I just became aware of a potential risk associated with those electrical smart meters that have been installed in California homes. Given that the Sage Report was only released January 1, you can be sure buyers are going to start asking the question, "Is this home safe?" I can bet that most lawyers will counsel against answering this question - after all, you're not qualified to answer it. So what do you say, and more importantly do, to address a buyer's fears about the safety of their family? Will their be yet another disclosure added to the purchase agreement? Will buyers require removal of the smart meter before closing escrow? Maybe but that's not the purpose of my post.

The purpose of my post is to give you some resources so you can understand what your clients are talking about. The Sage Report mentioned above has a hyperlink to the actual report produced by Sage Associates, an environmental consulting firm located in Montecito, California. I should reveal that I don't know much about the company or the efficacy of the study's methods. Here is a video I found that explains some of the science. Careful, it's over 30 minutes long.

Given the extent of the installation of smart meters throughout my neighborhood, I can't imagine a place I could go where I wouldn't be affected by the radio transmissions so I'm not going to worry about it...for now. But I won't be giving my smart meter a bear hug anytime soon. Yup, my smart meter gets no love.

Here is a list of vacation rental websites where you can advertise your house rental and, in many instances, collect payments. Please note that the Alexa Internet rankings are a measure of total traffic to the site and are subject to change - these were the results for 12/15/2010.

VRBO - A HomeAway Company (#3,888 Alexa U.S. rank)

Homeaway (#5,520 Alexa U.S. rank)

airbnb (#9,438 Alexa U.S. rank)

VacationRentals.com (#20,210 Alexa U.S. rank)

Vacapedia (#260,088 Alexa U.S. rank)

Always on Vacaction (#49,993 Alexa U.S. rank)

CyberRentals (#88,320 Alexa U.S. rank)

Find Rentals (#96,239 Alexa U.S. rank)

Great Rentals - A HomeAway Company (#101,922 Alexa U.S. rank)

rentalo.com (#128,583 Alexa U.S. rank)

Vacation Rentals 411 (#150,325 Alexa U.S. rank)

Beach House (#165,392 Alexa U.S. rank)

If you have used these sites to market your property, please share your experience:

Are any exclusive and don't allow you to sign up with other sites?

What sites have the greatest user satisfaction?

Which sites get the best results? Best results for the money?

What are the best regional/specialty sites?

What other sites would you add to this list? Why?

Which sites let you embed video?

Looks like Yahoo! Video is 'tacking' - a sailing term used to describe a boat that changes direction in order to better use the wind. I just received a short email announcing that starting today, upload functionality was removed. Users have until March 14, 2011 to retrieve videos from the site. It's not terribly surprising since Yahoo! acquired Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr in March 2005 and added a video player in April 2008, effectively creating two competing free-to-the-public video players in the Yahoo! family of companies.

What is surprising is that Yahoo! seems intent on competing with Hulu with network-style programming. It isn't clear what their business model will look like but small, independent production companies like Look Ma! will not be part of the program. I'm not saddened by the news - Yahoo! video has produced few views for my videos compared with the LookMa YouTube Channel and Daily Motion. In fact, I've been uploading my real estate videos to Flickr (#34 U.S. Alexa rank) on a paid basis for about a year now and have seen much higher views there than on Yahoo! video. For this reason, I see little negative impact from this news on my clients. Perhaps Yahoo! will even pour some marketing dollars into Flickr Video and drive more eyeballs our way?!

Eric Robbins, Chief Storyteller

Promote Video | Learn Video | Create Video

*****************************

Here's the email I received:

Dear Yahoo! Video user,

After careful consideration, we will be removing all general user-generated content upload capability and user-uploaded video from Yahoo! Video. As a result, your videos, user profiles, ratings, favorites, and playlists will no longer be available after March 14, 2011. User video content from Yahoo! Video that remains embedded on third party sites will no longer be playable after March 14, 2011.

Available on your profile page is a software utility that will allow you to download the videos you have uploaded to Yahoo! Video to your computer through March 14, 2011. You can find your profile by clicking on the 'My Video' tab or going to http://video.yahoo.com/mypage.

Once you download your videos, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video.

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Yahoo! Video.

If you have any questions about this change, please visit our FAQ section, or contact Customer Care.

The Yahoo! Video Team

*******************************************************************

Here's the Yahoo! FAQ response to "What is Yahoo! Video?":

Yahoo! Video is your Internet video entertainment experience, bringing you streaming video and audio content from the leaders in entertainment, sports, and news. You can watch exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage from your favorite reality shows. You can follow your favorite sports throughout the season and tune in to the network news, when you want to watch it.

Because Yahoo! Video is browser-based, it automatically launches and plays your content through a process called streaming. This makes it easier for you to enjoy your content because there are no software downloads to get started, as long as you have a current web browser and current media player software installed.

The 2010 RESA (Real Estate Staging Association) reports that houses that are marketed without staging, removed from the market and then reintroduced with staging spend a significantly lower amount of time on the market. However, the study makes no mention of whether the houses were put back on the market at the same price or a lower price. I would think that most houses that get reintroduced to the market have a lower price than earlier listed. Could that be a factor in the shorter market times?

