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nar mid-year conference in washington, dc


Some REALTORS have no idea that NAR actually puts on TWO conventions every year. The one most of us know about is the Annual Conference and Expo (this year, it is in Orlando). Every year, though, NAR and real estate professionals from around the world gather in Washington, DC for the NAR Mid-Year Meetings and Expo.

What is NAR Mid-Year?

The Mid-Year Meetings are kinda like the annual convention, but different. For starters, it is on a smaller scale. There is still and expo, but not as many exhibitors, and there aren’t as many attendees overall. The other difference is that there is a lot more emphasis on organizational, administrative, and legislative meetings (what else what you expect from a meeting in DC?).

My Mid-Year Experience

This year was the first time I attended the Mid-Year Meetings. I figured that since it is only two hours away from me, I should try and make some time to check it out. That is exactly what I did on Tuesday. Unfortunately for me, Tuesday was the first full day of the event, so there wasn’t a whole lot going on. I found a way to keep busy, though. :-)

The first thing I did was head straight to the Bloggers’ Lounge, hosted by the CRT. It is a great place for bloggers to hang out, so I wanted to see who was hanging around. The first person I met there was Keith Garner of CRT. Keith is a cool dude, and I was glad to see him again. Not long after arriving, I met fellow Agent Genius contributor Bill Lublin (@billlublin). We were hanging out, talking about the meetings when I asked if Bill wouldn’t mind sharing his experiences with me live for the folks at home via Ustream. Bill was kind enough to oblige, and we had a BLAST, along with everyone who watched the live stream from all around the country.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that Ustream doesn’t automatically record the live stream. So I can’t share with you the time Bill and I spent dazzling people with our banter and insight. ;-)

Mid-Year Live-Streaming Goodness

When I came back to the Bloggers’ Lounge a bit later, I ran into Monika McGillicuddy (@monimcg). Since I had already had success with Ustream and Bill, I asked Monika if she would share her experiences. She did, along with her husband, Jay (@acemaker), who came by a little later. This time, I was smart enough to record the stream, so here it is (you can probably skip the first minute or two, since it was just set-up):

Follow Along at Home

As you can see, I had a lot of fun at Mid-Year. My only regret is that I couldn’t stay longer. Lucky for me (and you, too), fellow Genius Matt Rathbun has offered up some of his own wall-to-wall coverage of Mid-Year. Way to go, Matt!

So, if you hadn’t heard of Mid-Year before, now you have. And if you have never gone to Mid-Year before, maybe you will decide to come to the one next year. Since it is always held at the same location, planning is a whole lot easier than going to Annual.

Hope to see you there!


Post by Daniel Rothamel



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social media


Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research into Social Media and the rapidly evolving landscape of social networking, data portability etc. What I’ve discovered is quite amazing and exciting. The timing of my research couldn’t have been any better, because there were two major product introductions this past week that will affect business marketing in social media well into the future.

Walls are crumbling: Those who remember the Cold War know how symbolic it was when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Once the wall came down it was impossible for the Soviet Union to stop anything. In the same way, social networking sites have been developing as empires onto themselves with walls all around them. For example, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn all require new logins, passwords and a completely new effort at building a network. This is cumbersome and a barrier to maximizing a users social media experience.

The greater disadvantage of these walls is in the fact that your social activities are not seamlessly integrated within your social network. The existence of walls segments and disjoints your ubiquitous off-line network and isolates and keeps from view your online social activities. For example, you may have submitted a cool post on StumbleUpon, uploaded a cool family video, written a review on Amazon or just joined a restaurant review club online. Your social network will have no idea – unless you deliberately make an effort to communicate these activities. In my opinion this takes away a lot of the energy out of social media participation.

That is why over the past week or Facebook and MySpace have announced that they will now allow data portability. Essentially with the new Facebook Connect initiative developers will be allowed to make applications that will allow the user to take their social network identity to any partner website. This means you can share more of your online experience with your social network. I cannot possibly sit here and try to imagine all the variations of possibilities, just as it was impossible for anyone to know how Berliners were going to take advantage of the fall of the wall. This is not limited to Facebook either, both MySpace and Yahoo have announced their own versions of similar platforms.

