Markets | Three Oaks Tradingpost

Real Estate Marketing: Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck

June 24th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

You can market in any possible way that you can think of when you are looking at doing real estate marketing. This article will look at what you need to do to make your marketing dollars go as far as possible.

One of the first ways is to get a website. The number of people online has continued to increase. This is one of the major ways that people are finding information these days and it has changed the way that people buy. If you do not have a website, you are at a competitive disadvantage with other realtors. A website does not have to cost you much. You can set up a website and then simply manage it yourself. This can help provide more exposure about you as a realtor and it can be a location where people can find more information about properties you listed. This can free up some of your time for more prospecting. This is a no-brainer when talking about real estate marketing.

You can list a home on Craig’s List. This does not cost any money and it can often provide more traffic and interest than a newspaper ad can. Many real estate agents place an ad in the newspaper simply because sellers expect that they will do that. The amount of traffic that this site generates is amazing. It is one of the top sites on the Internet.

To think offline about real estate marketing, networking is a major key. You must get your name out in the community. Find those mortgage brokers and title agents who you work well with. Start referring business to them and you should see referrals coming back to you. This can happen easily if you start to meet people by going to your local chamber events or local real estate meetings. These may happen on a weekly or monthly basis but it is a very worthwhile investment of your time.

Volunteer your time to talk with local groups. This can establish you as an expert and more exposure to your name. Be sure to pass out cards and ask for business. Chances are that someone in the audience knows someone selling a home. People want to do business with people they like so a friend could easily pass on a business card.

Brand yourself so that everyone knows you exist within the real estate marketing world. Develop what you stand for as a real estate agent. If you are the most efficient realtor around, trumpet that. This message needs to flow through all of your marketing materials so that people remember that one particular message about you. This message can stick if you do it in the right way. You can do this by wearing a shirt with your logo or putting a decal on the side of your car. You are not working for this attention as it happens.

Real estate marketing does not have to cost a great deal of money. In this instance, you have spent little money but have been able to gain great exposure by using some of the following actions in this article.

Tags: Bang, Buck, Estate, Getting, Marketing, Most, Real

Technical Real Estate Marketing Tipps

June 17th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

It is no secret that the Internet is one of the top places to market real estate but even in this lucrative medium you have to know what you’re doing if you want to spend your money wisely. This article explores products and services that offer the best value for your money. If you are willing to do a little legwork you can dramatically reduce your marketing costs while increasing the impact of your marketing money. If you are unfamiliar with the Internet or need some help with the basics of using a computer then hire a smart teenager to help you with the technical part and you can worry about the Real Estate Sales.

Rule #1: Always Pay for Customers not “Impressions”

If you do not have a degree in Computer Science you may not know the difference. One of the earliest and least effective ways to buy online advertising was through impressions. A web site owner would sell an ad on their site and then charge the advertiser for each person that saw the advertisement. This was the predominant way to sell advertising before the dot com crash of 2000. This is the same model that had been used by magazine publishers for decades. As an advertiser you are buying an ad but on the internet you can buy a customer. The problem with buying impressions is that you have no idea how many people actually end up on your site. Worse, studies have found that ads in some areas of the site produce almost no customers because no one clicks in those areas.

There is a much better way to buy advertising. Pay for the number of visitors that the advertiser sends to your site. If you are paying .10 for an impression then 1000 impression will cost you 0 dollars. That sounds like a pretty good deal. Unfortunately some advertising (such as banner ads) has a very low click through rate – less than 1%. The advertiser has no incentive to actually bring the potential customer to your web site. The advertiser displayed your ad so (as far as they are concerned) their job is done. If you received 10 visitors for your 0 dollars then you paid dollars per potential customer. As an alternative pay for users not impressions. If you are paying .00 per user session then you can be guaranteed that the potential customer found your site. You could buy 50 potential customers for your same 0. A thousand impressions for .10 is worth far less than fifty impressions at .00 per user. For more detailed information please take a look at Real Estate Marketing Sage.

Rule #2: Get in Front of Customers Before Your Competition Does

One of my favorite ways to gain a competitive edge in real estate is through Google Adwords. Adwords are those small text advertisements that appear along the right side of Google pages. Adwords need to be understood in order to be used effectively which is why many real estate agents avoid using them. They can take a little while to perfect but the impact on your business will be dramatic. The advertiser bids on specific terms by bidding how much they are willing to pay for a “clicks”. For instance an advertiser might say that they are willing to pay .00 for an internet visitor that typed the word “Maplewood Real Estate” into the Google Search Engine. They could buy 10 of these visits from Google each day for . These are some of the most qualified customers that you can find. Your paying more to contact a smaller number of web users but this is offset because the web users have a very high probability of becoming customers.

The most effective way to bid for these terms is to bid for terms that are very specific to what you are selling. If you are selling a home in Seattle the term “Seattle Real Estate” may not be the best term to advertise under. Why? It is too broad and probably too expensive at .32 per click. It is more effective to bid a large number of specific terms. It might be better to bid .50 per click for a variety of very specific terms. “Seattle Craftsman Home,” “Seattle Home with Hottub,” “Maplewood 2 bedroom,” “University of Washington Home.” Brainstorm and be sure to find as many targeted terms as possible.

