Real Estate Marketing Blog

Home Staging

Home Staging

All The World is a Stage

I caught this at the Real Estate Zealot.

It is a series done on home staging by Barbara Corcoran. The Most famous real estate agent of all. She gives great advice and this is not a bad thing to show your sellers who have that listing that won't or needs to sell. According to home stagers, home staging can increase the sales price by 7%.

1. Staging on only $100:

2. On a $500 budget turning a little spaceinto a larger space:

3. Selling fast when you have the worst house onthe block.

More of the Barbara Corcoran videos are at: http://www.youtube.com/user/barbaracorcoran

By searching "home staging" on youtube you can find a ton of great advice. If you would like consulting on how to take advantage of video to market your services contact us.

Buying Real Estate Online

What is the most misquoted stat about real estate and the internet?

80% of all home sales start on the net. The hype often blurs into "80% of home sales are because of the net".

Now last I checked, you cannot buy real estate online like a book at Amazon. I guess Ebay is giving it a go with their model. But for the most part at best, the net is a lead generator.

Which does not mean it is a buyer or seller generator. It is potential buyer or seller generator. And unless that lead is moved to a level of pledging loyalty towards you, your chances of selling anything are poor. Afterall, all they did was sign up for your free report, IDX, or Free CMA form. They have not pledged loyalty like a listing agreement or buyers agency agreement.

A relationship can begin online, but the deal seals way better on the phone and better yet belly to belly.

Where do 100% of the deals come from? A salesman/woman who meets that potential buyer or seller, face to face with a pen in hand.

Whose Business is Your Website Anyway?

Is Your Website Here Today, Gone Tommorrow?

I ask you, if your website disappeared, would your business disappear with it?

Last night, my friend shared with me one of the most frightful scenarios that I have ever witnessed on the Internet.

The website that had up until two nights ago put food on his families table all of a sudden was failing to produce leads. With further investigation, my sad friend found that all traffic was gone. It was a matter of seconds to discover this golden goose had become a nightmare.

Consumers Know What You Do, or Do They?

A recent survey has poured salt on a festering wound that the Realty Industry seems unwilling to heal.

A new survey by the Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Federation of America reveals that while 84 percent of consumers have a favorable opinion of real estate agents and brokers, many of them lack an understanding of the services that real estate professionals provide...Just 36 percent of those polled said they had "a lot" of knowledge about what agents and brokers do, and only 34 percent understood that the multiple listing service typically has the most comprehensive data about for-sale properties.

The survey also found that:

• When asked about commissions,  41 percent of respondents said they thought the real estate industry imposed the exact percentage
• 13 percent thought commissions were governed by state law.
• Only 26 percent were aware that compensation is negotiable.

As my ex-partner Mike Work explained to me in his interview, there are only about 13 hours in post contract work to get the escrow/settlement closed.

Is Your Professionalism Killing Sales?

Somewhere in between Sales 101 and our first time in the "Sales Box" of a car dealership, most of us came up with what professionalism should and should not be.  I think most decide, "whatever I just went thru in that dealership is what I don't want to do to people".

NAR has somehow led an industry that is wrought with lightweight sales training and has defined (better said, mislead) what should be the definition of professionalism. The behemoth organization's attempt at adding professional designations that require time and money by the "flock", but in reality add little value to an agents bottom line.

CRB or CCIM does not hold parallel value as "CPA" .The industry can try and pretend these cute acronyms mean anything. I always look at the top producers. DO they have these acronyms next to their name? Not many do.The reality is that a designation and education has always been lightweight and misdirected in the Realty Industry.

Maybe my own licensing test should have been a clue. I recall when I took my California Licensing exam that there was a multiple choice question on the meaning of "deciduous". Almost 20 years later that moment sticks with me. (I won't even answer what the definition means, but suffice it to say it has nothing to do with selling real estate).

"Grab Your Inner Soprano"

Well my favorite TV show just got whacked. Yep, Tony Soprano is no more. If you have been living under a rock the past few weeks, then let me announce that The Sopranos has been put to death with a controversial ending by HBO. Time to Netflix the past seasons I suppose.

As the finality of the Sopranos final episode neared, I reflected about why this show was so likable. I mean seriously this man is vial. Yet, the writer David Chase somehow gets us to love "T". One minute the man is bashing in an enemy, and the next minute we can't help but smile as he asks for the Gabagool. We feel compassion as Carm and Tony struggle with their children's (AJ and Meadow) life choices. Don't you think that is sick how we can come to love this family?

I have my own theories on why we Americans are drawn to Mobster shows.....

More on Free Stuff

Just a couple days after my last post on how nothing is for free, a British human rights advocacy group says Google has the most abysmal privacy policies and is leading a "race to the bottom" by the world's most renowned Internet firms. London-based Privacy International, which has monitored rights protections on the Internet since its fledgling days, ranked Google "hostile to privacy" in a fresh report that it staunchly defended on Sunday.

Riches On the Internet

Isn't the Internet Grand?

You get to go to a website and receive free tips on how to dominate the world.

Isn't Google Grand?

And Google. The Do no Evil is our mantra crowd happily dole out their charity.

They offer complimentary email, newsreaders, & free websites. Heck, they will even give you tools to diagnose your website with Urchin and Google Analytic. Blogger is your free blog. And you can even search your desktop for important files just like you do the Internet. The Toolbar allows you to surf the web and even do "poormans" SEO. And of course you can go over to MSN and get another blog and email, compliments of Mr. Gates. Yahoo and other engines also participate in this "internret giveaway".

Isn't it great that we can do most of our Internet for zero dollars because of the charity of Google, Yahoo, and/or MSN?

And they don't stop. Google has recently purchased Feedburner, and they have teamed with SalesForce.com to make it easy to integrate Adword leads into your communication platform.

10 sides from a 40 hour work week?

I just posted about my most recent killer interview / podcast:

“How Regular Guy Puts In A 40 Hr. Week and Walks Away with Ten Sold Homes per Month” ……month after month after month.

How to generate business from a real estate website that only costs you about $15 a month to maintain

Out of all the hundreds of bogus real estate templates, choosing an additional website that will generate leads like you will not believe

Choosing the one referral website company that really works.  There are plenty of scammers out there.

Why a great website isn’t enough: How to respond to leads that you get from that website so you don’t lose them!

And more

                           Get it here