Glenn's Mega Agent and SEO Blog

Virtual REBarCamp

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:49:00 -0600

On Tuesday November 17 Jim Cronin @ http://realestatetomato.com/ hosted the first ever VirtualREBarCamp. Being that we (collective we), eXp Realty run an Immersive Real Estate Company a Virtual REBarCamp really resonated with my and our company in general so we jumped in as a sponsor, a presenter and then we also hosted 3 IRL (In Real Life) events in Phoenix Arizona, Seattle Washington and Bellingham Washington.

The presentation that I did is called "The Real Estate Office of the Future" and in reality we believe that we have developed a successful model but more importantly the more we research the implications of a fully immersive real estate company the more amazed we are all with what the future looks like. The reality is that we have seen the future and it is empowering and profitable for all the stakeholders as well.

If you didn't get a chance to sit in the session here is a link to The Real Estate Office of the Future slides. Check them out and if you would like add comments here and I'll comment back as well.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
eXp Realty LLC
Direct: 360-389-2426
http://www.exprealty.com/

"The World's First Fully Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Brokerage."

To Prius or not to Prius

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:27:04 -0600

So I've been thinking about the Green Real Estate Revolution that will be happening in earnest in the not to distant future and I'm thinking about automobiles. Part of this is predicated on the fact that my Chrysler 300C is now worth more then I owe on it and that it doesn't really make the statement that I would want to make as a Green real estate company. However since the Tesla Class S hasn't come out yet (2011 - 2012) I'm debating the idea of trading in my car on something more Green.

The debate I continue to think about is this:

Does trading in my existing car (which I drive maybe 1000 miles / month) on something more efficient make environmental sense or does trading in a working car which obviously someone else will purchase and drive simply make the problem someone else's problem. Have I solved anything by trading in my car on something more fuel efficient at this point.

I'm a lot more emotionally interested in driving a Tesla Class S then I am a Prius even thought the Class S is about $15,000 more then the Prius..

Well that's it for my evening ActiveRain brainstorm.

The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:43:19 -0600

On November 17th, I’ll be presenting at the first ever Virtual REBarCamp, “The Real Estate Office of the Future” and there will be a number of ideas that I will be going over some of which I’ll be blogging about here and on Facebook and on ActiveRain while some content I’ll be reserving for the REBarCamp. I’m really looking forward to this REBC especially because I think we are really are in a major shift that probably wouldn’t have taken place if the real estate markets had continued to plug along at a reasonable pace. However as our eXp Realty Washington State Broker, Dale Kreiser has mentioned a couple of time, “This is the Perfect Storm.”

I titled this Blog Post, The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar and I believe that Bricks and Mortar in real estate especially is going to come under serious attack. The primary reason as I’ll layout below is that it isn’t relevant anymore or its really becoming less relevant. The second reason is one of money. I do not by the way consider money the primary motivator for the demise however financial reasons will force the adoption of other methods of agent aggregation.

First why WAS Bricks and Mortar relevant?

The primarly reason was that was where the information on homes was kept. Back since the Industrial Revolution and Automobiles and modern travel, the information on who’s home was for sale and how one could access it was controlled by brokers. At the time, this was a very efficient model given other ways to gather information. Everyone in town probably knew who the broker’s were and based on who they liked best they would give a broker a listing and that broker would shake the trees through his / her network of prospective purchasers and hopefully find a buyer. I haven’t read the history of brokerages in general however if a broker or brokers had the listings that made it easier for buyers to access the listings and so they would travel from broker to broker to find a property.

Obviously the better brokers would need to have sub-brokers or agents to help them stay on top of all the listings. Now the agents would obviously need to come to the office because that is where all the information on the listings existed.

As time went smaller brokers affiliated and shared information among themselves to compete with the bigger brokers and so the MLS came into existence. The MLS really was printed pages circulated between brokers with an agreement to compensate each other if one of the member offices sold a property.

Eventually the MLS’s became more important then the brokers. Now it was less about the brokers and more about being able to share information between the different firms because of the MLS, however in order for a consumer to access the MLS info they still needed to go into an office. That is also where they kept, “The Book”.

The Book was really the MLS printout which was produced once or twice a month and was the bible of real estate. The Book was protected like it was the Holy Grail and it really was because it insured that consumers needed to come into the office to meet with an agent to go and see property. Seller’s had it a little better since it was their properties being listed the agents would come to them and really had no serious need to go to the office other then to complain to the broker or drink some coffee with their agent.

Now the 1990’s rolls around and things started to change. By the late 1990’s there were public facing websites with some of the information that consumers could find in “The Book”. Consumers started to use the web to search for properties however generally speaking information was a bit spotty. There were no really good search sites and the Internet though recognized for its future importance was still a bit of a novelty for most.

Fast forward to the mid 2000’s. Everything that was in The Book is now on The Web… Consumers have quit stopping by real estate offices in the volume that they used to, they are now contacting agents on the web to ask questions. They are finding great websites to search with better information then they could ever find in a real estate office. Agents are now getting consumers leads to their Blackberry’s and iPhones. The need to go into the office is losing its appeal and for many agents its more of a time waster. Consumers are now coming up with their list of properties they want to look at and in many circumstances know a lot more about the homes they are interested, the zoning, the schools, the neighbors and the neighborhoods then the agents they are contacting. By the way, I’m not saying the agents aren’t competent at all, what I am saying however is the web based agent has to cover a larger geography then the traditional old school agent and is really becoming more of a facilitator then the holder of the information or “The Book”.

Now if we look at the original reason why agents needed to work in a broker’s office the primary reason was because that was were the listings were and that is where consumers were conditioned to go to get access to the listings.

Today broker’s have a big challenge on their hands because they are forced to provide value to agents who really don’t get a lot of value from the brokerage bricks and mortar themselves. Brokers are forced to cut sweet heart deals to agents for fear of losing the revenue associated with that agent but this is a major slippery slope because ultimately any deal cut for one agent makes it to all other agents who are working in that firm or prospective agents looking to join. Now the broker is forced to do more with less and the agents know they can get more for less. As much as a broker will attempt to differentiate based on their personal interaction with the agents, and that will work for a while, eventually agents will defect to where they can again get more for less and since the biggest commodity that the brokerage used to have and that was the listings and the customers walking through the doors on a regular basis went away because of the web, their relevance to the agent community at large is one of branding and not substance.

