Go Pro Systems: May 2010

Although a home is a much more permanent investment than a tie or a pair of pants, some home features and designs will come in and out of fashion. As a real estate professional, you need to keep up with the times. You need to be able to advise sellers that yes, they really should pull up that shag carpeting. On the other hand, you have to be savvy enough to market the right home to the right buyer, whether its features are in demand or not.

No matter where you think we are in the economic recovery cycle, people are still feeling the effects of the recession. Even those who can afford to buy a new home are still playing out the psychological effects of the economic downturn.

What's Out and Why

Many of the (sometimes grandiose) nesting features that people wanted before the recession, like home theaters, have fallen out of favor. Instead, there are a lot of people out there looking for smaller homes where they can be cozier with their families.

Subdivisions that have a lot of special amenities like swimming pools, tennis courts and large clubhouses and exercise rooms are not as important as they once had been. One reason for this may be that prospective buyers fear unpredictable homeowner fees. Many think that even if they get a great deal initially, a rise in fees may hit them down the road.

What's In and Why

All things natural are very much in, in a variety of ways.

Although people were not thrilled about moving into subdivisions with pools and clubhouses, they did like the idea of a planned community with walking paths. With an increased interest in health and emphasis on affordable activities, walking paths are popular.

Our country's increased emphasis on environmentalism means that people want to see energy-efficient appliances and windows, ad well as homes that use "green" elements in construction.

And no matter what else goes in and out of style, kitchens matter a great deal. This is true for prospective buyers across the spectrum-those looking for condos, starter homes or palatial properties. Whether they cook often or not, people really want great-looking, up-to-date kitchens.

While you keep up with the ins and outs of home features, GoPro Systems can  help you keep track of lead communication and lead management.

No matter how much you have learned and no matter how many great mentors you may have, there comes a time when everyone who has studied about real estate, has to go out there and actually be about the business of buying and selling real estate.

Here are some things those new to real estate should do:

Rehearse

You may think you know exactly what to say when you have the opportunity to sell, but if you do not have years of this under your belt, you would do well to practice your "scripts." It will be that much easier to bring them to mind when you the moment arrives.

After spending some time practicing on your own, you will need to do a little more to "road test" your readiness to interact with clients. Why not also ask another new agent or manager to help you practice some selling scenarios?. Have fun with it and be open to feedback.

Learn to build downtime into your schedule

When you do not have a lot going on, it is easy to think that you should not rest. You need to learn how important it is to recharge and get in the habit of doing it now while you are not overwhelmed with clients. You really cannot be an effective advocate for your clients if you are run down, so you need to pay attention to your energy level and need for recreation.

Start building your database

It is more than okay if right now your database consists of everyone you know. You don't have to wait until you have made that first sale or have a lot of years under your belt to get into the habit of contacting people to touch base. Whether it's birthdays or holidays or community events, you have to contact people so that they will keep you in mind when they or someone they know needs a real estate agent.

GoPro Systems wants to help new agents develop good habits and get organized. We offer sophisticated technology and systems that will help any real estate agent succeed.

Realtors understand the importance of staging a house to promote a fast sale and ensure a good selling price. Hooking the buyer's interest is all about appearance. A house that impresses buyers from the moment they arrive at the curb through a tour of the bedrooms and inspection of the kitchen is one that is guaranteed to sell quickly. "Curb appeal" is equally important when real estate agents design their website. A well-designed website home page invites the visitor to stop and explore in much the same way that an attractive front porch invites a home buyer to come inside and look around. Easy-to-read typeface, attractive use of graphics and white space, pleasing eye flow and a well-organized and easily accessible index of website content work together to make a good first impression on website visitors and encourage them to stay and explore.

However, just as a home that looks attractive on the outside must have what the buyer is looking for inside to generate an offer, your real estate website must offer value-driven content geared to engage and maintain the interest of site visitors if you want potential clients to interact with and return to your website. Interior web pages that provide original content that is useful to home buyers and sellers will attract potential clients. Buying and selling how-to tips and checklists, home financing options and links to loan sites, community statistics, school district information, local recreational opportunities and shopping venues will promote return visits to your website as home buyers research different neighborhoods. Linking area real estate listings to your website ensures that home buyers will keep returning to check new listings.

Designing an effective real estate website is a combination of art and science. Considerable research has gone into the study of how website viewers look at a web page, how the human eye moves around a page, what attracts a viewer's attention and what causes him to lose interest. Well-designed professional web page templates use this information to place content and visual elements in optimal locations. Offering home buyers and sellers "one-stop shopping" through interior web page content and outside links to professional partners (loan officers, real estate attorneys, title companies, moving firms, home organizers, decorators, etc.) helps turn casual leads into paying clients.

A recent New York Times article (For Some Brokers, Location is Relative) stated that "...just as every defendant deserves a lawyer, every home deserves an advocate." That same article shared stories of real estate agents who found very creative ways to sell homes in less than ideal locations. And when we say creative, we do not mean dishonest. If anything, honesty is essential in such situations and so is a sense of humor, as one interviewee notes.

The article centers on real estate professionals in New York City, a place where competition is fierce for not-so-great apartments and houses because there is so much demand. However, even New York City was not immune to the economic downturn.

Prospective home buyers in New York City are willing to consider less than desirable properties after putting them to the test. Noise level has been vetted by visiting at night or asking loved ones to weigh in on whether or not it is acceptable. And as a real estate professional, you can encourage this type of exploration. True, some will be turned off and not buy afterwards, but you may find someone who decides that they are okay with something that other buyers think is not acceptable. With a hard-to-sell property, it may be better to let people try it out (within acceptable limits) than to not make any concessions and have the property continually be turned down. You never know: a prospective buyer could find even more reasons to like the place.

The article ends with a particularly aggressive real estate agent saying that "there is a buyer for every product." This woman takes on the properties that others do not want to sell and manages to find buyers for them. For example, an apartment that is near the highway or train tracks may also be close to someone's job. One woman the reporter spoke to was okay with highway noise because she thought it was better in comparison to the sound of sirens that was common in the area where she lived as a child.

Accentuate the positive.

Everybody is talking about branding. Developing your own unique real estate brand is a way to create instant client recognition and set yourself apart from your competitors. Social networking has made brand development easier, faster and incredibly more affordable than every before. Savvy realtors and real estate brokers now use social network platforms to create a viable and recognizable brand in weeks and months instead of years and decades. Of course, the advantage of owning a recognizable real estate brand is increased lead and client generation.

In the olden days before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, brand development used to move at a snail's pace. Real estate agents and brokers were forced to rely on pricey magazine and newspaper ads, yellow page spreads, billboards, radio spots, property signage and thousands of handouts and mailings. It was tough enough - and wildly expensive -- to saturate your local market; realtors didn't even consider trying to create a national identity. The expense of branding beyond your immediate neighborhood far outweighed any potential gain. Minimal, if any, regional or national presence was achieved by association with one of the national real estate franchises that did dabble in national advertising.

Then came the Internet and a whole new world opened up. Real estate agents were able to connect with potential home buyers and sellers online and create a personal identity. Website logos, slogans, mission statements and blogs were all interconnected and branded with the realtor's unique personality and vision, initiating the creation of personal brands. The national and global reach of the Internet made it easy and affordable for a local agent to extend his reach beyond his local zip code.

The advent of MySpace, which led to the more fluid and less formal Facebook, and the progression of Instant Messaging (IM) to Twitter have allowed tech-savvy realtors to create unique personal brands in ever-shorter time frames. The instant and constant access made possible by today's social networking platforms not only keeps your brand in front of potential clients continuously, ensuring progression from lead generation to client to sale; it recreates the personal realtor-client relationship that was lost in the anonymity of web communication. Twitter use on new generation smart phones in particular allows real estate professionals to promote their brand and build important personal connections with home buyers and home sellers that generate sales.

Those who think that social media is getting in the way of face-to-face interactions may have a valid point in reference to personal relationships. However, when it comes to marketing and sales, the explosion of social networking tools has been helpful, not harmful. 

When it comes to getting the word out about homes you are selling, the more people you talk to, the better...even if you do not actually speak to them yourself. Perhaps we should say, the more people you are in communication with, the better. As a real estate professional, it is your job to get the word out, not only by tapping into your own network, but by making efforts to reach out to networks of people you who are not so familiar with as well.

There really isn't one social networking tool that people use for personal interactions that cannot be used for business too.

For example, we recently heard a great story about how a real estate agent used a number of different social media outlets to make a sale when things were looking rather bleak.

An agent who is about to sell a home that is priced to move via a bank-approved short sale might be feeling good, right? The agent we heard about was until the bank hesitated and the buyer balked. Then after bank's stalling caused the buyer to back out, the bank decided that it wanted to put the home into foreclosure.

The real estate agent decided to take matters into his own hands...literally. He used his own flip camera to make a video of the home and uploaded it to YouTube...and the story does not end there. This real estate agent really decided to go the extra mile.

After posting the video online, he used his website, blog, FriendFeed and Facebook to publicize the video and the sale. After getting a good number of views on YouTube, he was able to get his client 4 offers to consider.

Once you are using social media to boost your business and generate leads, you will need help managing this information and that is where you can turn to Go Pro Systems. Our Go Pro Systems Lead Builder 3.0 technology is the most advanced lead generation system ever created.

Electronic connectivity is quickly becoming reality. The iPhone, Droid and other competing smart phones now allow realtors and real estate brokers to monitor real estate leads from their Facebook page, email virtual tours of listings that may be of interest, Twitter the latest mortgage rate updates and listing prices, phone a real estate prospect to set up a house tour, even turn on the lights before arriving at the home with a hot prospect. Rather than being unusual, in just two to three years, this type of interconnectivity is expected to become the norm. Savvy real estate agents and brokers are getting on board now and learning to use new technologies to their advantage.

Sony Dash is the newest device to hit the technology market. Unlike smart phones which are designed to be interactive portable personal communication/information devices, Sony Dash is a personal Internet viewer that doesn't require any interaction. Marketed as a dashboard for your life, Dash is being heralded as a personalized vision of television's next incarnation. Designed to sit on a desk top or kitchen counter, Dash keeps you connected without any effort on your part. Set it up wherever you are - the patio, bathroom, bedroom, office, coffee shop, anywhere!

Dash has a 7-inch diagonal screen, is somewhat smaller than a notebook and weighs just over a pound. Set it down wherever is handy and Dash serves up a continual stream of web information programmed to your personal specifications. News, weather, traffic, Face book updates, television programs, new real estate listings, Twitter streams, Netflix movies, You Tube videos - you program Dash to stream the personally-selected information that is important to you.

With broadband Internet and wireless network connectivity, Dash can run in the background of your life, alerting you to client questions posted on your Face book fan page or to Twittered requests or incoming emails, allowing you to respond to your real estate clients' needs immediately. Dash is the newest way to stay on top of your real estate business and build the solid customer relationships that lead to sales.

One of the hot new ideas in the real estate industry is the offering of "Boot Camp" courses. Real estate boot camp courses can be designed to reach a general audience such as new home buyers or target a specific interest group like condominium buyers. The boot camp concept - an intensive blitz of information that covers all the important basics in a short period of time -- appeals to today's time-crunched real estate buyers and sellers. People considering buying or selling a home are attracted to Boot Camps by the promise of receiving maximum information in a minimum amount of time. Potential clients are more willing to give up a couple of hours of their evening or weekend time when they believe their commitment will be short-term.

The assumed anonymity of boot camp classes, as opposed to a personal meeting with a real estate agent, also appeals to many potential real estate clients. Boot camps draw motivated home buyers and sellers who are ready to take the real estate plunge, but they also generate high-quality leads by drawing people who are just beginning to explore the possibility of buying or selling a home. These people may not yet be ready to deal with what they fear will be uncomfortable pressure from a realtor or broker. A boot camp class gets these folks in the door, introduces them to you, dissolves barriers and creates a basis for building a personal relationship.

