As of 2008, Google had indexed over a trillion sites. Since then they have continued indexing more and more websites each day. There’s not an exact number right now but it’s safe to say that the Internet is enormous. When considering the vast number of pages, how are you going to stand out? It’s no longer a viable option to always go after generic search terms in order to get the most traffic. Unless you have large capital reserves that you’re going to pour into a very expensive ongoing internet marketing and SEO campaign for years, you need to find your Online Niche.
Your goal is to be a big fish in a smaller pond, which usually equates to being on the first page of Google for some relevant search terms. Most people don’t look past the first page of Google with some estimates putting it at 90%. If you’re not on the first page of Google, you’re missing out on traffic. It’s much better to get 50% of 500 searches a month as opposed to getting 1% of 1,000 searches a month. Also, as you’re building your niche for your site, you’re also optimizing it for the general search terms in the long run. An optimized page for the term “Detroit Michigan Mortgage Lender” also includes the more general search terms “Michigan Mortgage Lender” and “Mortgage Lender”. My favorite online niches to build for clients are: Geographic, product/service specific, and marketing specific.
What do you do all day? Where is your focus? Do you work hard every day and are always busy but don’t seem to ever get much completed? If so, you’re not alone. Many people suffer from the information and technical overload that is so prevalent in today’s society. We are bombarded by news, email, twitter, facebook, blog posts (keep reading this one!), and all sorts of electronic media that takes our attention away from what we should really be doing. Many times these small tasks and interruptions keep us from doing the one thing that could make a significant impact on our business.
I got the following from Brian Tracy’s book, “Eat That Frog”. What he says is that when you get into work in the morning you need to identify the 1 thing that will make the most significant impact on your business. It may not be something that you really want to do but it’s something that will help your business out the most. You need to sit down and complete that task before you move on to anything else, which includes before you talk on the phone, check email, tweet about reading a great blog or update your facebook status. Get the task done then move on to the next task that will make the most significant impact on your business.
Focusing in this manner will force you to complete your most difficult tasks but also the tasks that will create the biggest impact. You’ll then find that you end up fitting in all of the small tasks in about an hour in between the big tasks. A laser like focus is key in these situations because we have so much that can distract us. So many times when you let something small distract you, you end up skipping from small task to small task and eventually forget what you were doing in the first place!
You don’t have to get it perfect right away but make sure that you realize when you’ve gotten off task and lost focus. In this way you will be able to pull yourself back and see where you lost the focus.
What are some techniques that you’ve found keep you on task and focused?
Here you are with all of these great deals and you don’t have anyone to sell them to. How did you get in this situation? First off you didn’t listen to Drew when he told you to build your wholesale list and second you’re probably not effectively marketing via email.
Let me clear up a few misconceptions on email marketing:
Emailing to a bunch of people in the BCC field of your email program is not effective email marketing
You shouldn’t add someone to your list just because you found their email address, you need to get their permission.
More emails is not always better.
Permission Marketing
We’re talking about permission marketing here, props to Seth Godin, which means we’re getting someone’s permission before we add them to our list and start marketing to them. Makes sense. To do this we will utilize a email list marketing company that provides us with easy to use sign-up forms for our website. Also, if we add someone to our list, it sends them an e-mail asking for their confirmation before getting added to our list. This is called a double opt-in list. All of this is building a list of people that are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. If they are no longer interested, they can unsubscribe from your list.
What to send your subscribers
You might think the best thing to send your subscribers is just a list of houses each week of what you’re selling. I’m here to tell you that you won’t keep many people on your list doing that. What about the person that wants to learn a little more about what you do and real estate in the area. They’re not going to buy right now but they will probably buy in a couple of months. Well… you should keep that person involved.
Provide content in your newsletter about investing in your area. Give them the local real estate perspective along with tips for being successful. How about tips on how to buy properties in the area that you’re selling properties or what you have to look out for? Information like this will keep people involved and as you build your list, you’ll start to convert these subscribers to buyers.
You of course want to send them your properties that you have for sale but don’t just spam out your properties to everyone. Add some value to their day with some information and you will end up selling more houses.
