Remember Yahoo? Kara Swisher interview Neal Sample, who helms Yahoo’s social platform and publishing efforts, including its recent integration of Facebook and Twitter into the service.

So, there’s a house for sale. And it’s located at 370 Beech Street, Highland Park, IL 60035. And it’s famous. But can guess the name of the movie that made it so?

Here’s a quote:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you are such a wonderful crowd, we’d like to play a little tune for you. It’s one of my personal favorites and I’d like to dedicate it to a young man who doesn’t think he’s seen anything good today – Cameron Frye, this one’s for you.”

And here’s the tune. Can you name the film?

What about some photo’s?

One final clue. Here’s a photo of the main character:

If you said ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ you get 4.72 points! Full property details are available on Realtor.com and the home has even been featured on NBC’s Today show. Enjoy

You’re still here? It’s over. Go home. Go.

My friend and partner, Joe Ferrara, is in need of immediate help. Jay Thompson’s blog post is reposted here because it is far more eloquent than anything I could write. If at all possible, please help Joe.

Written By: Jay Thompson

Joe Ferrara

Many reading this know Joe Ferrara. If you haven’t had the honor of meeting Joe in person, then you are missing out on knowing one of the finest human beings to ever walk the face of the planet.

Joe is one of the co-founders of the Sellsius Blog, a site chocked full of goodness for real estate agents, brokers, buyers and sellers. He, along with his partner at the time Rudy Bachrarty, also were the geniuses behind Blog Tour USA. In the summer of 2007, Joe and Rudy wrapped an RV and set off across the country stopping in many locations and bringing real estate bloggers together. They defined social media before social media was cool.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say the Joe Ferrara is one of the people who is primarily responsible for brining the “re.net” together. His contributions to real estate, and literally hundreds of real estate practitioners, knows no boundaries. Joe is an extraordinary speaker, teacher, author, and friend.

And Joe Ferrara is very sick.

He’s been recently diagnosed with a very aggressive malignant brain tumor. I’m not a doctor, and I haven’t been able to speak to Joe since the diagnosis, but he is having a rough time right now and is currently in an Intensive Care Unit in a New York hospital.

Joe’s good friend Scott Forcino has been in contact with Joe’s wife Sandra, who is understandably over-whelmed right now. Sandra has granted permission to get the word out about Joe’s condition, and has graciously allowed us to try to raise some funds for Joe’s medical expenses, which are probably bordering on the absurd.

I have set up a PayPal account to accept donations for Joe’s expenses. You can donate by clicking on the donate button at the top of the sidebar on the right. PayPal is a secure site, you do not have to have a PayPal account, and you can donate via credit card, or “eCheck” (electronic draw from your checking account). If you have a funded PayPal account, you can also use that.

If you have a blog or website and would like to add the donate button to it, just copy/paste the code in this text file.

I’m in the process of setting up a site to collect donations at joe-ferrara.com (site is not active yet, but will be shortly). In addition, there is a “Friends of Joe Ferrara” Group that has been started on Facebook.

Please help spread the word. I realize times are tough for many, but they are tougher for Joe and his family. Any amount you can donate would help. If it fits your beliefs, a quick note to the man upstairs sure wouldn’t hurt.

Hang tough Joe, you have a LOT of friends out there that care deeply for you.

Update: Several people have asked publicly and privately for Joe’s mailing address to send a card. I’ll be happy to share that, but don’t want it posted on a public facing web site. Please contact me or leave a note in the comments and I’ll get it to you.

A TV commercial in the UK is currently generating a lot of conversation and having watched it, I found myself thinking about real estate, specifically the relationship between a Realtor and their clients. Here’s the commercial:

The video shows the stages of a woman’s life and has generated some emotional commentary about how positive for some, negative for others, the underlying message is (some naysayers take issue with the suggestion that there is an expected path for women). For me, looking at this from a purely marketing perspective, the final message; “Our lifelong commitment to you”, is the most powerful and makes me wonder what lifetime commitment a Realtor has to their clients.

