Real Estate Radio Usa Episodes

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 64 February 21, 2008 Barry Johnson… Well, he cannot seem to open his mouth without putting a foot in it, but he continues to speak anyway. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR, finally admits in his blog that he was wrong. Well he does not go that far, just saying that, like other economists, he has “been off” on his housing forecasts. Talk about the understatement of the year. Also in the news, a long forgotten trick to selling your house, depending on your religion. Find out more in this episode. Today Yelena Drabkin, co-founder of Zilpy.com, joined us for an interview. She walked us through all the features and uses for the site. Also, she confirmed that the site would remain FREE. Hooray to Yelena and her team at Zilpy for providing this invaluable resource to renters, landlords, and even us lowly investors.

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 65 February 22, 2008 Barry Johnson… We had an action packed Friday Edition of Real Estate Radio USA. On the program today we talked to Stefan Swanepoel from RETrends.com. Also we started a new segment called the “SideBar” with Eric Wesoloski and finally talked about the new post from Seth Godin. If you are going to talk about what is going on in the real estate industry, there may not be a better expert than Stefan Swanepoel. Stefan is the author of the Real Estate Trends Report. This is a must read industry publication for ALL real estate professionals. We discussed a wide range of topics today starting with the state of the market today and some specific ways the industry needs to improve. This is probably the most informative interview we have done to date and there is still so much more to talk about with Stefan, we have scheduled another talk with him for next month.

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 63 February 20, 2008 Barry Johnson… On today’s episode we talked again about trend of homeowners just walking away from their mortgages. That coupled with another story we talked about today that makes the case that prices in many “bubble markets” remain wildly overvalued. Listen to this episode to find out all about it. The majority of this episode was spent discussing the ago old question, how does a real estate agent justify their commission. Barry C talked about a “discussion” he got into with a realtor from Illinois today. She could not for the life of her understand why Barry C would even ask such a question. Therein my friends lies the deeper problem. More than validating job performance and answering one question, some go as far as to intimate that it is Real Estate Heresy to merely ask the question.

We were busy on today’s episode. We did not have a chance to get too far into the news before we were joined by our first guest, Brian Brady. After a good talk with Brian we were joined by SEO and Blogging Coach, Mary McKnight. Some interesting interviews today which started when Brain Brady joined us. Brian is “America’s #1 Mortgage Broker”, a consummate marketer and blogger, and one of the leaders of the Bloodhound Blog Unchained event coming up in May. We spoke with Brian on a range of issues including what you need to do to stay relevant in a Web 2.0 world. One of my favorite quotes he had from the show was, “You have to use ever arrow in your quiver.” We are definitely going to talk to Brain again before the Unchained event and hope he will keep us up to date on the state of the Mortgage Industry as well.

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 62 February 19, 2008 Barry Johnson… We opened today’s episode by talking about price discovery and how we can overcome the failing economy more quickly. By facing the foreclosure crisis head on and allowing market forces to happen naturally instead of stalling them through programs and proposed legislation, we could realize a more stable market and future. Or we could just let the talking heads blame anyone and everyone for letting this happen… That sounds like more fun. Barry C and I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin.com today. We talked about a range of topics from Redfin expansion plans, core business principles, marketing, to fun things like Glenn’s 60 Minutes interview. For someone at the helm of a muti-million dollar real estate firm, being a pioneer in a new form of real estate business, to me he was surprisingly down to earth and easy to talk to. We enjoyed having him on the program and will continue to follow Redfin.com’s progress in

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 60 February 15, 2008 Barry Johnson… On this Friday edition of Real Estate Radio, we started the show with the news that Detroit is starting to pull out of the slump. Reports today show that sales are increasing in a huge way. Is this the sign of the big turnaround we have all been waiting for? Keep listening to to stay ahead of the curve. We spent a great deal of the show today talking about the need to bring younger agents into the fold. With the median age of agents being 51 years old, the Baby Boomer generation will soon be retiring. Brokers who realize the need are now actively recruiting younger agents right out of college. We talk about this in depth on the show today. Can the real estate sales profession adapt to be able to capture this new workforce? Will the real estate sales profession survive without this new blood? We closed this Friday’s show talking about the BankUnited story where they are “Blacklisting” certain condo projects. Most of these condos that they wil

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 61 February 18, 2008 Barry Johnson… Happy President’s Day everyone. We started off the show with the news as usual. It seems that the national foreclosure problem is starting to solve another national problem, homelessness. Squatting in vacant foreclosure homes has become rampant in many areas of the country. This phenomenon carries many other problems according to a recent Georgia Tech study. Listen to this episode, I think you will find it very interesting. Today we caught up with Dustin Luther from Rain City Guide and 4Realz fame. We have been trying to get Dustin on the show for some time now and let me say, he was worth waiting for. Dustin shared with us some blogging tips and also some inside points into what is going on between him and the guys at BHB. Dustin wrapped it up by letting us know where we can catch him in his new seminar series. Check it out. We closed the show today with one of Barry C’s posts, “The Long Tail Of Real Estate Blogging And Marketing”. Marketi

