If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Google has added a great deal of capability to their Google Maps application that includes the ability to see property listings pulled from it’s Google Base, Wikipedia entries, and other sources.

The other big thing I have been able to gather is that it has added flash capability to Google Maps. The ability to embed maps that are “mashed up” with your information should be a huge help for real estate agents that are web savvy.

If you’re looking for a home in a certain location, you have a new search option: Google maps. Enter an address and click on the “show search options” link, which is right next to the “Search Maps” button. You can set whatever limits you want on size, price and other variables.

Another improvement to Google Maps adds geo-tagged photos and Wikipedia entries that are associated with specific locations. To see these, click on the “more” button on the map — it’s right next to the “traffic” button. via The Dallas Morning News.

More information on this:

• Trusted Reviews
• Wired Blog
• C-Net
• Google Operating System Blog

The real estate world has always protected their MLS data like it was gold, and to them it is. Go to almost any real estate office and see the security that is put on the MLS computers. If you think of Fort Knox you are not far off. But the protection of the data that the MLS thinks is what gives the power to the real estate agent is breaking down.

With the advent of online listing services the data is being put out there many different ways. The agents realize that their worth is not being the conduit of the information as it was in the past, but rather the services, support, and institutional knowledge they offer to their clients.

Will this lower commissions, sure, but not that much. I would be worried if I was an agent that thought that putting a sign in a lawn was marketing a home.

Professionalizing the industry and weeding out the dabbling agents is the benefit of breaking the walled garden mentality of data protection. Once the data is available to all then the true worth, knowledge, and skill of an agent will be the defining criteria for paying a commission.

Selling a home is a complicated and difficult process. The buyer and seller can do somethings alone, but there will be a large part of the population that will need the help that a trained and caring real estate professional can offer.

The idea that an agent can hold the 6 percent commission hostage is long gone, but an effective agent will find that being a true professional they will bring enough benefit to the public to have a long and prosperous career.

The triple threat of a weak market, legal pressure and increasing competition has compelled real estate professionals to offer their information more freely online, putting cracks in a walled garden of data that stood strong while the industry enjoyed its breakaway growth. It also presages an end to the days when sellers must list their homes with a broker so buyers can see them.

The trend revolves around the nation’s roughly 900 multiple listing services, or M.L.S.’s, where local brokers post information about homes they are selling. In years past, these services were highly restrictive about where and how that information could be distributed — for instance, frequently not permitting Web sites to display M.L.S. listings alongside for-sale-by-owner homes, bank foreclosures or other properties not represented by real estate agents. via the New York Times

I just read a great article over at Copyblogger on Generational Marketing.

Really, go read it now, here is the link; 

Are You Talkin’ to My Generation?

Are you back? Okay, great, lets move forward.

Here is my question for the real estate agents out there.

Who is the customer for the homes you are selling?

Not all of the homes and don’t say everyone is a customer. Each   Individual   House  .

If you believe or have said that everyone is a customer to a seller you have failed the test and turn in your real estate license. Seriously, that way of thinking is dead and buried.

But we have the answer and you have heard it if you read the article above.

EVERY HOME SHOULD BE MARKETED TO A SPECIFIC DEMOGRAPHIC.

Did you hear me? Let me repeat it.

EVERY HOME SHOULD BE MARKETED TO A SPECIFIC DEMOGRAPHIC.

• If your home is in a starter neighborhood, write the copy for a twenty something.
• If your home is in a luxury retirement golf community, write for the Silent Generation or Baby Boomers.
• If your home is in a upscale neighborhood filled with young families odds are you should target Generation X.

You now have the answer that can change your real estate business. The reason you need to market differently to each group is:

• Each one of these groups talks differently.
• Each one of these groups thinks differently.
• Each one of these groups triggers on different keywords.

The key to success is to target a market and develop your marketing around them. What worked 5 years ago does not work well now and will work worse in the future.

Lets look at your marketing material and ask yourself these questions:

• Am I are creating generic marketing material to sell the homes you have listed? Odds are you are failing.
• Am I writing in Real Estate Agent Speak and think that buyers appreciate my superior knowledge? Odds are you are failing.
• Am I always counting on my style and personality being dominant and not the concerns of my potential clients? Odds are you are failing.

But you can be successful. You can. It is not hard.

For the real estate agents out there, look at your listings.

• REALLY LOOK AT THEM (Nice McMansion in great suburb)
• Figure out what demographic would buy them. (Gen X)
• Now figure out what group in what demographic will buy this home. (Professionals with young families looking for good schools.)
• Once you have the target market figured out:

RE-WRITE ALL YOUR MARKETING MATERIAL  FOR THE DEMOGRAPHIC THAT WANTS TO BUY EACH SPECIFIC HOUSE YOU ARE SELLING.

