Tools You Already Have to Sell More Homes
May 30, 2008
Here’s an quick thought that could have a profound effect on how REALTORS can improve their business:
Use what you already have.
It’s amazing how many of us already have enough technology to list and sell homes for three careers. Yet for some reason, agents and brokers are always on the hunt for the “next silver bullet” to boost their sales. Now, I completely understand that we’re under a constant barrage of “use this, it’s new” marketing by tech companies and gadget freaks. But for a group that’s notoriously resistant to all of this stuff, it’s remarkable how agents are also the first ones to consider throwing their money away on the quick fixes.
Take, for example, online leads. Why do agents pay for them? It’s the modern-day snake oil sale, and it never fails, because the formula is so simple: “We had an agent who got a lead and it lead to a million dollar sale! That could be you!” Sure. If I remember, Ginsu used to “cut through a tin can and still cut a tomato.” Of course, nobody wanted to eat a tin-tasting tomato, now, did they?
How to Measure REALTOR Performance
May 28, 2008
Here’s a daily dose of Peter Drucker for you to consider:
In some knowledge work - and especially in some work requiring a high degree of knowledge - we already measure quality. Surgeons, for instance, are routinely measured, by their success rates in difficult and dangerous procedures, for example, by the survival rates of their open-heart surgical patients. But by and large we have, so far, mainly judgments rather than measures regarding the quality of a great deal of knowledge. The main trouble is, however, not the difficulty of measuring quality. It is the difficulty in defining what the task is and what it should be.
- Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Now, let’s apply Drucker’s sagacity to the real estate industry as it is today - and how it might evolve in the future. How should we be measuring the knowledge work of today’s REALTOR?
What REALTORS can learn from Memorial Day
May 26, 2008
Memorial day traditionally honors those fallen soldiers of war in our country. Since the end of the Civil War, the holiday has been an opportunity for ordinary Americans to set aside some time - officially, without work - to remember those who gave their lives to defend our way of life. And while most wars are fought in defense of “liberty” and “democracy” and “freedom” they are all ultimately struggles for the one item on the planet that makes all of those concepts possible:
Property.
Jefferson’s famous statement in the Declaration of Independence - “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” was essentially a modernization (in its day) of John Locke’s tripartite formulation of good government. The job of government was to defend, “life, liberty, and estate (or property).” The basis of a just society was one where “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” (See Locke, Second Treatise on Government).
So Long, Housing Crisis
May 22, 2008
Well, thank goodness for someone who understands the markets - other than the lopsided “woe-is-us” viewpoint of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR). In fact, when it comes down to it, maybe we should ask more Wall Street analysts and hedge fund managers to really monitor the markets for us. Here’s the good news, from the Wall Street Journal:
The Housing Crisis Is Over
By CYRIL MOULLE-BERTEAUX
May 6, 2008; Page A23The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now….
Apparently, the real estate market is better understood by measuring housing inventory than simply hand-wringing over dropping prices. Since bubble-pricing had nowhere to go but down, then the true measure of the market cycle is better monitored by measuring absorption rates rather than price swings. This makes sense because commodity prices rise and fall with the volume of sold; not the other way around.
Of course, in REALTOR mentality, the reverse is true: if prices rise, the number of homes is expected to rise; when prices crash, REALTORS can’t sell homes - not because buyers don’t like a bargain, but because too many REALTORS don’t know how to put homes on the market at the right price. And the right price is always determined by the buyer, not the seller. As long as REALTORS take their pricing orders from the sellers, they won’t recover their sales volumes. Once they understand that their job is to create a transaction, not represent the pricing strategy of an unskilled seller, they will be back in the saddle. Commodity (stock) brokers have always understood this: If a stock holder calls and asks to sell their shares at 20% above the current selling price, the broker attempts to explain to them how a market works. If the seller insists on an inflated price, the broker hangs up the phone. Only REALTORS agree to take on the expense and waste their time trying to sell overpriced commodities - because they agree to run their business according to the seller’s insanity, not the buyer’s authority.
Social Networking for REALTORS
May 22, 2008
by Matthew Ferrara
Successful sales professionals know their careers depend upon good networking. Connecting to consumers and other industry players remains the purpose of REALTOR Associations, chambers of commerce, condo associations and country clubs. Networking is the source of new leads and referrals. Yet in a faster, busier world, where there’s less time to go to the club or make it to a meeting, social networking opportunities have evolved to take place more conveniently, with greater access for everyone. Social networking has moved online, all the time, on the web.
Social networking online isn’t new. For nearly two decades, internet users have joined “discussion lists” and “chat groups” to make friends, exchange ideas and generate business. Traditionally, these forms of networking were based around a daily email with entries from participants “talking” about different “subjects.” Over time, the email digest moved to discussion web sites where threaded entries were posted on message boards. Users could browse the latest entries then post their thoughts to the author or publicly so the entire group could read their comments. Conversations were generated much like a kind of letter correspondence group, although faster and with greater numbers of participants.
The Blog Days of Summer
May 22, 2008
Show me an agent without an opinion about the market, buyers, sellers or mortgage rates, and I’ll show you a dead agent. But try to channel that agent’s opinions into a useful marketing tool and I’ll suggest you create a blog.
