Flyers or No Flyers?

Years ago I decided to try taking off all my tubes and flyers off my yard arm signs on my listings to see if I could get more calls. I decided that since I wasn't getting many calls that I'd try it. I had about 20 listings at the time and it was a chore refilling all the tubes but more than that it was about the lack of calls. I had a feeling that it might be because of the flyers. Was I giving them too much information?

At first, I thought I'd just take out some pertinant information, like the price. The phones were ringing much more when I did that but the buyers generally were upset that there was no price on there. I realized it was probably better to have no flyer at all then to have one with limited information that only made buyers mad. I certainly couldn't get too many appointments with buyers who were angry.

So I decided to remove all the tube flyers and the phones rang like crazy. The buyers had no information so they had to call. I got many more appointments and many more sales.

Occasionally, I'll have a seller who insists on a flyer tube on the sign and of course I get no calls on their listing. I tell them about my personal flyer tube survey but some sellers think they know more, even though you're the expert?

I think that if you give them all the info they won't call. I believe that the home buying process is done by process of elimination. If they stop and grab your flyer, they read it and see that it's a 3 bedroom. They want 4 so they keep driving until they call on a sign with no flyer and the agent gets them an appointment to show them other listings. I've been selling residential real estate full time in my area of Orlando, Florida for 17 years. I think that I can say that I believe in my little survey because I could see the difference in the amount of calls and ultimately the increased amount of appointments and sales for me.

Does anyone agree with me on this, or do you have a different opinion if so, tell me why.

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How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings!

How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings!

There are many ways in which agents use their Active Rain blogs for buyers, like in relocation packages and email alerts. Since our focus is on getting listings and Bob Stewart has this contest going on about how we share our Active Rain blog to build existing relationships I thought that I would share how we incorporate our Active Rain blog on a listing presentation over the phone or in person.

We also use our Active Rain blog information with our existing sellers.

Here is the play by play:


1. We take all of our short sale information posts and post them on our website under its' own URL: short-sales-Florida.com. Whenever a person, attorney, prospect, neighbor, buyers agents, whomever has a question about short sales we send them a link to our page that contains all our Active Rain short sale posts all in one place so they don't have to figure out how to use, 'search' or 'tags'.  This way they can read at their leisure, book mark the page of even print out the articles to read later on. This is probably our most successful and effective marketing strategy in using our Active Rain blog.

2. Go Google Me! You see, every agent has some sort of website, most are buried in the google sand box never having been indexed so that gives us a huge advantage. We have Active Rain screen shots that we use in our slide show presentation showing us as the point leader for Florida and a slide that shows the most subscribed to blogs on Active Rain. Since we are in the top 4- that is something we can use in our listing tool box! Now I know a lot of people will say so what about the points. Well, I am here to tell you that our sellers know it is a big deal because they read our blog. Not only that, people who don't know us will say to us: I don't know what those points mean but they must be important to be up there like that. Why would I want to market that we are one of the most popular blogs out of 160,000 agents plus? More exposure for their listings of course! Success breeds success.

3. On existing listings we take screen shots of our Active Rain statistics page along with our Clustermap screen shot to show them how many views their listing got from being posted on Active Rain. I love this feature because it is the proof in the pudding. Like Nestor says, "My favorite license plate is the Missouri, show me state." Show me what is going on with my listing! The sellers love this. We also use this same feature for listing prospects. We will take one of the existing listings and then show this same information to let them know what Nestor and Katerina can do for their property.

4. Problem short sales: We take a post we write such as Freddie Mac- Does Anyone There Know How To Read- and post it, then ask for reblogs, then take the post along with all the comments and send it to all our Senators and Congressmen, media outlets, etc, to get some action. You can makes these types of posts very viral if they contain a good cause. People like to help with causes. The seller was in tears as she read each of the comments because it meant so much to her that there was support for her.

5. Spreading the word: You know I write a lot of posts from my heart, political, natural health, homeschool, etc. We have our 'subscribe by email' set up through feedburner. You do not need to be an AR member to subscribe to our blog this way. Many of our local moms, families, consumers and agents who are not members of AR follow our blog. Like kind attracts like kind. So we have a lot of readers who follow our blog not because of real estate but because of what we believe and that in turn, turns into referrals from those who know, like and trust us.  We have bookmarks and business cards that are just about our Active Rain blog. We pass those out everywhere we go.

6. Surprise: I am working on some fantastic marketing tools to highlight our Active Rain blog and more. Since I got my new mac I have discovered the endless marketing possibilities with the tools that mac has to offer. Already I have cut my time by one third in how long it takes to put a post together now. As I master these tools- I will share them with you but also wait til you see the stuff I am cooking up! Subscribe to our blog so you don't miss out.

If you are using Active Rain as your blogging platform you should look into ways in which to promote your blog to your existing data base, your existing clients and prospects in your community and on line. You can increase your readership, your email subscribers and develop the relationships that will lead you to listings and closed sales as well as making some great contacts along the way.

 

 

How To Use Your Active Rain Blog To Get Listings!  by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

By TwitterButton

 

Shouldn't Realtors be fighting this bill?

