Word of mouth marketing has been a major part of every REALTOR's® business plan, we just tend to call it referrals. I belong to a "word of mouth marketing" group called BzzAgent. Originally I had joined with the hopes of getting free stuff, but I have found that I also enjoy being exposed to new products and being able to give my input on those products.
The latest campaign is for a book about "word of mouth marketing" written by David Balter who is also the founder and CEO of BzzAgent. It is an interesting analysis of what makes word of mouth marketing so effective, if done right, and what characteristics a good word of mouth campaign has. You can download a copy from one of many blogs or buy a copy from amazon.com.
Although it won't supply you with a step by step plan to create a successful word of mouth campaign there are a lot of good lessons to be learned about how we use word of mouth marketing, whether we know it or not. Just about every day we all give our opinions and critiques, on products and services, out to just about anyone who is interested and/or willing to listen. The question is, what are you doing to be the one people are talking about?
Lately we have been hearing a lot about how the Toronto real estate markets are cooling off. Some would promote the hype that the end has come and that the years of "wow what a great year for real estate" are over. After all we are down over 12.5% in sales to date at the end of May 2008 when compared to the end of May 2007. The number of active listings at the end of May were up over 56% (this statistic although true does not accurately represent the listing activity in the month of may just how many listings were active at the end of may and as such may be misleading without considering the number of new, expired, terminated, suspended and sold listings for the month), fixed mortgage rates are rising, Toronto has an extra land transfer tax, the Canadian dollar, gas prices........
Well lets face it 2007 went beyond most peoples expectations, but how is 2008 doing in a historical perspective. I am not talking about compared to 30 years ago when 20,000 home sales might have seemed great but just compared to the last few years that have been recognized as really good years for the real estate markets. 2004, 2005 and 2006 were by all accounts great years setting records for prices and sales volumes. Never before had the Toronto MLS® registered over 80,000 sales in a single year and here were three consecutive years in excess of 83,000 sales. 2005 saw 35,814 sales by the end of May. At the end of May in 2008 it was 35,309 only 1.4% behind 2005. In may 2006 there were 9,434 homes sold on the Toronto MLS® system compared to the 9,411 in May 2008. Average sales prices are up 4% in may 2008 over May 2007 and our inventory of homes is hovering around 3 months worth.
It is true that the markets are cooling down relative to 2007 93,000 plus sales and homes are likely to take a little longer to sell. However, we are still on the Seller's Market and Balanced Market boarder with a fairly strong demand for homes. Home Buyers in the Toronto area are taking a little more time to make choices and they are getting a little more picky about the home finishes. However, multiple offers are not unheard of and waiting on a home you like is still a good way to miss out on owning it. Even with the Bank of Canada's decision to not cut lending rates and the resulting increase in fixed mortgage rates has not caused the markets to collapse (but that will be another posting).
For buying or selling a home, now is as good a time as ever, well 10 years ago might have been better but we are not likely to see prices at that level anytime in the "foreseeable future" and probably not ever. Prices are still rising and likely to continue, just not with double digit increases.
Here I sit and type, check facts and compose my thoughts and insights on the Toronto real estate markets. I barely register the time flying by and the sleep that I am missing. Finally, I have reached an end, a point to break until the next post that may cover similar content but from a different view or focusing on another aspect of real estate for the benefit of anyone who cares to read it. a quick spell check and all is as it should be.
Quickly, I choose where I want it to be distributed; professionals, consumers and a group or two. Not so much as to be spam but enough to maybe get a little notice. It is done... Submit.
"Please sign In"...... The Horror.... The Horror. Quick, back, maybe it's cached... "page not found" :-(
Active rain please add a draft feature with an auto-save, or let the system recognize that, when I am typing (although slowly or just too word), I am active and logged in. I seem to have been away from my blog long enough that I have forgotten the golden rule of "Copy" before submitting... just in case.
So, I start over again, shorter, not so eloquent, just informative. I really do need to get to sleep.
I have to admit that I am embarrassed when I look at the last time that I posted on my blogs. The excuses have ranged from not enough time to health issues, but no more! Time for a new start and to try and catch up on all of the news, tips and statistics that are relevant to Richmond Hill Real Estate, Aurora and the rest of York Region, Ontario. My new motto, as stolen from a speaker at a seminar that I was at today, is "Just did it".
You can expect to see more updates on Toronto area's cooling but strong real estate markets, tips on buying and selling, mortgage rates and information (I now also provide Toronto area mortgage services as a Mortgage One Solutions Inc, Mortgage Specialist) and any other insights that I can think of.
Back on the blogging waggon and it feels good to have "just did it" and start thinking about the next to do item.
A proposed land transfer tax, by the City of Toronto, will undermine affordability and property values.
With the passing of the City of Toronto Act, that gives Toronto more powers to govern the city, many new proposals have been tabled to generate income for the city to cover the costs of services. One one of these is a land transfer tax of around 0.5% of the purchase price on all properties in Toronto. This may seem quite reasonable, except that we already pay the Ontario government a land transfer tax on a graduated scale from 0.5% to 2% with the average home being just over 1%.