So where does that leave us. The first major challenge is for agents and brokerages to recognize that the value is no longer in the listings. Even though listings are important for branding and ultimately as a product to market and sell, they don’t mean a lot because of the MLS and the Internet. The second major challenge is that consumers don’t say let’s go find ourselves a real estate office to find out what is for sale, so walk in traffic is at an all time low and going lower. The market recently driven by the First Time Home Buyer tax credit will likely slow down again once the Government determines that it has done as much as it can to help stimulate the market and once again agents will be scrambling to take as much home from the transactions that generate and the traditional brokerages will be struggling with their overheads.

To put in perspective the cost of Bricks and Mortar runs between $2000 on the low side of the equation upward of $7,000 – $10,000 / year per agent. If you don’t think broker/owners aren’t scared of what is going on in the economy, there is a reason why they are recruiting as aggressively as they are.

One more piece of puzzle relative to “Relevance”.

There has been value in the gathering of agents into an office whether daily or weekly, however the value has been one of Social Value. This is really the nail in the coffin of Traditional Firms. There is a major attempt by brokerages as a last ditch effort to stay relevant by talking about the value of an office, the value of being able to meet with the broker, the Sales Manager etc… and I agree these are valuable, however remember the late 1990’s when everyone recognized the future importance of the Internet. Well we are all recognizing the importance of “Social Media” and in my opinion even more importantly, the importance of Immersive Social Web or what we are referring to internally as Web 3.0.

This really is the Shift that will ultimately change the landscape of real estate brokerages. Whether it be the more superficial Twitter, Facebook, Flikr, Box.net, Google Wave, Orkut or any other number of quasi communication / marketing platforms, or what I consider the Virtual Office of the Future which duplicates the residual value of Bricks and Mortar in Virtual space, the landscape of work and how we do it is being forever changed.

The fact that I can blog on this site and in a matter of a few minutes to a few hours or days have 100’s if not 1000’s of prospective eyeballs read it and interact with me over this is nothing short of amazing and being able to do it from my Home Office which is quickly becoming command central for a multi-state real estate company is the future of our future as agents, brokers and owners.

The question is one of relevancy. Is Bricks and Mortar relevant when an Immersive Web exists where you can interact from your home office in much the same way as you would in a physical Bricks and Mortar office? Not everyone will engage in the immersive web today, but rest assured those in the late teenage years or early 20’s, those agents who will be moving into the workforce over the next 5, 10 and 15 years. Those agents will naturally gravitate to an immersive experience. That immersive experience will displace bricks and mortar. Broker/Owners of traditional firms you are frogs in a pot of water that is getting warming and warmer all the time… The problem is the frog dies before it knows its time to jump out. Try as you might by the time you recognize that you need to change you are too weak to jump out of the pot.

Interested in more information on eXp Realty and where we think the future is headed, please feel free to email info@exprealty.com or call me, Glenn Sanford, Founder and CEO of eXp Realty @ 360-389-2426.

Carbon Footprint Crazy Talk

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:49:26 -0500

Over the last few days I've blogged on our eXp Realty Corporate site on the subject of Bricks and Mortar. The first Article is "The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar" and the second one is "eXp Realty and Being a Green Real Estate Firm".

I blogged the second on based on some ideas presented by Terry Watson at a great presentation I saw down in Everett yesterday and he talked about putting information about being Green and talk about Carbon Footprint.

I thought a bit about it and thought maybe I would talk about the difference in Carbon Footprint between an agent who works out of their home (like in our model) vs someone who works out of a typical Bricks and mortar office.

There was also a bit of talk about a Green designation and the like, however I digress.

I wrote the article and it turns out that when you factor in commute, heat, air conditioning etc... The additional Carbon Footprint cost of driving to and from an office 5 days a week is 5.652 tons of additional CO2 emissions per year. This was actually light because I was factoring in a commute to the office of 5 miles each way and the national average commute is 12.5 miles each way.

I did think, Okay, 5.652 tons is a pretty big deal, but how much of a big deal is it.

The first thing you have to determine is where is most of that Carbon Footprint coming from. Well it turns out that most of it is coming from driving. Something like 90% of it comes from driving. The rest comes from the 100 square feet on average that an agent takes up. If you figure out that other people have to show up as well to the office, the cost per agent goes up again but I digress once again.

Now I thought, how does that compare with a home office. In most cases most of the costs associated with a home office are already paid for by reason that there is already a home. The cost of heating the home office is rather negligible and it turns out that running a computer an extra 8 hours a day only adds about 44 lbs of CO2 per year to your footprint. Even printing is a very minor addition of less then 100 lbs / year of CO2 output with something like 5000 pages a year being printed.

The difference in Carbon Output of a Home and a Home where a Home Office is present goes from something like 2800 lbs of CO2 per year to a whopping 3000 lbs of CO2 output and we if we use energy smart light bulbs, recycle everything we can we will reduce our CO2 output by something like 500 lbs per year.

Compare that to the over 10,000 lbs of CO2 increased by going to an office every day you can see how anyone who is serious about the environment can make an immediate major impact on their Carbon Footprint by working out of their home as much as possible.

The Crazy Talk is when you compare the 200 lbs of additional CO2 output by working out of your home office vs the 10,000+ lbs (5.652 tons) of CO2 output created when you commute to work on a daily basis going to the office doesn't look like a very Green Option. In fact you could almost say that working out of a Bricks and Mortar office in the face of the alternative of working out of ones home office is downright wasteful.

Think about what is 200 lbs of addition CO2 Output / 10,000 lbs of CO2 Output for going to a Bricks and Mortar office. We are talking 2% of the CO2 Output of going to a Physical Office or by going to a Bricks and Mortar Office you are increasing your Office CO2 Output by 5000% or 50x your Home Office Output.

Think about the looks we give someone for now recycling their newspaper. They could recycle their newspaper till they are blue in the face and they wouldn't even approach the impact of working from one's home office even one day a week and yet we don't typically don't look at our neighbor and go, what the hell are you doing driving to work, don't you know that increases your Carbon Output.

A day at the Virtual Office

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:10:44 -0500

It's interesting being a pioneer looking to embrace new technology before the masses. Obviously there is a lot of talk about what a virtual office might look like however we believe we have a pretty good handle on the concept of the virtual office.