Rule #3: Spend Money To Make Money

Realitors need a wide variety of tools including newsletters, virtual tours, flyers, broadcast email, and web commercials. Buying each of these tools individually can get very expensive. Fortunately you can buy a package that includes all of these services at one low price. Imprev is one of the best companies in this area. Imprev offers an impressive array of services at one very low monthly price.

I am in love with templatemonster.com. This site offers beautiful templates for a very low price. Most web designers are not going to build a site that looks as great as these templates. Pay your web designer to modify these templates as opposed to making a complete site. Your site will look more professional and you’ll pay a lot less.

Rule #4: Look At Your Web Metrics

Wouldn’t you like to know how many people are looking at your advertising? What they are thinking. What they are doing (buying) or not doing when they see your advertising. Your web logs are the second best thing to a crystal ball. I cannot tell you how many people look at their web logs and immediately know what went wrong or right with their site. The best part is that most likely you already have this installed and just need to know how to access the information. So ask your web master.

Rule #5: Hire REAL SEO not Junk SEO – Learn how much a keyword is worth.

SEO companies have sprung up by the dozen and the vast majority of them are built on a common misconception. It is relatively easy to get a great position on a term that no one looks for. For example say you want to find users in Seattle Real Estate. You go to an SEO company that offers to get you a great position for the term “Wonderful Seattle Real Estate”. So who looks for “Wonderful Seattle Real Estate” in the Google engine? No one. All of the web searchers are looking for “Seattle Real Estate” not “Wonderful Seattle Real Estate.” Companies are not competing for the term “Wonderful Seattle Real Estate” they want “Seattle Real Estate.” You can find the exact value of the term based on a very simple formula. Find the bid value for the term in Google and then multiply it by the number of Overture users. By this logic the term “Wonderful Seattle Real Estate” is worth less than one user a month.

Tags: Estate, Marketing, Real, Technical, Tipps

Real Estate Marketing ? 75 Percent of People Buy Their Home Online – Realtors – are You Ready?

June 15th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

Real Estate Internet Marketing is gaining much importance nowadays, as it is highly important for those who are engaged in selling real estate online. According to a survey conducted by a top-rated magazine, more than 75% of people lean on the internet to buy their dream home.

Since many of the realtors have their own sites on the web, with features such as pictures of properties as well as floor plans, it has enabled the potential customers for hassle-free home buying. A website not only enables to promote a realtor’s properties but also to promote the services they render.

But, there are such a great number of real estate-related websites that it has now become an overwhelming process for a particular real estate website to get ranked high among the search engine results. Here comes the role of real estate internet marketing.

A lot number of proven real estate internet marketing techniques are now adopted to improve the ranking of a real estate-related website for better search engine visibility, such as search engine optimization, search engine submission, pay-per-click marketing, link analysis, affiliate marking, and e-mail marketing. Among which, perhaps the most prominent one is search engine optimization.

Real Estate search engine optimization contains a series of strategic and technical solutions including selection of most appropriate keyword, preparing search engine friendly content, linking and submitting website to major search engines like Google and Yahoo. All of these factors work together to enhance your website ranking in the search engines for real estate related keyword. Although real estate SEO works can be done by business owners themselves,it is better to seek assistance of an experienced SEO firm.

A reputable SEO firm conducts a detailed analysis on your real estate business as well as your target markets, apart from structuring your real estate website with appropriate search terms, synchronizing Meta title and description, and formulating link popularity programs.

It is sure that a realtor can undoubtedly go ahead with proven real estate marketing techniques like real estate SEO.

To Your Success!

Tags: Estate, Home, Marketing, Online, People, Percent, Ready, Real, Realtors, Their

The Wisdom of Hindsight in the Real Estate Market

June 13th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

“Consider the following observations about the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. real estate market:

A home in Silver Spring, Maryland comes on the market and sells in one day. That’s no big deal. But the real estate agent received forty-one offers. I’ll repeat: Forty-one offers in only a few hours.
A home in the city of Alexandria sells in one day at a price 0,000 over the asking price. I’ll repeat: The house sold for 0,000 more than the seller’s asking price.
More than 30 people camped out for 7 days in order purchase units in a new urban townhouse development. I’ll repeat: Thirty people living on the streets with sleeping bags and tents in order to buy in a new townhouse development. “

A dream come true you say? These are excerpts from the article “One Word For Metro Washington Real Estate: Insane, written by Henry Savage for RealtyTimes.com…in March 2004.

Almost five years ago Mr. Savage painted a picture of a thriving sellers market that had gained so much momentum that home buyers were waiving financing and home inspections to make their offers more attractive to home sellers. As we have all witnessed, any market, whether stocks or real estate, cannot sustain this level of exuberance before something has to give.

