Realtio.com

Since it is 2007 calendar and greeting card season (you haven’t got yours out yet?) in the real estate world I thought it would be appropriate to talk about customer retention.

What about calendars? A 2007 calendar might get used and keep your name in front of your prospects but many just throw them out. How is yours working out? Please comment and let us know.

A hand written simple thank you note is still one of the most powerful marketing messages a business can use.

You want to stand out among the holiday mail? Handwrite a holiday greeting to your customers if you can and just thank them for their business. Make it personal. It should read like you are writing a short letter to one of your friends. The envelope should also be handwritten.

If you really would like to stand out and also do some good here is another idea:

Let your client know that instead of sending them a calendar, chocolate box or fruit basket you decided to donate a sum of money to the less fortunate in their name.

If you can… do it individually for each client. Your clients will then receive a notice from the charity that you made a gift on their behalf.

It will make you feel good. It will make your clients feel good. It will deepen your relationship.

And it will change the world a tiny little bit.

All the best.

-Ola

The 22nd edition of the Carnival of Real Estate is now live over at the official Active Rain blog. Head over and take a look! Lots of great content to read!

What is the carnival of real estate? It’s a “best of” collection of blog entries in the real estate blog world for a particular week. Every week there is a new host that reads through all submitted posts and pick his or her favorites.

Two of my personal favorite posts this week were:

1. Elizabeth Weintraub who guest blogged at The Real Estate Tomato with her top 10 list of What Sellers & Buyers Expect From a Real Estate Agent

2. Mary McKnight from RSS Pieces on How to write a blog that generates leads (pay close attention to Mary’s headlines and blog titles - she is a great copywriter).

Next week’s host is the Seattle Real Estate Professionals.

Best,
Ola

P.S. Big thanks to Pat Kitano over at Transparent Real Estate for mentioning us in his post “Three new blogs to watch”! If you don’t already read Pat’s blog just run over there and add him to your blog reader. He always has something interesting to say….

1. More Online Video Watching - Less Driving

Broadband is mainstream. Today I personally don’t know anyone sitting on dial-up anymore. My son will have a hard time believing that daddy used to sit on a 28.8kbs modem when he was young.

Video presentations are going to become much more common in the real estate industry during the next two years.

High-end productions like listing presentations made by companies like Inman stories are probably going to be reserved for upscale listings for now.

With the explosion of YouTube and easy to use sites like One True Media home owners and agents can make their own home grown presentations fairly easily. In the future agents will show up to shoot video in addition to digital pictures.

And “home made” productions can be even more credible and successful in terms of selling than a high end production one.

2. “Press 1 to buy, 2 to sell, 3 to get a mortgage and 0 to speak to an operator”

The use of call centers / contact management centers in the real estate world is increasing.
Good or bad? It’s all in the execution.

If you can get a knowledgeable person on the phone right away at 10 PM on a Thu night while you browsed a house it’s a good thing right?

But if you get put on hold for 15 min and get to an underpaid, tired customer service rep who is reading a script to you it’s quite annoying.

With the real estate industry going online, call centers with rapid response and extended hours are part of the future.

3. You will find more salaried agents to help you than today

Commissioned real estate agents want the deal to happen. Sooner rather than later.
When you buy or sell they get paid.

Most agents are hard-working and very ethical. But with a system where it’s in the agents financial interest to make the client close as quickly as possible you could encounter someone not so ethical if you are unlucky.

Salaried agents are part of the future. And companies that adapt that model have a distinct and clear reason why clients should trust them with their business.

4. Your transaction costs will be lower and more transparent

Yes, all those articles you read in the newspaper about discount brokerages and increased competition are true. The long-term trend is clear.

Transaction costs will go down when clients are doing more browsing and the agent does less driving. Consumers (and regulators) will become more educated and request better disclosures.

If the government required full disclosure of commissions in the title industry, consumers would not have to pay 80-90% of their title policy premium in commissions. And there is no good reason why anyone should pay more than $2,500 in commissions to a lender or mortgage broker.

Paying a percentage of the sales price to a real estate agent is a flawed model for sure, though I don’t see that going away anytime soon.

5. You will probably live in a megapolitan area

In a very interesting article last year Business 2.0 reported that the biggest wave of development since World War II will turn America’s major metro areas into giant megapolitans in the next 25 years.

What does this mean? Large cities will grow together and go from being metropolitan to megapolitan. In Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson will be united. Portland and Seattle are predicted to merge in 2030. Hope you like strip malls and chain restaurants, because there are going to be more of them for sure.

It’s funny. Yesterday we broke the story about HomeGain launching free property listings for agents and asked “Who is next?” RealEstate.com? Zillow? Active Rain? (I truly think Active Rain has the grass root agent participation to pull off a national listing site).

