BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

Thought About Safety Lately?

I’ve seen a number of articles about safety and real estate agents.  I think it’s a good idea to revisit the issue of safety from time to time.  It’s easy to stop thinking about it in between news stories about REALTORS® who have been injured or killed “on the job”.

I came across some safety information from NAR that includes some interesting ways to keep yourself safe.  One that I particularly like is the idea of setting up a code that everyone in your office knows.  Using colors is an often quoted idea.  Let’s say that you need someone to call 911 at your location - you call your office and ask them to find the red folder on your desk.  Red is the code word for needing immediate assistance.

And, yes, all these things can be considered just common sense.  If you have a way to ask someone to call 911, then obviously, you should also have a way to keep the office updated on where you are, or have a way to weave the address where you’re located into the conversation.

Safety Sounds Simple, But. . . 

It sounds simple, but have you ever tried it?  Practiced what you’d say and how you’d say it?  If not, do you think the most effective time to try it out is when you’re alone in an empty house with someone you think is about to harm you?  I don’t think so.

So, to me, the key is not just knowing what to do, but also being comfortable doing it.  If I had a code like that, I’d want to be confident that I could make that telephone call without tipping off the person I was afraid of.  I think that would take some practice.  It needs to be so automatic that you can do it even when you’re panic-stricken!

The 10 Second Rule

The other tip I really like relates to the 10 Second Rule.  This is the first time I’ve seen that on a list of safety tips.  It’s another thing that is so simple, but would take some discipline to do consistently.

The idea is that when you’re on the road, whether alone or with clients, you take 10 seconds when you arrive at a location to look around.  Well, not 10 seconds all at once, but the article identifies 5 times when spending 2 seconds to become aware of your surroundings could make a big difference.

That idea really makes sense to me because I’ve always been amazed at people who are surprised by an attacker when you know they should have had some idea that trouble was brewing.  But, when you’re late for an appointment, that 10 seconds might seem like too long a delay unless you really focus on your own safety

You can visit Realtor.org to see the complete safety review and you can even take a quiz.  The quiz is pretty simplistic, but I didn’t get them all right - do you think you would?

To all of you who are celebrating a birthday this Friday. . .

 Happy Birthday!

And, this year, you get to celebrate on the actual anniversary of your birth!

If you are a leap year baby, like the other 199,000 people born on February 29, you could be either 40 or 10.  I’d pick 10 myself.

For the rest of us, guess it just means that we’re a day older than we should be.  So, if you are 40 and you’re not a leap year baby, on your birthday I guess you’re actually 40 years and 13 days old?

Of course, there are other ways to fool yourself about your age.  I like the one that says that someone who is 40 is actually 30-10.  That’s if they decided to stop having birthdays after 30.  If they stop at 21, then they’d be 21-19.

Too bad they couldn’t figure out how to divide up the year without needing to include a silly fix like adding a day every four years.

Maybe I’ll work on that in my spare time.

This is the fourth in a series – see all the posts

Unless You’ve Been Living Under a Rock. . .

. . .you’re aware that the use of the Internet by home buyers has been steadily rising.  According to NAR’s 2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, in 2003, 71% of buyers reported using the Internet.  In 2007, that percentage is up to 84%.

The message bears repeating.  If you’re a real estate professional without an effective Internet presence, you’re falling farther and farther behind.  Not only are you handicapped in your ability to reach your prospective clients, but you’re also going to be hindered in your ability to effectively marketing listings - and your prospects know that.

The First Step Buyers Take

When asked what was the first thing that a buyer did to look for a home, their responses included:

• Looked online:  32%
• Contacted an agent:  20%
• Looked online for information about the buying process:  12%
• Looked in newspapers, magazines or home buying guides:  5%

Lessons learned?  It’s interesting that 12% of buyers looked online for information on the buying process.  If you’re looking for new original content for your website, how about a real down-to-earth buying guide? 

I’m not referring to all those slick “10 Mistakes to Avoid” articles.  If they really want information about the home buying process, it would be a great opportunity to write an introduction that explains an overview of the process in English, in a way that makes the visitor feel your concern for their welfare.  (Remember, on the buying side, you want warm and fuzzy.) 

