The Future of the Press is Online.The real estate press, (at least one of its companies anyway) obviously sees web properties and its distribution base of thousands of Realtors as the future.
As reported on Inman:
Dominion Enterprises, which publishes a handful of real estate magazines, has acquired Pullan Communications, a Los Angeles-based real estate marketing and Web site developer, for an undisclosed cash purchase price.
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I believe in the psychology of markets and that any economic market is hugely affected by attitude and opinion.
That is why I am always amazed that agents and companies will put out horrible news without at least a dose of balance of good news.
There is always good news. As bloggers, the most important thing you can do thru your writing is lead thru education. I believe the kids are calling it "thought leadership" these days.
I am not saying put your head in the sand. I am saying that if you wish to publish crappy news, then balance it with some sort of equalizer that bears in your favor.
If not you then who?
If you are not incredibly optimistic about whatever market you are in, then why should your prospect. When is it a good time to buy real estate. Right Now! Why? Because it is always a great time to buy real estate.
Frankly, if you do not believe that, then maybe it is time for a career change.
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I just caught an interesting post on Business Week:
While the top quarter or so is making good money, there's a huge army of Realtors at the bottom who would make more money with a full-time job at McDonald's. Nearly a third earned under $25,000 in 2004, according to a National Association of Realtors study. Here's the complete breakdown of the 2004 survey:
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Everywhere I look I get the down side of the market. Prices are dropping.
In fact, I just got an email this morning from my Pal Mike passing on a recent Inman story.
However, it was my dear ole Dad that emailed me proclaiming that sales have actually increased. What was that? Positivity in this real estate market?
After some prudent use of my Google skills & calling forth all the Boolean logic I could muster, I found it.
Sales of existing homes held steady with a modest gain last month, another indicator that the housing market is transitioning into a more normal market in contrast with unsustainable activity last year, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Now the naysayers will say, " yes but prices have dropped."
As a marketer, really who cares?
I know most of you have been used to selling based on price. That is why you might be having trouble in this market.
This isn't the danged stock market. Real Estate prices have gone up over the long term for, well... always.
So why sell it like it is a commodity? Where will that leave you? The market knows they don't have to get in now. And they know that if they wait, they have a pretty good shot at a lower price.
What they do not know is that they might not get the home they want right now.
So you have to find value elsewhere. In sales 101 you all should have learned that people buy for emotional reasons and justify with logic. So now that you don't have money lust as your primary driver you will have to find other just as emotional drivers for your prospects to buy. Their logical justifier is long term value, and the greatest logic of all is the tax savings.
As a side note: I always can tell when a company has gotten lazy when they stick the hot 19 year old babe up as the front of their campaign. They got lazy and cannot think of anything else so they go for the hottie. Once the attraction is felt viscerally, the feeling is attached to the company or product. BINGO it works. Sex sells.
( This reminds me of the Long Beach California Realtor who ran a Billboard size picture of herself in a bikini. I wonder if you hired a bunch of Chippendale's dancers for an open house if you could get some play? Hey I'm not gay but I know that women make most of the home buying decisions. But I digress...I really have to stop enjoying my evening Rum & Coke while blogging :-)
I have always felt in a hot market that sales agents get lazy in the same way and immediately go for the money lust driver. Hey it works.
But what happens? Pretty soon everyone is selling on the same driver. After that, what else do ya got? Go after their most important emotional reasons to buy now and your sales will continue to rise.
If I may be so bold to state that you are their salesman, and your fiduciary responsibility does not, & in fact last I checked, it precludes you being their financial adviser. If they come to you, then they want a house. Sell it to them without reservation.
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Almost overnight Expedia made the idea of a travel agent so 1980. The Travel Industry may have acquiesced to the designs of Expedia.com that forever changed the landscape of the travel business.
However, the real estate industry is not going down without a fight.
National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC,) which has just filed a consumer protection complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that "Internet financial services and real estate provider Zillow.com is misleading consumers, real estate professionals and financial service providers in on-line home valuations.
NCRC charges Zillow with falsely representing to the public that its on-line valuations are within ten percent of the home selling price when the company really has "less than a 30 percent accuracy rate when offering the valuations for public consumption." The result for consumers, says John Taylor, NCRC president and CEO, is that "consumers are already at risk of being over extended due to the increased access to non-traditional loans, Zillow's misinformation exacerbates the situation.
Recently at a Realtor Convention in Long Beach, California, the Zillow co-founder promised that Zillow was not coming out be a Realtor killer. This is interesting as the pre-launch hype of Zillow was about it indeed replacing the need for Realtors.
