Bare Naked Brain Fodder

I’m constantly baffled at the horrendous sales skills displayed by real estate agents across the country. While most of them are crying about the housing crises, mortgage defaults, and too much competition in the market, there are a few select agents cleaning house despite the afore mentioned problems.

I remember one time I was about to sell a piece of bare land that I owned and a agent said… “you can’t get any more then $45,000 for that piece of property”. I laughed. Then took some pictures, wrote a direct response ad, posted it onto Craigslist in “Rich Cities” and had a dude trying to escrow me a down payment on a $65,000 sales price in the first two hours the ad was live.

Real Estate agents only know what they are taught in their little real estate world. I remember one of the largest firms in Oregon wanted me to work for them, but wanted me to come into their office and train with their leaders. I laughed and said… “I’ll only work from home, on my time, and with my methods, and I’ll sell twice what your best agent is doing now”.

Of course they wouldn’t let a arrogant little bastard like myself create the rules. They said they couldn’t employ me without me showing up to the office each day. Idiots.

I never became a real estate agent because ultimately I hate being on other people’s time. And it’s WORK. But I have no doubt I could become a best selling agent in any area, at any time. No doubt in my mind.

Case in point…

Right now Ed McMahon (former co-host of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) is having financial problems and his house is going into foreclosure. Apparently he broke his neck a while back, and is about $600,000 behind in payments. You can read the yahoo story by clicking here.

Anyhow, here is a snippet of that article and it just proves to me that real estate agents are just as clueless as a blind man playing Nintendo…

“The six-bedroom, five-bath house is in a hilltop gated community overlooking Mulholland Drive called The Summit and is listed for sale at $6.25 million. It has been on the market two years, according to real estate agent Alex Davis, who has the listing.

The house is near that of pop star Britney Spears, which doesn’t always work in its favor.

“When we were trying to sell the house one time, there were about 100 paparazzi there,” Davis said.”

So you are telling me you can’t sell this house in 2 years? You gotta be kidding me? And saying that the house in near Britney Spears is a bad thing? Surely it depends who you are talking to.

Here’s what I’d do instead of trying to shield the fact Britney lives next door and the paparazzi is swarming 24/7.

I’d sell the place to a narcissistic rich person who is crazy for attention and the spotlight. My ad would probably be something obnoxious like…

“Who Else Wants To Live Next Door To Britney Spears While Basking In Ed McMahon’s Cozy Hot Tub”

Dear Future Neighbor of Britney,

If you want to have direct access to the top Hollywood Stars, live in the most exotic area of Los Angeles, and have Paparazzi shooting your photo for People Magazine then this is going to be the most important letter you’ll ever read.

Okay, it’s a little bit over the top, but you get the idea. Instead of shielding the fact Britney lives next door, find someone who wants exactly that. There are tons of rich people that would die to have the paparazzi follow them around so they would feel important.

Obviously whatever method they were employing for the last 2 years to sell this house hasn’t worked. I bet you anything I could sell that house in 3 weeks max!

But most agents have no clue how to think outside the box, craft a USP (unique selling proposition), and are dumbfounded by most of the things that us direct response marketers and copywriters do on a daily basis.

A few months ago I almost bought a Yacht just for the purpose of boating real estate agents out to Catalina Island and give advice along the way. Every single time I talk to a agent they are simply amazed at how a tattooed skater boy could know way more about selling houses then they received in years and years of on the job training.

But that too sounded like … WORK.

So, screw that. Instead I’ll just be a Monday morning quarterback and give these agents a quick tip on how to sell Ed McMahon’s homestead.

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Every so often I like to share a bit of music on the blog.  I’m pretty picky about the type of music I’ll listen to nowadays though.

Anything to aggressive, loud, or violent hip hop just wrecks my chill vibe.  In fact, playing Grand Theft Auto 4 last night had me feeling all shitty.  I mean it was pretty cool to run over a bunch of grandma’s in my Camaro, and ditch Michelle on our date, and run over cop cars with a dump truck, but after a hour of that I was sitting there feeling pretty empty.

In fact, I felt like crap.

So, I plugged in a little Jack Johnson and instantly felt better.  I love tunes that make you feel groovy.  So, speaking of groovy tunes, here’s one…  (What kinda tunes do you like to listen to when you want to lift your spirits?)

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