Home prices increasing 20% per year eventually results in fewer buyers for these over priced homes. Add to this mix, greedy money lenders offering low introductory interest rates (only to spike in a few years), and resulting in too many people owning homes they can’t afford. The demand for real estate begins to decrease, inventory rises, and eventually home prices drop. Sound familiar?

The increase in interest rates, would also have a devastating effect on all of those buyers who purchased homes with little or no deposit and are faced with the expiration of the attractive introductory rates. Foreclosures and housing gluts would be a natural result of this market.

Mr. Savage predicted this outcome in his article; stating “the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust”. Real estate, as do all markets, runs in cycles. The plight of our current market is the fall out from the golden age of real estate we experienced a few years ago.

Currently, in the Metro D.C. market, the average Sold price is just under 0; a 12% increase from the same time last year. It’s not 20%, but definitely a more realistic increase one would expect. Perhaps we are entering a new cycle in real estate; one that reflects adjusted home prices, sensible lending practices, and smarter buyers.

Tags: Estate, Hindsight, Market, Real, Wisdom

Some Helpful Tips in Buying a Second Home in the Miami Real Estate Market

June 11th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

All of us need to think about our retirement plans not necessarily today but sometime in the future. For some this could be anything from planning a vacation or buying an investment property. The latter is probably the most popular option as this can provide a comfortable financial cushion. But even if you don’t plan to turn a second home into an investment property, there are still things you need to mull over. And when you’re considering the Miami real estate market, here are two basic tips to help you.

Know where you are at your life right now

The very first step is determining if you are indeed ready to own a second home. Financial factors play a major role in this step. But another factor you mustn’t forget is your lifestyle. Your choice of property in the Miami real estate market should complement how you want to live your life post-retirement. Are you planning to spend a lot of time in the home? How frequent do you plan on using the property? Is transportation a major issue? There are relatively plenty of questions you need to ask in order to find the right second home.

Aside from those issues, maintenance is also another major concern. Owning a second home—Miami real estate or not—means another set of responsibility. What you can do is to choose a property that is less demanding. Condominiums, for instance, require less maintenance. Unlike traditional homes, the bulk of the maintenance duty is done by the management. All you need to maintain are the monthly fees. Plus the fact that these homes are perfectly located and filled with plenty of amenities is beneficial for any plans of turning your second home into an investment property.

Take some time in choosing the perfect location

The next basic step is to choose the right location. It is important not to limit your choices of neighborhood. Accessibility to public amenities like hospitals and police is crucial. Work may also be a factor if you plan on taking up part-time work in the future.

But, most importantly, the Miami real estate property you choose must be located in a place that you will love. Your preference is a major determining factor in the choice of location. Remember that this is a place where you are likely going to for some time off and relaxation. If the neighborhood doesn’t offer any chance of those happening, find another place where you can see yourself just sitting back and enjoying a hot afternoon.

Mark Michael Ferrer
Miami Real Estate

Tags: Buying, Estate, Helpful, Home, Market, Miami, Real, Second, Some, Tips

A New Era in the Canadian Real Estate Market

June 8th, 2011 by maureen | No Comments | Filed in Markets

The Canadian real estate market has changed as of March 22/2010. A new set of rules, as voted upon by Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) members, has been established for the nation’s Multiple Listings Service (MLS).The MLS, which has been operating in Canada for more than 50 years, is a data base of real estate property listings and the platform from which approximately 90% of all Canadian real estate transactions originate. The service was developed by CREA, and until recently only allowed listing submissions from certified Realtors that were under full contract with a seller to provide all aspects of the home sale.

The new rules have been brought in as a result of a lengthy inquiry by the Competition Bureau and will have a significant impact on the manner in which real estate is marketed in Canada. The Competition Bureau argues that the traditional MLS model was monopolistic in nature and did not provide consumers with enough options when it came to selling their homes.

Until now the only way to have your home listed on the popular MLS service was to hire a Realtor to represent you. For a commission the Realtor will provide you with many services, including the submission of your property on the MLS, and several other online real estate data bases. This system has worked quite well for years; however, with the advent of the internet and the increasing popularity of ‘for sale by owner’ (FSBO) homes, the Competition Bureau has stepped in to try to create a more level playing field.

The sharp increase in housing prices, and the subsequent boost in commissions, has led many to question the worth of a Realtor’s services when trying to sell their home. While the Realtor’s commission rates have not changed, the value of homes is much higher, meaning the Realtor will gross considerably more revenue for essentially doing the same job. This reasoning has been a motivating factor for the increase FSBO properties and discounted real estate brokerages.

The new guidelines will allow Realtors to sell individual services, including MLS submissions, as opposed to the creation of a complete listing contract. This will benefit sellers as they will be able to use an FSBO approach to selling their homes and also gain the exposure from being on the MLS. The new system will also benefit Realtors who, in many cases have seen a decrease in business due to the economic slowdown, and will now be able to piece out their services to clients that wish to go the FSBO route; thus creating a new revenue stream for them.

Tags: Canadian, Estate, Market, Real