I love Barcelona. As the people here say a lot, it has the perfect combination of “mar” (sea) and montaña (mountain). Beaches. Skiing. Great restaurants. Great food. Good-looking people. Great night life. What’s not to love? Carpe diem!

But lately I’ve begun to think that bohemian chic has its limitations. Let me explain. One of the things that I love most about Spain is that people here enjoy life. Too many people in the US have a 5-year plan they work like crazy to realize. On my very first visit to Barcelona, however, I realized that things here were different. I was 25 at the time, fresh out of law school. And I noticed that everyone here seemed so relaxed. Not a care in the world. They were all on the streets and partying. They embodied the Rent ethic that seemed so attractive after 7 years at Yale, busting my ass trying to be Maverick, trying to be the Top Gun. In this context, “La vie boheme! No day but today!” sounded especially appealing. You only have 525, 600 minutes in a year. How do you want to spend them? Forget all the bullshit and enjoy every day. Carpe diem!

That’s cool while you’re young and immortal. But as you get older, and you realize that you have fewer “todays” awaiting you, a long-term vision becomes unavoidable.

So what I loved about Barcelona when I first got here 7 years ago — the bohemian chic — looks more problematic as age gives me a little bit of perspective.

A few examples:

• Shitty service: One of my biggest pet peeves. The customer is the enemy, or at best irrelevant, in many Spanish businesses. If you want to come back, great. If not, who cares? Are you a loyal customer? That’s your problem! Just pay for your meal, and go — and I’m going to try as exploit you as much as possible while you’re here. Carpe Diem! For example, I eat at the same restaurant almost every day. For dessert, I usually get the arroz con leche, but one day I asked for the yogurt with honey. The waitress told me that they had honey, but I’d be charged extra for it. For a few drops of honey! Since then, I’ve been a little more reluctant to eat there. I don’t feel valued as a customer, so I’m trying to find my “Cheers” place — where everyone knows my name. And I’m not the only entrepreneur who laments this entrepreneurial short-sightedness in Spanish businesses. Yannick recounts a similar experience where a waitress charged for electricity when he plugged in his laptop! The title of the post says it all: A Catalan Starbucks, Impossible!

• Bye-bye 3GSM: A major international conference held in Catalunya? Impossible! Not quite, but given the oft short-sighted approach to business here, not far from the truth. A lot of blogs this week are lamenting that the organizers of the 3GSM conference want to leave Barcelona. The conference brings a lot of international prestige to Barcelona, but who cares? Let’s gouge the tourists! The petty thieves will rob them on the streets, the local businesspeople will rob them everywhere else, and the local government will remain largely silent because they’ll keep coming back, right? And all the taxi drivers that spend all day complaining in their smelly cabs about how tough life is will chat on their phones and drink coffee instead of attending to the surge of new clients, some of whom might even give tips. But who cares? Carpe diem!

Maybe it’s just a matter of getting old — from hippie to yuppie — or maybe bohemian chic really is an unsustainable way of life. Maybe as all of those long-haired, free love do-gooders of the 60s realized long ago, at some point we all have to grow up or suffer retarded development, both economically and personally.

This is the second episode of nuroaTV, our video channel for real estate. To record it, we went to the March for a Vivienda Digna, which took place on 1 March. We marched from Plaza Catalunya to Via via Laeitana to the beat of Brazilian drums. It seems like I can’t escape Carnaval! I was sambaing during the march — maybe I kind of missed the point?

More seriously, I should probably be more discrete, but that’s not my style. The real story is that we approached the organizers to see if there were some way that we could help out, since we too believe that everyone deserves dignified housing. As I will write in another blog post, I came to Barcelona in chase of quality of life. It’s still here, but life is now a life more expensive than it was just five years ago, and housing is only once indice of the problem.

In any case, the organizers kindly but quickly ushered us out of their offices, noting that they don’t work with “companies”, which I got the impression was a kind of dirty word. I respect that, even though I think that it’s important to include ALL voices in discussions that affect all members of a given society. I might not share the methods of squatters and more revolutionary anti-capitalists, but I do understand their frustration. And the only way to solve the underlying problems is to have a constructive dialogue in which we look for solutions together.

But I’ll save my kumbaya speech for another moment. For now, it’s enough that you enjoy the video, and let me know: What does the right to dignified housing mean to you? Does it mean anything? And if it so, what should society do to ensure this right?

People have been talking for years about how the Internet was going to  disintermediate real estate agents much in the same way that Internet has largely disintermediated travel agents. For the most part, things haven’t turned out that way. Here at nuroa we appreciate that real estate agents still play a critical role in the buying and selling of flats and houses.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s define what “disintermediation” is. Simply put, it means cutting out the middle man; cutting out the (real estate) agents and putting the principals (the buyer and the seller) in more direct contact.

Why is disintermediation relevant? For the consumer, cutting out the middle man also means cutting out the middle man’s commission.

Take a look at the travel industry, for instance.  A lot of people buy their tickets or book their hotels online. No need to walk down to the local travel agent’s office and sit down while she searches through all of her catalogues. Now you can just do it yourself via Expedia or eDreams.

Real estate, however, has proven to be more difficult to disintermediate, because there’s so much more at stake than a €2000 vacation. For most people, their home is their castle. Buying a home is the most important financial decision in most people’s lives, and it involves lots of boring stuff like laws, numbers, notary publics and annoying sellers.

So here’s the big question: Would you really be willing to spend €400.000 online based only on pics and maybe even a video tour? 

I probably wouldn’t, and I bet that most people wouldn’t either. The notable exception is Spanish real estate giant Metrovacesa, which has proven that their clients are willing to buy new developments (obra nueva) online based entirely only on the specs. For second-hand homes, however, it’s likely that there is — and maybe always will be — a trust factor that can only be dealt with by physically inspecting a property and, in many cases, by receiving the expertise and guidance of a real estate agent.

That’s why I think that Redfin’s model makes a lot of sense. They decrease the importance of the real estate agent via the Internet, but don’t deny that the agent currently still has an important role to play. There’s a lot of interesting consumer advice online (whether in the form of Q&A’s, wikis, blogs, etc.), but real estate agents are still important for the part of the process that require human judgment and sensibility — all of the intangible stuff that might include body language, things like negotiating price, figuring out an owner’s urgency to sell, knowing when to kiss the owner’s ass, knowing when to ignore or threaten the owner, figuring out how to outbid a competitive offer without paying too much, etc.

Redfin, in effect, offers an Internet business with a human component — they call it the “Redfin Advantage”. Under this model, the customer does all of the parts that don’t need an agent — e.g., finding attractive homes online,  researching neighborhoods, scheduling home tours and making an offer. The agent only steps in an expert negotiator — a closer — is required. The agents are paid a salary by Redfin, and their bonuses are based on customer satisfaction rather than sales price, which means that agents’ interests are aligned with the buyers’ and everyone’s goal is to get the lowest sales price. (Under the traditional model, the agent’s incentive is to get the highest price possible, as her commission is usually a percentage of the sales price, so the agent’s incentive is probably more aligned with the seller or at best conflicted.)

As proof of their effectiveness, Redfin released a study yesterday noting that on average their clients saved $15,568. And at the end of the day, regardless of all of the bells and whistles related to different types of real estate sites, the bottom-line is the same: Home-buyers want the best property at the cheapest price. Whoever can accomplish that feat has a good chance at really disrupting the current marketplace.

Perhaps as a testament to the disruptive potential of Redfin’s model, the traditional real estate industry seems pretty much antagonistic towards Redfin, as the company only reinforces the idea that real estate agents are largely irrelevant, except maybe for certain later-stage parts of a transaction. And the take-home message is clear: Since agents are only needed at the last part of the transaction, they should cut their standard commissions dramatically.

What do you think about Redfin? Is it the future of real estate? Or is it more likely that at some point real estate agents won’t be necessary for even the latter stages of a transaction — will a clever algorithm someday be able to do it all? And even if a clever algorithm could do it, would you trust it with your life savings?  TechCrunch’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, can a machine ever entirely replicate or surpass true expert knowledge?

A pair of humorous videos from the Jimmy Kimmel show.

F*cking Matt Damon

F*cking Ben Affleck (Jimmy Kimmel’s response on finding that his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, was f*cking Matt Damon. Nice cameos with Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle and Brad Pitt)

I was watching the Indian Wells semifinals today between Novak Djokovic (the number 3 male tennis player in the world, all of 20 years old) and the veteran, Rafa Nadal (the number 2 male tennis player in world, all of 21 years old). And the commentators were talking about how to deal with the pressure of being in the semifinals of a major tournament.

On the one hand, the sports psychologists always say that you should “play your game”. In other words, don’t worry so much about your opponent. Whether you win or lose is all in your hands. Under this approach, you should “go for your shots”, meaning that you shouldn’t be afraid to take calculated risks. If you play it safe, you’re always going to be in the defensive position, and you have to wait for your opponent to lose rather that playing to win. Be the master of your own destiny!

On the other hand, players like the Williams sisters always get criticized for playing too aggressively. They’re always going for their shots. So sometimes, when the stars are all aligned, they play absolutely brilliant tennis and no one can beat them. The opponent becomes irrelevant as they hit winner after winner after winner. But if their games are a little bit off, or if their competitors are a little bit better prepared to deal with their go-for-broke approach, then they commit a lot of errors, frustrated that their winners are largely ineffective. In other words, their attempts to be the masters of their own destiny become largely ineffectual, whether because of the circumstances or because of their opponents.

Sometimes as CEO of nuroa, our property search engine, I wonder which approach is better. Probably a combination of the two. But as in tennis, you only know if the approach was the correct one after the fact, once you see the instant replay. If the ball goes in, your brilliant! If the ball goes out too many times, even by a few millimeters, you’re a reckless loser. And this applies not only to overall strategy, but to employee decisions, to partnership proposals, to deciding which investors to take in your company.

But isn’t part of being in a start-up the joy of being in a high-risk, high-reward venture? What do calculated risks mean in such a context? Can a start-up really afford to play it safe? That being said, can it afford to be too aggressive?

Is there a happy medium, or is it just a matter of the post-mortem evaluation of your start-up after it’s hit the dead pool, or the IPO prospectus as you prepare for your IPO?

What do YOU think?

She’s back! Out of rehab . . . Without her kids . . . K-Fed (her ex-husband) has gained about 15 pounds since the divorce and now has custody of their two kids . . . But Britney Spears is back . . . as an actress on a popular U.S. sitcom . . . and we can only assume, that eventually, she’ll back back a dancer/singer.

Baby steps . . .

All the best, Brit!

Why do smart people do dumb things?

Why do we all take risks that we know are not worth it? The list is interminable: smoking, drinking, super-sizing your order at McDonalds, going to McDonalds, unprotected sex, promiscuity, cheating on your partner, drugs, not going to the gym, ignoring your mother’s phone calls, speeding around Barcelona on a motorbike, going at 160 km per hour on the highway when the speed limit is 110 . . . .

Why is it so good to be so bad?

Bill Clinton had his Monica Lewinsky. Sarkozy has his Carla Bruni. And now Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York, has his Emperor’s Club V.I.P. People are calling for his resignation after it was made public that he was “Client-9″ at a high-class prostitution ring with a taste for petite American brunettes. According to prosecutors, the Emperor’s Club operated in London, Paris, Miami and other cities, and charged between $1,000 and $5,500 an hour.

Spitzer, better than anyone else, should have known better. As attorney general, he made his career by angrily and enthusiastically hunting anyone and everyone that committed a crime, including members of prostitution rings, which he denounced as rife with human trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Now it seems that the sheriff was also an outlaw.

I’m trying not to judge him. As Britney Spears famously explained, “I’m not that innocent.” I’ve made my share of mistakes. I have my “bad boy” streak. Part of getting older is coming to grips with one’s own imperfections . . . realizing that youthful idealism is refreshing, but at the end of the day, we’re all very flawed human beings full of contradictions and hypocrisies that cause pain to ourselves and to our loved ones.

Good people do bad things.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck.

(By the way, the reference to “the spirit is willing . . .” is from the New Testament (Matthew 26:41), where Jesus tells his disciples on the night before he was crucified: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The point is that Jesus himself was struggling with temptation, but he overcame it, unlike the weaker disciples.)

I know that I should stay out of politics, but I don’t usually do what I should.

I have to say that I’m very happy that Zapatero won. Or almost more to the point, I’m very happy that Rajoy lost. One xenophobic homophobic leader (ahem, Bush) is enough for me.

This morning as I sat in a cafe listening to my iPhone and reading the paper, I was a bit surprised by La Vanguardia’s (the Catalan newspaper’s) headline: “Zapatero Gana Por El Apoyo de Catalunya (Zapatero Wins Because of Catalunya’s Support)“. Probably true, but somehow I didn’t think that was the most important element of the story. It’s like if Obama wins and then the headline were “Obama wins because Blacks Voted for Him.” It would be undoubtedly true and marginally newsworthy, but for me there is so much more at stake than regional pride.

Anyway, when I got to the office, I thought it’d be interesting to look at how international newspapers covered the story. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was: “Socialists Win in Spain, Get Clear Mandate“. The WSJ defines the mandate as “engineering a soft landing for a country that has fueled European economic growth for a decade” — which, for me, is the most important thing, ahead of which region played what role in the electoral process.

For the most part, the Journal has a favourable write-up of Zapatero noting that “[t]he Socialists’ re-election is a clear vote of confidence in the charismatic Mr. Zapatero, who became prime minister four years ago at the age of 43. Mr. Zapatero’s tenure has focused on social issues, including introducing gay marriage and tougher penalties on domestic violence against women.” The Journal also seems reassured that Zapatero “can count on the well-respected former European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner and two-time Spanish Finance Minister Pedro Solbes, who is likely to be finance minister in the new government.” In short, Zapatero is seen as a charismatic leader with a clear mandate and an effective team. Not bad, considering that the Journal is a more conservative newspaper.

The New York Times, which has more of a liberal slant, also noted that the election gave Zapatero a clear, new mandate. The headline was “Socialists Re-elected in Spain, After Bitter Campaign“, and the article noted that “[d]espite a bitterly fought campaign, the outcome seemed to endorse some of Mr. Zapatero’s boldest decisions, including the withdrawal of Spain’s troops from Iraq, the granting of more autonomy to Spain’s rebellious regions, simplified divorce and the legalization of homosexual marriage.” Again, the focus is on the fact that Zapatero is a bold leader with a clear mandate to move Spain toward modernity (in line with the direction that the NYT has called for the US goverment to move in).

Interestingly, the NYT ran a story on Saturday in which the author noted that Rajoy seemed just the opposite of modern. The reporter explained: “Mr. Rajoy, a 52-year-old former interior and education minister, has not been helped by his personal style. He has a graying beard, apparently to cover scars from a car accident years ago, that makes him look old-fashioned and older than his years. He laces his speeches with 19th-century expressions and suffers from unfortunate nervous habits, sticking out his tongue and bulging his eyes when he is angry.”

I agree with the Times and the Journal. Rajoy was an unwanted blast-from-the past that used fear of difference (gays and immigrants, among others) to win votes. Zapatero’s message was more inclusive and optimisic. So I prefer Zapatero. I think that he’s moving Spain in the right direction. The economic downturn is scary, but thanks to the Bush family, I’ve already lived through a few recessions, so what’s one more? It’s part of the cycle of life. What goes up, must come down . . .