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 59 February 14, 2008 Barry Johnson… Today in the news the Fed is talking about how they are going to save the planet. Well, not really but they are going to try to help the economy. Several major economists are starting to forecast how low they think the Fed will drop rates. Listen to this episode to hear all about it. Barry C and I talked about the state of real estate sales as we see it today. As we get more into 2008, we are going to start speaking more about traditional sales techniques and how to apply them to real estate. Sometimes people have told us that we have very strong opinions about what we feel real estate agents are doing wrong, then they ask us how to fix it. Well, you will start to see this as an ongoing trend in what we talk about on the show and in articles on the blog. Today we featured a series of stories that dealt with the National Association of Realtors and their never-ending parade of erroneous information. Expect to see a blog post from Barry C abou

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 58 February 13, 2008 Barry Johnson… In the news today, more information about “Project Lifeline”. Barry C has now officially dubbed this “Project Flatline”. Also in the news, a story about how the current market shake up is affecting the rentals in some areas. If your area is showing less than average job growth then you may want to keep an eye out on these trends. Listen to the rest of this episode to learn more. Today we had a special guest and one of my all time favorite figures in real estate, The Real Estate Investment Maverick himself, Mr. Frank McKinney. Frank spoke with us in one of our longest interviews ever. He let us know his 4 key strategies to profit in what he calls “The Great Real Estate Depression of 2008″. Frank spoke with us about his latest projects, the 3 books he is writing simultaneously, and his $29 Million “green” project he is currently building. You can even go to his website and get live updates on the construction. Frank also spoke with us about th

Real Estate Radio USA Episode 57 February 12, 2008 Barry Johnson… Today’s lead news story was from Inman News. A post written by Marcie Geffner highlighted the idea that it is now becoming socially acceptable to just walk away from your home. One of the points she makes is quite striking, the idea that homeownership in our society may just not be as important as it used to be. We had a chance today to speak with Cynthia Moler again. Cynthia has the new website about the Raffle that she cooked up in Maryland. We always love talking to Cynthia and were astounded to hear that she will personally be donating her $24,000 commission to the charity, The San Mar Children’s Home. Do yourself a favor and go over to the website and get a ticket. It is only a $100 and you could wind up winning a $390,000 home. We closed the show today with a plea to real estate agents to get out there and change the general public’s perceptions of your profession. We read a story from a nationally recognized writer in a national trade

Lawrence Yun and the NAR are at it again. We have asked the question over and over again… “Why are agents all over the country not storming the NAR castle?” The organization that is supposed to be supporting you continues to be laughed at by the media and the general public. I do not know how a sales business could survive when their lead organization continually diminishes their credibility. Today’s first interview was with “Mr. Internet”, Michael Russer. Michael spoke with us about his Online Dominance program. This is a guy who really knows his stuff. He has been teaching agents and business people about automation and how to be more productive. If you do not have the answer to this key question he asks, “What is your Core Competency?”, then you need to check out his website. The next interview we had was with Roger Neal. As you may have heard before on our show, Roger owns IHateRealtors.com. Today we had a chance to catch up with him to find out where he is going with the site and his marketing plan. I

Welcome to the Jungle Baby! That’s how we started the show today. As if things were not bad enough for real estate agents right now, they went and made Slash from Guns N’ Roses mad. Mr Slash has filed a lawsuit in LA County alleging, among other things, fraud. Joining the ranks of Marty Ummel in her lawsuit against her realtor, Slash says that he has been had and suffered extreme emotional distress. By the way, don’t forget to read the lawsuit. We interviewed Chuck Davis and Maston Crapps today. These guys are thinking way out of the box. They are heading to the International Property Show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. These guys realize that they are going to have to be proactive to get their business going. They are selling large tracks of land in Florida and Georgia. We are going to be checking back in with them in a couple of weeks to see how the trips went. We changed things up today and did the news late in the show. We talked about the report commissioned by CNNMoney.com regarding the 100 worst zip

Our lead news story today was about troubled homeowners just walking away. Wow, look at that, I can rhyme. Anyway, as we talked about before on the show, more and more people are just walking away from their home, even if they could afford to keep them. This is a trend you are going to be seeing for quite some time. Also, the Loss Mitigation Departments at the banks are starting to get some press, although not very positive. They are crumbling under the avalanche of loan workouts and short sales. That is why your deal is stalled, NOT because the bank doesn’t do short sales… We had a chance to talk to Bob Stewart from Active Rain today. He is the “Community Evangelist” and works hard to keep this community of over 70,000 real estate professionals in line. Bob let us in on a few community secrets and things that are coming over there at Active Rain. We can expect to see alot of things out of them and their new offering Localism. Since Barry C is such a fan of all things Active Rain, lets just say that you have