Remember the movie disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore? Remember the virtual environment that the company they worked for was developing... Well that technology now exists today and more importantly we are using it...

What you may ask am I talking about. I'm talking about virtual persistent 3D virtual offices where we can interact in a shared environment which closely approximates that of bricks and mortar... We have been using this "Second Life" type environment now for almost 2 months and I'll be honest the results are nothing short of extraordinary. Our productivity has went through the roof and meetings which would have been almost impossible to have IRL without significant expense and travel are now done inside of a virtual environment.

So I have digressed and now to the meat of the Post:

A typical day at the Virtual Office.

I'll usually roll out of bed around 6:15 - 6:30 in the morning... Grab a bite to eat of breakfast and then get in front of my machine, put my headset on and launch eXp Virtual (our virtual office platform).

I'll normally stop by the eXp Operations room to meet with our Outsource team. These are members of our team who work outside of the borders of the United States and do development work, manage our Newsletters, do some of web and collateral material development work. We'll review what they had worked on during their day (our night) to see what progress they had made on the different projects they are working on. That meeting will usually last from 7:00am - 8:00am. Keep in mind we are all in Avatars, all with headsets on and we are sharing screens working on documents and demonstrating task level work which has been done or trying to determine what the next steps.

8:00 - 9:00am I just into our leadership team meeting inside of the eXp Boardroom. Currently we are working on getting Arizona opened up so typically I'll meet with our broker for AZ, our President (also in Arizona) as well as our onshore IT/Development and Administrative Team. All of us are logging in from their homes but we all work together. Normally this group will range from 8 - 11 people depending on what is going on.

On Monday at 9:00am - 11:00am is our eXp Barcamp. This is a relatively unstructured collaborative meeting where everyone is encouraged to bring something they are passionate about and run a meeting of their own for 30 minutes. We'll start by all getting together initially in one common space and breaking out into smaller groups to discuss the topics which we have brainstormed to be facilitated.

On Tuesdays is our Washington State and Arizona State Company meetings. Similar to the office meetings in a Physical Office we meet online in our Virtual Theatre and go over all the materials which we need everyone to stay current on. We might display a video, Powerpoint, Wiki, Website or other materials during the meeting and everyone can ask questions and/or participate directly (via their headset) or via the ongoing Text Chat.

At 11:00am - noon I typically meet again with our developers to see any demonstrations that they might be needing to discuss directly. We'll review where the current state of the Application is and if necessary run some test data through it before moving it into our production application. All the testing will take place online.

Noon: Well a guy has to eat, so I'll typically break and go to lunch with someone IRL. Somewhere around 2:00 - 2:30 I'll get back online with either individual agents to do presentations for them or collaborate on a project or open up a round table to talk about a subject to get us further down the road of having a totally defensible business model.

3:00 - 4:30 I'll start to wrap up the day with different people who have been up to different projects. Again keep in mind that everyone is working out of their homes which is what makes this totally amazing.

There may be a couple more occasions in the office between 4:30 and the time I hit the sack however the bulk of the work is done between 7:00am - 4:30pm.

Bottom line is productivity in all measures has went up, agents and staff are engaged and even though we all work out of our homes we're all having a great time.

EdCon the Last Two days in Seattle

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:57:43 -0500

Well yesterday was that time of year again. EdCon... The Education Conference put on by the Washington Association of REALTORS. For clock hours its really the best deal in Washington State. Last year I was pretty busy so I didn't get my clock hours in and I'll be honest I did get my back up against the wall this year as my birthday is coming up like tomorrow...

What I found quite interesting was that EdCon really embraced some of the Web 2.0 technologies this year. Many of the speakers were talking about box.net as a way to share and store files. As a real estate company we are actually using it as our Paperless office. The Virtual Office of the Agent... Pili Meyer. She talked about using GotoMeeting and/or GotoWebinar for Broker to Agent communications as well as Agent to Consumer communications...

Gee Dunsten was all about business planning... Awesome stuff on the 5 stages of an agent's business.

1 - Creative Stage

2 - Directing Stage

3 - Delegating Stage

4 - Cooperative Stage

5 - Collaborative Stage...

There was tons of other great stuff however I figured I would drop a quick note while I was still thinking about it.

BTW: Check out our new company we launched last week eXp Realty. We are the World's First Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Company :D

Starting a Brand New Virtual Real Estate Company eXp Realty

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:26:30 -0500

If you have followed my blogs here on ActiveRain in the past you'll probably know that I'm as much or more a business person then I am a real estate sales person.

That being said I / We have just completed our firth iteration in the real estate business.

Iteration 1 started on April 29, 2002 when I got licensed as an agent at Prudential Kelstrup REALTORS in Bellingham, WA. During this time I personally built and managed my own lead generation, did my own transaction coordination, showed and negotiated purchase and sale agreements, paid my bill (with the help of my original mentor) and ultimately made a good living as a REALTOR.

Iteration 2 - By 2003 I was starting to generate leads in multiple markets and started to refer some leads out to agents in my office and a few other Prudential Offices around the Pacific Northwest.

Iteration 3 - March 2004 - Started a couple of real estate teams inside of Keller Williams. 1 - In Bellingham, WA and another in Seattle WA. By 2005 we added a couple more teams.

Iteration 4 - April 3, 2007 - Fully Vested in the Profit Share program in Keller Williams I decided to start my own firm, BuyerTours Realty which was essentially our team in our branded real estate firm.

Iteration 5 - October 2009 - This last week we launched eXp Realty as the World's First Fully Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Company. The last three months has been the most intense 4 months of my career and its been totally worth it. Without going into too much detail on this post, we believe that our new model will totally redefine being Virtual without feeling like you have given up any of the interaction and collaboration typical of bricks and mortar.

More to come... Now got to get to finishing up that Press release ;) that I've been meaning to get to the last couple of weeks.

What is Your Exit Strategy?

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:14:24 -0500

One of my favorite subjects relating to the real estate industry is business planning. In my opinion its a subject that is given much lip service by agents and managers however the actual execution of a well built business model is a rarity though any agent, manager or owner could if they so desired really develop and execute against a business plan or model.

That being said, in the book, "The Millionairre Real Estate Agent" by Gary Keller one of the basic premises is how to grow a real estate business into something that produces revenue month after month, year after year and the ultimate goal is to either hire a manager to run your business and/or to sell your business when its your time to start to take it easy.

