Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Sunday, April 22, 2012, 11:15 AM
2 Comments
Well I’ve locked myself in my office for the past few days placing the finishing touches on the upcoming week’s (Thursday) housing market reports for Long Island and Hamptons/North Fork but noticed about 500 new followers on my twitter account.
Business Insider, the giant blog aggregator with an online newsroom, placed me on their “The 101 Finance People You Have To Follow On Twitter“
The only name noticeably absent (has to be an oversight!) is my friend Barry Ritholtz who is a twitter content machine, known to wear Ted Baxter ties.
Very cool to be on the list with the very people I already love to follow. Thanks @BusinessInsider!
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Sunday, April 15, 2012, 3:58 PM
4 Comments
I had an interesting conversation stream recently that I thought I’d re-share. I dropped the participants names off (just in case).
My conversation began on Twitter with a question from a friend
Broker/Friend: Why do people hate real estate agents?
Me: Probably for same reason they hate appraisers.
Conversation that moved over to Facebook (my Twitter stream flows through it)
Colleague1: People “hate” what they fear. People mostly fear the unknown. They also hate situations in which they don’t get what they think they want. Real estate valuations and transactions are the vortex for unmet expectations as well as the unknown. From a philosophical perspective many believe hate and fear are synonymous. If that’s true, perhaps the vibe agents and appraisers receive is more fear that just comes across as hate. Information and explanations can diffuse and even disperse some of that. Setting expectations properly and education. Sometimes I think agents and appraisers simply get busy and skip some basic steps that could help. People in every profession get too busy and skip those steps. Of course, you can never satisfy the assholes, but I believe a few simple customer service-oriented tactics could make life easier for everyone involved. Thanks for letting me post on your wall and I hope you have a great weekend.
Me: Well said [redact]. I think also that the bar is so low in both industries that there is a wider range of competence – combine that with a large and significant asset tied to raw emotion and self worth and a whole lot of hate is the byproduct.
Colleague1: That’s a really good point. When people are dealing with what is most often the single largest asset they’ll ever possess, emotions naturally run high and they do let it become very personal.
Friend: In my experience, lying is the #1 problem I’ve had with real estate agents. Reason # 2 would be when they flirt with my husband and act as if I’m not there.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, February 6, 2012, 5:00 PM
2 Comments
This was shared with me today via twitter @gabrielfreedom and it just clicked – the best explanation ever made for the various social media tools out there – using a sweeeeeeet analogy – donuts.