Email Marketing Service Recommendation
I highly recommend Aweber as the best list marketing service out there. They not only have the best deliverability rates for their messages but they also have more templates and easy to use form builders than anyone out there. Anyone. Designing and implementing forms on your website and hover forms to capture even more leads is as easy as point and click.
Many people like iContact as a single opt-in list provider, which is fine if you already have a large list of subscribers that you want to upload, but I would still recommend Aweber. Urban Detroit Wholesalers switched to Aweber a couple of years ago and although we lost some subscribers, the move has been more than worth it.
Either list service will be good to get going so check out either iContact or Aweber to get your list marketing going now. You will see your sales soar.
The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists. ~Spencer Johnson, MD author of “Who Moved My Cheese”
Fear and uncertainty still seem to rule our economy and real estate market. This is still due to changes in the markets and a general lack of adaption by people in those markets. When your business was making money and things were good, you didn’t think about change. When your way of doing business started to not be effective anymore, what did you do? Hopefully you not only thought about change but you grabbed the bull by the horns and took it head on. Times for small tweaks or fine tuning are gone. Make far reaching changes and innovate or be left behind. It’s interesting that this advice not only works for businesses but also is key to positive growth in the City of Detroit and Michigan as a whole.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? ~Spencer Johnson, MD
If you’re letting fear lead your business or your actions, you might as well give up now. It may be hard if you’ve been burned but you have to make sound businesses decisions, innovate, and push the boundaries constantly. You may be able to rest on your laurels in other markets but not here in Michigan. Sitting back and watching what’s happening puts you out of business as so many people have learned. I don’t want to scare people with my assessment right now as I’m more optimistic than ever.
Those of us that are willing to put ourselves out there in our businesses and life have an amazing amount of opportunity surrounding us. I’m talking to businesses every day that are having there best years ever because their competitors that failed to change and innovate are out of business and even with a smaller market, they have a much bigger piece of the pie now. Just don’t take anything for granted, work for it. If you have to get down and dirty and hustle to get things going, do it. You will set yourself up for not just a better tomorrow but an amazing tomorrow.
Take what others have done and learn from it. Take what you have done and learn from it. Put together a plan and work that plan. If you’re bumbling around from one activity to another, you’re only doomed to repeat errors and not truly grow. Innovate. What can you do better and how can you do it better? How do you add more value to your clients?
While someone may have moved our “cheese”, we still need to move on. With more opportunity than ever, our motivation should be more than ever. Be strong and be unafraid.
All MLS October ‘09 sales at highest levels since 2004
Lowest on?market inventory levels in any month since January 2006 (42,785 in October 2009, 48,059 in January 2006)
NonForeclosure Sales Top Foreclosure Sales in Metro Detroit. For the month of October, the total nonforeclosure sales were 3,483 compared to 2,938 foreclosure sales….
…Months supply of inventory (MSI) has dropped by nearly 50% ? from 11.9 month supply last year to 6 month supply this year
I am an optimistic person and I know that the real estate market WILL turn around. This is great new, right? Well, any way you look at it, this is good news. Let’s just chose which points we look at to get that good news…
The first point above that you can look at for good news in the market are that October ‘09 sales are the highest they’ve been since 2004, which means there are buyers coming to the market. The second is that there were 3,483 non-foreclosure sales in October. The points about foreclosure inventory levels being low and foreclosure sales being low is an artificial statistic.
If you read my post in August about The False Real Estate Market Bottom in Detroit, you’ll remember that we are looking at a false bottom or an artificially inflated market. This all has to do with the foreclosure moratorium by mortgage companies and the State of Michigan. What this did is create a huge backlog of foreclosures that will be dumped on the market in the next couple of months.
In the post I predicted that the the foreclosure flood would hit Metro-Detroit in November of 2009 to January of 2010. It no longer looks like November will be that time but I feel confident on a January-February 2010 flood of foreclosures hitting the market (barring any government intervention, which would be a bad idea). Banks are not good at foreclosing on and getting REOs listed, which you’ve most likely seen working in real estate, and these foreclosures are no exception.
Per RealtyTrac, Michigan is still #7 in the nation for Foreclosure filings. Looking at the Wayne County information, which is what I used in my original analysis, foreclosure filings for August, September, and October of 2009 are the highest they’ve been this year. This all points to more foreclosures on the market.