We all know of what look on the surface to be relatively successful real estate teams and or agents in our marketplace and a lot of agents make truly failed attempts at scaling up their businesses to look like those of their competitors.

As one of those competitors I truly sometimes wish I had the business of an individual agent then the larger enterprise of meeting payroll, lines of credit, P&L's, Balance Sheets, IRS filings, taxes and the many additional features of a business. Sometimes at the end of the day the net income seems small relative to the amount of work necessary to get a business in place.

That being said, I always go back to the basics, or as Stephen Covey put in his 7 habits book. Always begin with the end in mind.

In your Real Estate practice, the end in mind should be your exit strategy. In Stephen Covey's book his end in mind was the ultimate end, or the passing to the other side. In our case relative to the real estate business, it should be "how do I want to turn over my real estate business to someone else to run with?"

Of course this is not a simple question, because begining with the end in mind ultimately means that you have to examine things like, what does your business stand for, how do consumers perceive it? What the difference between my business and someone else's business? What is that differentiation? Is the differentiation scalable?

Experience says to me that most agents will either not be able to answer these questions with any significant authority even after they take time to think about their business. That's not to say an agent isn't smart, ambitious, or even hard working. The reality is that great ideas for a lot of agents are either unatainable or not realistic to begin with.

So assuming that is the case for most agents then what is their choice given their given predicament?

Maybe they should invest in someone else's business.

What do I mean? There are real estate offices that are already established that maybe you can either earn some sweat equity in by providing knowledge and efforts or if you are able you could potentially look at making an actual financial investment in the company. Assuming that you have chosen the right company to back either physically, financially or both you may be able to get a return and potentially generate enough free cashflow necessary to create some financial independence from the rat race of always having to rely on the next sale.

Maybe it makes sense to join a company that provides some incentives for helping the office or company grow. Keller Williams and Exit Realty are the best examples of this, however our company though small provides revenue sharing opportunities for its agents.

Ultimately what you want to be able to do is to be able to step away from the business and still earn some ongoing compensation.

Of course there is always investing in real estate which cashflows and ultimately provides ongoing income from rental properties which having the principal repaid over time by tenants.

Anyway I hadn't blogged for a while but this is a subject that I think about often and I truly believe that if you are in the real estate business you are already in control of your destiny, if you'll only define what that is.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
http://www.BuyerTours.com/

& Real Estate SEO

Can Sales People, Marketing People and Business People Occupy the Same Body?

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:27:50 -0500

Short Answer is they can. The reality is that they can't stand each other.

First, Let's start with our Sales Person. You know who you are. You're excited you have a prospective buyer / seller in front of you and you sell. You've got the Mike Ferry Scripts happening, you've got the contracts going back and forth, you love negotiating. It's in your blood. When you're selling, you're alive. You are a wheeler dealer. You make things happen rather then waiting for things to happen. You are proactive. If you don't have a client, you'll get get one. You eat what you kill. You know the drill...

Now let's put on the Marketing Hat: You are about Lead Generation. You are a major Quadrant II person. You have a plan which you review and execute against. It's not about making the sale, it's about making the phone ring and you can do that. You've run the ads in all the right places, your website is humming, you've got traffic and you want more of it.

Now your Business Owner Hat: You're questions are, What business are we really in? You've got your SWAG.. I mean business plan. It's about ROI and asking, should we even be in the real estate business? Where can we get traction in the marketplace? Can we adequately defend this part of the market? What about our team? Do we have the right people on the right seats on the bus. Is the bus pointed the right direction?

I've transitioned over the last seven years from Sales and Marketing to Business Owner and Director and for me it was a natural transition. It was obvious that if I was going to have some sort of sembelence of sanity in my life I didn't want to continue to be trying to make the next sale... IMHO that would have been the path to burn out for me. Nothing wrong with it, I just knew that for me there had to be a better way.

What I find more mentally challenging is the fact that agents generally tend to not move from Sales very well. They are focused on finding the next customer that they never take the time to put together a marketing plan. Generate the inbound call necessary to scale a business.

If success leaves clues. Here's a big one: You can't scale a one-to-one sales business. The best you can do is create a mini team, but ultimately that's about the best you'll be able to do. Maybe get a couple of buyer's agents and a couple of assistants and then work your butt off to make sure that you make payroll every month.

Real Estate brokerages thrive on the fact that Sales People aren't good at marketing or running businesses. They aren't even very good at protecting their paycheck. Fortunately for the brokerage, there are a lot of agents running around making enough transactions, not scaling their business that they can simply aggregate them under one roof and call themselves a brokerage. From time to time someone will outgrow the fishbowl, but generally speaking agents are like the elephant with the piece of string hanging off their leg. They don't believe in their own ability to move up into marketing or business ownership that they ultimately have little to show for themselves at the end of the day.

Sure business people are competitive. They more then most understand that the fights become more important the larger they grow, so choosing the right fights and making sure you win them is key. But just like a begining sales person, a begining business owner has to start somewhere and there is no better teacher then failure as long as you are willing to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and give it another shot.

I remember reading The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller and having started a number of small businesses including a couple which I ultimately was involved in getting to the public markets, Gary simply stated the "Self Evident" principals of business and packaged them up for real estate agents. The only challenge is that most agents didn't have past business experience to match up the book against.

Ultimately they didn't have the 10,000 hours in the business game to be able to jump in and take it to the next level.

The other challenge for sales people is that once they have the "experience" they often don't believe in that experience. They still have emotional wounds from attempting different aspects of the business and don't realize that now they know how not to do it, so they really are prepared to fight the big fight.

The basic question still remains: Can Sales People, Marketing People and Business People Occupy the same body.

I think my answer is they can, but not at the same time.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC

Looking for a home in Bellingham Washington. Check out our Bellingham Real Estate website http://realestate.bellingham.net/

Selling a Home Via Social Media in 72 hours

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:16:26 -0500

I just saw a Tweet go by on Twitter from @TyDowning:

Plz RT Let's help our own @TimMoore sell his home in 70 hours via ONLY SoMe!! - http://bit.ly/uf8bk - What a great LIVE case study!!

Taking a look at the Craigslist Listing and subsequent Facebook photos it seems that for a guy who knows Social Media he really hasn't spent a lot of time really trying to figure out how to really get this home sold.

