Post about "Real Estate"

Holiday Real Estate Marketing Leads to First Quarter Commission Checks

Across the country, real estate agents are scaling back their efforts to find buyers and list homes. They cite the holiday season as being the “real estate dead zone” so they make less effort to promote their businesses.This is a mistake for a few reasons.First, we all know that real estate marketing today leads to paychecks in about 90 days. Do you really want to be looking at a month or more with no closings come February, March, or April?Right now, when other agents are “asleep at the wheel,” is the time to make your presence known. But do it right.If you have a list of past clients and people in your sphere of influence, write them. But don’t write and ask them if they’re ready to buy or sell. Instead, offer them some good information and ask them to pass it on to others who will be interested.Show them that you’re on top of the local real estate market and let them know that you will be working in December should they need your assistance. Do ask for referrals, but do it as an offer of assistance, rather than a request for help.Let them know that you’re always willing to take their calls or answer their emails if they have questions about the real estate market. Their questions and your answers may be just what they need to make a decision to buy or sell. So take the time for them.If you don’t have that good list, and if you haven’t loaded it into an autoresponder, start working right there. Go back through your old files and take names, addresses, and email addresses. Then search your personal address book as well.What if your list is all postal addresses?Then it’s time to change that. Bite the bullet and send postal mail to all those people. But in that mail offer something of value if they’ll come to your site and request it. Offer something of interest to buyers and something to sellers. Let them choose one or both of your offers. Then you’ll have their email addresses – and if you’ve done it correctly, the addresses will be in your autoresponder.What about people you don’t know? Start capturing them from your real estate website using those same autoresponders. Entice buyers with one offer and sellers with another, so that you can follow up with appropriate drip marketing letters.Want to do more? Tweet about real estate. Use your Facebook page to let people know about the report you’re offering. Go to real estate related blogs and make comments. Go to Yahoo or some other site and answer people’s real estate questions. Start adding Localism posts to your Active Rain blog. And always make the offer for the free report.The second reason why you should be marketing your real estate services right now is that buyers who shop during the holiday season are usually serious about buying. Some of them have a deadline for when they need to move, so they have urgency added to interest.Holiday home sellers are also serious – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be willing to keep their homes in showing condition during the holidays. They understand that this is a good time for them to be on the market because they know there will be less competition.Finally – This is a good time for you to market yourself as a real estate agent because you will have less competition. A whole lot of other agents have “taken themselves off the market” for the holidays. They’re either sitting around sulking, or they’ve decided to abandon their business in favor of shopping, baking, visiting with friends, or sitting home watching holiday movies on TV.Be the real estate agent who is there, available, and ready to assist.

Getting the Best Deal: How a Real Estate Website Can Get You Closer to Your Dream Property

There was a time very long ago when scouting for a piece of real estate was a task that was undertaken with great trepidation and with a general fear of being at the losing end of a deal gone bad. Approaching a real estate company or agent was something people didn’t do with great ease. Even when folks had great plans and a fat wallet or bank account, the industry was seldom looked upon as a “safe” market. It was always assumed that the insiders were a bunch of crooks who were out to hoodwink the unsuspecting investor. Thus it became a trend to look at anyone who was a part of the industry with suspicious eyes. Never could someone claim to be in the real estate industry and find people relating that to their integrity or honesty. The local tea vendor would have been given more credit as an honest man than the local real estate agent. This sorry state of affairs would have continued had it not been for the dawn of the internet era. Now everything has changed.With the arrival of the internet people had access to information like never before. Sellers could approach buyers directly and the middle man was left out. This meant that the need for the traditional real estate broker was diminished. To the point where it seemed that there would never really be need for them. Then the internet proved to be a game changer yet again. The enterprising agents began to create an online presence. They began to advertise their specific skill sets and the reason why they were still relevant in a digital era. Most importantly, they stressed on the fact that they were now working in the same way as the rest of the world. No longer would the term real estate agent mean something less than honorable.As such, a real estate website today can be very useful and highly beneficial to the customer. In fact it has everything you could possibly need to find that dream property-Finding it: with Google Maps integrated into the real estate website, finding a specific piece of property becomes a cinch! Not only can you find the plot, you can find out everything you could want to know about the local area, besides finding the travel routes from there to almost anywhere!-A closer look: with multiple photos and videos it becomes so much easier to view the property without leaving the comfort of your home.-Agent profiles: No longer do you need to call up a complete stranger to find out about your dream property, you can read about the agents on their profile page and choose which one works for you best-Feedback: finally you can get feedback about the company you decide to employ for your real estate needs. Testimonials from previous customers can help you feel more confident about their integrity and trustworthinessAll these can fall a little flat if you are using a mobile device to access the website and it displays like a tiny map on your screen. Most of the better agencies have responsive design websites that can adapt to the device and browser they are displayed on. so if the website loads like it was meant for your device, you know you are in good handsIn conclusion it can only be reiterated that the reason that real estate websites can get you closer to your dream properties is, that they are a representation of the new breed of real estate businessmen. People who believe very strongly, in the ethical and legal way of conducting business. Honest men and women who have a passion for locating unique and special properties and uniting them with customers who know that this is not just about bricks and mortar. Real estate to them is more than just a business, it is who they are. It is an extension of their personalities, their willingness to serve, and their passion to make every customer satisfied, if nothing else.The real estate website is a portal that can truly help customers locate the dream properties with ease and it can only do so when it is followed by the service and intelligence of the company it represents. Without them the website would be just another website. With them, however, it becomes a brilliant tool to magically bring all the talent of the agency into the homes and offices of the customer via the internet. So in a way, the website is the digital version of an actual agency, made available to the customer on a constant basis at their very fingertips.