Web logs, or blogs for short, have made quite a lot of noise online in the past few years. Even before the last presidential election, blogs were slowly transforming the old Internet bulletin boards into a new form of daily journal. Blogs are well known in news, political and financial webspaces, where pundits, politicians and fund managers have been posting their thoughts - or ranting, more likely - about anything their fingers cared to type. More recently, however, blogs have started to appear on more traditional, published-based web pages, like real estate brokerage and listing aggregator sites.
Real Estate Chickens Come Home to Roost
May 21, 2008
Consider it a wake up call: interest rates are a little higher (but still a 45 year low), inventory is a lot larger and days on market are far longer. Certainly, it’s a crisis but not a depression - homes are still selling. So get over it, and get a strategy in place to sell in this kind of market, because it’s here to stay for a long time. The challenge facing real estate professionals today is the result of the investments they made - or failed to make - during the last decade in sales, marketing and technology. For some agents, the challenge is welcome; they are ready to compete with the latest consumer techniques, online marketing and wireless tools.
For others, the chickens have come home to roost.
Outlook 2007: Cool Tools at Last
May 20, 2008
Fourth time is a charm, at least for Microsoft’s latest upgrade to its ubiquitous Office suite. Since 1997, computer users worldwide have trusted their work to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. A decade of editions - from Version 97 to the latest Office 2007 has promised to be easier, faster and cooler. And each time, some functions - like previewing printouts before wasting paper - got a little easier, while other features - like the dreaded mail merge - became almost impossible. Maybe this time, Microsoft got it right? Well, let’s just see.
Since Outlook is the program most of us spend the most time using every day, let’s look at how Outlook 2007 hopes to improve our day. For starters, the single most exciting thing about the new version is that it installed and converted my Outlook XP data flawlessly. That’s a huge success for Microsoft: if a user has to deal with hassles just installing an upgrade, they are usually tainted before even using its new features. But the installation was simple and perfect: Outlook 2007 transferred my mail server settings, setup preferences and every folder without a single hitch.
New Housing Deal or New Deal Housing?
May 19, 2008
Real estate professionals should be upset today. A terrible blow for the integrity of the real estate industry - for housing as a foundation of personal equity and wealth, for the rule of law in mortgage lending, for simply doing good for ordinary Americans - has just been dealt by the government. A so-called “great compromise” has just laid $300 billion - financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - in bad debt at the footstep of the taxpayer. According to the Wall Street Journal:
The legislation combines the regulatory reforms for government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a proposal to use the Federal Housing Administration to offer up to $300 billion in federal guarantees to help refinance struggling borrowers into new mortgage loans.
One compromise proposal discussed last week would use the money from an affordable housing fund created from Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s earnings to help pay for the FHA guarantee program.
The Virtual Office Strikes Back
May 18, 2008
In the technology world, nothing is dull like yesterday’s news; unless the old news was right. That’s the case with the story of a technology strategy that might have made all the difference today, if only more brokers had taken it to heart. So it is that the “virtual office” is back in the news, which too many going-broke-brokers and paper-drowned-agents wishes they paid attention to last time.
Didn’t the virtual office take off, you ask? Doesn’t everyone have a laptop, PDA and wireless email device? Sure, if we’re talking about college kids – but not the average agent in the average real estate company. NAR studies still show a mysterious 5% of agents don’t report owning a cell phone. Less than half of agents own a PDA newer than two years old and barely 20% are checking their email wirelessly. Brokerage infrastructure is hardly any better these days. Most brokers suffer from advice from over-cautious IT geeks still worrying about “security” rather than cost-efficiencies of installing wireless routers in their offices. Only a tiny fraction have created secure virtual networks or intranets so agents can access to email and marketing materials from home.
Why Technology Matters
May 17, 2008
If you’ve ever wondered if your technology strategy really makes a difference, a article from the archives at RealEstateJournal.com should make the point. Titled Amid Slump, Real-Estate Agents Hang Up Their Blazers, authors Hagerty and Athavely provide a glimpse of a real estate industry filled with $37,600 average-income agents. Their brokers fare not much better, trying to carry the expenses of 20-25% agent over-capacity. Looks like another year where one out of four agents call it quits.
Before you start jumping for joy, thinking that less agents in the business will mean less competition for you, reconsider: Less agents means better competition from those who remain. Working the boom market is not so hard, with a heartbeat and a license, many inexperienced agents beat the odds. But sticking around through tough markets requires serious players. The competition will be well-trained, well-financed and most likely, well-versed in the technology that keeps them competitive. Talk about tough times!
That’s why technology matters more than ever. When markets tighten, competitive advantages are critical. Enhanced technology skills provide competitive advantages across every segment of your business: prospecting, leads generation, communications, marketing, transaction tools and client relationship management. Every one of these areas can benefit from technology that saves time, cuts costs and expands opportunity to maximize the market. And with incomes for agents and brokers dropping with the market, technology mastery becomes more critical than ever.