Now I'm not saying that the idea is a bad idea but having thought about this subject for the last seven years and having read countless books on the subject of marketing and then comparing that to what actually happens in the trenches there are some glaring challenges for FSBO's no matter what method of marketing they choose.

Value of their time. On the surface this seems like it might lean in the FSBO's favor. They market a property themselves and save on the commission, however there is a significant discrepency of the actual returnable investment on the time invested.

What do I mean? When I as a real estate agent market your home you are typically getting a large number of people and technologies marketing your home for you. Most FSBO's don't sell because it is virtually impossible to compete with the MLS. Your advertising dollars are worth less then an agents advertising dollars.

What do I mean by that? When you spend money (if you choose to): You buy an ad to advertise your home in the newspaper, or even for that matter taking the time to put your home up on Craigslist, Zillow or other places and you get an inquiry on your home and invariably your home doesn't work for the buyer who inquired, what do you do with that buyer? Ultimately you do nothing with them. There is no opportunity for revenue if you don't have a home that specifically is looking for your home. An agent. Different story: Advertising a listing which 5% of the time may lead to the sale of the listing, ultimately have a marketing vehicle to generate buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that most agents are not making a significant income in the current market, so if you take into consideration the amount of dollars spent by an agent and them compare that to the one home that a FSBO has to sell its easy to see how a FSBO in order to create the enthusiasm necessary to sell his/her home may actually spend more (before a home is sold) then they would have paid an agent (after the home is sold).

How do 80+% of consumers search? They search via sites like REALTOR.com, Major Real Estate Portals. It turns out that the portals with the most homes are from websites that are extensions by membership of the MLS. Craigslist may get the occassional investor or tire kicker, but serious buyers want to be able to bookmark and sort and visit a number of homes to make a decision on one.

Who represents most of the buyers in the marketplace? Well its agents. They are the ones working with clients to put together the list of homes to see, giving their opinions before even going into homes and for all intents and purposes nixing homes where they don't have a way to get paid for their efforts.

FSBO's are simply on the losing end of the marketing equation. No matter how good you are at "Social Networking" the power of the coordinated masses (agents and their clients) will out perform the efforts of the one.

Are there cases where this isn't the case. Of course there are. But this is like pointing out that people win the lottery and suggesting that is a good reason to spend lots of money on lottery tickets. Since we've heard about someone selling successfully FSBO we think we can sell on our own and less then 10% of the time the FSBO sale is successful.

Who watches over the pricing of a FSBO? It's obviously buyer and seller, however in order to get a home sold doesn't the home have to be priced at a bargain price relative to other easier to view properties in the marketplace? So does the seller actually net more?

Anyway enough comments on this prior Tweet.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
Bellingham Real Estate

Sacred Cows of Real Estate

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:40:43 -0500

Yesterday I wrote a post on the subject of Commissions and the Rookie agent. I got a lot of feedback however most of the feedback was about how taking a listing at a reduced fee was somehow unprofessional and that it showed weakness of the agent. I won't get into the arguments here, however do feel free to review the original post.

Today I'm kind of interested in what are the Sacred Cows of Real Estate?

Commissions certainly fall in that category.

Another Sacred Cow seems to be that for an agent to have a growing business one needs to focus the majority of time aquiring listings. I've certainly done well on the buyer side of the equation without many listings over the 7 years I've been in the business and in most respects I think that was a good decision for me.

What are some of the other Sacred Cows of real estate? Do you have any that you think should be challenged as a norm for the industry? Let's challenge them together. Please feel free to reply to this post and we'll either start a new conversation on the topic or simply discuss it in the comments section.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
Direct: 360-220-1470

http://www.BuyerTours.com/

Commissions and the Rookie Agent

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:19:48 -0500

I just read an AR blog post encouraging beginning agents to stand firm on commission when in their first listing presentations. Certainly there's a lot of agents who don't like the idea of discounting and it may stem from the fact that if someone discounts or buys the listing then those "established" agents are pushed into a corner of either reducing their fees or walking away from the listing.

In terms of competition we typically compete on a few fronts:

1 - Experience: I am the most experienced agent in this market so you need to list with me because I'm the best.

2 - Relationship: You and I are good friends so you need to list with me.

3 - Marketing Plan: Similar to Experience but different in that a well executed marketing plan may be better then listing with the listing agent who is the most experienced with a market.

4 - Reputation: Similar again to Experience, but this is based on how someone is percieved in the marketplace. Do they do a good job? Do people refer this agent ect?

5 - Price: All things being equal, consumers tend to be motivated by price.

So let's look at a new agent:

Typically, they have no experience, limited relationships, a rough outline of a marketing plan, no reputation to speak of and no clients.

The agent then gets a prospect, a would be seller to go and meet with to sell his / her home.

The client is going to measure up the agent based on the criteria above:

The catch 22 for the new agent is that without experience there is no reputation. Even relationships don't count that much though its likely your mom will list her home with you and until you have had some clients there is no repeat / referals going on.

So how do you land your first clients: Well the answer is obvious: Price

If an agent is inexperience and doesn't have confidence then on what basis is that agent competing for the listing? In all likihood the only to compete for the listing is the fee. So even though the suggestion is to hold firm on a higher fee (which is obviously negotiable anyway), it would make sense to take a reduced commission with the first few sellers with some general privisos.

1 - If I do a good job (and I will): Would you be willing to refer me to your friends and family. Ultimately I know that I'll do a great job for you and I'm willing to take a lower commission due to the perceived inexperience in the real estate market which I plan on making up by turning you into a raving fan.

2 - I'd like your feedback on all aspects of the job I do for you. I'd like critiques on my listing presentation, my marketing plan, my feedback plan, and how we (you and I) collaborate on getting your home sold in the shortest amount of time and for the most money.

3 - I can take a discount on the listing side of the commission, but it would be a mistake especially in this market to discount the buyer side of the commission.

I wouldn't make the first few listings about the amount of commission. Think about the first listings as cutting your teeth and learning from your on the job training. Should a seller pay a full fee if you are fumbling around with the listing? Is it fair to a seller to have him / her get frustrated while you learn what steps should be done first and which second and so forth? I think its only fair to provide a discounted fee on your first few listings.

Once your confidence and systems are in place then discounting to get a listing should become a thing of the past, but then again you are now a professional real estate agent who actually knows what to do and how to do it. Now you have experience, relationships, a marketing plan, a reputation and the need to compete on price becomes a thing of the past.

Price is a real issue for home sellers. In the absense of a compeling reason for the client to list their home with you, the only compelling reason left is price. The reduction in your commissions is the price (and the revenue btw) that you are willing to pay to get the experience. The faster you get the experience, the faster it will be that you earn what you are worth.

Would anyone notice if Realogy Declared Bankruptcy?

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:50:50 -0600

Earlier today @REALTORMarley Twittered while at the Keller Williams Family Reunion (company annual sales conference): According 2 #yahoo financial #realogy (ie Coldwell Banker) likely to fail in 2009 HelpUSell filed for bankruptcy... #kwfr

Checking there's a bit of buzz over an article written by Rick Newman over at USA Today called 15 Companies That might not make it in 2009. #5 on his list in Realogy. For those of you not familiar with Realogy they own the likes of Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, Sotheby's and a new entry Better Homes and Gardens. Realogy was purchased in 2007 by Apollo Management through Apollo Fund VI. Apollo owns numerous big name companies some of whom have recently filed for Bankruptcy including Linen and Things as one of the more recognized names to go BK.

My first reaction was that this was evidence that Bricks and Mortar are dead when it comes to real estate. Though this idea certainly has merit looking into the details further it looks like the challenge with Realogy is really one of significant debt and the inability for Apollo or Realogy themselves to be able to reoganize that debt in a timely basis. There also seems to be a suggestion that the companies ratio of assets to debt are out of whack and as a result bond holders could accelerate the repayment of the debt and then the last part of the puzzle that I was able to find was the idea that debt issued by Realogy is trading at a significant discount to face value. One post I read suggested it was trading a 6.5 cents on the dollar which suggests that the company is like a boxer who is already knocked out but for some reason won't fall down.

All that being said, what happens if Realogy actually files for a reoganization of debt? Well it turns out that Carl Icahn is a big holder of debt in Realogy and as a result he probably has some ideas for the company, however what does it do to on the ground agents at C-21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby's or BHG?

My guess is that business on the ground won't even skip a beat.

Why?

Well if you think about other companies that are filing for BK, they almost all deal in a business where the inventory is either made or purchased by the parent company. Take autos. If GM declares bankruptcy and they are forced to shut down manufacturing facilities and close down product lines, dealers will ultimately either go out of business or do a whole lot less business because there is just less inventory to sell.

If you are a retailer like Linen and Things was then inventory is purchased (even if it is on terms) by the parent and as a result a store is only as good as the inventory that the parent is willing to purchase for the store. No inventory again no sales.

Real Estate is a different animal. The parent provides no actual inventory. They don't own homes, they in most cases don't even broker homes, they simply collect franchise fees for providing a selling system for agents. There is a possibility that national advertising campaigns might be cut which probably won't trickle into consumers awareness for quite a number of months and if the contractual relationship with the franchisees is solid maybe even that wouldn't be impacted.

Inventory is a function of agent quality and agent count. So unless there is a massive exodus of agents from these franchises relative to other firms, these companies will continue to maintain their marketshare.

So will an agent be impacted at these major firms? Other then a short term black eye, it's likely that the eye will heal and business will be back to business as usual. Of course given the state of the housing market that means working hard and bringing a big game to the table to make a modest income (if that).

Upside, a leaner and meaner corporate office (once the initial reality at the home office is over with). Downside, less personel supporting all the brands and the agents (because without a doubt there would be downsizing in a restructuring).

Anyway that's my first blush opinion on what might happen if Realogy did file BK.

Mind Mapping Software

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:32:03 -0600

I watched a video a few days ago and in the background of the video was a Mind Map. Now I'm pretty hip on the technology that is out there, however one of the challenges that I have is with top down hiarchial business planning. Not everything fits neatly as bulleted lists. Some ideas are more squishy and there is a need to just get info on a piece of paper and start to drag things around to see where they fit. In fact my personl opinion is that more closely aligns with how our brain works anyway.

I tend to more involved with platforms that charge little or no money so of course I looked for something free and I found FreeMind: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ .

After downloading it, I started to play with it and boy this makes brainstorming on the computer fun again. The ability to put down a main topic, add lots of nodes, add nodes to nodes and even add more nodes to those nodes. Hook related nodes together. It's awesome. Anyway check it out. In my humble opinion if you don't have a good way of brainstorming out business plans, follow-up plans for your different lead types in your database or even doing up a large family tree, this might be a good place to start.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC
Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog

RealFuture CRM vs. Top Producer

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:14:33 -0600

During August, September and then October our real estate revenues went into the toilet. Because of the credit crunch and the fact that consumers just quit buying revenues went down and our cash reserves dropped significantly. As a result we were forced to make some decisions which we had put off for a while. Many of them were cost cutting in nature but some of it was just refining the model.

Our first major expense we cut back on was Top Producer. This has been a hard one to replace, however we have around 50+ agents currently working in the different markets that we compete and as a company we were paying for all the Top Producer accounts. With Assistant Accounts our monthly expenses were about $1400/month which is not insignificant.

Looking at the CRM Landscape there was not a lot of solutions that made sense to move to. We had evaluate most of the Real Estate specific CRMs and most of them were priced similar to Top Producer. We were hoping there was something in the Open Source community and that was lacking as well. The closest I could find was ZohoCRM.com which provided a three person workgroup CRM platform however it lacked the ability to do drip campaigns, or if it did it was too crytic to figure out how to do them.

In July I made a run to Inman Connect in San Francisco and saw a product RealFuture CRM. On the surface it looked like what we needed. It provided a contact manager for all of our agents and with some upgrades we could push and track leads sent to agents from the company level.

However the biggest plus was that the platform for the basic accounts is "Free".

Now there are limitations to the platform however for the agent just getting started or even an agent with a modest database (of less then 500 people) the platform doesn't cost a dime and it provides most of the functionality of Top Producer on an individual agent level, the most important to us at this point was the ability for agents to put their clients into drip campaigns for longer term follow-up.

So far RealFutureCRM has been a good choice. Their tech support seems very responsive when there have been issues and it even interfaces with our GMail Platform inside of Google Apps.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC & Working The Magic LLC
Direct: 360-220-1470

Visit our Phoenix Real Estate website. Also check out our Real Estate SEO blog.

