Good Morning!  The 2011 National Association of REALTORS Annual Convention and Expo kicked off yesterday afternoon and I am happy to report that the first day was a success for Help-U-Sell.  Our booth is HUGE and, thanks to Ron McCoy, very well located.  We have a big corner, just one set of exhibitors back from the main entrance, right next to the Wells Fargo booth (which always draws a big crowd with games and give-aways).

It was a success for several reasons:

• First and foremost – the quantity and quality of people who stopped by to chat.  Really, we’ve done this show before and others, and this time people were bright, energized, and sincerely interested in who we are and what we’re doing.  It was a fairly constant stream of significant conversations.
• We looked GOOOOOD!  Mary, Robbie, Kendra, Ron and I were joined in the booth by Dan Desmond, Kim Zelena, Leigh Ann Losh and Elias Klaeb, so we didn’t look lonely and forelorn! (nothing worse than a great big booth with one or two people in it).  Plus, Ron had gotten each of us a high quality white button down collar shirt with big embroidered logo over the pocket.  We looked sharp and cohesive.
• A couple of former franchisees, people who dropped by the wayside in the turmoil of 2006, stopped by and were more than a little interested in . . . well, in doing what Help-U-Sell people who leave often do:  coming back.  One said something I’ve heard many times before: ‘The happiest days of my real estate career were the ones I spent as a Help-U-Sell Broker.’
• We had conversations with people from Canada, the Philippines, and India (yes, India) about the possibility of our brand making it into their parts of the world.  That’s probably down the road a month or two (or ten), but it’s great to know there is interest and anticipation there.

We are building momentum to carry us into a growth phase.  Growing is not something we’ve put much energy into over the past few years.  Instead, our laser-focus has been on helping our people survive and thrive in the most difficult market any of us has ever seen.  So we’re starting from a full stop.  But the momentum is building.  Our Informational Webinars are pulling in a steady stream of interested attendees, our presence here and at the recent CAR Expo and upcoming Tripple-Play meeting are putting us on the mental map of REALTORS everywhere, and our full-page ad in the latest REALTOR Magazine is propelling us forward.  I expect 2012 to be a year a significant growth for Help-U-Sell.

We expect many more Help-U-Sell family members to be in attendance over the weekend, all wearing those cool white shirts and helping us spread the word about our excellent industry and consumer offerings.  If you are in Anaheim, please stop by and say ‘Hello.’

Kendra in the booth

2011 NAR Expo: Day 1 is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

I got an interesting email today.  It was very official looking and it was from ‘The Electronic Payments Association’, NACHA.org.  The subject was ‘ACH Electronic Payment Cancelled’ and the message indicated that a payment I had authorized from my bank account had been cancelled.  There were few details, but there was a link to a full report.  I noticed that the link was the title of the report (a long number) followed by .PDF.EXE.

This is pure Phishing.  Here’s how I knew:

• It was addressed to my business email, jamesdingman@helpusell.com, an address my bank doesn’t have and that I don’t use for any online commerce.
• I’ve never heard of NACHA.org or the Electronic Payment Association
• If there was a problem with any online banking transaction, I’d expect my bank to contact me
• Finally:  and this is the biggie – the link ended in .EXE.  That means it was an ‘executable,’ a program.  Had I clicked it, it would have installed something on my computer.  It might have been a little program that transmits information on all of my contacts to a spammer or it might have been a keylogger that would record my keystrokes in hopes of uncovering my passwords and other sensitive information.

We have all gotten pretty good at ignoring the messages from the doctor or lawyer in some far off land who has several million dollars and needs to temporarily put it in your bank account (and therefore needs your information).

We have gotten pretty good at deleting the message from your bank asking that you reconfirm your login information (your bank would never ask for that online).

We have learned to laugh at the message from the lawyer in the Far East who tells a tale of a distant and previously unknown relative whose entire family was wiped out in a horrible car crash, leaving YOU as the only beneficiary of their multi-million dollar estate.  Yeah, right.

But not all phishing messages are that stupid.

I’ll bet for every 100 copies of the message I got today, 10 people actually click the link.

Here’s another that’s not so stupid:  it’s the message from the doctor whose name you don’t recognize regarding a payment that you made.  Again, there’s a request for information and/or a suspicious link to click.

Or how about this one:  the message from a good friend who’s stranded in London or some other vacation Mecca, with no money and no passport, (the victim of theft) asking for cash.

Please be careful with your email.  If you don’t recognize the sender, don’t respond or click any links until you at least Google the sender and the subject to see if it’s legit.  And be especially careful with links that end in .EXE!

Don’t Get Phished! is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Evernote is a great tool for real estate people.  It’s a cloud-based storage platform with great organizing and collaborating capabilities.  Let me see if I can be more descriptive about that:

• You create ‘Notes’ in Evernote for anything you want to hang on to.  It might be a line of text, a web page, an email, a video, an audio note, a PDF, a contract, a photo . . . really:  any content viewable on your computer can be stored in a Note.
• Your Notes are actually housed in the ‘Cloud.’  So they are viewable on any internet connected device and your content is always synced and up-t0-date.
• There are also Evernote apps for Androids, Blackberries and Iphones which make it easier to use on a mobile device.
• You can share specific Notes with other people you designate – so it’s a great way for you to keep on the same page with, say, a client.

Here’s a video showcasing how one Realtor uses Evernote.  Unfortunately, there is a minute or two of dead space where he demos how he uses Evernote with a mobile phone, but I think you’ll get it from what’s here:

Everthing you put into Evernote on your computer can be viewed on your phone or tablet. You can also use your phone to add to Notes – by say, taking a photo or making a voice note.

