizon its nice to see, see what's coming.

Metro Brokers TV: So what changes this time?

Moe Giroux: I think the biggest thing that I have seen the change is this definitely a lot of less friction between the realtors and what we used to look at these threats with this on site and online companies that we thought used to be the competitors, we are looking at them more as partners.

Metro Brokers TV: You are talking about like truly a Zillow?

Moe Giroux: Exactly all well you have gone and on and on there is this hundreds of them.

Metro Brokers TV: Anything you can pass on to our membership that they should be on the look out for tips from Moe?

Moe Giroux: The best step I can give him is you need to come you know it's definitely worth your money, you will enjoy it and you will learn a lot. Social networking is the next step phase but people have to get into Facebook, you have to get into Twitter we heard about it and we know lot of our friends and others that are doing it, its time to jump in.

Metro Brokers TV: Yeah I guess there was a little bit more here on last year it was more about blogging and things like that nature and social media was just starting, now we are seeing social media is... its everything.

Moe Giroux: It is definitely more.

Metro Brokers TV: Well Moe appreciate your insight and information and if you are looking for more great information about Metro Brokers our culture and our people make sure to tune into metrobrokerstv.com.

Chris Siow on Bug! Real Estate the radical real estate company

BrokerIPTV: We are at Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008 and I am with Chris Siow. Did I say that right Chris?

Chris Siow: Correct.

BrokerIPTV: And Chris is the founder I believe of Bug Real Estate.

Chris Siow: Actually, the founder of Bug Real Estate is from San Diego. His name is Kevin Seney. I am the regional owner and director of San Francisco district.

BrokerIPTV: So, tell us a little bit about Bug Real Estate then.

Chris Siow: Sure. We have a very radical, different concept than the traditional real estate company. We are very focused on our business model. We are the first company who allows all the agents to drive the same kind of car. They are the Volkswagen Beetles. They are iconic and we wrap them up in ladybug design, so that we can allow agents to expose themselves in the community that they can tell people what they are doing by just driving their car without being invisible.

BrokerIPTV: How are you different than a traditional... are you a traditional shop or...? How does that work?

Chris Siow: Well, program wise, we are quite similar to the traditional system, but we are just representing ourselves as a new kind of concept company. We are very focused in our brand. We try to be casual. We try to be approachable. We try to be friendly and fun and develop a new kind of lifestyle for agents instead of just being in a Lexus or Mercedes Benz, we have Volkswagen. We are trying to be green. We use less paper. So, we are a new concept, new fun company to be with.

BrokerIPTV: Office location, what about a lot of terrestrial[Phonetic] real estate or not as far as offices?

Chris Siow: At the moment, at this market situation, a lot of offices are suffering in terms of having a high overhead. We are trying to have all the agents to work out from their home to try to keep the overhead low, but we do have a regional office in each district to allow agents to have access to all kinds of service like meeting rooms and office equipment to be used.

BrokerIPTV: Well, great Chris. Interesting name and I appreciate you talking with me today.

Chris Siow: Thank you. Bye, bye Mark.

Todd Carpenter's Barcamp a success on social media techniques in mortgage and real estate

BrokerIPTV: We are at Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008 and I am here with Todd Carpenter and Todd I understand had a really successful camp today.

Todd Carpenter: Yeah. It was awesome. We had kind of an ad hoc meeting with mortgage and real estate technology people. Had some great discussions. It was kind of an open forum and it was just great.

BrokerIPTV: What items of interest came up that has been different let's say than some of the past Inman Connects.

Todd Carpenter: Well, the difference between like an Inman Connect and this event is that we could break into really small groups, have discussions about like doing business on Twitter. You obviously wouldn't have 200 people going to a conference on how to do business on Twitter, but here is like 12 or 15 people that are really into it and figuring out how to do it and excited about it. So, little conferences like that were what made it so exciting.

BrokerIPTV: Yes. So, tell us what is the meaning of BarCamp? Tell me where that came from?

Todd Carpenter: Well, you know I don't know the exact history of it, but BarCamps are open discussions that are like an unconference[Phonetic] and they are really famous in the tech industry. You get lots of software people doing it. Andy Kaufman, who is right here in San Francisco decided we needed to do this for the real estate industry. There are a lot of folks that kind of doubted it would catch on, but I was all for it from the day one and we worked together to make it all work and it turned out great.