Inventories are down but foreclosure filings are up. That points to future inventory growth and towards other intervention (the government), which created artificially low inventories.
Where’s the Opportunity? I’m a strong believer in finding the opportunity and not spreading doom and gloom like the national media. What you need to know is exactly what’s going to happen when a flood of foreclosures comes on the market. There’s going to be increased inventories, decreased prices, and lower buyer confidence in the market. This is only going to be temporary because sales are still strong and the inventory will get eaten up but all of them at once is going to cause these activities to occur.
While the market and most people are reactive, we need to be proactive and see this for what it is. A temporary phenomena. Taking action when these foreclosures come on the market in buying the foreclosures and fixing them up to rent out or flip is going to put you in a very good position. There will be plenty of inventory to choose from and by the time you get your property stable and rented for awhile, the rest of the market will catch up. By that time inventories could well be on their way back down.
We have a window of opportunity coming up that you will never see in metro-Detroit real estate again. What are you going to do when presented with this opportunity; take ACTION and invest or kick yourself later for not doing so?
As reported by Drew's Mortgage New's on November 6th, the first time home buyer tax credit has been extended through April 30, 2010. While there are some basic changes, everything is close to the same as it was before with one major exception. Current homeowners can take advantage of the credit as long as they have lived in their house for 5 years. Here are the two different buyer groups that can utilize this credit, as explained by Drew Sygit:
First-Time Homebuyers (FTHBs): First-time homebuyers (defined as not owning a home in the last 3 years) are eligible for up to 10% of the purchase price or a maximum of $8,000. Single taxpayers and married couples filing a joint return may qualify for the full tax credit amount.
Current Owners: The new tax credit program now gives those who already own a residence incentive to move to a new home. If they've owned a primary residence for 5 consecutive years out of the last 8, their eligible for up to a $6,500 tax credit. Single taxpayers and married couples filing a joint return may qualify for the full tax credit amount.
If you missed the inaugural meeting of TEDxDetroit, you missed something big. It was a meeting of minds from Michigan that talked about positive change, innovation in business, and good things going on in our state. Know what was missing from the meeting? Negativity, doom and gloom or any talk about something not happening. We need more positive ideas and people from Detroit and Michigan!
Our state and city have been through some challenging times and I know it’s not always easy to see past that. Dwelling on negativity, however, will just perpetuate a down economy and bad things. Focusing on positive change and what we can do to make a difference in our city and state will create the positive change that we need. I’m not talking about just saying that we’re in the best economy ever and that everyone can be millionaires just by saying that they are, I’m talking about actually focusing on positive change that you can create.
What about Dawn White, co-founder and President of Accio Energy (a Michigan based company that has multiple patents for wind energy) and her invention of wind energy without the blades (i.e. not a traditional wind turbine with loud moving blades)
TEDxDetroit wasn’t only about business and entrepreneur speakers; it was also about local performances. My absolute favorite was this poem (and I wasn’t a fan of spoken poetry) written and performed by D Blair “Detroit, While I was away” (found on Positive Detroit)
As Ghandi so eloquently put it, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Michigan needs positive ideas and positive people, is that you?
Investors in Detroit have noticed for a couple of years European investors coming to the market for great bargains on investment real estate. It seems that 2009 is no exception as we have seen more European investors than ever purchasing cash flow investment properties. Whenever I tell someone this they invariably ask me why because many of them aren’t involved in real estate at all or they pretty much think that investing in real estate is the same here as everywhere.
Detroit real estate offers excellent bargains that are very difficult to find in the rest of the world. Our price points are very low (around $40,000 for purchase and rehab) and these properties still rent out for $850-$950 a month. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s good for cash flow. If you add into that the weak dollar, which gives European investors another discount when purchasing our properties with the conversion from Euros.
Most of the European investors we talk to are investing for the cash on cash return and for the long term prospects of the investment. Unlike many U.S. investors, they aren’t looking for the “get rich quick” investment and are willing to invest in a solid property for the long term. This is going back to the way real estate investing used to be and I think it’s a great model. With Detroit foreclosures you get the best of both worlds. Monthly cash flow for a good cash on cash return and purchasing at 50% of the actual value of the house, which means great long term (10 years) prospects for value.