By the way, Matt Rathbun, who made the video, has pretty good information on how to use some of the best technology available to Realtors on his website: theagenttrainer.com. Check it out.

And to learn more about Evernote, go to www.evernote.com and to the blog: blog.evernote.com.

Evernote 4 U is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

That last post has me pre-occupied.  I think the two graphs and the statement by Yun are dramatic.  I keep asking, ‘How can this be?  How is it in a time when most Americans have taken a 50% or more hit on their home equity (which is, for most, the biggest nest egg they have), that the Financial Industry is doing so well?’  I mean:  aren’t these the guys who got saddled with all of these upside down loans who now have to cash them out for far less than they have in them?  How is it they can be so profitable at a time like this?

I don’t claim to be an expert.  I certainly am not.  I tend to see complicated things simply, often missing the many nuances.  And I don’t know the big answer to the question, HOW.  But I know one of the ways.  When Banks were failing right and left, the FDIC stepped in seized the assets and guaranteed the deposits (thank goodness!).  Because the FDIC is not in the banking business, they then turned around and sold those assets to other banks.  Among the assets were usually a big stack of bad loans, mortgages where the property was worth far less than the amount of the mortgage.  Wow!  How do you get somebody to buy something that’s worth-less?  How about incentives and discounts.

So let’s assume that Bank A fails.  The FDIC steps in and seizes the assets, including one $300,000 mortgage on a property currently worth $250,000.  They then sell that mortgage to Bank B for $235,000 – which is the discount part (since the property is worth $250,000, they transfer the asset at a discounted value that makes sense to Bank B).  Here’s where the incentive part comes in.  Because we are in a declining market, the FDIC goes on to guarantee Bank B’s losses on the mortgage.  They say, if you take a loss on this loan, we’ll cover you up to 80% of your losses.  Hey, now this is sounding a little safer, a little better.

So Bank B goes on and forecloses on the mortgage (let’s not even consider the impact on the foreclosed family, their neighbors, area values and the economic climate).  They ultimately sell the property for $220,000 to an investor.  So you think:  they paid $235,000 and got $220,000.  That’s $15,000 in loss and the government is going to cover 80% of that, which is $12,000, so Bank B’s net loss on the deal is $3,000.  That’s ok, we all have to do our part, and they probably made a little on servicing or something.

But that’s not the way it works.  The ‘loss’ is calculated NOT from what Bank B paid for the asset but from the face value of the asset:  $300,000.  The ‘loss’ is the difference between $300,000 and $235,000, $65,000.  And 80% of that is $52,000.  Bank B gets $220,000 when they  dispose of the asset plus $52,000 from the government (which is, by the way, you and me), so their take is $272,000 on a thing they paid $235,000 for:  a net of $37,000.

I don’t know about you, but I’d take that deal all day long.

The infuriating thing is that We The People can’t afford this.  We’re borrowing from the Chinese to pay for the stupid deals we made.

Here’s a little PR Fluff from the FDIC about this:

How’s It Happen? is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Profitability of the Financial Industry, 2,000 to present:

Monthly US Home Price Indes, 1991 to present (red line inserted by me at approximately the point at which Financial Industry profits turned around):

Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for NAR, a couple of weeks ago:

The aggregate homeowners’ real estate equity stood at $6.1 trillion today versus $13 trillion in 2006 according to Flow of Funds data from the Federal Reserve. According to Census, there are 74 million homeowners. So on average, the average equity per homeowner in 2011 is $82,000, which is down from $170,000 in 2006.

So, who’s paying for the bad behavior of the Financial Industry that led up to the collapse of our economy?  Well, I guess there’s no real surprise there.

And, by the way, when we talk about ‘redistribution of wealth,’ let’s be very clear about the direction in which the redistribution is going.

Disconcerting is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free
Listen, please listen, that’s the way it should be
Deep in the valley, people got to be free.

Shout it from the mountain on out to the sea
No two ways about it, people have to be free
Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be
Nat’ral situation for a man to be free.

–Felix Cavaliere

Friday, February 11, 2011 is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Below is a link to an interview with the young Google executive who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Egyptian government for two weeks as the protests began.  He and others mobilized the power for the Internet, Facebook and Twitter in the wake of the killing of an unarmed man in Alexandria about a month ago.  That event and the instant spreading of the word in its aftermath became a lightning rod for the protests.

I believe this is the face of the revolution.  He is smart.  He understands technology.  I believe what he’s started is irresistible, unstoppable, inevitable.  As you watch the fall of Mubarek on CNN, I hope you will marvel at the power of the Internet to quickly disseminate information, to put people in motion.  For me, that is what this all about.

The Internet Revolution: Updated is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Dan Desmond asked for the four one-page Help-U-Sell benefit flyers in a format he could post on Facebook.  I’ve reproduced them here, one after the other, for that purpose.  Dan, feel free to ‘Share’ in this format, or just copy/paste into your own blog and then ‘Share’ from there.

Help-U-Sell for . . . flyers is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

You’ll notice in the next Post, the one on The Electronic ETM, an embedded video and a link to an Audio version.  If you don’t have time to read (or if you’ve forgotten how or maybe are dyslexic), you can watch me read it to you or download the audio to your IPod for later listening.  To download the audio, click the link then ‘Save Target As’ and put it somewhere you’ll be able to remember on your computer.  Transfer to your MP3 player and your set to go. We’re going to try to do this with most posts here — the ones that are considered more important anyway.

Something New is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

A new edition of Help-U-Sell Connect is online and ready for you to read.  There are a number of tips for getting the most out of your new Help-U-Sell office website as well as Top Producer recognition and a new video update.  Thanks, Tami, for keeping us all up-to-date!

Click HERE to be directed to the  Help-U-Sell Connect newsletter

It’s Here! is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog