Matthew explains the do's and don'ts on how to take photos in today's real estate industry
Watch this video Peter Drucker said that the purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous. That should come as welcome wisdom to the real estate industry that is comprised of so many reluctant salespeople.
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Successful sales organizations are relentlessly focused on one thing: the consumer. They resist the temptation to worry about competitors, and they target every action and innovation to creating customers who: Refer them to their friends. Come back in the future. The key to doing this well is to adopt a culture and infrastructure that listens and learns from consumers every day. We call this having a “consumer mindset.”

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, yet most REALTORS still haven’t figured out how tap into its traffic. Maybe that’s because their MLS listing sheets can’t play a video? Let’s change that.

Matthew Ferrara explores how properly staging a home’s unique value proposition can make your listings more competitive in a tough market.

The iPad’s destiny isn’t how it will revive newspapers and magazines, but how it will finally kill off the real estate property listing sheet. Hopefully.

Riddle me this: How is it that the industries that charge the least for their products and services seem to have more more advanced technology than those that charge the most? Some time ago, we wrote that REALTORS might want to take a look at how gas stations were using technology to market ancillary products to their customers. Now a year later, my local real estate brokerages still don’t offer any interactive technology to their visitors in the waiting area, but my local veterinarian and shoe store does.

Peter Drucker said that the purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous. That should come as welcome wisdom to the real estate industry that is comprised of so many reluctant salespeople who won’t telemarket, interact at open houses or even join Facebook (latest numbers show less than 35% of REALTORS with a social networking presence). So what can be done to improve the pathetic listing sheets, the photo-less listings or sea-sick virtual tours that are undermining so many sales? Perhaps a quick art lesson could help.

Why is it that some things just won’t go change? There, on my doorstep, was a reminder that some companies still don’t get it. Nearly two pounds of absurdity, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag, and personally delivered to to my front porch, was a reminder that the more things change, the more some things stay the same. Absurd, when you think of it: Who uses the Yellow Pages these days?

Video blog entry from Matthew's blog post titled "The Persistence of Absurdity"
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I feel bad for REALTOR.COM. Let me start by saying that I like REALTOR.COM – I really do. They’re a hard working bunch that puts lots of time, energy and effort into promoting other people’s products. They aren’t always perfect – yet they keep trying, and trying, and trying. And they do have the number one real estate destination on the web – so they are doing something right. But for long? This week they announced their their latest round of new features for the website. Too bad it’s still fairly clear that REALTOR.COM is destined to fail. Why? Because one group of people hates the site most of all: The REALTORS themselves.

One of my most favorite motivational messages comes from a short piece by Simple Truth’s 212-degrees movie. The message is simple and powerful: At 212 degrees, water simply boils. At 212-degrees it becomes steam. And steam can power a locomotive. In other words: One small degree of effort more, and you’re moving from ‘hot water” into powerful productivity. So, what would one degree more of effort look like for REALTORS when trying to sell a home in a competitive marketplace?

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.

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 [...]

Ok, today’s blog entry is a cheap shot, but there’s a bigger story later on – so stick with me…. And you’ve heard it before, but if there’s one constant in this business, it’s that you can lead a REALTOR to water but you cannot make him think… or was that a horse and drink? Oh, who knows… but one thing’s for sure: You can give a REALTOR a digital camera but damned if they’ll use it. Here’s the fun part. Go to REALTOR.COM and do the following search: San Diego, California $1,500,000 to No Maximum Single Family When the search results appear, click Sort Results by Number of Photos. Then click page 30 to go to those with the least photos. Ok, I did it for you (you knew I would… )