Here’s a press release from the “Lending Tree of Real Estate Agents.”

LessThan6Percent Revolutionizes How Home Sellers and Real Estate Agents Connect

Press Release: LessThan6Percent – Mon, Apr 29, 2013 6:39 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — LessThan6Percent (http://www.lessthan6percent.com), the online marketplace where home sellers can compare commissions and marketing plans from local real estate agents, is exiting its beta launch in the San Francisco Bay Area and expanding into Southern California. Founded in late 2012 by serial entrepreneur Simon Ru, LessThan6Percent provides home sellers a convenient platform to streamline the process of finding the best agents to represent their home.

"The problem home sellers face is that there are thousands of agents in any given market," says Ru. "It is difficult for home sellers to compare agents to find the best match. They don’t know what questions to ask, what to look for in a marketing proposal, or how to start the awkward conversation of negotiating services & commissions." This is where LessThan6Percent steps in.

LessThan6Percent differs from traditional agent-matching service such as Trulia (http://www.trulia.com/) and Zillow (http://www.zillow.com) by matching sellers to proposals submitted by agents rather than agents’ profiles. Instead of directing sellers to call agents’ numbers on a directory, LessThan6Percent transforms the matching process by having agents compete for sellers’ business. With a click of a button, home sellers would know exactly what services they are going to receive and how much they would cost. This level of transparency is unparalleled in the real estate industry.  

You may have noticed that LessThan6Percent is one of our newest advertisers, featuring that oversized entry form on the right. We’re certainly in accord with their business model. Some home sales are pretty routine, and there’s no reason why the six percent commission rate has been enshrined as unchanging. Personally, we’d like to see home sales done as flat fees, because that would mean the buyers’ agent wouldn’t have a financial incentive to advise you to bid more than a home is worth.

Then again, we are in Bay Area Bubble 4.0, every house is worth more than it’s listed for, and you couldn’t possibly pay too much for a place in the Real Bay Area. That means your agent was right to tell you to overbid by 85%.

Meanwhile, LessThan6Percent says you can specify what you want in an agent and look over the proposals you get in response.

And if their algorithm predicts you may be likely to sell, watch for their ads appearing wherever you surf.  This reminds us of that creepy datamining prediction that Target became infamous for: figuring out you were expecting before the rest of your family knew.

But LessThan6Percent also expects to reel in many leads through an algorithm that the company has created to identify people who are likely to sell. Ru said the algorithm scours a wide array of information sources, including social media, and then turns up likely sellers, like people who it’s discovered are having children soon.

The company then uses printed materials, cookies and keyword advertising to invite those people to use the site, Ru said.

- See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/04/08/new-website-lets-sellers-see-proposals-from-listing-agents

According to Ru, the comments on this article were “getting heated” once a NAR official showed up. It appears Inman removed them by moving the article to a new location and conveniently neglecting to bring any comments along… or even allow them to be made.

LessThan6Percent envisions having agents slug it out for the right to sell your house. Why not have a good fight in comments on what you think of this idea? 

Got your attention already, haven’t we?  And if you like the little taste of hot bikini bondage babe above, just wait until you see the bodacious blonde on blonde action (which we swear we are not making up).

For this and more blatant uses of barely-clothed women to sell real estate, have a look at this video.  Then check out the page for the house.

It’s already been sold at auction, but it’s a mighty long commute to Google (even more removed than last weekend’s house).  According to Google Maps, it’s 480 hours away, but that’s because they wanted a stop in Japan first.

Enjoy the video.  And enjoy today’s weekend open thread!

The secret to being rich is to start off rich.  Don’t believe us?  It’s true, and it’s how Mark Zuckerberg bought his house in Palo Alto.  Let’s hear from Burbed reader nomadic, who alerted us to this excellent opportunity. To go bankrupt!

Here’s the letter I got in the mail offering super-low interest rates on a loan secured by a stock portfolio.  The beauty of it is that the interest rate goes down the higher the loan amount – the opposite of what working stiffs get when they want a super-jumbo loan to buy a house in the RBA.  (Then again, the larger the stock portfolio, the smaller the risk?)

This must be how Zuck got his ultra-low interest rate on his mortgage.  Interesting that they don’t mention a mortgage in their “average loan rates” example.

The headline above doesn’t say pay three to four percent interest.  It says pay three quarters of a percent interest.  Let me repeat that.  You can buy a house at 0.76 percent interest.  All you need is a sufficiently healthy stock portfolio to borrow at least $3.5 million against. 