Honestly, I believe under the right market conditions, staging is a
major benefit to selling a home quickly. People are visual and seeing a
cluttered house detracts from visualizing their new home. Maybe it even
reminds them of their old, cluttered home - the one they no longer want
to live in. And as for empty homes, they're lonely and uninviting.

However, when the bubble is getting hot there is more demand than
supply. Staging isn't as important during this period since buyers are
in a feeding frenzy. However, staging still helps drive those multiple
offers and the price. When the market is down, you just want to get feet
on the floor.

Last comment and I'll shut up finally! But this is the most important
piece to all this. If you are selling in 2010, you are marketing on the
Internet where 90% of buyers do their research. That means they are
looking at pictures and videos of all the houses that meet their
requirements. If a house looks shoddy, they simply click to the next
one!

Of course, I have a vested interest in those pictures and videos looking
good...that's my business. But I also have a vested interest in helping
my clients - agents and sellers - to move their homes quickly. To
accomplish that, I prefer a staged home.

Stupid title but it got your attention, no?

If you are one of those agents sold on the benefits of staging, than this post is for you. If you're going to invest in staging a home right, make sure you get the most mileage by producing a home tour video. You will reach more buyers and your seller will love your marketing-savvy. And because your video lives on the Internet long after your listing sells, you continue to benefit and your ROI keeps going up-up-up!

But an even better tack is to highlight your staging and video marketing during the listing presentation to get the business. Are any of your competitors doing this? If they are, what's your counter-punch? Here's your counter-punch: free tech-savvy presentation materials (.ppt,.mov).

I have filmed over half The City for CityTourVideo.com but I need to get these areas:

O SOMA/South Beach
O Russian Hill
O Downtown/Civic Center
O Inner Richmond
O Richmond SeaCliff
O USF/Panhandle
O Western Addition
O Alamo Square/NOPA
O Hayes Valley
O Inner Sunset
O Sunset
O Mission
O Potrero Hill
O Twin Peaks/Diamond Heights
O Bernal Heights
O Glen Park
O Excelsior/Outer Mission
O West Portal/Forest Hill
    Mt. Davidson Park
O Ingleside/SFSU/CCSF
O Bayview
O Financial District

Are there any shots you feel should be in these videos?

Sure, you can post your listings directly onto your personal Facebook profile but this can alienate your friends who are not in the market for a home.  Here are a few other methods for marketing your new listings on Facebook (don't forget to trumpet this service in your listing presentations):

1. Create a Group or Fan Page and post your listings there. This is FREE but can take some time to populate with friends and fans. Video-YES

2. Widen your net and post your listing on the Facebook Marketplace. Facebook launched the marketplace in May 2007 but with few adopters, it retooled with the help of Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle.com. This new format launched recently, so the juice is concentrated for early adopters - there are few agents doing this and it's FREE! Video-NO

3. Create a Facebook Ad and target Facebook users by city, age, gender and education level. Choose a headline that is accurate, yet disarming, and a photo that shows off the best feature of the house in high detail.  A buyer who clicks on this ad can be sent to any landing page you desire - the property or agent URL makes the most sense. However, you could also send it to one of your Facebook pages so the buyer can interact more easily with you. You could link to the listing video in your profile videos or link to your Facebook Marketplace listing. Cost is minimal - $1 can get you 5,000 impressions or more. Video-YES

For more advice like this, please join the Mimicc Real Estate Marketing Lab.

Eric Robbins, Chief Storyteller
Look Ma! and New Rulez Marketing

There are two ethics being addressed with this question:

1. How is an agent personally green?
2. What does the agent know about green building and houses?

Question #2 is certainly more identifiable and measurable.  NAR's Green Resource Council has a designation designed to help agents get knowledgeable about green housing issues and to subsequently market themselves as having said knowledge.  Clearly there is value here both to the agent and the consumer. But what isn't as clear is to what extent a consumer is persuaded to work with a green agent based on 3rd party designations. There are certainly consumers out there who seek out green houses but do they really care about the green agent when their last agent proved capable and trustworthy? I don't know the answer but I suspect 'trustworthy' wins out over 'green' much of the time.

Question #1 is more interesting because it requires an agent to make sacrifices that put him/her at a competitive disadvantage to other agents. If you use your car less or stop altogether, you can't visit clients as much and we all know how important it is to be seen by our clients.  If you go completely paperless, you stop doing direct mail and your competitors will be seen more often. And so the big question becomes, do consumers care that you lowered your carbon footprint? How would they even know unless you visited them more often or sent them direct mail?

This is issue is near and dear to my heart so I wanted to dedicate some brainstorming on how to best serve the consumer's green needs and how to overcome the competitive disadvantage that is created in personally going green.

What do you think? Feel free to respond here or join me in the Mimicc Real Estate Marketing Lab where we have dedicated a group to this topic.

Real Estate Video

City Tour Video

Real Estate Lab

I read a recent ActiveRain blog talking about the power of surveying your clients.  It was rocking good advice! Not only does 'the survey' help the agent better service their clients, they can also be used to help the agent better spend her marketing dollars.  And there is one more important benefit - she touches her past clients in a unique and reputation-building way! Here's an example of a survey result one of my client's experienced.

Real Estate Video

City Tour Video

Real Estate Lab