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New powerful tool that helps home buyers calculate the cost of owning a home. House Math 2.0 helps homes buyers look at the benefits and actual cost of investing in a property.
The tool only works for some cities across the USA for now. The creator of House math 2.0 also plans on launching an API for agents to provide this tool through their websites.
Looking for real estate blogs that provide read worthy information:
About Real Estate
Baron Briefs
BloodhoundBlog
BlueRoof.com Blog
condoDomain.com blog
Homethinking blog
Hot Property
Inman Blog
John Cook's Venture Blog
Matrix
NAR blog
Nestoria Blog
New Homes Blog
Property Grunt
Rain City Guide
re:PDX
Real Central VA
Real Estate Insights
Real Estate Technology
Real Estate Tomato
real/diaBlog
Realty Blogging
Realty Thoughts
Redfin
Renthusiast (UK)
RSS Pieces
Screenwerk
sellsius°
Technology for Real Estate
The Future of Real Estate Technology
The Real Estate Economy
Times Online
TransparentRE
Trulia Blog
Ubertor blog
WebHomeUSABlog
Zillow Blog
ZipRealty Blog
The real estate business model has changed dramatically over the last two years. Nowadays, most real estate home buyers search online prior to contacting an agent.
In the following paragraphs I will point out the most common mistakes agents make when entering the world of online home shoppers.
Most real estate agents that own a website have no idea how to market to home buyers and sellers shopping online, failing to capture their contact information. Real estate agents have to realize that home buyers and sellers want to visit a website where they can find the information they need. Most agents believe that a home buyer will read their about me page and say I like this agent. When the reallity of the matter is that most home shoppers and sellers are looking to do research, or find their dream home online, and then contact an agent. So what is the best way to capture the visitors contact information. The best way is to capture their information prior to providing the information they are looking for. The worst thing to do is to provide free information without having any way to capture the lead.
Agents that do have a website and are capturing leads fail to contact the lead on time. Most home buyers and sellers not only visit one website they visit many websites. What does this mean? It means that they also leave their contact information in other agents web sites. RealtorExposure.com we can't enphassis enough how important is to call your leads right away. According to a recent study by NAR 68% of homes buyers across the USA use the first agent they speak to. So at this point it comes down to a classic western battle of who can take out their gun first. Calling a real estate lead two days later is a dead real estate lead. That is why you should only use real estate lead generation services that will provide you with leads that are generated real-time. By real-time we mean as soon as the lead is generated you receive it via email or text message. There are many companies that claim to provide real-time leads that are delivered to agents within 72 hours. This is not a real-time lead.
Agents that capture a lead and contact the home buyers and sellers immediately, fail to retain the client. See not all of online generated leads will be ready to buy today or tomorrow. Some are ready to buy in a month, and some in a year. So how do your retain the person that will buy in a year or 3 months from today. You need to have a well stablished system and website that can do this for you. You will need a website that is capable of providing any type of information the home buyer will need so they dont have to go to your competitors site to look for the information you are not providing. What type of information do I need to have? MLS access, home value analysis, mortgage calculators, personal account, email alerts, email marketing.
If you dont make the comments mistakes mentioned in this article then you are ready to start increasing your business, with RealtorExposure's lead generation solutions.
We have reached now the year 2007 where the real estate market has changed significantly, new web sites like zillow.com came into the market making a change of how how buyers and sellers do the their home search online.
With such innovative systems online it demands real estate agents that generate real estate leads online to become more sophisticated. As the months pass we see a decrease of people leaving their contact information in smaller websites that do not offer as much information and services as compared to the big players.
The year 2007 we feel is going to be a year were there will be a number of companies launching innovative solutions that will change the real estate transaction home buyer and seller purchase cycle. More and more home buyers and sellers become aware of sophisticated websites like zillow. How can regular real estate agents compete with companies like zillow. RealtorExposure.com will be offering in the near future services that will allow you to offer solutions to home buyers and sellers so that you are able to keep on growing your real estate business.
As mentioned on prior articles search engine marketing is by far the most effective ways to generate real estate leads online. To be more specific the search engines that are most effective as far as having the highest conversion percentage is Google, Yahoo, and MSN. For those that dont know what is a conversion percentage is, this is the formula: it is the number of leads generated by the number of actual visitors.
Search engine marketing has become a complex marketing medium, due to the fact that there are many companies that are experts and have innovative tools to compete against individuals or small companies. What am I trying to convey here? Do not try to generate leads yourself most likely it will not be a cost effecient campaign. Search engine marketing takes a lot of strategy, dedication and studying.
How complex can posting an ad on Google, Yahoo and MSN be? Well, it is not only writing an ad, you also have to take into consideration that need to write compelling ads that people are actually going to click on. Let me give you a set of questions that will make you think:
- Where should users be redirected to when clicking on the ad?
- Why are users not leaving their contact information?
- Where in my website do I loose them?
- What type of real estate technology and marketing approach should I be using?
For these answers you would need a sophisticated web analytics tool, and knowledge on how to measure what needs to stay and go on your website.
Most real estate agents and brokers handle online generated leads as another lead. Online leads should be handled in a different manner, since the process of closing online leads is different. The purpose of this article is to help agents understand how important it is to approached and managed these leads differently. Lets look at some of the common mistakes agents make when handling online leads:
1) What most agents don't know is that when a potential home buyer or seller visits their website, in most cases they also visit 2 other websites, and leave their contact information as well. So what is the mistake made here by most agents? Well, most agents do not call their leads right away, giving the opportunity to other agents to contact the lead first, loosing the lead before even reaching it. According to a study conducted by NAR 68% of home buyers nationwide use the first agent they speak, get my point?
2) It is important to be able to generate real-time leads in order to have a higher closing ratio. Most companies selling real estate leads online do not deliver real-time leads. What they actually do is provide the lead to 3 different agents after the lead has been stored in database for who knows how long. If you plan on generating leads make sure they are real-time.
3) If a home buyers or sellers is searching for homes online does not mean that that potential buyer or seller is ready for a real estate transaction yet. In many markets the consumer goes through a buying cycle before beign ready to purchase. In this case where do agents make the mistake? See, most agents are looking for leads that are ready to buy within 30 days. Agents fail to follow up for a long period of time if that lead is not ready to purchase within 30 days. Agents should have a lead management system where it automatically emails their leads in a constants bases, updates their users on new homes or price reductions. It is important to have an innovative system in place to stay in front of every single lead.