Then, you could include an offer for a more detailed Home Buying Guide, which would give you the opportunity to obtain contact information and to start creating a relationship with that site visitor.

Educate Your Sellers

The information about how Buyers operate also provide some statistics that could be very helpful in educating your clients who are selling their home.  I know that it is often frustrating for agents when their clients insist on using promotional methods that aren’t going to help sell their home.

Newspaper-type advertising is the thing I hear mentioned most often that fits into the “not useful but the client insists” category.  Maybe some of the statistics will help if you find yourself in that position with a client.

First, you’ll notice in the statistics above, only 5% of buyers started their search by looking at newspapers.  Then, there were these results:

 Those statistics indicate that of the 84% of buyers who used the Internet, 99% of them found it to be a useful resource.  The print media didn’t fare as well.  Of the 51% of people who look in newspaper ads, only roughly half of them find the ads a useful tool.  And, home books garnered even less enthusiasm.  Only 31% of buyers even used them, and of those, only 34% found them to be useful.

Try including those types of statistics the next time you describe your marketing plans - and, let me know if it helps!

Subprime lending, predatory lenders, foreclosures, short sales - there’s a lot of concern about all of those issues.  And, naturally, as much education as you can provide to your prospects and clients, the better off they’ll be.

NAR has a brochure available called Learn How to Avoid Foreclosure and Keep Your Home.  The brochure was produced jointly by NAR, the Center for Responsible Lending, and NeighborWorks®, and it covers topics such as the types of loans that tend to get homeowners into trouble, and the steps their lenders may be willing to take to assist them in avoiding foreclosure.

Here’s another opportunity to position yourself as an expert, and to provide a professional handout to get people’s attention.  People who may be susceptible to predatory lenders or who want to avoid foreclosure will be likely to keep this type of a handout - and remember the person who gave it to them.

The member cost is $20 for a pack of 50.  For 40 cents a person, it might be an excellent investment.  The brochure could also be a useful resource to help you quickly write a page on your website, or a post on your blog, to address the same issues.

As you may know, I lost my cat companion of over 20 years late last year.  For a period of time, I was undecided about whether I wanted another pet or not.  Or, whether I should get a dog or a cat.

That indecision was resolved as I found myself cruising the local Humane Society website and ended up spending more time on the cat pages.  And, then I found myself always coming back to the photo of one 4 month old kitten.  So, I decided to go meet him.

I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but here, the Humane Society is composed of a group of volunteer “Foster Parents”.  The volunteers cruise the local Animal Shelter and scoop up as many animals as they can.  The cats and dogs then live with the foster family until they are adopted.

One meeting was all it took.  The kitten was pretty laid-back, friendly and curious.  Of course.  He had been found in a parking lot, so he’d probably been on the street for a while, and was pretty skinny.  His attitude and the way he moved reminded me of one of the characters on Friends, and so he was named Joey. 

Now, the house is back to feeling normal again - with the sound of little cat feet padding around the place.  It’s been a lot of fun having him around.  He’s got a lot of energy being young, of course.  But, he’s also the most intelligent cat I’ve known.  I’ve taught him to fetch his favorite toy, a wire with a few suede tails tied on one end.  It also seems funny to me that he sleeps on his back with his legs in the air, or sometimes with his back legs crossed.  He looks like he’s sitting in a recliner. 

He always uses the litter box, and in fact finds it disgusting when the box is cleaned out.  As I’m trying to remove the solid waste, he’s working just as hard trying to get it all covered up again the way he’d left it!

So, if you’re looking for a pet, try the local humane society.  I think an animal whose life was a bit messy at the start can sometimes end up making one of the best companions.

A Message from Kathleen:  This is the first guest post on the BRER Blog.  I’m lucky that Sam Chapman agreed to contribute this post, and I look forward to his future contributions, too.  The issue of requiring registration before a visitor can search the MLS on a real estate website is a hotly contested one.  It may not work in every market as it has for Sam, but it’s certainly worth considering!

A Couple Changes Have Made a Big Difference

I made a couple of fundamental changes to my highly ranked Austin real estate website at the very end of November.  As a result, the number of leads I have generated from the website has absolutely skyrocketed.  What did I do?

