North Ameican Women-to-Women Network

My partner, Ginny Mees, is keeping me very busy these days. As the "tech guy" for Harper Mees & Associates (residential real estate team in Danville, California) part of my job is Internet marketing, web design and maintenance, and keeping up with the evolution of technology.

In February of this year, Ginny launched www.WomenHomeowners.com, a site and network focusing on independent women homeowners. It wasn't 6 weeks before we realized that the Wordpress platform wouldn't meet her needs, so we stopped all promotional activities and rebuilt the site.

We managed to get it relaunched just before the July issue of Realtor magazine hit with their feature article on niche marketing. Since that article hit, things have been pretty wild! Women from all over North America are flooding Ginny's email inbox with requests for more information.

In 4 short months, Ginny's efforts, at the local level, have produced over 20 warm leads for her and the potential for 8 to 10 transaction sides. In addition, she was featured in a full page article in her local newspaper that was mailed to over 50,000 homes.

The women that have attended these meetings are spreading the word to their friends about this community resource that supports women with homeownership.

Here in the East Bay of California, short sales and foreclosures are still hot and heavy, but the market seems to be stabilizing and I, for one, find it interesting that so many real estate agents are spending time and money to try and brand themselves as Short Sale or Foreclosure Experts when that market segment is already dominated by the early adopters.

In case you haven't noticed, women dominate real estate (53% of brokers and 72% of full time agents). Demographic trends show that the financial power of women is on the rise while that of men is flat-lining. Women are earning more college degrees than men, too.

Every real estate success book I have read promotes finding a niche market. All-in-all, I think that partner of mine has come up with a brilliant idea that will position her and our team for solid business despite the market cycle.