BrokerIPTV: Well, that is truly I think what Web 2.0, Web 3.0, social media, that is what it is about, it is unscripted doing business, something like what you do, just taking on the blogworld, no one gave you permission, you are just doing what you want to do, right?

Todd Carpenter: Absolutely. So, that is another topic. We went to blogworld last year, saw the political bloggers and the tech bloggers doing their thing and we knew we would have to bring that to the real estate industry and so, we created our eblogworld[Phonetic], which is in September on the 19th and that is going to be even better than this, I think.

BrokerIPTV: Appreciate your time Todd. Good seeing you here man.

Todd Carpenter: Thank you very much.

Mr.Tubemogul, Eugene Lee, the king of video contnet

BrokerIPTV:  Hey, this is Mark Eibner, Real Estate Connect in San Francisco 2008 and who do I have here on the floor, but Eugene Lee from Tube Mogul.  Hey, why don't you tell us a little bit about Tube Mogul and we use Tube Mogul a lot on Broker IPTV.

Eugene Lee:  Yes, Tube Mogul is an online video syndication and analytics company.  So, you take your video, you upload it to us, and we syndicate it to the top now[Phonetic] 17 sharing sites.  Where we are really powerful is that we bring you back analytics on how your video is being consumed.  The video views, comments, ratings, and we aggregate that over time. So, a consecrator [phonetic] like BrokerIPTV here will upload a video to us and we will deploy it to sites like YouTube, Yahoo Video, Google Video and again, we will pull back how many times a video is viewed, their comments or ratings, and we will aggregate that over time.

BrokerIPTV:  So, were you here at the RE BarCamp?

Eugene Lee:  I just got here at the end of RE BarCamp.  I wanted to come say hi to a lot of peer content creators, just like you, come say hi, put a face to a name...

BrokerIPTV:  Yeah.

Eugene Lee:  To people who've been emailing me and to see how it's coming along within the video space.

BrokerIPTV:  Yeah.  [Inaudible] the guy I need to talk to if I ever need my amount of videos upped[phonetic] a little bit, right?

Eugene Lee:  Yes. Yes.  BrokerIPTV's got good content, so, I can't say no to that.  Broker IPTV interviews some real cool people.  I wonder have you interviewed Craig Newmark you know from craigslist.  He is always at the space in real estate, so, yes, we are absolutely.

BrokerIPTV:  Well, no one is going to match Eugene Lee from Tube Mogul for God's sake.  Hey, well, it has been nice talking to you down here.  We hope to see you throughout the seminar here.  You guys have a space here or you are just here?

Eugene Lee:  I am just here to meet and mingle with you know Realtors or those involved in real estate space.  You want to use video because right now hot topic is localized content and we are seeing that Realtors are using video as a utility, whether it be to sell home or you know get a listing, to get their name out, build a brand, and that is where video is powerful enough.

BrokerIPTV:  Well, thanks [Inaudible] Eugene. It's great seeing you.

Eugene Lee:  Thank you Mark.  It is good to be here.

BrokerIPTV:  Yep.

Ben Martin leads the way as social media director for the Virginia Association of Realtors

BrokerIPTV: We are at Inman Connect Real Estate in San Francisco 2008 and I am on the rooftop of Trulia[Phonetic] here and we are talking with Ben Martin and I was intrigued to interview Ben because Ben is the social media Google director rock star[Phonetic] for the Virginia Association of Realtors. I just find that hard to believe.

Ben Martin: It is true. What can I say? You know real estate agents are always looking for new ways to engage with their clients, with their customers, with their [Inaudible] etc. We are basically taking a page out of their book. We are basically saying look we've got 30000, 35000, 36000 members that we want to engage in the activities of our association. So, what we have said is... oh and social media is a great way for us to engage these same people who are engaging their clients in the same methods. So, we said, okay, real estate agents are doing this, why can't we do it too?

BrokerIPTV: Why don't you go over through the basic things you are doing for your association members?