Affordable housing has been a big issue in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) for a long time and this tax will only make things worse. The average Toronto home ($380,000 in 2006) will have an extra cost of $1,900 in up front expense that can not be rolled into a mortgage.
Many people are looking at this tax as a buyer's tax. They say that it will burden the home buyer with extra costs. However, the home seller, and the Toronto real estate markets, are likely to get hit even harder by this tax.
Most first time home buyers are stretching their budget to find a house that they like and can afford. Some are using 100% mortgage programs with the majority taking on mortgages for 95% of the homes value. Even with a 95% mortgage they are often pressing their savings to make a 5% down payment and cover their closing costs. So adding an extra $1,500 (on a $300,000 home/Condo) will drastically effect their buying power.
Leveraging is one of the great wonders of commerce that allow us to acquire stuff, including homes. A 95% mortgage is effectively a 20 times leverage of our down payment. With this in mind if the buyer has to remove $1,500 from their down payment then they decrease their affordable purchase price by $30,000!!! (This is one of the main reasons that it is critical that sellers pay for the buyer's real estate agent as well.) This huge drop in affordability will cause the property values in Toronto to drop as much as 10% ($30,000 from $300,000) as buyers are still going to be looking to get a similar home for their money.
This may kick many home buyers out of the market, or at least delay their entering into the market, which would cause a decrease in sales and higher competition on the selling side. The Toronto real estate market could find itself swinging to a buyer's market rapidly and prices could drop even more than 10% before affordability and buyer confidence are both re-established.
On top of this, it is believed that every resale home generates $27,000 in spin off spending (on average and according to a study commissioned by the Toronto Real Estate Board) on things like decorating, renovations, new appliance and even just stocking up on household supplies from local stores. All of this spending boosts the Toronto economy and generates taxes. So this new tax will not only decrease property values, without increasing housing affordability, but it will also decrease the taxes that are generated in spin off purchases due to fewer sales.
Higher price homes will also be affected as it will take longer for people to save up equity to move to the "next step" home and many people may just stick it out in their smaller home or move out of the city. Homes in Richmond Hill and surrounding areas will seem much more attractive and affordable as they will not have the extra tax burden.
So what can you do? Send an email to Mayor Miller, here, to let him know that you do not approve of this tax. Also, contact your local councilors and let them know. You can find your councilor's contact information at the City's Councillors web page.
The Toronto Real Estate Board has published the statistics for home sales activity in February 2007. This means that I will be posting my analysis of Aurora, Richmond Hill and Newmarket in the next day or so. TREB is calling this the 2nd best February ever in terms of sales volume, and my preliminary review of York Region is that most areas have had a great month with sales to listings ratios back up to near "seller market" values.
I will add links here to each analysis once they are posted so that the information is readily accessible and organized for you.
If you have any questions about the York Region Real Estate markets please feel free to call me at 416-278-2335 (my direct line).
Well I have been confounded by Yahoo again. For some reason nothing that I do to promote my sites on Yahoo ever seem to work. In the early days, when I had little success with the big G, I had a trickle of traffic that cam through Yahoo. However, I have never managed to get added to their directory even after a year and a half of submitting my sites (not on a regular basis and not through a service that might be considered spam). For some Reason I can be number one in Google and off the top 5 pages on Yahoo.
So you may understand my shock to find this result on Yahoo under the term "Real Estate Market Aurora Ontario". I was following the referral links to my York Region Real Estate Blog which is found at the number 6 position on this list. Having my blog on the list is not odd, because it does address the markets in Aurora, Ontario. What is odd is the first two links.
Both of these links are mine, except that they were experiments that I had started on my ISPs free site and never did anything to promote them. I had originally started the pages while playing with the idea of creating custom forms and frame them into my websites, but I ended up trashing the idea as I would lose a lot of the other features that P2 has in respect to "prospects" (sms, stats, email template, drip campaign etc...).
The top one only has a title and and a statement that the site is no longer in use. I am not sure why I even changed it to have that message, but it was probably so that if someone happen to get lost and find it they would not be waiting for me to contact them when I was not connecting to it.
I did a little checking and it also does fairly well in "Real Estate Aurora Ontario" and "Real Estate Aurora" (from the "Canadian sites"). So I am baffled, but it seems I am going to have to reopen that site at least to direct people to one of my working sites, and to update the contact information on the "index" page.
Does anyone have any insights as how an un-marketed site like this could rank at all let alone be 1 and 2? Especially when there are several other sites below that would be much more relevant and Google doesn't even have it Cached! I don't know if I should be happy for the opportunity or disappointed in Yahoo's algorithms
Recently, on LinkedIn, a question was posed asking people what phrases we would search if we were looking to move into a particular area. While posting my answer, and looking at Google trends and the sites that came up at the top of the rankings, I was reminded of a discussion on the P2A's blog forum (RELiberation) about secret agents and stealth websites.