Whoops.  All you need is an investment portfolio at this particular online brokerage.  For loans under $50K, you need to have twice that in your brokerage account.  With this firm.  But!  Remember about rich people getting richer? The more you have, the more you save. The more you have, the more you can borrow, too.  If you “qualify” and have an account over $100,000, you could borrow against 85% of your assets.

Remember how well things went when anyone who could fog a mirror could buy a house for nothing down? This is an even better idea! Borrow against your investments, and if the underlying value drops, then you have to pay some of the money back immediately, or sell assets to cover it. Good thing you’ll have a bunch of equity in your new house that you could borrow against to pay back your brokerage account you borrowed against in the first place.  This sounds like a perpetual equity motion machine.

Open your portfolio, open your wallet, open your eyes, and we’re opening this thread to any topic you wish.

Burbed began in February 2006, when the market was running bubbly, the RBA ran clear to Seattle, and an East Palo Alto crapshack would run you $850,000. It's early days but we're seeing definite signs of re-carbonation. Burbed reader dollarbin sends in some further proof.

Of course this is Palo Alto. When ads like this run in East Palo Alto, we will have arrived. Again.

Did you check out last week's Palo Alto Weekly? There were at least two different full page ads from Realtards with groups of buyers looking for houses they can close by the end of the year. High end stuff too, 1.5 to 4 million. I can't find links online, but I can take photos of the ads from the physical paper, it might make an interesting weekend post.

Interesting is the word for them. Voyla!

This is also your Weekend Open Thread, so go wild. Buyers 1 through 6 are counting on you!

Yes, this is an actual ad, even though it ran in The Onion.  This is definitely one of the more interesting approaches to pounding the pavement for new clients (he’s certainly pounding something), and we first found it at The Fiscal Times, in a slideshow featuring more listing fail.  Guess we managed to miss it when it hit the big time on Boing-Boing.

This is in a completely different class of self-promotion than, say, writing cute little jingles about yourself.  Then again, as long as the jingles aren’t NSFW, the jinglemeister won’t have Wanket’s results:

Calls and emails to Mr. Wanket were not returned and an Edina Realty spokesperson said the ad didn’t adhere to their guidelines and he’s no longer with the company.

In case you’re wondering just exactly why this ad does not adhere to Edina Realty’s guidelines, we have their answer:

“Well, first of all, it didn’t have the required Fair Housing notification on it,” [Vice President of Marketing Lynn] Clare said.

Let us know about how other real estate agents grab your attention, either in a good way, or if they unintentionally end up beating you off.  P.S. Wanket is no longer in the real estate industry.  Can’t imagine why.

People sometime ask me, “How is the real estate market in Silicon Valley?”

Well, let’s look at this e-mail I got recently:

Townhouses across the street from train tracks, light rail, a high way, and a major road – starting at $624 per square foot?

If you ask me, the market is doing pretty darn well. Everything is back on track, just as nature intended. Finally the Real Bay Area is back on track to eventually overtaking lesser places like Manhattan, London, and Tokyo for most expensive real estate.

The real question is: will you be lining up for 3 days or 3 weeks on the street to get one of these units?

Thank goodness!

As regular readers of this site already know, homes in the Real Bay Area don’t need to convince buyers of their value.  No matter how inept the Realtard representing it, even a turkey of a home within RBA limits will go pending quickly.

This isn’t the case for homes far, far away from the RBA. Thanks to Burbed reader Michael Boltonestater for this example of how to sell a house that has the misfortune of not being anywhere near Google or Facebook.

1501 GUTHRIE Dr
INVERNESS, IL 60010
$1,149,000 (Reduced from $1,490,000)

BEDS: 4
BATHS: 5
SQ. FT.: 6,757
$/SQ. FT.: $170
HOA DUES: $17/month
LOT SIZE: 1.03 Acres
PROPERTY TYPE: Detached Single Family, 2 Stories
STYLE: Traditional
EXPOSURE: East, West
YEAR BUILT: 2001
COMMUNITY: Inverness
COUNTY: Cook
MLS#: 08047047
SOURCE: MRED
STATUS: Active
ON REDFIN: 46 days

Wide open floor plan with granite, stainless, and maple kitchen w/ viking range and commercial hood. Hardwood floors throughout much of the home. !st flr. Theater, office, and sun room! Dining room is perfect for large dinner parties. All bedrooms with private baths and walk-in’s. luxurious master suite with sitting room, and high end master bath with vaulted ceilings, cherry cabinets, and marble. Huge deck.