I have been seeing alarmist ads of TV about the American Clean Energy & Security Act of 2009 for some time now, but it took an email from one of my past customers to get me to look into it a bit further. I certainly had no idea that it may have such a dramatic impact on housing and the ability for owners to sell their homes as it appears that it may. A part of the problem is that very few people anywhere, including the Congress, have any real idea of what is hidden in this bill and what impact it might have on everyday life.

The name of the bill is innocuous enough. I mean who can argue that we don't need cleaner energy and that saving on energy use and costs wouldn't somehow make us all more secure. But in this nice sounding bill, as in many things in life, the devil is in the details. The bill, as it was passed by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate, is 1427 pages long. It has 835 Sections dealing with all sorts of rules regulations and programs. The bill was sponsored primarily by Representative Henry Waxman of California, which in itself explains a lot.

When I received the email from my past client, he passed on some comments that he had received from someone who apparently took the time to read through the bill and highlight the areas that should be of concern to homeowners. Below, in parentheses are a few of his comments. The author has obviously reached his own strong opinions about the bill, so take these with a grain of salt. Since this Arthur has interspersed so much of his personal opinion into the content below, you may wish to go read the bill yourself, which you can do at  http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2454 . I have also put a complete PDF version on my Web site at http://www.themilfordteam.com/PDF/HR2454_Bill.PDF

Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act.

    H.R.  2454, the "Cap & Trade" bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.  The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year.  No one is excluded.  However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, these voters may get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost.  Thus you, Mr.  and Mrs.  Middle Class America, will have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else.

    But wait.  This awful bill (that very few or no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it.  Probably the worst one is this:  A year from now you won't be able to sell your house.

    Yes, you read that right.  The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it.  But, if not, then forget it.  Even pre-fabricated homes ("mobile homes") are included.  In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.

    To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured.  Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.  Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a "label" in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner If you don't get a high enough rating, you can't sell.  And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act.

Sect.  202:
    Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America .

    Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act.  You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (i.e., ex$pen$ive) to meet in a few years.  The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements if you meet certain energy efficiency levels.  But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants.  You should expect requirements such as "can't have an income of more than $50K per year", "home selling price can't be more than $125K,. 

Sect.  204:
    Building Energy Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for "at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act." This means that within five years, 90% of all residential homes in the U.S.  must be measured and labeled.  The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program.  The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help enforce the labeling program. 

Sect.  304:
    Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d) that 1 year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.

I'm generally not a fan of alarmist rants by people with a particular ax to grind and the author of the comments above may have misinterpreted some things however, this bill appears to have lots and lots and lots of things buried in it that will cost everyone lots of money to comply with in the future. It deserves to be exposed too much more scrutiny than it has received and hopefully the Senate in its deliberate style will find and remove or modify some of the more onerous provisions that the House bill contains. I'm generally in favor of doing things to decrease our use of energy in all aspects of life; however, having the government come into my home and tell me that I must do this or that to improve it's energy efficiency before I can sell it feels more like a home invasion than a helpful program.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act appears to be another misguided attempt by our so-called leaders to save us from ourselves. I think they should stick to passing legislation that lawn mowers need labels that say that one shouldn't stick their hand under the mower while it running. That's still stupid, but at least it didn't cost us much.

I checked to see if this topic has been posted here before and it has, but with surprisingly little follow-up comment. It would seem to me that anyone not already living in California would be at least a little alarmed by the provisions of this bill as they apply to homeowners, especially the need to meet some ill-defined set of energy standards before one is allowed to sell. It will be too late to get up-in-arms after the fact, if this bill passes as it is currently written.

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How will the Holiday Season and Furlough dates impact you?

How will the Holiday Season and Furlough dates impact YOU?

 

In lieu of departmental lay-offs of valuable employees, the counties of King and Snohomish opted to take ten mandatory days unpaid through the end of 2009. Due to these furloughs, recordings and other title and escrow functions cannot take place on the following dates:

 

Upcoming Furlough Dates: 

 October 12  Columbus Day

 November 11 Veteran's Day

 November 26 - 27 Thanksgiving                             

Holiday County Closures Dates:  

October 12 Columbus Day

November 26 - 27 Thanksgiving

 

As of September 25, 2009 only 61 days remain before the first time home buyer credit of $8000 program comes to a close. This coupled with the above mentioned furlough dates means that you only have 57 days left to close your purchase transaction and still take advantage of this credit.  While 57 days may seem like a long time, if you factor in the time it takes to get pre-approved, find a property, and go through the loan process, you could be stretching yourself thin on the time it will take to close your loan.

 

Remember - you must close no later than November 30, 2009 to take full advantage of this program and my fear is that many first time home buyers are waiting for rates, or purchase values to come down. In our present economic state, do not gamble $8,000 and be certain to work alongside a mortgage professional that you can trust, that can offer a guarantee that your purchase will close on time. 

 

Through Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, I can offer you not only a buy on time guarantee but also back that by a one-time mortgage payment refund.  With my vast knowledge of industry knowledge and mortgage products and services, I can assure you that I will see your first time home buyer purchase through to its close and beyond.

                                                           

Heather Burns

Home Mortgage Consultant

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

10900 NE 8th St Suite 1430

Bellevue, WA  98004

(425) 468-8645 Tel

(206) 714-3522 Cell

(866) 496-5671 Fax

Heather.S.Burns@wellsfargo.com

Website: www.wfhm.com/heather-burns2