Social Networking on Any Site: With the proliferation of social networking I’ve long been wanting to convert my static HTML website into a social network of its own. I want visitors to be write comments, share the page with friends, allow me to network with their friends online etc. Well, now the technology is here to help me do this. Google, earlier this week introduced Friend Connect. This is how Google describes the technology on its webpage: “Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.”

Watch this video to understand what the technology can do for you:

Currently Friend Connect appears to be by invitation only. I’ve signed up for a preview release and you can do that same if you’d like.

What this all means is that social media marketing is just getting started and what I see on the horizon gets me pretty excited. It is especially exciting for business like ours. After all ours is a fundamentally relationship based business, and social media is built around relationships.

Image: Shared from “Spoon” under the creative commons license.


Post by Shailesh Ghimire



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I received the following email from Justin.system is the parts

 

I have read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent it is fantastic.  I also have the Billionaire Real Estate Agent.

My problem is in the building of systems.  I want to develop:

1. A system to get buyer leads.  (I get a lot of buyers leads but do not have a system to handle them)

2. A system that once we get the leads, how they are handled.

3. A system to get listing leads.  ( Same as above)

4. A system to sell our own listings.

5. A system to get Referrals

We are currently getting 50 to 75 buyer leads each month but once the lead comes in the difficulty is in tracking the lead and making sure that our buyer specialist are doing everything they are supposed to do.

We are also getting ready to do a huge marketing campaign to get seller leads but I don’t want the same problem to happen that is currently happening with the buyer leads.

99.9% of Realtors have a Real Estate job, you my friend have a Real Estate Business.  The proof is that while you were away from your business taking care of health issues your business grew.  Not a small feat.  The other 99.9% of Realtors would have gone Bankrupt. 

That is what I desire.

My goal is to pretend that I am going to Franchise my business and design it so anyone could come in and run it.

I am reminded of a mandatory Monday morning sales meeting I attended when I was a failing life Act Now Justin! insurance salesman in 1969.  I was with New York Life and a successful veteran agent from Flagstaff had driven down to Phoenix to talk to us.  He was there to inspire us and to help us do better.  He was a nice and honest man.  After hearing him speak I determined he was also a stupid man.  Nice, honest, successful and stupid.  Every single person sitting in that room was someone who had no idea where their next sale was going to come from - if indeed there would even be a next sale.

He was really happy when he told us that all he did to get business was call his past clients.  He had been with New York Life for just under 20 years (all of us were less than 6 months in the business) and he had many past clients.  He would have his assistant lay 5 cards on his desk each morning before he came in - each card contained the names and contact information for one of his past clients.  He would call each of them and just chat with them for a while.  As he was about to hang up he would ask them which of their friends or family might benefit from talking with him.  He had enough clients that calling 5 of them 5 days a week for all the weeks he worked that he would wind up calling each of them about once a year.  This was his system, and it worked beautifully.  Naturally, I was relieved to know that in a short twenty years I wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore, I could just call my past clients.  At the time I could have called all of my past clients at the burn rate of 5 a day in less than a week.  I didn’t have an assistant, nor could I even afford an office for one to sit in but I could sure see the beauty of his system.  Only it had nothing to do with me.  Or anyone else in that room.  At the time none of us could use it.

_______

In my business now we have lots of systems.  I am totally willing to share any or all of them with anybody who wants them.  You can have any of my checklists (you can download some of them here), you can copy them, modify them - in short, use them any way you like.  The first thing you will be aware of is my checklists are my checklists.  You will need to make some changes in order for them to be useful for you.

All of your checklists - if they are truly going to matter - will need to be composed by you.  You can find lots of stuff lots of places but for it to matter, you and what you are doing need to be a part of it.  Why bother with a checklist?  Can a checklist be a system?  Sure.  All of our checklists are lists (usually in the correct sequence) of those things that must be done to get the exact product that particular action is supposed to produce.  In most cases the checklist represents what I used to do and now someone else does it for me.  It is a hat I wore and now someone else is going to "wear that hat" and take care of it for me.