It was Zillow.

Last night Zillow launched a free listing service for agents. It’s a very smart move by Zillow that is sure to make them an even more successful real estate site. Is it good for agents? Yes. Free exposure to listings is almost always a good thing. I would expect Zillow to start offering some premium advertising options for real estate agents as the next step.

It’s truly the week of “We want your property listings”.

John Cook over at Seattle Post-Intelligencer also reports that HouseValues issued a press release that they will direct their participating agents listings to Google and Oodle.

Here are some quickly selected posts from around the web on the Zillow announcement:

1. Bloodhound Blog’s Breaking News Coverage (Great post)

2. Inman News:
Top 10 Reasons Why The Zillow Move Is Significant
Real Estate industry reactions to the new Zillow service

3. Sellisus:
Will Zillow let listing owners opt-out?

Next year will surely be interesting. Will Zillow be the new national MLS? Stay tuned….

Best,

Ola

Real estate agents used to upload their listings to the local MLS and that was it. Today you want to make sure that your listings are being seen and have good placement at sites like Google, CraigsList, Trulia and now… online lead generator giant HomeGain.

HomeGain is turning an increased focus to its home search feature. Since Nov 22 any real estate agent that registers for a free AgentEvaluator trial membership as well as all current AgentEvaluator members has been able to upload their property listings for free at HomeGain through a new beta initiative.

HomeGain says it is currently working on upgrading and enhancing the service for a larger launch in the near future when it’s out of beta. This is the 2nd beta launch from HomeGain this fall. Last month they announced a free AVM tool called HomeValueCMA.com.

So… Is this new property listing exposure a good deal for real estate agents?

I think so.

In a buyers market, exposure of your listings to buyers is crucial. And there are 5 million unique visitors a month at HomeGain that can be accessed at no cost. (In real estate traffic 5 million unique visitors is huge).

Traffic from HomeGain’s new property listings will not be subject to their normal referral fee at closing.

So there we have it when we begin to wrap up 2006 in terms of online real estate:

Everybody is getting into the online listing business. “Upload your listings to us and we will send you traffic!” is the message .

Almost all players seem to agree that if you don’t have the listings you won’t make it to the big leagues.

One can only wonder who will be next into the listing business. RealEstate.com? Zillow? Active Rain (who just turned 6 months and broke 10k registered users -big congrats!)? All are prime candidates.

We might not have seen the future of real estate marketing yet. And it might not be a more transparent real estate experience either. But it sure gives a lot of room for all the top real estate bloggers to speculate about the future.

When the industry meet at the Marriot Marquis at the Time Square in January for Brad Inman’s Real Estate Connect NYC 2007 I bet the discussions will be around an old topic but with a renewed and re-energized focus:

Who got the listings? And what are they doing with them?

-Ola Edvardsson

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Technorati Tags: real estate marketing real estate 2.0 zillow homegain realestate.com inman.com transparent real estate future of real estate marketing brad inman inman news real estate connect nyc 2007 real estate connect real estate conference trulia

The main problem with all advertising and lead generation in the real estate industry is this: The long sales cycle.

This can of course be very frustrating since most professionals are compensated on commission. And when you’re hungry… your entire focus is on feeding yourself for the day.

That means that most agents and brokers are focused on “the next deal” (and hopefully one that close soon!)

So when you buy or generate leads you want people who are ready to buy or sell in the next 30-60 days. On average that is probably about 10-20% of the leads captured on most sites. The other leads are a little bit colder. They will become warmer but it might take 3-12 months.

The result is that 80-90% of all online real estate leads are wasted.

So what’s the solution?

1. Your real estate marketing has to be a long-term effort. The couple who sign up on your site today might not buy or list a house until six months from now. (I know, it’s no fun.)

2. Repetition and follow-up not only works. It’s necessary. You need a follow-up system.

3. And when you follow-up… make sure you give your new potential client a reason to take action and call you.

Even if they don’t want to buy a home you want to encourage interaction to keep the lead warm. It could be as simple as a review of their buying criteria (it always changes) and update them on what’s going on the market. Every time you get a contact you have strengthened the relationship tremendously.

And never forget… that successful real estate marketing is long-term.

Now… as an agent… do you really enjoy doing your own marketing and lead generation? Let me know.

All the best.

-Ola

P.S. If you haven’t signed up for our email newsletter and mailing list I highly recommend you to. Subscribers get weekly updates of blog posts and exclusive content and updates only available by email. Get on the list here.

It wasn’t long ago where every where you looked you saw a headline about the end of the national real estate boom and the upcoming crash. Today prices are coming down and the real estate market is clearly softening.

Aren’t we all waiting for headlines saying “The worst is over”?