The boot camp concept can be employed again and again. Boot camps can be used successfully by professionals from different aspects of the real estate market from realtors to builders to property managers to loan officers. Offering boot camp courses is a good way to get your name in front of the public and define yourself as a local realty expert. Boot camps can be offered on any number of real estate topics including what first-time home buyers need to know, tips for first-time home sellers, selling in today's economy, the complexities of condo buying, real estate paperwork 101, loan application tips and buying foreclosed properties. As long as you can impart useful information to boot camp participants, you can continue offering boot camps on different real estate topics.

Twitter can be a great tool for real estate agents to have in their online arsenal, if they know how to use it correctly. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, so think of your Twitter account as an abbreviated blog. You can also use Twitter to promote your real estate business, build your brand and generate leads, much in the same way you use your blog.

While we have heard stories of people who mentioned that a home was for sale in a tweet and found a buyer, we want to caution you that this will not happen for everyone. Part of what you can do on Twitter is work on building relationships with the clients you already have and try to attract more. Some real estate professionals open up their Twitter accounts to the public, while others only allow certain people to see their tweets. No matter what, you want the people who connect with you via Twitter to say positive things about you online and offline.

Use Twitter to:

Share information
Of course you can tweet about your own blog posts and articles, open houses and new listings, but you may want to go beyond that. You can also tweet links to articles about real estate trends and about happenings in the areas where you sell homes.

Some real estate agents have found that using social media tools like Twitter not only helps them reach out directly to clients, it also gets them some media attention too. If you are hoping to become a go-to real estate expert, then you can use Twitter as one of the ways you establish your platform.

Make friends with people who are (or want to be) in your area
While there are bragging rights to be had for getting a record number of followers, you would to well to follow some influential people too. Keeping up with the locals may give you insight that you otherwise may not have had.

You can also use Twitter to search for terms related to real estate like "want to move to City Y" or "house hunting in City X." While you may not want to exhaust a lot of time this way, you could connect with possible clients.

The tech savvy people at Go Pro Systems want to connect with you on Twitter. Join today and follow @GoProSystems.

Just a week ago real estate agents and brokers were scrambling to help home buyers meet the government's April 30 deadline to take advantage of federal tax credits for home buyers. Unfortunately, completing the contract is just the first step. In order to cash in on the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and $6,500 credit for repeat buyers, realtors will need to prod buyers to lock in their mortgage financing and close before the program terminates on June 30. The clock is ticking and without a little helpful advice from their real estate agent, some buyers may miss the deadline and lose out. Home purchases that don't close by the deadline will net home buyers zero at tax time. For some buyers, loss of the federal tax credit could be a deal breaker.

Realtors who want to realize a commission from a hard-earned sale may need to step in and help their buyers connect with loan officers. Tougher underwriting standards implemented in the wake of the recent real estate/mortgage industry meltdown that sent the economy tumbling has made it harder for even folks with decent credit ratings to obtain home loans. Add to that industry confusion over new federal disclosure regulations, what they require and how to meet them and you have a potential disaster lurking in the shadow of the looming June 30 deadline.

It was pretty tough to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s when you had 45 days to close a real estate deal, as was the case before the economic meltdown. These days most banks need a minimum of 60 days to close. As the clock ticks down below 30 days, closing home purchases in time to meet the federal deadline could become impossible. There are things realtors can recommend to home buyers to improve their chances of closing by the deadline:

• Provide the lender with complete information and full documentation up front, including income, tax returns, assets, reserves, down payment source, etc. To speed the approval process, document every figure.
• Make sure the appraiser doesn't submarine the deal by low-balling the home's market value by including foreclosures in his computations.
• Expect heavy volume as the deadline approaches to create snarls at title, escrow and settlement firms. Larger firms may be able to guarantee loan closing dates.