Realty World Northern California & Nevada

Part 3 of a three-part series titles “Are You In Or Out Of The Real Estate Business?”

In Part 2 of this series, you made a decision to stay in real estate for the long run. You evaluated and made prudent decisions on all your business and personal expenses. Now, let’s talk about moving forward. Today is the day to start deploying different strategies that you have not done before.  Be creative and have some fun! 

• Learn about new technologies like social networking that will expand your marketing reach to more potential home buyers and sellers.
• When was the last time you took a good look inside your tool box? To be successful in your progression, it’s important to use those tools. You might just have some really cool, effective and useful tools that were never used or maybe you forgot you had them.
• Establish your blog article series. Trust me, it’s not hard. If I can do it, you can too! You know tons of information about the real estate business and your local community that people need to hear about. After all, you are the expert.
• Reconnect with all your former clients to let them know that you are fully committed to your profession and all their real estate needs. Perhaps it might even be helpful to let them know just how great the buying opportunities are in the present market.
• Take full advantage of all the wonderful educational classes offered by your local Realtor Association.
• Apply for and acquire your C.R.S. designation, one of the most powerful designations in real estate.
• Take the time to freshen up and modernize all your marketing materials and presentations.

Most importantly, now is the time for those of you who are part of Realty World to make absolutely certain that you are fully aware of and are using the resources that are available to you. Remember, when you are struggling to find a gold mine, more often than not, the gold nuggets are right there in your backyard!

Have a powerful day!

Scott Gill
Senior Vice President
Scott.Gill@rwnc.net

Click here to read Part 1 of ths series.

Is print finally dead?

For some time now, I have been amazed at how fast video has grown on the Internet. Just about every major website uses video more and more to get information out to the public, faster and more interactively. What has also amazed me is how slow real estate has picked up on using video as a marketing tool for both getting the listing and attracting potential buyers.

I did some research last week about what it would cost to video a home for a “potential seller” and the average cost came out to $250. I’ve been in this business for a long time and know that most realtors might think that’s too expensive and would pass it over. However, I also know that over 90% of sellers select their agent over others when video marketing is offered. Well, let’s put it this way… 90% of Generations X & Y would; a growing demographic who are now over 50% of your customers. You see, with video rapidly becoming the most common thing Internet users are looking for, these generations know that the Internet is the most powerful tool to sell their home. Think about it. If you visit MSNBC, CNN, or FoxNews, video is pretty much all they promote on their websites anymore. They wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t the direction consumers are moving on the Internet.

Here are some really interesting statistics about YouTube from March of last year that I bet you didn’t know which makes them smaller than what they are now.

So my question to all of you is would you spend $250 on a listing if you could beat out your competition even 50% of the time? Or better yet, what’s stopping us from moving toward video as a marketing tool?

James Dwiggins
Chief Strategy Officer
James.Dwiggins@rwnc.net

The real estate business may get a bit of octane in its tank with the most recent additive that came to the stimulus bill being run around in the halls of Congress last week. Members of the US Senate approved (unanimously) to allow a tax credit for homebuyers equal to 10 percent of the value for resale and new construction. 
 
The proposal also caps the deduction at $15,000. Currently, there is a $7,500 tax deduction in place which is limited to first time buyers only. The new proposal includes all homebuyers and is expected to cost the government over $19 billion dollars of the proposed stimulus package.

It’s important for all brokers and associates to communicate this news to their clients once the gavel seals this bill into legislation.  This is most certainly an important and compelling reason to make contact with your client base and educate them on potential advantages of moving quickly into a purchase mode.

Scott LeForce
President
scott.leforce@rwnc.net