I am not sure if this was by design, but it did get the company the publicity it needed to already become a common verb. Like we all might "Google it", apparently we now can "Zillow it".
As any realty agent learns in their first week is that the public records are wrought with an abundance of BAD information. Apparently Zillow or their Angel Investors did not look into this mere formality.
So when the blogsphere started harping about their bad data (yours truely included), all of a sudden Zillow realized they had to get cozey with Realtors.
They had no choice. Currently the only way they can have accurate data is by getting Board of Realtors sales records.
While the Boards have been only too happy to whore their(your) data to the online world, they have kept the sale data in a "big locked box" (to quote a past Presidential Candidate ;-)
So what started out as a tremendous marketing lesson in publicity, is becoming a lesson in Spin, as Zillow fights to stay credible, while the Industry isn't so willing to let that happen.
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The Government has released their recent data from the Census on Housing.
Some good stuff in there for developers to compile for Real Estate sites.
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Who is selling all that property?
With all the doom and gloom out there, did you know that 2006 is on pace to be the third highest transactional year.
National Association of Realtors (NAR), 2006 is on pace to be the 3rd best year in history for transaction volume. Despite flat & in some cases declining home values, property is transacting.
So why are many agents/brokers feeling a pinch?
Because NAR says that the number of Realtors has more than doubled. There simply is less volume to go around. In an earlier post I mentioned that in California there is 1 real estate licensee for every 52 adults. Basically, that is like one agent for every other block.
Read my last post and how buyers and sellers pick an agent mostly because of personal contact.
Myth:The Internet is not a method to lesson the need for personal contact. Last I checked, it is still illegal to put a house up for sale into an online shopping cart. So if you cannot sell the house online, then what is your reason for being online?
That question often is never answered. Yet, it should be the first question one asks themselves before embarking onto a marketing campaign.
The web is indeed a way to have people opt-into your most valued offerings. Once they are into your world, then you are able to add more value and more value with the goal of personal contact for a real conversation and consultation.
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The real estate industry is under pressure to change because of a couple major arguments.
1. Freely distributable MLS data
2. Price gouging
Actually both fronts stem from the idea that the NAR is running a monopolistic organization, where prices are fixed and the listings data is controlled by the organization.
And it isn't totally manufactured either. I know of a local discounter that has been blackballed by local buyer agents. Its not official of course, it is subtle.
And, I know of local companies that have opted out of IDX!
In fact a leading consumer rights group, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), on Monday issued a report charging that real estate industry members act as a cartel to stifle competition, resulting in higher prices and poorer service for homebuyers.
The argument goes that it is cheaper to operate a brokerage today because of technical advances.
...and most of your licensee friends sleep as the rug is being pulled right out from underneath.
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I feel like I just recently posted that there was one agent for every 75 people in California. I even put it into my presentations.
"At one time there was an agent on every corner with a website, now there is an agent on every other driveway with three websites or more!".
Well, time to pull out the metaphor book again.
It seems that there is now 495,000 licensed agents in Cali. The state now boasts a licensed agent for every 52 adults, the California Department of Real Estate reported.
"The level of interest in real estate licensure is unprecedented," said Jeff Davi, the department's commissioner, in a statement.
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Well it seems that as soon as I posted my mls.google.com story about Google Base, I started seeing similar takes in the real estate industry and elsewhere.
Blogs are that way aren't they? Topics often firing off simutaneously.
I saw references in Inman News as well as off-real estate blog marketing sites.
GoodRoI actually pointed out how the results seem to be showing up in the regular SERPS ( Search Engine Ranking Position). Perhaps a beta test of some kind.
GoogdROI references a poster over at Webmasterworld as having said that this is going to be a mess as every Realtor massively uploads their MLS listings and the rest of the MLS. This will cause a massive duplicate content problem. Not to mention all the vendors will get into the game of uploading your listings as a service.
Why would they do that? So they can get the traffic back to their site thats why. One poster actually brought out a brilliant point.
Drumat5280 said:
Google Base scares me.
I can handle competition from other sites, but competition from Google itself scares me in the classified ad market.
I am sure Craigslist and Monster are also starting to get scared.
This actually could be interpreted as a shot across the bow of agents trying to get Natural search results. If the bulk of the results are Google Base for real estate, then agents will have no choice but to pay for clicks.
This shows that results in natural search can come from, not only natural SERPS, but Local Search and perhaps Google Base. Oy Vey!
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