What can you do if you own a ginormous housing tumor in flyover country and no longer wish to have it sap your precious bodily fluids?  You list it for sale and more than 30 days go by, which means, according to Jim the Realtor, that the price is more than 10% too high.  In this case, probably way more than 10%, as you’ve already cut it 23% without any takers.  It could mean that nobody wants your expensive mistake.

Clearly, more drastic marketing measures are needed.  Have a look at them by clicking on through.

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Thanks very much to Burbed reader B Parker for today’s find on Craigslist!  Ads there rarely last long, so we’ll capture everything for posterity.  Posterity in Silicon Valley terms is probably even less than a Friedman Unit.

$2064 / 1br – 650ft² – Walk to Cupertino Schools from Your Brand New Home! (sunnyvale) (map)

---

Date: 2012-05-22, 2:24PM PDT
Reply to: see below ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

ESXPT220
Belleville Way at Homestead Road (google map) (yahoo map)

• cats are OK – purrr
• dogs are OK – wooof
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 3031817347

Here’s why B sent this rental ad in (and we don’t see enough examples of rental ad fail, so we’re quite pleased with this one).

Walk to cupertino schools from your 650sqft 1br apartment

The photo on the Craigslist ad goes to the apartment’s website, which is really great or we wouldn’t have found this awesome kitchen.

But walking distance to Peet’s Coffee AND Starbucks?  SOLD to the caffeine fiend with kids who don’t mind sharing your bedroom!

Here’s an easy way to turn your house into another paycheck.  All you have to do is let a company with the staid, trustworthy and dependable name of Brainiacs from Mars paint it for you.  Sure, they’ll use the paint to it into a giant advertisement, but the longer their graffiti is up, the more your house pays you!  Have a look at what they did to this house in Buena Park.

Mortgage trouble? Try transforming your house into a giant BILLBOARD

Mail Online (UK)
By REUTERS REPORTER’; Last updated at 6:08 AM on 13th February 2012

When they saw the house on El Dorado Drive in this Los Angeles suburb being painted a startling orange and green and giant billboards hung on the outside, Scott and Beth Hostetler’s neighbors were initially angry and confused – some even considered calling the police.

But what they witnessed on Friday was not an offensive redecoration decision by the Hostetlers, but rather the debut of one of the more unusual schemes to arise from the housing crisis.

In return for allowing the front of their four-bedroom house to become a garish advertisement, the Hostetlers are getting their nearly $2,000 monthly mortgage paid by the marketing company behind the project, Brainiacs From Mars.

Not clear if this lucky family (Beth and Scott Hostetler, with daughter Sarah) had to spring for the T-shirts or if they’re making even more money wearing them every day.

Here’s Brainiacs from Mars’ founder and CEO, Romeo Mendoza, showing us what the house looks like when the Reuters photographer remembers to check exposure properly.  And we have many more pictures for you after the break, so click on through!

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Did you like the photo of a free house when you buy a dishwasher?  It was too good to be true, as that offer was only good in Maryland.  So here’s another “free” gift with purchase.  Thanks to Burbed reader Overheard in San Carlos’ Friend for this find.

First, the Craigslist ad, which has been yanked:

Here’s the relevant text:

I will find a reasonably priced house/condo for you, and will give you back a rebate 0.5% from purchase price ($1,500-$5,000 on average), PLUS purebred Ragdoll kitten to people who buy or sell a property with me:

But this amazing offer is on the agent’s website too.  Look at the photo in the upper left!

Here’s the cattery the agent uses for the “free” kitten, Ragdoll Palace.  Think about that name while considering the palaces we looked at in the upper tier of the Case-Shiller Index earlier this week.

Elena explains why she’s giving away a FREE KITTEN with every home transaction:

According to a popular belief in Europe and Russia, new homeowners should first let a cat walk into their new house, then the owners can cross the threshold. The cat will bring good luck and wealth to the new home. I love beautiful superstitions and want people, whom I help buy a new house or a condo, to have a very good luck in their new homes. That is why I am offering Buyers my appreciation gift of the cutest Ragdoll kitten to step into their new home for good luck.

Go ahead, click on that link to beliefs above.  It takes you to a list of Russian folk traditions, not one of which mentions anything about having cats walk into a new home.  It does say this, though:

When giving an animal as a gift (a cat, dog, bird, etc.), the receiver should give the giver a symbolic sum of money, for example one Russian ruble.

Returning the promised rebate check to Elena will easily accomplish the same thing.