First, I put a large Search Austin Homes link at the top right of every page on my website.  Right below that, I put my contact information.  My thinking was that people would be drawn to the link as they see it on every page.  My statistics also show that around 95% of visitor time is looking at listings.  Having the contact information has resulted in an average of just under one email or phone call to me per day by potential buyers.  Prior to the change, I was getting around 6 per month.  That is an enormous change!

The other significant change I made was forcing visitors to register to view listings.  On my search by map page, people get detailed views of listings that they click on.  I give one free detailed view and then ask them to register.  Of the top sites that show up on Google when searching the term Austin real estate, half force registration. 

Of those, mine is the only one that offers at least one free detailed view, the rest force registration right away.

How Things Changed

Before forcing registrations, my stats show that people were seeing around 10,000 detailed views of listings per month.  Since the changes, people are seeing almost 40,000 detailed views.  This has resulted in around 150 registrations per month.  Before the changes, I was getting around 20 per month.  Again, a huge increase in leads!

When people register, they have to enter a name, a phone number and an email.  So far I am finding that around 70% of the information is real and will actually get me in touch with someone.  Of the people my team and I are able to reach by phone or email, we’re finding that around 11% are resulting in a relationship.  By this I mean ongoing phone calls, emails, appointments or custom searches being set up.

Tracking the Bottom Line

How many of these will actually close is something that I really want to see.  As most internet leads are around 6-9 months or more before they actually start seeing properties in Austin, that is a number I won’t have for a while.  However, I am extremely encouraged with what has happened since the beginning of December and feel that I am going to see very strong sales this year and in years to come.

This post was contributed by guest author and Austin REALTOR® Sam Chapman.  Sam has lived and worked in the Austin area for almost 20 years.  Sam primarily works in the south Lake Travis area and western parts of Austin, but can refer buyers to agents who specialize in parts of the greater Austin area.

This is the third in a series – see all the posts

Differences in How Buyers and Sellers Choose Agents

NAR’s 2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers pointed out some interesting differences in how buyers and sellers choose an agent.  Keep in mind that the questionnaire that provided the basis for the Profile was sent to home buyers.  The home buyers and sellers from the survey are actually the same individuals, answering from different perspectives.

 The first thing that caught my attention was this statistic.

• Did the Seller use the same real estate agent for their home purchase?
  • 47% - Yes
  • 53% - No

I’m sure distance contributed to the reasons why the same agent wouldn’t be used for both a purchase and sale.  However, the median distance the buyers moved, according to the Profile, was 13 miles, indicating that long distance moves were not the most common.

Priorities Change When Selling a Home

I wondered if anything in the Profile would indicate another reason why different agents were hired.  I think part of the answer lies in the differences in how buyers and sellers choose an agent.

When an individual is selling their home:

• The reputation of the agent jumped 10% in importance.
• Honest and trustworthy still came in second, but even the importance of working with a friend or family decreased somewhat.
• The agent having a caring personality and being a good listener dropped in importance by 5%.

Lessons Learned

Agents need to market differently to buyers and sellers.  The person looking to buy a home wants to work with someone who is warm and fuzzy:  honest, trustworthy, caring and a good listener.  And, that makes sense since they will be spending a lot of time with that agent .

Sellers indicated that the most important thing they wanted from a listing agent was to sell their home within a specific timeframe.  Sellers are looking for someone who they think has that ability.  So, the reputation of the agent is much more important, undoubtedly in terms of how effective that agent is in getting homes sold.

And, again, where reputation is an important criteria, it’s much more effective to illustrate your reputation than talk about it.  A great question to ask your sellers, keeping in mind that you want to use open-ended questions, is something like this:

• How well did the timing of getting your home sold meet your objectives?

When the same person is both the buyer and seller, it means you must focus on reinforcing both sides of your personality and your business.  For example, you can’t sacrifice showing your caring side to come across as an aggressive marketer.  It’s an interesting line to walk.

Do you usually help your clients purchase a new home and sell their old one?  How does your experience match with the responses in the NAR Profile?