Twitter - Competitive Intelligence Gathering Program

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:37:47 -0600

As part of my getting into Twitter I installed TweetDeck and added a few people to my follow list (now at around 67 people). A few of the people that I've added are strong REALTORS in markets that we run teams or offices in including Seattle, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Long Beach California. Many of those same competitors are also following me as well. What I've started to notice on Twitter is that many of the agents on Twitter especially those who are more leading edge are also Twittering about what they are doing to grow their business models out.

Keep in mind that IMHO especially when it comes to the real estate market in major metros what one agent does in his/her marketing plan will likely not impact the marketplan or success of another agent in that marketplace measurably, so to some extent there isn't a lot of risk in Twittering. However by participating in the Twitter discussion either as a lurker (following a bunch of peoople and not Twittering yourself) or what will more likely happen, Twittering for the purposes of being a member of the community at large, you'll likely be able to get ideas or even brainstorms with other Twitter participants.

I can tell you that in the last 72 hours I've learned a bunch about Twitter that I never knew and I'm now modifying parts of our business model to include some ideas I've seen Twittered about by agents around the country.

So if you haven't added Twitter to your competitive intelligence gathering efforts you'll want to start soon, before your competitors beat you to it.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/ceoglenn

BuyerTours Realty LLC & Working The Magic LLC

Check out our Bellingham Real Estate Website and/or

Our Real Estate SEO Blog.

Twitter Day 3 Observations

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:41:59 -0600

Three days ago I decided to take a closer look at Twitter. Prior to that I had opened a Twitter account and noticed that a few people who I knew of and a few I didn't know at all were following me on Twitter which was quite interesting in its own right since in reality I hadn't really posted much to Twitter other then to open an account. At that point I really wasn't following anyone and I was struggling with the idea of why would I. I had posted a couple of Twitter posts back six or eight months ago when I saw that Dustin Luther was using Twitter to update his Facebook status which was kind of interesting but as far as I could tell nothing interesting was going on on Twitter.

My first blog post which I posted yesterday about how Twitter is like Channel 9 on a CB Radio when I was a teen is certainly a good basic description.

Today I learned there were channels on Twitter. Channels on Twitter are typically prefaced by the # symbol. There was one that I saw today which was #REBiggestLoser. It turns out this a weight loss motivational channel for REALTORS.

I also found that there are some pretty famous people Twittering their day away. Lance Armstrong Twitters and he has like 17,700 followers. He's only following 41 people but I'm now a follower of Lance and his Twitters have been so far pretty cool to read.

It turns out that this little Twittering community in 140 characters or less is more interesting then I would have ever expected.

I for one will be Twittering more... BTW: My A/R Posts now update Twitter and Twitter updates my Facebook Status... And then the widget on the right of this post includes my latest Twitters on Twitter.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC & Working the Magic LLC

Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog

Twitter - Our version of the CB Radio

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:46:33 -0600

I remember almost 30 years ago when my parents would take me to see my mom's relatives in Alturas California that it seemed that everyone owned a CB Radio Alturas was a bit remote and a rancher community for the most part and everyone had these big long antennas on their automobiles that would allow anyone to talk to anyone else who would be willing to respond to them.

Information could be passed back and forth between a couple of people and unless you changed the channel to a less busy frequency there was a good chance that there were a lot of people listening to the conversation.

Earlier today I had someone follow me on Twitter. I hadn't used Twitter for at least six months but every couple of weeks someone else would follow me on Twitter. Well I decided to really get into Twitter. I tried out the Twitter plug-in for Google Desktop but it wouldn't allow me to post and then I downloaded and installed TweetDeck. Now this is a cool piece of code. It divides up all the conversations in such a way that it can be meaningful to read the Tweets coming in and it provides a lot of tools as well.

Well upon my announcement that I was going to get involved with Twitter in a Twitter post one of my followers posted a note that ultimately got me a bunch of new followers on Twitter as well. Well from there I decided that I needed to follow a few more RE voices and have since added a few more and interestingly enough many of those same people have decided to follow me as well.

What's the upside to all this? Well I now have a bit of a new audience. I can see how expanding this audience over time could really be a leverage point in some of the different ventures that I'm involved in so it seems that the goal may be to grow my Twitter network so ultimately when I have something to say there are a lot of people listening.

You can find me on Twitter @ http://www.twitter.com/ceoglenn

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Bellingham Real Estate - BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC

Chec out our Real Estate SEO blog

Merry Christmas to All

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:39:47 -0600

Well it's Christmas Eve and another year has almost come to an end. Even with all the negative press and real world slow downs in the market I'm thankful for being in an industry that has very little barrier to entry and where someone without a lot of capital can grow a practice into a business.

Even with all the challenges that exist, the real estate industry in my humble opinion provides one of the best platforms for individuals to test their entreprenueral muscle, develop personal mastery, and ultimately exceed to virtually any level you wish to grow to.

ActiveRain has become a part of my life and I know its become a part of many other real estate agents lives around the country. It gives us the ability to tap into clues of success and leave a few clues for others to figure out along the way. It gives us a way to track (whether through virtual stalking ;) ) or collaborate with people who are exploring all kinds of different ways to grow and succeed in this business.

As we move toward 2009 together as a community, let me say thanks to all those who have challenged me to think about this business in new ways; to look at the business with fresh eyes; and to those who (God Bless 'em) are still trying to figure out this whole business to begin with.

Again Merry Christmas... I'm pretty sure Santa is on his way to your house right now... So go to bed!!!

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC
-- Bellingham Real Estate --

& Working The Magic LLC
Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog

The Other Secret - The Law of Distraction

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:58:40 -0600

Okay, I'll admit it... This blog post is in fact a distraction from some of the business planning stuff I am continuing to do before the new year. I found my mind wandering to different subjects and drifting from the task at hand which is how all of the different business units hook together and ultimately provide value and accountability for agents that I work with. That being said, Distraction raised its head and I found myself thinking about the fact that I needed to get my workout plan back on track for the new year, and some of the personal goals which I need to be putting into place rather then just the business goals.

I also read a headline about a Blizzard heading our way so I'm thinking I should get out this morning and do something (like get a cup of coffee at Starbucks)... I digress however being distracted yet again from my blog post about The Law of Distraction.

