Don’t Get Phished!

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!

BPO to REO Advice

Stephen Taber was on the Help-U-Sell Broker Roundtable call yesterday.  His is a remarkable story.   Working in Phoenix – which is one of the epicenters of the housing crisis – Stephen starting doing BPOs about 3 years ago.  Because BPOs were just about the only thing happening in the market at the time, they basically became his cash flow.  He routinely did upwards of 40 BPOs a week.  Seriously.  This year he is heading towards 100 closed sides, all of it from his REO listings.  So there is truth in the notion that doing good solid BPOs and doing them quickly is one way to break into the REO market.

Stephen is really bright and seems to have boundless energy, which certainly contributes to his success.  But he also shared a couple of tips that bear repeating:

  • If you want to do BPOs, get a Blackberry.  Because Blackberry has its own proprietary email system, messages – like the request from an asset manager for a BPO – come through quicker.  Stephen tested this and found that he got a message on his Blackberry about one minute earlier than on any other device.  You know, if you’re trying to compete for BPOs, this is essential because the request goes out to lots of people and whoever responds first usually gets the deal.
  • When you do a BPO, really dig for the value.  Lenders and asset managers aren’t looking for a price you can turn in 3 days.  They’re looking for a 90 day price.  Stephen cited conversations with asset managers who told him he got the REO because his BPO was the only one that matched the value they saw in the marketplace – everyone else was much lower.  That doesn’t mean to inflate your BPO, it means work for the best value you can substantiate.  Lenders are wanting to get as close to fair market value as possible and expect to get it after a reasonable marketing period has occurred.

Great information!  AND I have to tell you that more than a couple of good Help-U-Sell brokers who also broke into the REO business have told me they intend to back away from it a bit.  REOs come with a whole set of challenges and often involve a substantial financial investment on the part of the broker.  Some in more diverse marketplaces are moving more toward short sales and equity sellers for a less complicated transaction.  BUT if yours is an REO market and you want to get that business, you can still break in.  Like so many other brokers doing REOs, Stephen is now too busy to do many BPOs so there’s a chance you can build the kind of reputation for speed and accuracy he used to get started.

Creative Financing for 2012 – What’s Hot & What’s Not

That’s the title for Patricia Boyd’s session at the Help-U-Sell Success Summit next month.  I heard from her yesterday and am excited about what she’s planning.  It’s going to be an interactive session with the attendees dictating the direction of the discussion.  This is a great approach for our group because we tend to be more knowledgeable about finance than most Realtors.  We will be able to drill down on the ideas and programs that we want to know about, not wasting time on things we already understand!

As a person who has made and orchestrated many ‘presentations,’ I am impressed.  You really have to know your stuff to be that kind of spontaneous while leading a meeting.  I’ve seen it only a few times, most notably with Steven Covey.  He had his assistant backstage on a laptop with ALL of his slides.  They were not organized in a linear, slide 1, slide 2, slide 3 fashion, but were just on the assistant’s screen as individual graphics.  As Covey was talking, he’d say, ‘Put up that graph, please,’ and ‘let’s see the slide about organization.’  The assistant knew the material so well he could quickly get the right graphic on the screen and Covey was able to let his presentation flow in the direction he wanted at that moment.  The result was a powerful session absolutely tailored to the audience.  In the end we all felt as if we’d been allowed to wander around inside Steven Covey’s mind for an hour.

Patricia comes with about 30 years of real estate finance experience.  Her agenda has always been the same:  help consumers make good decisions by educating Realtors about financing.  Sometime in the early 80’s, she taught me what a ‘junk fee’ was and how to spot them in my client’s Truth in Lending docs.  It’s that kind of knowledge that enables a broker or agent to bring high value to a real estate transaction.  I expect there will be lots of note-taking when she meets our group Monday afternoon, Nov. 14!   Learn more about Patricia HERE.

Evernote 4 U

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.

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