Real Estate Marketing Blog

"2008 Real Estate predictions"

Predictions and advice to succeed in 2008

2008 will no doubt mean huge shifts in the real estate industry and henceforth the online community. Words that come to mind are some of the obvious ones. The following may be experienced by the public and certainly agents:

• Foreclosures
• Bankruptcy
• Office Closures
• Massive Attrition from the industry
• And a possible recession beyond real estate
• Information Overwhelm and Confusion
• Misplaced energy
• Demand for publishing
• Near Death of the MLS
• The Renewed art of Creative Financing

Some of these are self evident while I will explore the others thru this post.

We are getting what could be seen as attacked online. There is so much information being thrown at us that choice is becoming less empowering and more inhibiting. The online world will become even crazier as the advice being thrown about out there is getting more and more complex, and in many cases just plain bad.

Guard Your Information Flow

Sifting thru information is an expense. How you manage that expenditure will determine your profits.

Have you ever got online without a specific goal and found yourself stuck in reading every email that of course leads you onto the web? And the end of the day comes and you basically have surfed some really "interesting" sites all day. Not doing anything to bring you closer to your goals?

If feels justified, but with honest introspection, you know the day was a wash. And 8 hours of non sense at $100 an hour is an $800 loss. But of course if that is habitual then one can probably make more money hourly at the local Super Market. The best way to beat this is to surf the web with specific goals and outcomes.

Expenditures can include:

• Email
• Bad online marketing strategies
• Reading low value information

Remedies:

• Unsubscribe from non profitable advice.
• Start timing your online activities.
• Separate email from must have email, subscriptions, and family, friends, and jokes. Separate them into unique email accounts that don't beg you to look. Gmail or Yahoo is a great solution.
• Schedule email and online reading time. Leave when you have to leave. Get an egg timer, and live by it.
• Have rules for what you will read and not read.
• Read business items on a business computer and fun items on a separate fun or family computer.

Perfection

New England runs the longest winning streak ever in the NFL

During the Holidays I usually break away from my own personal strict rules for blogging. Which is to keep the blog in a strict context of marketing. And today is no different. However....

2007 Real Estate in Review

It is that time of year again where we reflect and plan. I offer my very short review of 2007 while giving you a list of real estate reviews as well as reviews from throughout the Internet culture and beyond.

The story of real estate in 2007 has got to be receding real estate sales and values that involves foreclosures and credit freezes. We saw blogging come into full stride in private as well as multi user aps like Active Rain. Social anything and WEB 2.0 have been shoved down our throats along with video.

We began the year with Map mashes being the next great thing, while maps are ending 2007 with a big yawn. Wow three paragraphs equal a whole year. eeek. I guess that's why I offer you a big list of other reviews:

Predictions of a Future Internet

Want to see the future of online real estate?

According to Pew Internet: 93%  percent of all teens are online, 73% were online in 2000 and 87% in 2004. 64% of online teens have contributed to online content, up from 57% in 2004.

NEW YEAR looks to be good time to buy a home.

Well, The good news is spreading.

Headline in my local paper the Daily Breeze: NEW YEAR looks to be good time to buy a home.

WHAT!??

I saw this in the paper this morning in an article by Greg Wilcox of the Daily Breeze. Not posted yet on their site but good news spreads and I suspect that more and more people will feel the pressure from all the positive bloggers out there. Keep up the good news!

Niches

When I started in real estate years ago, I was an Apartment and Investment specialist. Mostly 2's and 4's. And of course it was always great to get into an exchange on a 20 unit!

Home Improvement Calculator

I was given this from my rep Deana Morgan over at HomeGain. This is something that I have wished I could find forever. They have built a calculator that helps you decide where to spend money to increase the value of your home and property.Nice tool.

Christmas Marketing Data

A New report from American Pulse says that Americans are shopping this Holiday Season, despite mixed economic news. But what I found most interesting was:

Ruby Red Ajax won't launder the 2.0

Is there a new Bubble gurgling online?

Not real estate, technology.

The first Internet bubble burst from an overabundance of estimated value.

Ruby Red Ajax won't launder the 2.0

Today, the promises of old has been repackaged for those that weren't around or easily forgot. The recent run up in online tech has seen a real estate valuation site go public on a Registration Form! Behind that veil was a telemarketing operation and good publicity. Ries and Trout would say they benefited from being first.

However, as the real estate market has adjusted,online advertising revenues have followed suit. And fundamentals at some point force upon a webmaster an inevitable recognition of facts. This has recently taken hold of.a 2.0 company called Edgeio, Which just recently closed its doors.

For every YouTube there has been 1,000 others that won't make it.Where is the business model? Eyeballs they say. No money there unless you get bought out by Google.

Technology replaces itself and renders its past incarnation less valuable, and sometimes valueless.

After the buzz is stripped away, Web 2.0 is just another website. And marketers will do their level best to make it seem new. That is called marketing.

So reading my blog may make one think I am anti-everything inernet. And that would be the wrong impression. I am against making investments of money and time that are based on an overestimation of returns.

In the end I use all of the tools one might think I harp on. I just do not get enamored by the next big thing. If it has a URL, it is a website. How do you make money with it?  That's what we do for our clients.

What is a Blog?

My "elevator" definition of what is a blog?

Web Blog=blog

The word blog has reached the inevitable level of over-hype. However, I give my pith revelations form years of blogging (This blog has been around since 2004). A great blog concept in my humble opinion is to define what it can do for you.

It can help one capture an instant credibility and authority over ones marketplace. Like the author of a book you get that recognition as an expert-if it is good.
A blog can give you relevance in your market. Proof that you deserve a place in the market.

It is in essence a textual story of your brand.A transparent story that unfolds over time. If you add nothing to the marketplace but noise then that will be obvious.If you add insight, you will have just etched a permanent residence in your readers head.

When done right, you will get calls that do not qualify you, but ask you how much, and how? It shortens your sales cycle.

Why Blog?