I have a "hat" for how a listing presentation is to be done.  (you can see all of that here)  All of my listers wear the hat the same way.   Always giving their communication, always them injected into the cycle - it’s theirs now.  But how that "hat is worn" makes all the difference in the world.  There is a proper sequence and attitude for a listing presentation.  It does not vary.  My newest lister has been with me about 3 years.  My most senior lister has been with me over 12 years.  I still check with each of them - having them recite the proper sequence at least every six months.  How did I arrive at that exact sequence?  Did I discover it at Starpower?  Yes and no.  I got a lot of ideas a lot of places.  I tried a lot of things.  Most of them did not work.  A few did.  Out of the thousands of things I tried a few worked.  I remembered those.  I remembered how I did them.  What I said.  How I said it.  What order I said them in.  What order I did them in.  I would vary them to see if it made a difference.  It did.  I then reverted to the "way that worked".  Please understand that there is no statement here that what I do is the "best" way.  The "only" way or any other thought that would suggest that there are not other methods or approaches that are valid.  What I know - from very long experience is that the "hat write up" I have for how to do a listing presentation does work. 

_______

So you would note your successful actions on all of the things you do.  What were the steps?  This isn’t just to train others, it is so you can do it again and get the result you intended.  What is the correct technology that you used?

In order for any of this to matter you have to personally have a subjective reality on it.  It has to be real to you.  Not a bunch of words on a page but something you can see and know is true.

Lets start with "leads".  I don’t believe that you are getting 50 - 75 leads a month.  I don’t mean to imply that you are trying to con me but if you were getting 50 - 75 leads a month you would be selling 5 - 10 houses a month from those "leads".  People in the lead selling business have redefined the word "lead".  What most of them sell is an inquiry.  Big difference.  A lead is someone you are going to call back.  You have spoken to them and assessed the quality of the prospect and decided that this is someone who is interested in what you have to offer and is capable of buying a house.  You aren’t tracking them because most of them don’t really matter.  You are most likely pretty damn good at lead conversion and identifying who is and who isn’t a prospect now.  All of the now prospects you sell to or list.  The rest of the inquiries sort of get lost.  Should you have a system for following up on those?  Sure.  Outlook, ACT, Agent Office, REST, there are loads of potential systems around.  But for keeping track of names, etc., you don’t need to "develop a system", you would need to decide on one and use it.

You take anything you do - that you will want to do again (and again) - and systematize it.  What were the steps?  What was the sequence.  When you start doing this you will tend to leave out important steps.  Easy to see if you type them up and have someone else attempt to do it without any explanation that isn’t on the checklist.  In my office we have every significant (we will want or need to do it again) action "written up".  We have a checklist for that action.

The first actions to write up are the ones you do screamingly well.  Best to write them up when you are in the zone.  When you are just flying on that particular subject - write it all down.  Write it all down.  Write it all down.  You will be amazed at how handy that write up will be when you alter your own successful action and, changing something, watch the stat crash.  The fix?  Simple when you have written up your hat when you were in "Power".  Just go back to doing it the way you were doing it when the stat was soaring.  Doing this also tends to involve realizing what crashes stats.  This collection of what works and what doesn’t work becomes the "policy" of a successful organization.  It makes no difference if that organization consists of several thousand people or a person just getting started at something.  When something crashes the stat, note it.  Make a record of it.  When something makes a stat go up, note it.  Before long you know with certainty what works and what doesn’t.  For example, have you made a record of what you do - that is already working - on lead conversion? 

This business is simple.  Leads.  Listings.  Leverage.  Inquiries are not leads.  Some of them can become leads.  Some leads can be converted into buyers and sellers.  Once you have discovered with certainty what your successful actions are you have your "systems".

The discovery process can be a lot of fun.


Post by Russell Shaw



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Not long ago, I wrote a post here on Agent Genius about the social networking sites that are actually producing income for me. One that I mentioned is LinkedIn, which is quickly becoming my social networking for business site of choice.

I joined LinkedIn back when they first launched and tried to get a couple of friends to sign up. A few did, just to humor me, but my interest wained because, quite frankly, there was no one to link with. Now, fast forward a few years, and I am seeing old friends. colleagues and classmates sign up daily. It’s fun to reestablish old connections!

And its fun to get referrals from people I don’t even know after they read my profile. You gotta like that.

A few weeks ago I had a ‘real estate crisis,’ and I turned to LinkedIn for a solution. I have a client who is a well known celebrity (don’t laugh, we really do have some famous people here in Metro Detroit. . .) and his electricity was turned off in his house due to a mistake at the power company. This happens fairly often here, and they usually take about 3 days to come out to switch the power back on. And that was the answer that DTE (our electric company) gave. It would be a couple of days before they could send anyone out. No power = unhappy client who needs to buy an expensive house from me this summer.

I set out to save the day by checking my LinkedIn contacts to see who I knew that knew someone “high up” at DTE. I came up with a couple of options and after a few calls I had access to a senior marketing executive. Certainly the marketing department would understand my crisis, right?

Well, it all worked out. We got the power on that day.  Thank you LinkedIn.

If you haven’t linked with me, here is my profile.  I just might be able to help you someday.


Post by Maureen Francis



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traditional media tries to bully bloggers- epic fail


Remember the recent rash of Bloggers dying because of blogging? (Shailesh covered the NY Times’ take here, reading this will help you understand the rest of this post) I call BS- it looks to me like the traditional news outlets are bored AND threatened. Hear me out:

This is not news, the media is bored. Anyone who sits at a computer all day is inactive and prone to weight gain and eye strain, just as they reported back in the 80s with the advent of the black/green screens popping up in offices worldwide. Yawn.

The traditional media is threatened, so in true dinosaur form, they say “oh, blogging is like really bad for your health n stuff.” Then, to prove they are threatened, they say “bloggers are fatties with crossed eyes” which sure sounds like a playground brawl to me!

Think about the source of who’s reporting that blogging is a direct threat to life, and you’ll realize it’s like FSBO.com saying “using a Realtor will decrease your chances of selling your home.” Someone’s gotta pay the bills, right?


Post by Lani Anglin-Rosales



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<Yawn >

Today was one of those dreaded office meeting days, but I decided to go in with an open mind, with a good attitude and determined to get something out of it, especially after reading Jonathan’s Too Much Time On Our Hands - did I succeed?…..you be the judge

Intention is everything

I have to tell you that my manager tries. She cranks up energetic music, she is loud, tries to get people pumped up and usually has a good agenda to keep us entertained……man! it’s tough to manage a real estate office!

Once you walked in the room, just by looking at the Realtors’ postures, you knew it would be a fun one (I’m being sarcastic here). Everyone drooping in their chairs, with expressionless faces….<sigh>

Half-way through the meeting, after reviewing all the regular agenda stuff: what’s new with short sales, which addendum needs to be added to what, what wording to look out for, certain problems to watch out for with condos……..blah-blah-blah…….My manager decided to ask each agent what they were doing, what they were experiencing that was worth sharing. The stories were not very exciting, the tone was still a bit somber, some said that they were seeing a bit more movement, some price reductions, maybe more phone calls. But I saw nothing new.

Attitude can beat the odds

I took a deep breath and felt like I was sucking the life from everyone in that room. I felt like raising my hand like an excited 10 year old in 4th grade and scream “ME, ME…..let me tell you!!” - It felt like I was the only one in that room excited to be a part of our real estate experience. It felt like I would be gloating if I told everyone about all the foreign nationals calling us, the daily leads, our increased website traffic. The invitations to contribute to blog in different important sites, to be interviewed by magazines, to make a difference in our industry.

Are we freaks?

Was I so different than those agents at the meeting? Sadly enough, as much as I have encouraged blogging and pushed several agents to take a peek into the web2.0 world, no one in that office will even read this post. They consider me an odd ball, and the truth is that I AM, and you are too if you are reading this. We are part of that minute 2% of Realtors nationwide who are blogging and reaping the benefits.

So what do you think, did I get anything from that meeting?