I thought I would give you one today.

Today Toll Brothers, a luxury home builder from Pennsylvania announced 4th quarter and full year earnings results for 2006. Their earnings dropped 44 percent because of write downs of owned and optioned land and a high number of cancellations, 585 total.

Their forecast for the next year is not pretty. Earnings are expected to drop 62% in the next year.

The most interesting thing in their earnings release was a statement from the CEO and chairman Bob Toll. He is calling the bottom in some markets on the east coast:

“Fifteen months into the current slowdown, we may be seeing a floor in some markets where deposits and traffic, although erratic from week to week, seem to be dancing on the bottom or slightly above.”

“The metro D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia, which was the first market in which we saw activity slow, seems to have stabilized, although at levels much lower than those we have enjoyed over the past few years. In metro DC’s Maryland market, a more lot-constrained region where builders built fewer spec homes and there were fewer speculative buyers, the market also appears to be stabilizing”, Toll continued.

If you’re a real estate agent or mortgage broker, then I have a simple question for you:

Why should anyone do business with you?

I call this: “Reason Why Marketing”.

If you don’t give the client at least one good “reason why”, then you are losing a lot of potential business.

I find the real estate industry very interesting. No other industry has these many independent contractors all in business for themselves. And the vast majority of them are also tasked with the assignment of branding themselves.

When I say branding you might think I am talking about slogans. No, I am not going to dig up agent slogans for this entry. Let’s just say there are good ones and maybe not so good ones.

Instead you need to start thinking about what separates you from your competition.

What do you bring to the client that no-one else does? Or if you don’t have anything special, maybe you do something better than the rest of the agents in your market? It’s all about educating the prospect.

In a buyers market two different positioning ideas comes to mind:

1. If you’re working with buyers a reward that locks them in and give them an easy to understand “reason why” is very powerful. It could be a rebate or gift at closing. The 1% cash back at closing is becoming increasingly popular throughout the country among agents.

2. If you’re focused on listings then marketing and negotiation skills are great for positioning. Be sure to be able to quantify and explain very clearly why you’re better than the other agents. Can you make a guarantee that provides value to the client? Can you show marketing skills that other agents don’t?

Service levels are also great. Explain very clearly why your service level is so exceptional. If you have testimonials to back it up it will create a powerful message.

This is a great time to start refining your message for 2007. And the basic process is simple.

Answer this question: Why should anyone do business with you?
Write down your answer. Read it out loud.

Then ask yourself this follow up question: So what? Continue questioning yourself until
you feel you have something that you truly believe in.

I would love if you would be so kind to post your answer to the question as a comment to this post.
Thanks in advance!

All the best.

-Ola

There are a lot of great real estate blogs out there. I will be featuring different blogs on our blog roll as we go along. One of my favorites is Transparent Real Estate by Pat Kitano.

Pat says: “It’s our mission to provide a bird’s eye view on how the new transparency will change the real estate game for the benefit of society. We focus on business strategy, new business models, technology and innovative real estate marketing for the real estate community.”

He does an excellent job analyzing how the online real estate industry is changing and what new companies are doing.

Today he has a great story covering the acquisition of Web design service Adaptive Real Estate Services (ARES) by classified site startup Edgeio. Why did they buy it? Because ARES have a network of local brokers providing IDX feeds into an integrated data solution. Simply put: Edgeio can now incorporate almost 70% of all MLS listings nationwide into their search result. Depending on the price it might turn out to be a smart acquisition.

If you don’t already subscribe to Transparent Real Estate I urge you to. It’s essential reading for anyone with an interest in the real estate industry.

All the best.

-Ola

When was the last time you truly enjoyed being marketed to?
It’s not that often is it?

Anyone filling out a lead form today with the option of being contacted by 3-4 mortgage
brokers, real estate agents, insurance sales people etc are truly in for a ride.

If they used a reputable site, chances are their data will only be used once. If they’re
unlucky they will get signed up to multiple databases and resold several times in the following
90-120 days.

Simply put: What’s going to happen is that this client will get a lot of instant attention.

The phone will ring off the hook, literally within minutes. Emails will show up.
And it will get irritating very quickly.

You see… the majority of all these companies contacting these leads
are missing out on some big things:

- They don’t get into the mindset of the client.
- They don’t build rapport.
- They don’t give a sense of a true, caring service mind.

Instead they’re mainly focused on delivering their script (if they have one)
and are more interested in themselves (and the commission) than the customer.

The sense of a desperate bunch of guys flocking around one
attractive girl in a bar comes to mind when listening to some of these calls.

A very simple starting point to get these calls work much better is this:

Realizing that no-one really likes to be a lead or treated like “a lead”.

Or maybe you do?

All the best.

-Ola

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