I was reminded of this topic because as I went through a couple of the top sites I noticed that soon sites drew me in and others had an untrustworthy feeling to them that is hard to describe. Since we usually have between 5 to 20 seconds to grab the attention, of the average web surfer, this got me wondering about what makes a site sticky. For me it seems that I the sites need to feel open and friendly with promises of great service, although not stated in a way that beats it over my head. My wife would call it a "warm Fuzzy" which was the term she had used as an engineer for providing clients with a sense of "she's on the ball and is going to make everything work out just the way we want". For her it came with anticipating the questions and knowing the answers before the question was asked. There will always be some questions that you cannot anticipate but on the whole your client get a warm fuzzy when you alleviate there concerns and ensure their complete confidence in you, to do what needs to be done to reach their goal.
With this in mind I went looking to figure out what generates that warm fuzzy in a website, for me, that would put me in the mood to fill out forms and press that ever important submit button.
The first site that I looked made me want to hit the back button within about 2 seconds, and I could not understand why. So, instead of hitting the back button I sat back and looked at the screen and tried to figure out what made me feel uncomfortable. After a few minutes I was reminded of the posts on stealth sites, as there were no pictures of the person or people that owned the site. There contact information was there but not a single smiling face, not even a stock picture of someone enjoying themselves. With that realization I also noticed that the colours, Black and Gold although I do not think that it was a Century 21 agent, were stark and somewhat depressing. The site had no life to it at all. The layout way easy enough to navigate but I could not connect with the service or the product offered.
So, here I am posing the question to the AR community, what gives you a "warm fuzzy" when you visit a website? What is it that makes you want to continue and submit a request? Or what makes you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome on a site?
After all it may just be my personality type that needs to connect like this.
P.S.
While you are thinking about these questions, I would love to know how you feel when you visit my main website at http://www.andrewhodgerealtor.com/
Is it too busy, confusing or not engaging? I get a fair amount of traffic, but I always want to try and increase the conversion ratio, and your feed back would be appreciated. Let me know if you would like my opinion of your site. I am more than willing to provide my honest opinion.
The Humberlands is a great neighbourhood in the north west corner of Richmond Hill. This neighbourhood is very conveniently located with a short drive to the 400 or the 404 (highways if you are not familiar with the area.) as well as shopping. It has a Catholic and a public elementary school on Red Cardinal Dr. and is also serviced by a second public elementary school located at Coon's Rd and Humberland Dr.
The neighbourhood has a trail that runs in a circle around the central part of The Humberlands which is about 1 kilometer around and connects three different parks including one with tennis courts, a basketball court and a "water park" fountain for kids, and parent, to run through in the summer.
Construction started in The Humberlands in 1998 give or take 1 year. I moved into the area in 1999 and there were a few homes on Amarylis, Sunridge and Silverdart at the time. Currently there is one area that is still waiting to be built, on the east side of Red Cardinal Tr. just south of Bloomington.
As of March 3rd, 2007, there are 21 homes for sale in The Humberlands. There are 2 townhouses priced between $299,000 and $320,000, 2 semi detached homes asking $329,900 and $344,900 and there are 17 detached homes for sale between $399,000 and $778,000. At the top end of this price range you can get a home that is around 3500sqft with a 3 car garage and on an extra deep 65 foot lot.
If you would like more specific information about The Humberlands please feel free to call me on my direct line (416-278-2335) or if you would like to receive a list of available Humberlands homes for sale you can visit my Richmond Hill Real Estate site and file in the home search form. Please include a valid phone number and email address as I do confirm requests before sending listings and I cannot send you listings if the email address does not work.
If you are currently living in The Humberlands and you want to know what your home is worth you can also get a free Humberlands home evaluation.
I respect your privacy and will only contact you in order to confirm your request and to assist you with your real estate. I will never provide your contact information to any other person or organization without your expressed permission, in writing. (This does exclude any support staff that I employ and situations where required under the appropriate laws of my location in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada.)
I look forward to talking with you and providing you with the information you need to make the right real estate choices for your particular situation and help you buy or sell your future homes if that is what suits you best.
If you have been considering moving into the Macleod's Landing development in the North end of Richmond Hill, Ontario, there are a lot of choices available. Located in the N05 district of the Toronto MLS® system, in the Oak Ridges area of Richmond Hill, you can can find 38 available homes on the MLS® system.
6 of these homes are rentals ranging in price from $1,680 to $3,500 per month plus utilities. Of the homes for sale 9 are freehold townhouses priced between $319,900 and $389,000. The remaining Macleod's Landing homes that are currently up for sale are freehold detached homes priced between $399,900 and $788,000.
These numbers are from March 3rd 2007, in the morning, and may change at any time. For up to date information on the area or for information on specific homes or housing types please call me on my direct line at 416-278-2335 or visit my real estate website and request information on Richmond Hill Homes with Macleod's landing in the "wish list" area.
Macleod's Landing is still under construction, however it is already a great area to live and there is a new school already in the Yonge and Jefferson Sdrd section and one of the two new school in the King's Hill section is currently being built. There are several parks currently built and the trails between all three sections of the development are accessible, although it will be easier, and less mucky, to access when construction is finished.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
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