Ben Martin: Okay, sure. Well, probably the flagship thing that we've got going on is varbuzz, that is v-a-r-b-u-z-z.com. It is a multi-author blog. We've got about 20 or so contributors. Not all of them are from Virginia. We've actually engaged a Realtor from across the river in Maryland to be an author for us and basically we are like a conversation café for what is going on in the real estate business in Virginia.

BrokerIPTV: Well, you guys are to be commended because I don't really know of any other... are you aware of any other associations that have a social media director?

Ben Martin: Yeah, there are a few other associations that really have you into[Phonetic] social media. Miami Association of Realtors, I think they officially go by the Realtor Association of Miami and the Beaches; they have a fantastic social media effort. So, I follow what they are doing pretty regularly and others are catching up, but I would have to say Virginia is definitely leading the way on this.

BrokerIPTV: All right Ben. Well, hey, we really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and insight man. Congrats.

Ben Martin: Thank you.

Mike Bradley on the economy and the housing market in Denver

BrokerIPTV: We are at Inman Connect in San Francisco 2008 and I have Mike Bradley here and Mike I understand you were at... you were in the bulls[phonetic] session today.

Mike Bradley: Yeah, that was very interesting. Three positive people on the economy and three not so positive people talking about the economy.

BrokerIPTV: So, you remember the names of the one of the positive speakers?

Mike Bradley: I've no idea what their names were, but they are right along the same lines what I've been thinking. market is going to turn eventually. It is going to take another year or two, but you know one guy said something very interesting. He was talking about how banks are finally accepting short sales, foreclosures, and being much easier to work with than in the past and that is totally true.

BrokerIPTV: Wow. So, tell me about the pessimists in the group then.

Mike Bradley: Pessimists said that while that is open, it is still going to be three years to clear up the inventory and that is probably the case. You know there is a lot of foreclosures on the market and that has got to get cleared up and it has got slowed down with what is coming on the market at the same time.

BrokerIPTV: So, would they be in local market specifically they say in the US in general or were they picking on California, Florida?

Mike Bradley: They are pretty general. That is neighborhood specific. There is always hot spots that continue to go up, but even in New Port Beach and San Francisco Bay area, they are saying there is plenty of foreclosures and yeah, five years ago we had five year arms[phonetic] and record levels. Those are adjusting right now. So, there is just as many coming on the market where banks are finally working to clear them out the books.

BrokerIPTV: So, what do you see in say in your local market in Denver? You work Littleton, Highlands Ranch right?

Mike Bradley: Yeah. Littleton, Highlands Ranch, we are not nearly as bad as the nation. I think that the Denver area is one of the top communities to invest in right now, but we do have the same impact. Now, there are a lot of houses that are on the market, not selling and the buyers are following rather than leading. So, the price reductions are slow to come.

BrokerIPTV: Great. Well, thanks for talking with us today Mike. We appreciate your input and feedback.

Mike Bradley: Thanks [Inaudible]

Neil Lunagaria of Oodle on advertising rentals and other classifieds

BrokerIPTV: We are on the floor here at Real Estate Connect in San Francisco 2008 and I am with Neil Lunagaria. Neil is the... are you the Founder and CEO of Oodle?

Neil Lunagaria: I am not. I am Director of Sales for Oodle. I have been with the company for about a year-and-a-half. I predominantly work in our real estate and rentals categories.

BrokerIPTV: So, tell me about Oodle.

Neil Lunagaria: We are actually a search engine for classifieds, actually second largest classified site next to craigslist. Distant second, but second on the list. We have much like craigslist, we have about nine categories across the board, which include real estate, rentals, jobs, tickets, personals, so, people can come in, look for a girlfriend in personals, look for a house on real estate, look for an apartment or look for a job. Great synergy amongst all classified categories.

BrokerIPTV: So, what do you think the biggest difference is then say... why do you think craigslist has such a big user base and what is your user base compared to craigslist?

Neil Lunagaria: Great question. Our user base is basically more driven to consumer to business whereas craigslist is more consumer to consumer. Although the community is more engaged on craigslist because they have been around for so long and they've done a great job you know expanding their listings around the country. We are a few years younger than craigslist obviously, so... and again, our model is a little bit different. We are not, not for profit; we are profit... you know we are working for profitability. The difference really being is we don't want to own any of those listings. We want to obviously make sure that consumers will come to our site, find what they are looking for, and you know basically you have them go off of our site to the corresponding URL, mostly our client, mostly our partners.

BrokerIPTV: Interesting. How is your rental market? You have a lot of rentals?

Neil Lunagaria: We do. I don't know the exact number. I want to say probably about 2.2 million rental listings, big ones that include national aggregators[Phonetic] like apartments.com, rent.com, forrent, and then we are also obviously speaking with direct sources like archstonesmith and companies like that as well.

BrokerIPTV: Well, I'll tell you what, next time I have a maybe a lawn mower or a rental I've got to do, I'll try Oodle versus say craigslist.

Neil Lunagaria: Give us a shot. That's all we ask.

BrokerIPTV: All right. Great. Well, thank you very much Neil.

Neil Lunagaria: [Inaudible]

Aaron Sperling with Vflyer on segmenting your listings with widget 2.0

BrokerIPTV: We are on the vendor floor here at Inman Connect in San Francisco 2008 and I am with Aaron Sperling. Aaron, could you tell me your position with vFlyer.

Aaron Sperling: I am the CEO President of vFlyer.

BrokerIPTV: Wow. So, you are the guy that started vFlyer all those years ago then.

Aaron Sperling: We started more than 2-1/2 years ago with my partner, Oliver Muoto.

BrokerIPTV: Oh, excellent. Well, as I said earlier when I stopped by, between you and Craig and craigslist, my life has just been made a whole lot easier with vFlyer and using craigslist.

Aaron Sperling: Oh, that's fantastic. We work very hard to have attractive content there.

BrokerIPTV: So, tell me now, I have heard the rumors, we have actually read it, we know they are going to happen with craigslist as far as some restrictions on HTML. How is vFlyer going to react to that?

Aaron Sperling: Yeah, we work very hard to review the policies that craigslist has put out, what they think they are going to do in terms of the changes to the HTML and what we have done is we have created a version that is compatible with those new guidelines.

BrokerIPTV: So, anything else we need to know? What changes with vFlyer? Any improvements you guys have in the future?

Aaron Sperling: Absolutely. We just did our widget 2.0 release, which we are really excited about. So, what we've done is, we've now made it easier to create widgets to segment your listings. So, now you can have widgets for your rentals, for your for sales, for your vacation rentals. If you have cars, you can have a car widget. We've just made it easier to create and manage your listings in relationship to your widgets.

BrokerIPTV: But we can separate them by categories instead of having rentals and for sales, and resort properties all on one page, we can... depending on the blog or the website, we have the ability to post those properties.

Aaron Sperling: Absolutely and the other exciting thing is we've made it easier to post the widgets to places like Facebook and other social networks. So, it is typically a couple of clicks and it posts to those places.

BrokerIPTV: Well, excellent. Well, Aaron, once again I appreciate your time here at Inman and I think you have a lot of supporters out there with vFlyer.

Aaron Sperling: Thank you very much.

BrokerIPTV: You bet.

Laurie Manny on how much social networking is enough

BrokerIPTV:  We are at Real Estate Connect San Francisco 2008 and I am with one of the panel speakers today from Inman Connect at actually the Blogger Connect.  This is Laurie Manny and Laurie has a blog called longbeachrealestatehome.com and welcome Laurie.

Laurie Manny:  Thank you very much.  It is nice to be here.

BrokerIPTV:  Anything you gleaned on your conversations today up on the panel and in further[phonetic]

Laurie Manny:  Yeah, actually, I think the panel that I was on was an excellent panel.  It was just great and we talked about a lot of things that were very interesting, but I think that afterwards the feedback that I got from the audience was right on.  They were like, yeah, Laurie, we are real estate agents and so many of us have been so lost in the social networking and the lead generation that we have lost sight of the fact that you know we don't need to spend as much time as we are spending on the networking and the lead generation.  We really need to make it about our real estate business.

BrokerIPTV:  Yeah, I think I kinda gathered that when people were... when you talk about the aspect of the digital footprint.  You are on Linkedin, you are on Twitter, you are on your own blog, you are on Facebook, you are on MySpace...

Laurie Manny:  It's too much.

BrokerIPTV:  So, you think it's too much?

Laurie Manny:  Well, if you spend an hour a day Twittering and another hour let's say on Facebook and on Linkedin and you spend an hour reading on ActiveRain and then you go visit Trulia and Zillow blog and the Inman blog and maybe a dozen other blogs, how many hours have you spent total?  Guess?  Estimate? What do you think?

BrokerIPTV:  Four to six.

Laurie Manny:  Four to six hours.  Okay. So, a real estate business we don't know[phonetic] and anyone that has been in the business for a while will tell you, you can't run a real estate business eight hours a day five days a week.  It is not a 40 hour a week job.  So, if you are spending six hours a day networking and we didn't include any blogging, did we?

BrokerIPTV:  No.

Laurie Manny:  So, let's say eight hours, okay, let's give that another two... you have two, two full time jobs, you can go eight hours on real estate, eight hours on the setup, and eight hours sleep, and where is your life?

BrokerIPTV:  Maybe just stick with your one or two blogs, reaggregate back and forth and call it a day.

Laurie Manny:  And I think that you will fare far better than having spent eight hours a day social networking.  If you don't spend the other six hours, you will have the time to followup on those leads and convert them into business.

BrokerIPTV:  Good point.

Laurie Manny:  It is about conversion.

BrokerIPTV:  Yep. Thank you very much Laurie. Appreciate it very much.

Laurie Manny:  Thank you so much.

Daniel Rothamel the realestatezebra puts social media concepts to work for his blog

BrokerIPTV: We are on the vendor floor here at Real Estate Connect in San Francisco 2008 and I am here with... the only way I know you is the realestatezebra. How are you doing?

Daniel Rothamel: I am hanging in there. It's been a long day, but I am hanging in there.

BrokerIPTV: Excellent. I guess you were one of the panelists speaking this morning.

Daniel Rothamel: Correct. I spoke at Bloggers Connect on the panel, Take your blog to the next level. That was the topic we were charged with this morning.

BrokerIPTV: Well, I am just curious because I am involved... I had some social media interest myself, but how can a person take their blog to the next level and not drag[phonetic] their life with it?

Daniel Rothamel: To me, it is about integrating it into your life in a way. I am a practicing Realtor also. So, one of the things that is important to me about taking your blog to the next level is it means taking it off the Internet sometimes. I think we have a tendency to concentrate so much on what goes online that we forget that we are still in a relationship business. It is still about meeting people. It is still about engaging people. That is what we do and the Internet only blogging, [inaudible] everything it only helps us facilitate that process. It doesn't replace it, it only helps us facilitate it.

BrokerIPTV: Yeah. I think I always try to remind my brokers, this is still very much a contact sport.

Daniel Rothamel: Right. Exactly. It totally is. It is. You are exactly right. It is a contact sport and that is how you create more contacts and doing that, it is a two way street. There is double benefit there; making those contacts increases the SEO and all those things for your blog and as that happens, it enables you to do more things like contact more people.

BrokerIPTV: I picked up I must say numerous little tips and tricks for websites and software and ideas and concepts from Twitter.

Daniel Rothamel: Oh, yeah, totally. It is amazing to me how much stuff you can pick up and it is amazing to me how much people pick up from me that I didn't... you know whatever. I didn't think you can be that popular, but I get people like, "Hey, thanks for sharing that link" or you know "I am really glad you shared that story" and it happens all the time and that kind of stuff leads to other conversations.

BrokerIPTV: Right. Well, I really appreciate you talking about this Dan. Once again, your Twitter name is realestatezebra?

Daniel Rothamel: That's right. If you ever wonder if I am somewhere, go to realestatezebra. If it's not there, then I am not there.

BrokerIPTV: How about your blog?

Daniel Rothamel: realestatezebra.com.

BrokerIPTV: Talk about great branding. This is what social media is about. Realestatezebra... I know him by that versus Dan... I can't remember his last name, but...

Daniel Rothamel: Rothamel.

BrokerIPTV: Rothamel... but I certainly got realestatezebra down. So, thanks Dan.

Daniel Rothamel: No problem.