CLTA Debuts California Title Website

Sacramento Business Journal reports that the CLTA and the California Insurance Commissioner's office has debuted a Title insurance website, TitleWizard, to allow consumers to compare title insurance rates. My first run was a residential refinance on my home and Old Republic Title was about $500 cheaper than 1st American. Then I ran a purchase of my house and the rates were $700 cheaper across the board than for a refinance (assuming that I was the Seller, of course).

Too bad for commercial brokers and agents, the website doesn't factor in rates on commercial deals (I thought I was on to something).

Anyway, worth the look..

Google Basewide? One Step Away in California

This is one of those "outlandish and inconceivable" notions that occurred to me as I was scanning a few news sites this weekend. Hey, if Jim Cramer can speak in generalities and sound bites on CNBC and induce the Fed to drop rates, then here's my two cents as I see a couple of dots that could be connected some time soon.

Question: If Jason McCarthy, who is the Development Manager of Real Estate for Google (Google Base), were to make a Redfin-type deal with Countrywide in California, what would be the impact?

Scenario: Google Base is attempting to deliver relevant real estate content to the consumer in a format most potential buyers are familiar with and aiming to be the prominent provider of property information aggregation; a new MLS system, if you will, with inventory provided by the agents and owners themselves at no charge.

Redfin is a new brokerage concept that hires in-house (employee) agents to oversee the listing transaction of an owners' home for a one (1%) percent fee, which effectively saves the owner between 2% and 5% of the purchase price in terms of a sales commission represented through traditional real estate brokerage. Redfin is VC funded and attempting to turn a profit through volume, which means that the jury is still out as to whether this type of brokerage business model will be profitable in the long run.

Countrywide is the largest lender in the country and quickly becoming the largest residential land owner in California. Using the chart, the amount of REO properties owned by Countrywide as of Sept. 1, 2007 is $995M in aggregate value, which is most likely going to grow month-to-month another 20% in October.

In the 1990's, the government established a quasi-public institution (Resolution Trust Corporation) to inventory, rehab and sell those REO properties taken back as a result of the Savings and Loan bailout. This time around, is that entity going to be the likes of a Google or Redfin. Is it inconceivable that Basewide or RedfinRTC would be established at a .5% listing commission rate on a Countrywide portfolio that is going to exceed $1B by the end of the year (if not the end of this month)?

I remember those days in the late '80s and early '90s in Houston when entire neighborhoods of 4,000 SF homes were abandoned, with the keys still stuck in the front doors for the RTC officials to pick up when they had time. But, this time around with the Google Van roaming the neighborhoods creating the little "Street View" guy for our viewing pleasure on Google Maps, it might not be that must of a stretch to contract with Google Base to inventory the entire Countrywide portfolio for a transaction fee and reduced listing commission.

Once Google Basewide has its California Broker's license, such a scenario would put Google on the Real Estate map in a hurry. Such a move would certainly get NAR's attention in Chicago (as well as CAR's in Sacramento). The 800 lbs. real estate gorilla (NAR, that is) will be forced to wake up and confront a growing threat to this industry; technology and its endless bank accounts.

Technology... A Terrible Thing To Waste

Below is my first article for BloodhoundBlog..

Hopefully as a new contributor to the forum I will be able to provide some insight on the commercial side of the business. Without going into the history of the Site To Do Business and its involvement with the CCIM Institute (I’ll save that one for a later date), I wanted to point out that one of the most helpful, most talked about (at least within the inner circles of the Institute) and worth every penny of this designee’s annual dues is the Site To Do Business (“STDBonline”) website.

Simply, STDBonline is an information resource site geared towards the commercial real estate professional with over 20,000 subscribers to date. It is offered as a subscription service for non-CCIM designees, but included as an exclusive membership “perk” once you become a CCIM candidate “on the way to the pin” ( another topic to be discussed later). For those in Silicon Valley and Bellevue pushing the residential side of the real estate technology chase (zillow.com, trulia.com, terabitz.com, et al.) in order to attract numerous eye balls searching for homes to justify venture capital dollars looking for advertising payback, the informational aspect of the commercial side of the technology chase is left to a select few (providers, that is). As a CCIM, this invaluable tool continues to add features and data that meet the demands of sophisticated owners, investors and potential clients. For many of my CCIM colleagues, STDBonline is always open in one browser on the taskbar.