While there are some exception, for the most part European investor are finding successful real estate investors from Detroit so they can leverage their experience on how to create successful investment properties. Real estate investing is different than it is in Europe and Detroit is different than the rest of the United States or even Michigan. There are specifics in Detroit properties to watch out for like water, taxes, neighborhoods, specific streets, City requirements, ordinances, and other items. Working with a reputable Detroit real estate company will ensure that you know how to navigate through these. A good place for foreign investors to get more information is at our Detroit Real Estate International Questions page.
Our experience has been that more and more investors are coming to Detroit as it’s a great return on investment that doesn’t require a million dollars of investment capital. We have sold properties and made successful investors of European investors from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France, and many other European countries. If you’re interested in investing check out our Detroit Real Estate site or leave a comment.
Detroit has great price points, excellent cash flow, and a tremendous return on your investment if you know what you’re doing. Too many times I see investors rushing into Detroit real estate because of prices without any knowledge of what they’re doing. They don’t work with anyone that has knowledge of the area and they don’t have any good contacts. They just figure that the prices are so cheap, it has to work. Well, I’m here to tell you that this just isn’t true.
The $1,000 Detroit House This is the single most frequent request I hear from investors. “I want to buy the $1,000 house that I heard on the news”. No you don’t and here’s why. Detroit has great prices but it has it’s limits. The $1,000 house is that price and still for sale for a reason. Here’s what I’ve seen with the $1,000 or for that matter the houses that are more than $1,000 but still cheaper than you usually see in Detroit:
They are in bad neighborhoods that are hard to rent, have very low rents, and have a high probability of vandalism and theft to the house.
They require so much rehab work you will end up spending as much as the other houses after fixing it up.
They usually have high taxes, back taxes or both.
I have seen people that invest in areas with some amount of success but for the most part I have seen them doing most of the work themselves, not fixing up the house to code, renting to anyone that walks by, knocking on the doors to collect rent, going to court often for evictions, and living close to the area. They may end up getting a good cash on cash return but they are spending a lot of time to get it.
The Great Looking House in a Bad Neighborhood I see houses come across my desk every day that don’t need much work, have reasonable taxes, and have reasonable prices. That is until you look at the location. Location is key in Detroit! You can have the best house but if it’s not in a good neighborhood, you will not be successful. Bad neighborhoods will leave you with a house that isn’t rented and will quite possibly be broken into and vandalized. This happens very rarely in the good neighborhoods. See our report on Detroit Investment Secrets for more on good neighborhoods.
The Great Neighborhood and Great House with No Contacts You must have great on the group contacts or be working with a company that has great contacts in order to be successful in Detroit real estate. Contacts like contractors, property managers, property security companies, mortgage brokers, insurance agents, and other critical contacts are a must. Make sure that anyone you’re working with has long standing relationships, documented processes, and a lot of experience working with everyone.
The Great House with High Taxes Taxes vary greatly from house to house, in the same neighborhood or even on the same street in Detroit. If you’re not checking taxes or taking them into account, you’re gambling with your investment. Taxes are our biggest qualifying factor after location. Taxes and location make or break a deal.
At Urban Detroit Wholesalers we take into account these factors and more in providing great deals to you. Don’t just take our word for it as we post all of the due diligence that you need to know on each of our houses. View our Detroit Foreclosures to see contractor estimates, a rehab checklist, public records, appraisals, pictures, video walk throughs and everything else you need to know to make a buying decision.
If you’re new to investing in Detroit, I suggest reading our Detroit FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). If you’re investing from out of the country, we have created many successful investors from a wide variety of countries. Our processes and contacts insure that you will be successful investing from abroad. Read our International Detroit Investing FAQ.
Here you are on a real estate blog and you see a post about small business technology. If you’ve been investing in real estate for awhile, you’re anxious to see what I have to say. If you’re new, you might be wondering what I’m doing. When you’re starting out in real estate, and many experienced investors for that matter, you must treat your real estate investing like a business and not a hobby. To that point, I’ll dive right in.
Technology is critical for small businesses. You don’t want to go overboard with it and you don’t want to spend a lot of money. I’m going to show you a couple of products that are going to help in both of these areas. I might not get to everything in this blog so subscribe to our blog and check out the other suggestions coming soon.
Google Apps Standard Edition I’ll admit that I’m a little late to the game on this but I was waiting for it to hit the critical mass. A year or more before and Google Apps was not something that would have worked for what we needed. What I’ve seen lately, especially with releases this year, is that Google has a focus on organizations and enterprise software. While you might not be a 2,000 employee shop, what it means is that Google is taking what they’ve learned from focusing on the individual to their enterprise software. That’s good for small and large businesses.
Google Apps Admin Panel What you find signing up for Google Apps Standard Edition is that it’s free! You get to add up to 50 users to your organization through and administration panel. This is much more than we need but it’s nice to know we can still grow. The administration panel is a big differentiating factor from regular Gmail and Google Apps. As an administrator, I can actually manage the accounts and settings for each user.
Gmail Alright, this isn’t your grandma’s Gmail. This is email hosting to replace Exchange hosting, which is exactly what my organization did. You get 7gb of storage for the Standard Edition and up to 25gb for the Premier Edition (cost of $50/user per year). 7gb of storage is much more than you’re going to find at any exchange hosting companies, especially for the price. I was a bit skeptical at first but I’m sold on everything now.
For a small business, the switch to Gmail should come with more options, not less. You can configure this to work with your domain so instead of CoolREICompany@gmail.com or “sent on behalf of jared@CoolREICompany.com” you can work just like you do in Exchange as jared@CoolREICompany.com.
Gmail is an amazing tool. They do provide tools for you to sync your calendar with Gmail so you can continue to use a desktop email product like Outlook or Thunderbird but after I got it all setup to sync, I ended up just using Gmail. Gmail is such a great interface with so many features (far too many to list here) that it’s all I use now. It’s easier to use and easier to manage a high email workload with their archiving feature, easy use of labels, and their grouping of emails in threads (this one is the space saver). If I have a single email sent out to multiple people that we then reply back and forth on it 10 times, it shows up as one email instead of 10 in my inbox. I can easily open it up to see everything else. This is a huge productivity builder!
Google Docs This part of Google Apps replaces your Microsoft Word suite (Word and Excel) and puts it all online. You may wonder how these apps work online and I was definitely skeptical. Google delivers here with very stable apps that auto-save, which negates any Internet connection issues. This is definitely what you need for collaboration within or outside your company. Nothing else comes as close to making it easy to share and collaborate with others.
Some cool features include the ability to share any documents in a folder (new feature) with anyone or even make it public and the ability to make your spreadsheet easy to fill by your users. Do you make the spreadsheet easy to use by just sharing it? Well, I’m sure you know that spreadsheets aren’t always easy to fill by non-spreadsheet users. That’s why Google offers a very easy to create form that integrates with your spreadsheet automatically. You can literally have the form created with a website address for users to submit their answers to the spreadsheet easily in 10 minutes. This is great for an event sign-up or a questionnaire.
Google Calendar This calendar does a great job of making it easy to use, some cool new features, and the look and feel of a calendar that everyone can instantly use. This is great for events as you can chose to have people share comments and see who else has accepted. In this one way they’ve done a better job than online invitation companies like eVite who have been doing just that for 10 years. Google calendar has all the options you need.
Google Contacts Although this is still listed in Beta, it functions very well. You can upload your existing contacts, create groups, and this all integrates with your calendar, mail, and Google Talk.
Google Talk When I was an IT/Business Consultant, I used chat all the time for quick questions/answers. Lately I tried using Skype but it was using up all the resources on my computer, which made it pretty unusable. I just recently installed Google Talk and I have to say, this is the best chat software I have used! It’s fast, uses almost no resources, and it’s intuitive. I can video chat, call people, send voice mails, and even send SMS messages. This all integrates with my Contacts so it already has all the information.
If it sounds like I’m a salesman for Google Apps, I’m not but I easily could be. What makes a great salesman is when they are selling something that they truly believe in and I truly believe in Google Apps as a solid product. They provide the most intuitive interfaces that I’ve ever worked with, the performance is great, and they provide everything I need for free. This is definitely a good base to build your real estate empire!
Real estate and how you can market yourself online for more profitable leads. Web Design and SEO tips, blogging tips, lead management, and more Internet marketing.
I will also discuss Detroit real estate foreclosures.
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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