Mobile Marketing, Digital Camera Delights
May 16, 2008
No other tech tool has been more widely adopted by real estate professionals than the digital cameras. While the recent NAR survey of its members showed a paltry percentage had adopted wireless email devices, the digital camera ranked near ubiquitous with agents. And while some sales professionals still only see the camera as route to bankruptcy (ie., printing flyers and postcards) the fact remains that today’s digital cameras make it possible to market properties better, faster and cheaper than ever before.
Even though most digital cameras will last for years, newer models make a compelling case for upgrading your camera. Features such as larger LCD screens, better resolution and easier photo transfers easily outweigh the cost of buying a new model. Even in a smaller package, today’s digital cameras offer larger features – like multimedia movie modes and panoramic modes – that savvy sales professional can turn into marketing opportunities. With great models in the $300-500 range, it may be time for top performing agents to look at the options.
Real Estate Sales 101: Say No to Bad Listing Deals
May 15, 2008
Here’s a really simple idea for REALTORS who are struggling to sell “overpriced listings.”
Just Say No!
Call it the Nancy Reagan Rule of Real Estate: Some listings are “bad” for you - kind of like certain kinds of substances are bad for you. But sometimes, we REALTORS just get on a “listing high” when we get a homeowner all geared up to sign on the dotted line. After pouring our our hearts in a listing presentation, filled with facts and figures and advice, we become momentarily vulnerable to a moment of insanity called “I’m gonna get this listing!” And that’s when we all-too-often shoot ourselves in the foot.
Every REALTOR “knows” better than to take an overpriced listing. But they need to start “doing” better if they want to survive the downturn. Here’s a simple economic fact: the buyer of any product sets the price. Period. No ifs, ands or butts, unless you’re a one-of-a-kind painting or bejewelled egg. As long as there are “other options” in the marketplace similar to your product - other computers, MP3 players, airline seats and houses - to choose from, the buyer sets the price.
Selling Homes to Generation Y
May 15, 2008
Here’s a real dilemma for real estate companies today: Can their agent successfully build relationships with the next generation of real estate buyers? Right now, honest brokers would have to answer a “qualified maybe at best” if we were to take a look at what they’re doing to prepare their agents for the 45 million Generation Y buyers starting to enter the housing curve.
Let’s start with some data: Generation Y is in their 20s. Graduating college, these kids are the new first-time home buyer. No, it’s not Gen X anymore; there are a few X’ers who still won’t get out of the house, but the bulk of newbie buyers are Y’ers. What do we know about them? First, they are highly networked. They have grown up online, playing online games with friends thousands of miles away, online. Their social circles are highly structured – they went on “play dates” that mom setup with their friend’s mom – and they only make new friends by “adding” them to their official page of friends online, at MySpace. They have had a cell phone since they were 10 and they don’t make calls on it. They fully expect IM to replace email and think voice mail is what Edison used to tell Watson to “come here.” They get a constant flow of information by text message – updates from friends, weather, movie times and sports scores – and they don’t “check” the internet because they are always connected to it. Speaking of the dial-up days of the internet is like remembering the Pony Express.
No Photos, Please!
May 14, 2008
Regular readers of this column may remember the installment, No Photos, No Buyers, No Kidding, where I exhorted real estate agents to make every effort to upload multiple photos to every listing on their website. Back then, the argument was that online listings without photos were about as useless as jargon-abbreviated classifieds in the back of the newspaper. Truth be told, the consumer vindicated my efforts, with the NAR’s annual buyer survey reporting that the consumer ranks multiple photos as the single most important data they seek from online portals. Some real estate companies have gone so far as to mandate multiple photos as a pre-condition before a new listing will appear online. And yet, while any search (try one now) of REALTOR.COM will still find plenty of listings without photos, tremendous effort has been made by most agents to saturate their listings with photos and virtual tours.
Now, however, I’m ready to admit that I was wrong. I concede defeat. Throw in the towel; anything you wish, if you’ll just stop putting more photos online. Please!
What has made me change my mind? Just look at some of the photos now ruining the real estate space online and you’ll join me in throwing up your hands (or maybe just throwing up). And if it weren’t so serious, it would border on ridiculous. And agents, apparently, can’t see it for themselves. Let me illustrate:
Agents ask me all the time why I think their listings don’t generate leads. There are lots of reasons, to be sure: No buyer is going to inquire about an overpriced listing; nor will they be interested if your description is typed in all CAPS. But the real killer comes with the initial presentation, such as this “opening photo” from a recent new listing.
And it was not alone, accompanied by others, each more gruesome and more grisly than last (all of which can be found on my blog). Could any seller have been so adamant that their property be photographed immediately that the listing agent couldn’t have persuaded them a day for cleaning?
And what is it with the persistent desire to photograph toilets? Look: the modern buyer pretty much assumes that indoor plumbing accompanies most homes. Unless it’s missing, there’s almost no reason to photograph the bathroom. Perhaps opulent bathrooms in luxurious listings deserve a digital click or two. Yet most listings waste valuable online space – and do considerable effort to cause buyers to leave the website – by displaying such gems as moldy bathtubs, drab sinks and the ever-present shower-curtain.
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