For example, the October 2007 news blog on the STDBonline website highlights the following valuable data resources for its subscriber base:

• Business Lists - Once you establish a project and create a study area, you are able to generate lists of businesses to use for market analysis, competitive analysis, marketing, or prospecting. Business lists are available on study areas using radii, donuts, and hand drawn shapes or a standard geography, which receives the closest 2,000 to your center point. Currently, there are 16,000,000 businesses in this database. After creating/selecting a qualifying study area you want to use to create a business list, go to the deck entitled “Choose Reports and Maps.” Step one asks you to choose a report package from the drop down list of categories. There are two possible choices, the Business Extract or the Business Locator. The Business Extract provides you with an Excel spreadsheet of businesses that you can manipulate, upload onto a map, or use mail merge to create a mailing list. The Business Locator generates the same information but in a PDF;
• Flood Maps - FloodSource has 100% up-to-date coverage of the entire U.S. and 100,000 plus flood maps online. The data and the maps come directly from the actual up-to-date, official FEMA flood maps. If you’re an appraiser, surveyor, or other real estate professional and you simply need a “snapshot look” at a property’s location relative to the nearest floodplain, FloodScapes are what you need. They are ideal for inserting into reports or as a pictorial tool for illustrating a property’s likelihood of incurring flood damage. The concept is simple: enter any street address or any latitude/longitude in the U.S., and FloodSource automatically creates a custom map report, containing only the portion of the FEMA map you need with the property’s location indicated right on the map. You can save, import, or print your FloodScape report. Enter an address and get an official FEMA map;
• Environmental Reports - The First American Environmental Risk Determination Report is used for evaluating and completing due diligence on a commercial real estate loan or for a property transaction. The report also provides extremely valuable environmental information for assisting in your financial decisions. It not only provides all governmental listed environmental action sites within a one-mile radii of the subject site, but also ranks the RISK from these sites and provides next step actions; and,
• Business Information Summary - Now you can determine the number of businesses and employees in your area and compare its daytime population to its residential population. The Business Information Summary identifies the number of businesses and the number of employees by SIC and NAICS classifications in a market. The Business Information Summary also compares daytime population of the area to the residential population. Knowing where people live and work in your market is vital to deciding where to locate businesses and services such as new bank branches, ATMs, restaurants and hotels.

These are just a few of the features incorporated into the website, which has a separate sitemap as a promotions list of the available tools, but here are a couple of my favorites and why:

• GlobeXplorer – Online aerial mapping site that won’t replace Google Maps, but it will provide the latest aerials in the industry. And the most useful tool (at least with my clients) is a dropdown menu bar to show the previous aerials taken over the property. Need an aerial from 10 years ago to compare the growth patterns for your residential developer clients, you won’t find that information from Google Maps;
• LenderCheck – Online reports emailed to you for a specific property that will help you stay ahead of many “surprises” on your way down the Closing Checklist. Need to know if the property in escrow will require a Phase II, this tool will help you identify problems before they become surprises weeks before closing (as we all know, any deal has its "problems", but what you try to eliminate are the "surprises" that kill or delay a deal to death);
• Consumer Expenditures – Online consumer expenditure demographic reports emailed to you based upon radii, donuts, customized grid or drive-time analysis. Here's what I like to do with a drive-time analysis in a cold call example: “I know that the market is slow right now on the other side of town and you may be interested in looking for alternative retail space, I wanted to email you an excel spreadsheet of the business customers within a 20 minute drive time of our center so you can see your potential customer base from our location. Can I get your email address?”Which agent do you think a potential retail client is going to remember after you email him/her a list (in excel format – along with a graphical representation) of all the businesses in a 20 minute drive-time from their potential new retail location? With practice, the report takes less than 5 minutes once you input your location.

Many, if not the majority, of the new clients we pursue in the commercial real estate industry test our “proximity to opportunity” to help them make money. This “proximity to opportunity” might be the first step in the process, but the information, technology and resources (along with the speed in which we provide it) helps solidify a foundation of trust to maintain a lasting relationship with any client. STDBonline is our information staple in the commercial side of the business. Thanks again for the opportunity to contribute to the forum.