If the Secret is the Law of Attraction, then the anti-secret is The Law of Distraction. Messing with the goal setting mechanism of the brain in favor of short term gratification. So whether it be grazing for food in the kitchen, watching an old episode of Star Trek, or updating one's Facebook status, these are all distractions.

Life wouldn't be any fun if it didn't have distractions. It's just that too many distractions ultimately yield low productivity and in this current economic environment, one must stamp out as much non-productivity in favor of making sure that goals are achieved or at least pursued.

Well enough of this distraction. Now its time to get that cup of coffee...

Snow is great for business planning

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:50:43 -0600

I've been trading a couple of facebook jabs with some of my friends in warmer climates like Long Beach California. James Bridges posted that he was going to play tennis last night and that it was cold. Looking at the weather in SOCAL it was 48 degrees down there vs our 21 degrees and a foot of snow here in Bellingham Washington. That being said I think I've been a lot more productive in the last 24 - 48 hours due to the sheer fact that the snow is keeping everyone at home... Why is that good? Business Planning...

It's so much easier to do business plans up when the distractions are at a minimum. When I'm in Bellingham I tend to go to the office every day and of course there are always distractions. Someone has a client challenge (a coaching moment), the gossip (water cooler stuff), and then other people who simply drop by the office the I talk with ultimately means that I live my life in Quadrant I (7 habits) while at the office on most day. I end up doing Quadrant II activities when I'm at home. My daughters now spend most of their time in the rec room, or texting their friends, doing homework or watching YouTube videos or playing video games. They are becoming "independent" as much as they can so parents are the necessary evil in their lives to growing up.

Anyway all that said, I've been able to focus on multiple integrated business plans pretty much non-stop for the last few days and its amazing how focused 2009 is becoming. Taking the ideas from my head and putting them on paper and ultimately figuring out what resources we have and what we need to complete our goals for next year is something that for the most part needs to be done in isolation.

So the upside is that all this Snow is insuring that we have the 2009 possible... Of course to execute on said plan we will have to wait for the snow to thaw.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC
Direct: 360-220-1470

Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog

Business Planning 2009

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:32:19 -0600

Well it's about that time of year again for many agents. The time when they think about what has taken place this last year and how they want this next year to be.

I'm working on helping our agents with their business plans this year and a few thoughts have come to mind.

Questions that should be answered:

What is in your Lead Generation Toolbox as an agent?

Website, Blog, ActiveRain, Localism, Friends and Family, Past Clients, Email, CRM ect...

How much time are you going to spend on those items that you put in your Toolbox? Are you going to master a couple or are you going to spread your time around to multiple sources of Lead Generation?

How much of it can you automate or get done with leverage?

What is the outcome of all this work? How many deals do you want to do this next year? What do you want to Gross? What do you want to net? What will that do for your personal life?

What books are you reading to inspire you on the subject?

This is just a start of some ideas, but a little work should yield results that are better then 2008.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC

Looking for a Home in Bellingham Washington? Check out our Bellingham Real Estate website.

Photo Galleries

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:37:21 -0600

I'm liking Picasa more and more. Google using some of Microsoft's early on practices of giving away the platform and then (most likely) charge once you have the marketshare continue to bring out or support (by buying) the best web platforms.

I've been playing around with Picasa for a couple of years. Nothing serious, just playing. I would still do my buyer based virtual tours in Adobe Photoshop Elements and upload them via ftp to a server before emailing to a client. Well Picasa has changed that. With the ability to upload tours to the Google servers via Picasa it certainly makes the whole resizing and then manual uploading of a tour via Photoshop Elements seem somewhat redundant.

I was looking to put up our company Christmas party photos on Facebook this morning and then I thought, there has to be a plugin between Facebook and Picasa. I did a search on Google and sure enough Facebook does have an add-on for Picasa to upload an album.

I downloaded the plug in and then highlighted the album in Picasa and clicked on publish to Facebook. After entering my email and password it was quick as a wink.

I love all this free stuff we have as tech agents... No wonder the old timers are either going broke or getting out of the business. The costs of being in business traditionally takes the margin and then some, especially when the tech savvy agent can do more, faster for free.

Link the Short Tail - Blog the Long Tail

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:07:24 -0600

There is a lot of controversy about linking however its what works and continues to work for me for the last six plus years. I have a lot of top ranked sites that were ranked because of link building. Link building is almost a relgious discussion because for each person who has done well with link building it seems that someone knows someone who was "blacklisted" by Google or Yahoo for Link Building. We've never been blacklisted; knock on wood; however we have really started to work on the blogging front to round out the SEO/SEM part of the business.

Ultimately for a new website (of a new agent or someone who is just getting on the web) to get traffic, Google needs to know it exists. Then Google needs to know that you are in fact a website worth ranking. The only way to do that is through link building. Some will be one way links as in Adword Campaigns, Directory Submissions, links from the Chamber of Commerce or your brokerage in your city. Others may be pay links from your newspaper, or other advertising medium. All of that will only get you so far. Even if you are a blogging fool it will take a while before you are blogging on something unique enough for Google to rank high.

Now if you do reciprocal link building for your community, like we do with Bellingham Real Estate, with other agents and you get a few hundred incoming links from other agents you will become highly relevant compared to your competition. You'll also be able to pass on link juice to your blogs which means that even your content will be ranked better then just blogging alone.

Ultimately it is combination of efforts that will get you the best results IMHO.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC
Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog

Chuckanut Drive - Street View Map

Glenn Sanford (eXp Realty & Working The Magic, LLC) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:15:39 -0600

A few weeks ago we decided to launch a Chuckanut Drive Real Estate page on our Bellingham Real Estate website. As many of you may know Chuckanut is a world famous drive that is one of the most beautiful winding road overlooking the Ocean out onto the San Juan Islands.

Earlier today I was looking at Google's Street View maps in Seattle and even though the initial indication from Google Maps is that the Street Views don't extend much out of Seattle it turned out that Google had done street views of Chuckanut Drive.

If you check out my latest Chuckanut Drive blog post, you'll see embeded in the blog post a Street View from Google. If you haven't checked out Chuckanut Drive before this is a great way to take a look at the drive without ever leaving home.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford
--
Founder / CEO
BuyerTours Realty LLC &
Working The Magic LLC
Check out our Real Estate SEO Blog