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Use the clues and links to solve this Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate exclusive. The first person to email or fax (973.407.8801) a correctly completed crossword will be recognized on this site (to great celebration) and sent a goodie bag chock full of all kinds of cool gifts from your friends here.
Feel free to use the comments field to ask for hints or trade notes with others.
Posted by Nicolai Kolding
Recently (and I use that word liberally), Sherry Chris “memed” me. This is basically an invitation (another term I’ll use liberally) for me to share a bit of myself on this blog by answering some questions.
Who is your favorite musical artist?
Posted by Nicolai Kolding
On July 3rd, I proposed three floorplans for a residential sales office. I’ve taken all of the comments that followed into consideration and would like to offer up just one more plan:
Posted by Nicolai Kolding
I think it’s well past time for the layout of the “traditional” real estate office to change. As a customer, I see woefully little that is designed around my needs. As someone with a vested interest in the success of this industry, I see wasted costs galore that make my stomach churn. As I’ve written before, I believe we can do much more with much less. I can’t imagine a better time to move forward with revolutionary designs.
With that in mind, I recently challenged myself to draw up some floor plans. A few ideas were floating in my head but I needed to get some real measurements to make them useful. So I casually paced out floors of all kinds of different business I thought we could borrow designs from. I sized up office furniture with my trusty tape measure. I played with a snazzy interior design program. I mumbled to myself a lot. And, in the end, I opted for old-fashioned pencil and grid paper so I could free-form away when the mood struck.
Dear brokerage owners and managers:
I know times are awfully tough right now and, believe me, I’m not trying to kick you while you’re down. But I have a nagging question I need to ask: have you considered the possibility that you may never make more money than you are today? I’m not even thinking about what you made, say, in 2004 or 2005. I’m talking about never earning more than you are right at this very moment. Think about that possibility for a minute. What if this is as good as it gets?
No, I don’t think the housing market is doomed. Quite the opposite; I’m bullish long-term. Home values and transaction sides will increase again. In some places, this is already underway. In many others, the turnaround appears near, even if the pace could be only moderate. Despite this, I still believe few brokers will see any real gains because too many are betting the ranch, so to speak, that these two drivers alone will whisk them back to profitability. Too few are thinking realistically about that most critical of revenue drivers: their percentage take per transaction (also known as broker commission rate or BCR).
Posted by Nicolai Kolding
For those of you who have read the first two parts of my trilogy on long-term strategic planning: I swear I’m almost done. If you have actually enjoyed this ride, well, thank you. We should meet one day. I can only assume you’re one-of-a-kind, wildly misunderstood, absurdly funny (if only to yourself most of the time), and have the kind of mind that collects countless random statistics (most of which have no practical applications). You probably drive a manual transmission.
You ready then for the grand finale? Let’s hop to it. If you recall, our two questions created four Scenarios each with a probability attached. Our next step is to assess the organization’s level of preparedness. Ask yourself: what would happen to my company if any one of my Scenarios came true? As an example, let’s take the bottom left Scenario: in this instance we have broker commission rates artificially capped at 2% while Goozillsoftmart has decided not to become a player in direct brokerage. For any company that has already been doing business at 2%, this could be a welcome environment. They can go about business as usual while their competitors scramble to reposition themselves. For many, it would force a hard assessment of how the company is structured. The result would inevitably be dramatic change.
Posted by Nicolai Kolding
In my April 11th posting, I raised five broad questions of what could be asked in each of the STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political) categories for building a Scenario. Let’s now work this down to two and make the questions more industry-specific. Remember that we’re trying to ask questions about the world sometime in the not-too-distant-future that are specific yet far-reaching in their implications. Being able to plan for the Scenarios created is intended to give you a distinct competitive advantage.
Economic: Is it possible that a major “outside” corporation (one that is not currently in residential real estate brokerage but with the ability to quickly enter on a national basis) jumps in?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
There have been way too many fun and downright cool postings here lately. Let me do what I do best and douse all this excitement with my buckets of pragmatism.
Let’s talk…….Long-Term Strategic Planning!
…you don’t decide when to stop.
As I chatted recently with a colleague about the collapse of Bear Stearns, he observed that the United States is now coming to grips with what individual European nations wrestled with a generation ago: we do not control our own destiny, nor will we ever again. The stark reality of the global economy is being hammered home by the day in ways we are only beginning to appreciate.
We must now accept that whenever it is that we pull out of this (presumed) recession, it will be driven in large part by global forces. Like it or not, the US economy will improve thanks to the efforts of far-away corporations and governments (either directly by buying Treasuries or indirectly through investments by sovereign wealth funds). The fact is our banks’ cash positions have so dwindled due in large part to toxic mortgage-backed securities that many are too thin to make even good loans. To get cash the banks will have to either rely on government bailouts or more interest rate reductions (though, as this WSJ blog notes, the Fed can only go to the well so many times) or raise capital that will often come from foreign sources.
The increasing influence of sovereign wealth funds is clearly starting to make some people nervous. I refuse to take a blanket isolationist view; the idea of an open worldwide market can and should be embraced. At the same time, I cannot help but lament the areas where foreign trade is just a euphemism for foreign dependence: imported oil, exported jobs, and non-existent manufacturing, to name a few. Nor do I understand the consumer-driven, borrow-to-the-hilt mentality that runs from individuals to corporations to our governments. We have collectively lost our discipline. I cannot help but to connect the dots from these places to what happened to our dear, overleveraged Bear Stearns.
What message does this young curmudgeon have to tie this back to our housing woes? For starters, whether you’re a homebuyer, homeowner, agent, or broker: recognize that our economic troubles run far deeper than the subprime crisis and therefore require a more introspective look at what ails us. We need a return to the fundamentals at the government, corporate, and individual levels. Washington must lead the charge by getting its house in order. With a national debt nearing $10 trillion, we are seriously overleveraged and in real danger of having our Treasury bond ratings lowered. At the corporate level, to our real estate brokers: now is the time to rethink your model. Trash many of the old ways and the expenses that go with it. Deliver the finest customer service you ever imagined. If you feel really daring (and now is the time for radical thinking), there are some great ideas in this 1000watt blog post. Buyers: find an agent who works with you to find a properly-priced home that’s within your means. Your investment will appreciate in the long-run and an agent worth keeping is ready to wait many years for your repeat business if they so earned it.
This bear ain’t done dancing yet, folks. What happened over the weekend matters to all of us but the full story runs much deeper. Each of us needs to recognize our role in the troubles and then contribute our part to the recovery.
If all else fails, you can either laugh or cry along with this entirely different perspective from Steven Colbert:
If you’re a broker, go grab your P&L. Look to see when the last year was that had GCI about the same as 2007 and then compare the two years’ percent retained (the percentage of GCI kept by the house after sales agents receive their “splits”). My guess is 2007 was worse. Maybe a lot worse.
This despite the fact that over the same time period most of your expenses, like rent, increased (thanks to nothing more than simple inflation, which is only slightly easier to control than death or taxes).
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Sherry Chris |
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Nicolai Kolding |
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Wendy Forsythe |
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Scott Schubiger |
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Robert Albanese |
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Jason Steele |
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Kevin Doell |
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Paulette Costa |