This also ties into comments made by Allan Dalton at last week’s Westchester Real Estate Professionals meeting. In part, Allan highlighted ‘transactional relationships’ which I understood to mean that a Realtor will be part of my life only when I am buying or selling a house. Essentially there is no ongoing relationship.

I expect people to disagree but know that along with Allan (and increasingly many others), I don’t think sending a calendar or fridge magnet each year counts for anything. Trash giveaways like that, under the guise of ‘drip marketing’, do more harm than good to the real estate industry. They certainly do nothing to continue, let alone build upon, any type of relationship.

I’ve lived in my home for almost seven years and so I am about to hit that sweet spot when data says I am considering a move. If I was contemplating that and I had a note of the name and number of the Realtor I previously used, I would call them. But there’s a problem; I do have that information but it’s out of date. I know that because, just for the hell of it, I called her office to say ‘hi’ and was given her new contact information.

Yeah right! They explained she was no longer with the company, they didn’t know if she was still in real estate but someone else in their office could help! Please don’t tell me you are surprised; Realtors guard leads from the people sitting next to them so giving up even the potential of a lead to another company is never going to happen.

My call highlights a really important problem in real estate and relates to my main question; how can a Realtor keep a real and longterm relationship going with their clients?.

Colleagues, past or present, are highly unlikely to help. Google was actually my solution. It helped me find my Realtor and she is still in business locally. But I only know that because I put the effort in to find her. I don’t know how many people would do that but I would guess not many. As a result, if I was really looking to sell my home the commissions would end up in another Realtors pockets.

Allan suggest’s Realtors embrace social media to create and continue real and long term relationships. I roar my approval. Facebook provides a mechanism to do that by allowing Realtors to regularly connect with and be involved in the life of their client. That’s how relationships work in real life – you have to connect with a person on a relatively regular basis and put some effort in.

You could, of course, just stick with annual gifts. Allan was pretty blunt about one he received from a Realtor; a ‘welcome home’ mat with her name on it ended up in front of his dog’s kennel. Am I missing something? Is there a better way to keep in contact with your clients than social media?

Over the last few weeks I’ve highlighted a couple of absolutely amazing listing video’s with the latter generating lots of comments and opinions:

3275 Mandeville Canyon Road, Brentwood, CA

Casa Estrella – Knights Ferry, CA

While both are excellent examples in how to market a home, most commentary focused on the cost and length of the video. Which leads me to a question; when it comes to listing videos just how long is too long? I ask in part because of a third example video, created by Portico West.

At almost nine minutes it started to lose my attention about half way through which made me think; if I was standing in front of the Realtor, I would happily listen for a lot longer so why did I lose focus during the video?

Perhaps it’s because I can’t ask questions, I can’t interact with the presenter. Or perhaps there really is a limit to how long a listing video should be. Should the video serve as an intro, a way to get someone’s interest so they contact the listing agent with questions? Or should it provide a detailed overview of the homes features? Please let me know your thoughts. In the interim, how long can you watch this video before wanting to ‘click off’?

Email is becoming a tool with diminishing value. It isn’t going away anytime soon but it has problems. Personally I get over a thousand emails a day; 90% of them offer either Viagra, millions of dollars from a deceased African politician or offers of friendship from a Russian girl who can help me fill my free time (one of these certainly interests me…).

In addition to the spam there’s also the issue of sending large files (and by large I mean more than 2MB). I don’t think there will ever be perfect spam solution but for the second issue there is an answer; Dropbox.

Dropbox allows you to send files for free. Simply download the program (free), create your account (free) then select the amount of disk space you want. 2GB is free, 50GB is $9.99 a month and $100GB is $19.99 a month. 2GB should be enough for nearly everyone.

Dropbox then adds a special folder to your computer. You simply drop files in the folder and they are instantly available on any of your other computers and the web.

When you right click on a file in the ‘public’ folder you can identify a unique Website address (URL) that allows anyone to access the file on the Web. As an example the following link is a 10MB file of an interview I did with Bernice Ross (download time is dependent on the speed of your internet connection).

Emailing this size file isn’t normally wise but emailing a link to it is. Obviously you could use this mechanism for any type of file including Office documents (Excel, Word etc) and PDF’s.