More work, sure. But much more profits are in store for you.

In this day and age, work should not scare you. Paying for and marketing your listings to the average buyer should scare the hell out you.

Because if you target Joe Public in this age of specialization you are most likely to Fail. Failure is marketing dollars down the drain on a listing you will lose.  

And you are better than that.

(Did you read the post on generational marketing? If not, you failed. It is one the of most important things you can do today if you want to be successful as a real estate agent. Here it is again.)

(Of course, if you made it this far you did learn something, but really go read the article, re-read this post, and this turn off all lights, computers, and anything else that will distract you and think about it for 15 minutes.)

(Feel energized and back in control again? Good, I know you would.)

Congratulations, you are now on the road to being very successful marketing homes as an real estate agent. Now go re-write your copy on all of your listings and buyers literature and sell some houses!

PS My target for writing this post was the cutting edge real estate agent who understands the rules are changing quickly. Is that you? I thought so…

The National Association of Realtors has released a video today showing how the Past President of the NAR Pat Combs uses her technology. She shows how cool the concept of scanning documents makes her state of the art instead of using a fax machine.

While it is not all bad, all I have to say is what a waste. Instead of introducing some of the newer technologies out there that are incredibly beneficial she shows technology that at most is 5 years old and dated and at the worst a newfangled electric typewriter.

And the irony of all this, they have put it out on YouTube. So only those that at least grasp technology and learned how to use the internet will see it and they will see it as humor. Poor Pat, and the lady who is doing the interview should talk to some of the more wired real estate agents. They can show the average Realtor what really can be ground breaking technology to grow their business.

Hat tip to Barry Cunningham posting at Bloodhound Blog for the find.

It is great to read stories that show how real estate agents can improve their exposure in local markets and expand their perceived expertise. We are so caught up in blogging and the internet, but there are many other ways to let the public know how knowledgeable you are.

And if they were real smart they would have these shows up on You Tube and their web sites shortly after broadcast.

Byrnes-Benkart, owner of Realty Executives Tri-County in Bellingham, is one of a handful of area real estate professionals using public-access cable TV to turn a laser focus on the housing market in their communities.

“We hear a lot of talk in the media about the real estate market, but many times it’s painted with a broad brush. It’s often from a national perspective or a state perspective,” said Milford resident Michael Shain, a mortgage consultant with Medway Co-operative Bank. “But I wanted to do something that focused on specific towns because every market is different. What’s happening in Milford may not be the same as what’s happening in Newton, Brookline, Pittsfield, or LA.”

In September, Shain began taping “Real Estate Roundtable” at Access Bellingham-Mendon. The program, which he cohosts with Byrnes-Benkart and two other realtors and is produced monthly, airs on local-access channels in Bellingham, Milford, Medway, Upton, Grafton, and Mendon, and covers market news in those towns as well as in Franklin and Wrentham. via  The Boston Globe.

Dustin over at 4Realz.net has an interesting letter he received about a MLS that is looking into opening up their listings to comments. Go give it a read and then come back.

For those of you not wanting to leave it essentially wonders about the issues that the MLS would face opening up homes to comments that may not be flattering to a home and or homeowners.

Here was my comment, I figured I would share as it talks to the issues that Realtors face when discussing homes:

I think this is the Catch 22 of the real estate world. They created a cartel that keeps real estate agent complaints in house with onerous restrictions in a tough marketplace.

Before the internet it was very difficult for information to be put out without going through the cartel (MLS) or one of it’s members without the cartel rules being invoked.

Add to that the pressure of the government adding another layer of restrictions and compliance factors, almost all homes are forced to be discussed in a very narrow way.

But with the internet and non cartel members there are ways to take this data and avoid the legal and industry barriers to the truth.

It will be tough when I as a non Realtor or agent can say things about a home that you can not when it comes to marketing or getting eye share for the information on real estate in a particular area.

The real estate industry is in a tough place due to the rules they have created for themselves. Savvy entrepreneurs will be able to slide into the marketplace and create a much more accurate representation of towns and cities that the Realtors will not be able to compete with.

While I as an active participant to a transaction would be beholden to the rules of the state and federal government, as a commenter I would be only held to those of the 1^st Amendment. That will be tough for real estate agents to counteract on a property or region.

If you are using Google Adwords to drive traffic to your real estate site it would make a great deal of sense to sit down with your web designer and slim down your page (send them this post as it will help them).