Post by Ines Hegedus-Garcia



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Although this is a frickin’ hilarious video, seriously think about this:

If you’re not online, will the next generation of buyers and sellers find you?

And if they DO find you, are you what they’re looking for? Can they even distinguish that from browsing your site?

Don’t be left on the curb, be clear and concise up front (especially on your landing page) so consumers know what you’re offering. Ditch the “I’m a Realtor” sentence and add “I’m a Realtor specializing in selling Lake Tahoe vacation homes.”


Post by Lani Anglin-Rosales



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2323651835_b951cb24fb.jpg

Source - Creative Commons


This is about habits …

Not the kind of habits that Catholic nuns would wear, either, but the habits that are hard to break. Although maybe you could get a post out of the Catholic nun habits, I just don’t know enough about them to really make it work. Another day, perhaps …

I’ve been thinking a lot about my business habits lately, specifically those that have prevented me from being as good an agent as I could possibly be. See, I started in real estate in 2004, late to the party but still one of those markets where things were pretty easy. Not that I didn’t work hard to try and be as successful as I could be, but 2004 was still a strong market, at least here the bustling metropolis of Southwest VA. Sellers were entertaining multiple offers, and buyers were putting their best foot forward, every time, or they risked losing out. It was a good time to start because it gave me the confidence that I needed to really take off – each year was a record year for me, and I had it made. I did everything by the book, I was confident that I was making the right decisions in guiding my clients, and everything was good. This real estate thing was easy!

Or so I thought.

Stinking It Up

It probably happens to all of us at some point, but we get ahead of ourselves and things fall apart. In my case, I got a little complacent, a little sloppy, and then I started making mistakes. Case in point … I once listed a home that had a completely different school system than what I represented. Completely different! There was an elementary school ½ mile down the road that I assumed was the school that served this neighborhood, but later discovered it was all wrong. Not so big a mistake, but it was still something that if I had used the resources available to me and taken just two minutes to call the school board and verify, I wouldn’t have made it. A quick change in MLS, and all was right with the world again. Sometimes the lessons weren’t so easy to flush away, however.

A couple of years ago I listed a home that I was sure would sell quickly, and it did – first day on the market, first buyer who saw it bought it. Cash. Quick closing. Awesome! Not quite. Two days before closing, the buyer discovered that the property was on a septic instead of a sewer, as I had entered into the listing. Uh oh. Big mistake. Didn’t check my resources, and it stunk the place up. The buyer and his agent held my feet to the fire, and in the end the buyer got a house with a new connection to the Town’s utility system, while I came up several thousand dollars short at the end of the year. (No, E&O wouldn’t cover it but that’s a story for another day.)

There have been many more mistakes along the way, of course. I’m not naïve enough to think that they’re not going to happen, but my point is that I can be a SLOW learner. It’s one thing to make a mistake because I get ahead of myself, or I’m just not paying attention; those things happen to everyone, it’s normal. It’s another to do it multiple times and not take anything away from the situation. That’s my one bad habit – sorry, typo, that’s ONE of my bad habits. For me, it’s easy to say “well, if only they’d have taken care of that crack two years ago when they saw it”, or “if they would’ve gotten a stronger preapproval then their offer would have been accepted”, but if I’m not changing my habits to make sure that the sellers have adequately prepared their home for sale, or that my buyers have an airtight preapproval from a reputable local lender before making an offer, then I’m not being the best agent I can be. If I’m not striving to be my best then my clients are getting shortchanged. I don’t want that – I want them to walk away from the transaction knowing that I and my Team do everything we can to make things go as smooth as possible.

Give It Your All

Lately it feels like bad habits have popped up far more often the good ones and I’ve beat myself up over them, but I know that there are good ones as well. There’ve been a couple of times recently where I’ve had to go back to a client and say “I screwed up, here’s how we’re going to get back on track.” Learning from my errors hasn’t been easy, but I’m trying. My assistant Aaron is great at learning from mistakes, and while she doesn’t make many she is always quick to take action to resolve it - in fact, I don’t know that I’ve not seen her make the same mistake twice. I really admire that, and I’m really trying to get better at it.