In the news today, a report from the US Census Bureau announces the largest ever one-year decline in home-ownership. This can be attributed to a number of factors including these other stories we talked about today. Have you ever heard of “Redlining”? If you haven’t then you need to listen to today’s episode.We also did a follow up from yesterday about the story that banks are increasing their down payments requirements in certain areas. We had an interview with Webdigs Co-Founder and CEO, Rob Buntz. Here is a guy who has taken the tired old real estate sales model and completely thrown it out the window in favor of a “Service meets Technology” approach. He has started his company after 18 months of market research, strategic business development, and financial modeling that led into comprehensive we application development. We are as excited about his new enterprise as he is and have asked him to let us know when he breaks into new markets. Be sure to keep listening to hear from Rob again. We closed the sh

We are back from the big Super Bowl weekend. I promise not to let Lindsay pick teams anymore, at least not until we have already placed our bets on the team she DOESN’T pick. Enough about football, we have real estate news to talk about. We talked about a couple of stories in the Sub-Prime Meltdown area. Due to stricter Fannie Mae guidelines, lenders are starting to require high down payments. Also a great story in the Atlanta Constitution Journal today that finally released the numbers of the sub-prime default rates over the last decade. The numbers are in and they did not go up that much. Find out why that is significant in today’s episode. We had a chance to talk to Lenore Wilkas from Prudential Fine Homes International in San Mateo California. She is a fellow blogger and unapologetic to her real estate agent brethren for taking them to task and making them justify themselves and their existence. What a breath of fresh air Lenore was. She is part of a group that created a new blog called Real Estate Darwi

Another Friday edition of Real Estate Radio USA has come and gone. Here are the predictions for the Super Bowl from the crew… It is official, we have all picked the Pats to go all the way and make history with a no loss season. Enough with our predictions, lets get on to real estate. In the news today, we first talked about the legislation that is being “floated” around Washington by Senator Chris Dodd. He wants all of the taxpayers to come up with $20 BILLION to bail out the foreclosures. Also in the news, we keep following “war-zone” properties and find gold, this time in Cambodia. Barry C’s thinks we need to start looking around the world hot-spots starting with Chernobyl. You have to listen to today’s episode to hear his thinking behind that statement. We also talked about the latest trends in real estate today. Some really interesting people and concepts happening out there right now. It is always good to see when there is a challenging situation, what people are capable of coming up with. From bloggin

We finally made it, Episode Number 50. The Big 50. I feel so old. It is quite amazing how far we have come in such a short period of time. We want to thank all of the listeners for their support and the Academy…. it was just an honor being nominated…. Wait… What? Nevermind… So much for the attempt at humor and on with the news. Today we talked about the NAR TV ad campaign and the reviews by the educated Real Estate Elite. For instance, Chris Mayer, director of the Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia Business School, called the ad “Insane”. Guess they did need an Ivy League Professor to figure that one out. In addition we talked about Michael Russer and his thoughts about technology and the real estate agent. This guy makes lots of sense and we are going to try to get him on the show sometime soon. We also let the cat out of the bag today… The top real estate market we have been researching, Bagdad, Iraq. Check out this episode to find out why prices there are going through the roof. We finished up

Looking for an area with over 25% appreciation? You need to listen in to the show today. That and the Fed rate cut of 1/2 point lead the news today. We also talked about how the investors are getting back into the market in record numbers. WARNING!! If you have kids listening to this episode, Beware! Barry C talks about running around in Hawaii in a thong Speedo. I know, I know… not pretty, but he said it anyway. We interviewed Cesar Dias from Repo Home Tour, the Original foreclosure bus tour. Here is a guy that knows the meaning of getting out there and MAKING things happen. He has a business plan, a plan to market his business, and is executing it in a big way. We really enjoyed having him on the show and expect to hear more out of Cesar soon. Today we kept going with yesterday’s them and used one of Barry C’s new blog posts. The post was in reference to the story he wrote about the Ummel case and the comments he received. So in his response, he wrote “The Listing Addendum Every Seller Must Have And Most

We made it back today after being out sick on Monday. We are all blaming Barry C around here at the studio for infecting all of us. For all of you that have not heard, while I was laid up in bed this weekend, Barry C has been taking on Realtors from around the country… I think it is becoming Barry C’s hobby of choice! Today we started off with the news, as usual. The first 2 stories were about foreclosures and how certain municipalities are dealing with the ongoing problems and expected drop in tax revenue from all of the values dropping like lead balloons. Listen to what we have to say about it. Also, an interesting story out of South Florida. A real estate agent who is beig sued for a post he made on his blog. Did we say the he is being sued for $25 Million? Hey everyone out there, if you are going to say something about someone and state it as fact, make sure your facts are straight. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Barry C has created quite the “BUZZ” with his series of articles about real esta

Another week has come and gone. We missed yesterday’s episode as Barry C was sick and we did not want him infesting everyone else in the studio. He was a trooper and made it back for today’s show. We started with a news story today about foreign buyers. We have been talking about this for a couple of weeks now, but if you are not reaching the international markets with your marketing, you are missing out on a ton of potential buyers. We also mentioned some interesting ideas that some agents are doing, Foreclosure Bus Tours. They are taking 40 or so prospective buyers and showing them 10 foreclosure properties at a time and getting deals done!