Like a Trojan

USA Today's feature headline yesterday, "Foreclosures take toll on mental health" stirs us with a new and burgeoning dimension to the foreclosure problem.

Imagine the anxieties that plague a family resigned to this impending nightmare.

What stresses befall them as they box up what few possession they have left and move on?

What chronic issues ensue when they are out of their home with no credit or cash to get themselves back into a new one?

What courses though the psyche of foreclosed Americans when they see real estate agents in tour buses and loud speakers rummaging through the detritus of their broken lives?

As Brian pointed out his a recent post, Can you find a positive spin on this?, the danger facing real estate amid this crisis is being short-sold on get rich quick schemes and loose practices when far grander opportunities should prevail. They are there, right under our noses. All we need to do is take a whiff. 

Real estate's customer is in trouble. And they can use a few superheroes. Committed to protecting and serving those careening toward disaster as well as those who have fallen victim to it.

How hard would it be for brokerages to build a preventative foreclosure department dedicated to supplying services for those facing crisis? Mortgage counseling. Financial counseling. Or plain old counseling - you know - someone in the industry to talk to? To vent. A shoulder to cry on and then possibly lean on for strength.

Prevention solutions are not new. Companies like Trojan and Lifestyles rose to the occasion amid the AIDS crisis, publishing manuals on safety, donating their products and creating massive awareness campaigns. They fused assistance and education with their legacy product and came out the other side stronger for it.

It was good for business - but it was also just good.

This is the charge for real estate. To educate. To seek out the high road and wrap a benevolent sheath around the problem.

If I were a broker, I'd mandate foreclosure training for agents -- not just on how to sell them, but how to help the people that called them home.

I urge the powers of real estate to organize their armed agent forces into a Salvation Army of service providers, because right now, in plain view of your marketplace -- your customers -- is a disjointed band of foreclosure mercenaries.

You have a golden opportunity to emerge a hero. How 'bout it?

- Davison

Redfin sets sail: Are you following?

Redfin broke a big taboo this week by "co-mingling" FSBO's and foreclosures with MLS listings.

Under every circumstance it's the right thing to do. It delivers exactly what the customer wants: All the listings, in one place.

But there's something more here. Look beyond the mashup. How do you think the Redfin brand is being strengthened by offering every housing opportunity, politics be damned?

I'll suggest the following:

• It makes the company and its agents appear distinctly more expert.
• It makes the company seem more consumer focused and more trustworthy than other brands.
• It makes the company appear more sensitive to the needs of the community by providing representation to people with alternative needs.

I don't believe the first question most consumers ask when they hit a site is if it has all the listings. I believe they don't know to ask. Trulia's fabulous traffic proves that. If anything, the consumer has been slipped that false notion mickey about coverage for a long time.

But that's certainly about to end. And it's about time.

So what's next? Well, it wouldn't hurt to follow suit. The data feeds are out there. Along with a herd of new company sunrising across real estate's horizon with new ideas, tools, apps and possibilities. And it certainly wouldn't hurt to leap frog either. One up them as they say.

Or not. You certainly have options. You can use this opportunity to vilify Redfin. Or allow your local MLS to ban you from co-mingling.

I think that continuing to moor your boat to old taboos is a bad idea -- especially when your competitors have set sail into the future. 

- Davison

Discretion is the better part of valor

"Up ahead, here on our first stop along the foreclosure tour, is a beautiful 3 bedroom, 2 bath home. The owners were a nice family and at the time I thought bidding $180,000 over asking made sense. Hindsight sure is 20/20. Okay, let move on, there's hundreds more just like this."

So I'm sitting around our backyard grill with a group of friends after being gone for a week. Phil, a Brit who works on my British Car was in Vegas the week prior. He tells the group about the foreclosure bus tours he saw advertised there. He wanted to know what I thought of them.

I never got a chance to answer. Jose, a local architect, went for the jugular. Puffing his cigar, he called them vultures. Preying on the clients they screwed. Others chimed in.   

Then, Jose turned to me and said, "Why don't you do something about that?"

"Wait a second" I said, "What could I do? I don't even know them."

"Realtors", Jose chomps. "Isn't that what you do? You work with them."

Somehow, when you have a cigar in your mouth, everything you say seems to have more authority.

"First there are 1,200,000 Realtors out there" I explain while flipping burgers. 1,199,990 of them are not driving foreclosure buses. And second, I work with their brokers, vendors and association and..."   

That painted me deeper into the corner. The conversation got heated. It wasn't pretty, playing off their perception.

So what do I think of foreclosure bus tours? Well, I think they lack a certain air of diginity. At the end of a foreclosure is a family who was hurt by real estate. In some way. Even if they have only themselves to blame. It's the epilogue to a tragedy. And cleaning it up for one's benefit could be handled in a classier way. If for no other reason than to insure that the people who pick at the carcass of Realtor esteem are held at bay.

Or at least so I can have a barbecue with friends and not have to defend an industry.

"Caution is preferable to rash bravery" said Falstaff in Henry the Fourth. I think this is applicable here.

- Davison