My only hope is that either Obama or Hillary will win, because 8 years of Bush is almost more than I can bear. The US needs someone to take us back in the right direction.

In our effort to stay cutting edge and try out new things, we’ve launched our own video channel at nuroa.es and nuroa.de called “NuroaTV“. I think that this makes us the property search engine to delve seriously into videos.

And no, we’re not trying to be YouTube II, but we do think that video is just another format for presenting our users with relevant information and feedback from other consumers. I think that the results — that is, the video below — speaks for itself!

In any case, last weekend a bunch of us (along with our young video director, Xesc Estapé and his production team) hung out in the centre of Barcelona to see what average people thought about various issues, one of which was the effect of the real estate “crisis” on the Spanish elections, which will take place this Sunday. We thought that it was timely given that even the New York Times had written a story about real estate and the Spanish elections.

Our series is called: “¿y tú qué piensas? (so what do you think?)“, and it fits into our strategy of offering hyperlocal content that keeps real estate consumers well informed about current market conditions. For the moment, the video is on a separate page on Nuroa’s website, but we will soon integrate our videos directly into the search results page.

For this first video, we went to the streets of Barcelona to see what the Spanish public really thought about José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, and his conservative rival, Mariano Rajoy in the context of the housing crisis. Let’s just say that people were generally pissed about the current situation.

But don’t take my word for it. Take a look for yourself! And please let me know what you think about the video. (Warning: The video is in Spanish, but there are still quite a few very funny images that can be understood no matter what language you speak!)

Axe!

I still have Brazil on my mind.

Carnaval was hot! Both literally and figuratively.

Hanging out in Bahia

We flew from Barcelona to Salvador de Bahia by way of Madrid. Victor (our product manager and star blogger) picked us up at the airport and then drove us to his home, where his parents and his brother had waited up so that they could join us for dinner. The Aloi family was really, really cool and really, really generous. They have a nice duplex penthouse apartment with a swimming pool on the roof and a full-time housekeeper. They made our stay pure joy. I felt like David Beckham! They got hold of a friend’s yacht, and took us island hopping in All Saints Bay (the biggest bay in Brazil). They got us free passes to go to various Carnaval events like the camarote (like a VIP area where you can see Carnaval from a balcony area with open bar and kitchen, but where you don’t have to mix with the rowdy crowd). It definitely was not a backpackers’ trip.

Actually, the rowdy crowd was my favorite part of the Carnaval experience. The camarote was fun, but being in the Carnaval crowd feels like being in a cult, or like being an Obama supporter, like you’re a part of an exciting movement where the communal experience is the most important part. And, of course, everyone is drunk, so it makes socializing a lot easier. Maybe too easy. We entered a kissing challenge, where each night the goal was to kiss as many people as possible. It was something that everyone in Bahia does during Carnaval, apparently. Being from the US (i.e., anti-PDAs — public displays of affection), I couldn’t really get into the game. So Victor’s aunts ridiculed me and called me “Pretty Woman”, in reference to Julia Robert’s statement in the movie that kissing is more intimate than sex. I was like a little old lady in that crowd.

(By the way, Zum Zum Zum Zum Zum Baba — the title of this post — is the chorus to one of the most popular songs that we listened to during Carnaval.)

On the second night in Rio, we went to a samba school, where we saw all of the samba girls practicing their moves. It was an amazing experience. The dancers know how to shake their junk in the trunk. We even got to dance with some of them.

The only bad thing about Rio was that it was overcast most of the time we were there. But it’s still Rio — amazingly beautiful.

Off to the beach

On the last couple of days of Carnaval (it lasts 6 days and some Brazilian entertainers are pushing to make it 9 days!), we went to a really cool island called Morro de Sao Paulo. We watched futvoley (which is volleyball but played like soccer, so you can only use your body, your head and your feet — but not your hands) and drank caipirihnas made of mango, kiwi, coconut and other tropical fruits.

I’m already planning for Carnaval 2009!