Maybe that’s one of the things that can make us good agents, as well, the desire to keep working and keep trying, to fight the urge to give in to the bad habits and keep striving to give clients everything we have. Because in the end, that’s what they want - our best.

Okay, I feel better.


Post by Jeremy Hart



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jeremy hart from NRVLiving joins AG!


Jeremy Hart, REALTOR in Blacksburg, Virginia is the newest addition to AG- please welcome him in the comments! Many AG contributors are already friends with Jeremy- he is active on Twitter, LinkedIn and has a strong presence in many of the social media arenas.

For those who don’t, Jeremy is always frank, fair, and upfront, has a great sense of humor, an insanely good memory (especially regarding inside jokes involving Vanilla Ice or golf carts with rims) and most importantly, he always writes with the consumer in mind. We asked Jeremy to join AG because he always provides solutions and is an innovative thinker who already fits right in to the AG crowd. Welcome, Jeremy! We’re very excited you’re officially an AG!


Post by Lani Anglin-Rosales



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An email I received last week:

 

Hi Russell,

Good to hear about your new association with AgentGenius. We all need your stuff.

We can’t afford a Radio or TV marketing campaign, so I would appreciate your thoughts on…

Other than Radio/TV, what do you feel are the best 2 or 3 systems to get listings?

Other than marketing my listings, what is the next most effective method of attracting buyers?

Thanks for your help.

Raymond

Good news, it is a short list.  There are precisely two ways to get business: marketing or prospecting.  All methods of getting business fall into one of those two categories.  If the question on how to get business includes, "We can’t afford….." then for now skip the marketing part.  Prospecting is your answer.

Prospect for listings.  Buyers are almost never "looking for an agent", they are looking for a house.  So, prospect for Success - Failure listings.  Emulate top agents.  Almost all long-term top agents are listers.  To get a closed escrow you must first have an open escrow.  To get an open escrow you’ll need a listing.  To get a salable listing you will have to have gone on several listing appointments.  To get a listing appointment you will have to have leads.

Therefore, you are in the lead generation business.  Full time.  If you are going to succeed that is the business you are in all the time.  You are not in any other business.  Just getting leads.  Get enough leads and you don’t really have "unsolvable problems" in your business.  Don’t get enough leads and all you have are "unsolvable problems".  Your main dollar productive activity is getting leads.  Time spent working on getting leads is time well spent.  Invested, if you will.  Time spent on most other stuff is quite possibly wasted time. 

There can be a real charm to deliberate nonsense.  It can raise a person’s tone and get them out of a bad mood - it can do a lot of good things, it can change lives for the better.  Laughing, joking, having fun, creating and spreading a "spirit of play" can be one of the most joyous experiences in life.  Do it often.  But if not knowingly and causatively "playing" please don’t pretend that the mindless time wasting activities that most real estate agents spend their days working on are productive.  Are you causatively playing?  Cool.  Otherwise, if you don’t physically have a buyer to show a house to or are in the process of physically writing a contract, or on your way to see someone to do just that or to take a listing - prospect.  Get leads.  Get more leads.  The number of leads that you actually need is far far more than you even think it is - you need more than that.  Lots more.  Work on that. 

I found the following hereYou don’t need a life plan. You don’t need motivation, self-confidence, peer support or even luck. All you need is the willingness to take the next most obvious step—then repeat the process again and again, regardless of how you feel. Try it. Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts. You don’t need it before you start.

In response to your question, "Other than marketing my listings, what is the next most effective method of attracting buyers?"  My answer?  Market someone else’s listings.  This is what is done with an IDX search.  If you want more to market via the various listing propagation sites, borrow them.  Ask other agents if you can advertise their listings.  Buyers are looking for houses.  Get lots of houses on those various sites.  Hundreds is the correct order of magnitude. 

____Success Series - smaller

Something I am just delighted to be able to announce is that the Realtor Success Series is finally compiled and there for anyone to see and use.  Even I personally had no idea I already had that much content available.  I hope you like it.  More to come.


Post by Russell Shaw



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