Google Adwords uses a quality score to determine how much you are paying when your ads are clicked. A higher quality score will save you money.

One of the components to the quality score is the load time on your landing page. Google has released a FAQ in their help center to explain how this works which can be found here.

The key thing to think about is according to Google are:

• Use fewer redirects.
• Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
• Do not use interstitial pages.
• Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.

All of these factors if they are addressed can end up saving you some serious money (and improve customer satisfaction) if Adwords is part of your marketing plan.

The Wall Street Journal Development Blog has an interesting post on the age gap that is occurring between buyers and agents. The average age of real estate agents in the United States is 51 while the average buyer was 39.

Mostly this is a non issue and I was glossing over the post until I read the comments. There was anger in them about the disconnect between what the agents perceived their role was and what the young buyers are looking for.

Here is a sample comment:

I have to admit that old school agents make me nuts. Half the time they come at me with a couple NAR talking points, not realizing that us younger buyers are running the numbers and doing the research online. It makes them sound archaic and I always wonder if they really think we’re that dumb?

If you are reading this post odds are you are not caught in the old school way of selling real estate, but I will bet that someone in your office is. If they have a young client there is a good chance they are hurting the firms reputation and are are not giving the service that is needed, or worse, the client thinks they are being insulted. 

I wonder if this is a wide open niche that can be exploited. Instead of taking the traditional route in your marketing, aim it directly at the twenty something buyers. Build you web site out as they want to use it and use the tools that they use.

I bet just offering  services that fit the clients needs and wants would create a great long term business for you.

An enterprising real estate agent in Australia,Anthony Gorman of Ken Guy Maroochydore, is taking the real estate home tour to a new level. In his attempt to sell luxury waterfront properties he has rented out a luxury cruise yacht to take 44 prospective buyers on the home tour and see the property from the water side.

The homes all feature deep water docking on the Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane, Australia. What I love about this approach is that he is taking a different tact. Growing up on the water I know that the real luxury waterfront properties tend to look their best on the waterfront side, and those that are interested in them appreciate and live on that side of the home. So first impression is not the street entry way but the waterfront appeal.

Kudos to Anthony Gorman for looking outside of the box to sell homes.

Those on the maiden voyage will dock at six luxury canal homes and cast a discerning eye over others as Anthony launches a sales pitch that will leave the average open-house inspections high and dry. Imagine sitting back, taking in the grandeur of the canal estates around Minyama and the tranquillity of the waterways, with a glass of something cold in hand and servings of seafood.
Anthony could when he took one of the usual tourist canal tours, and decided he may just be able to make cruising sell.

“I’m not aware of anyone having done this before,” he said. “I thought it would have to be the best way to see these homes – they are located in the most magnificent part of the world. “These homes are designed to look their best from the water rather than the road, and all the people who are coming on the cruise are interested in deepwater access.” via thedaily.com.au.

In the past week I have talked to a couple of real estate brokers about  how they are using the web to sell homes. They know that this is where the hot leads are  coming from and want to capitalize with it, but are they doing all they can do to maximize how to best capture the excitement of buying a new home?

Most real estate agents have a very bland IDX feed and boiler plate copy on their site. That is why having a blog on the agents or brokers site is such a good idea. The excerpt below talks about having a pulse on your site.

Excitement, interest, fascination.

All the passion of buying a home that will motivate a buyer to pick up the phone or fire over an email  to arrange a showing.

I think it will be hard to create that excitement on the typical real estate web page, but  a blog can bring that passion to the buyer that will have  them pick up the phone and make the call.

Does your site have the passion to motivate your potential customers?

Even the savviest businesses have to constantly redouble their efforts in this regard. Another client of mine, FourOxen (not their real name), a publicly-traded high-tech shop that does things like employ community evangelists and a sort of mascot uber-developer who fosters camaraderie amongst current developers and potential future hires, recently launched a new business line and tried an AdWords campaign to promote it.
At this point, with keywords, ads, bids, and other parameters all set up, there’s only one thing missing. You guessed it: a pulse. For a technology company, their search app is underwhelming at this juncture. It isn’t fun to use. There isn’t much if any benefits copy. No clever user interaction or virtual marketplace features. No editorial direction that points to our “favorite” good buys. You know… a pulse!
Until we build all of those things, it’s an abstract business model that should work in theory, but doesn’t yet. Among other things, the account currently suffers from low quality scores in AdWords. Part of the problem must be site-related. There’s not enough there there.
E-commerce just got harder. You can blame the Macs, Rand Fishkins, and Jeff Bravermans of the world. Markets really are conversations. Locke, Searls, and Weinberger called this thing a long time ago. via Search Engine Land