If you’re not a blogging type, consider other ways to increase your visibility in your market area using established real estate social networking websites.

There are some issues with some social networking sites when it comes to real estate.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, you can read the latest move from Facebook at Joel Burslem’s blog.  The bottom line is that Facebook will suspend the account of anyone who is caught posting real estate listings in the marketplace rather than paying for a “Social Ad” to promote the listing.

There are other alternatives, though, that don’t cost money!  One you might want to check out is the Trulia Voices website.

Everyone from consumers to real estate professionals can ask and answer questions.  It’s a real opportunity to display your expertise to consumers in your market area.  For more insight, check out this article on the Inman Blog.

The Inman post talks about active bloggers stepping outside of their blog to gain exposure in other places on the Internet.  However, I think it’s also a great way for a non-blogger to get more involved online.  Answering a consumer’s question is a lot easier than maintaining your own blog!

I’m not around kids very often, so it’s always a hoot when my sister’s grandkids come to stay.  They bring their parents, too, but the kids are the most amusing. 

There are three grandchildren - all boys, from two different families.  The oldest boy is about five, and his cousins are three and one.

Of course, there is a certain amount of preparation required.  For those children who are old enough to get into things but not old enough to know better, the kitchen cupboards must be secured.  I found these great gadgets to give to my sister.  Each one is a plastic clamp that can be adjusted to fit on the lower double-door kitchen cabinets to prevent them from being opened.  For the single door cabinets, we all just have to be vigilant.  But, it’s much easier when the number of trouble spots is narrowed down.

And, the chair across the staircase upstairs does a passable job of keeping the littlest ones from taking a solitary stroll up (and/or down) the stairs.

The boys get along fairly well together.  The funniest thing is that the oldest boy just loves to help out his two cousins.  He tries to keep them out of trouble, when he’s not joining in, that is.  And, he takes great pride in teaching them new things, reading them stories, and generally playing the big brother role.

I hadn’t really thought of how a six year old views a three year old.  But, I think they really consider each other as peers, just as if they were 25 and 22.  That became obvious to me a while ago when the two were playing together.  It was at a time when the younger of the two was just getting some traction learning how to talk, but wasn’t very good at it yet.

The younger boy wanted something, and the older boy was trying to figure out what it was.  There was a lot of back and forth “discussion” on the topic.  Finally, the older boy was out of patience.

Getting to his feet, and pumping his arms in the air to emphasize each phrase, he exclaimed,

“I CAN’T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU’RE SAYING!!!!!”

I was talking to an agent the other day about improving his Internet presence.  His opinion was that thinking you can use the Internet to do real estate marketing is a pipe dream.  And, I can understand why he’d think that. Take the Poll in the left column of this blog, for example.  If you haven’t participated in our Internet Poll in the left-hand column, now would be a good time to do it!

So far, there are 28 responses, and we need more to make the results meaningful.  But, of the 28 responses

• 65% (20 votes) get Little or No business from their real estate web site
• 35% (8 votes) get One-Half, The Majority or Almost All of their business from their real estate website

Even with such a small sample, there are a number of ways to interpret the results.  Some people, like the agent I spoke with, look at the results and decide that turning a real estate website into a lead-generating tool is just too difficult for the normal person.  It might seem like the people who are getting business from their website are either Internet gurus or just awfully lucky.  But, that’s not really true.

You CAN Go From Rags to Internet!

The only difference between the people who are getting business from their website and those who spend their days knocking on doors is this: the ones making money from their website have

• a professional-looking design
• interesting tools and information for visitors
• an effective SEO strategy

Our strategic partner, Mike Parker, wrote an article for Broker Agent News relating the experience of one broker who almost closed up shop until she learned how to make the Internet work for her.

You don’t need to be an Internet guru to accomplish that.  And, if you want people to help you so that you can continue to focus on your business, that’s pretty easy to accomplish, too.  We assist real estate brokers and agents to create lead-generating real estate websites, addressing design, content and SEO. 

Our strategic partnership with Blackwater/Compass for SEO means that we can provide our clients with a seamless process from the initial design phase through to the site ranking in the search engines.

Don’t assume Internet success is out of reach - just go for it!