How Do Activerainers Choose Referral Partners - Points, Posts, Personality? And How I Found a Great Folsom Real Estate Agent

How Do Activerainers Choose Referral Partners - Points, Posts, Personality? And How I Found a Great Folsom Real Estate Agent

The idea for this post came from looking at my Activerain rank in the Temecula area, let alone California.  In fact, I am IT and SEO for my husband who is a "recovering attorney" (so am I) as a Marine Corps JAG officer and spent 6 years as a judge for military courts martial (I was military spouse); since 2004, he's been helping people buy and sell real estate (in the high hundreds as of the date of this post) in the Temecula, Murrieta, Oceanside areas as well as the high desert areas of Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree. 

QUESTION: At the end of this blog, I'm going to ask you to chime in on how you choose the agent to handle your client referrals.  Would it be activerain points, quality of the AR posts, reflection of experience at closing many transactions in the locality, extra training, or other factors?  A combination?  I look forward to your feedback.

WHY I'M ASKING:  Here I am blogging, balancing putting time into my clients for loans (lots of VA here in the Temecula and Murrieta, etc., area since we're near Camp Pendleton, of course FHA and conventional as well), besides being the one to do SEO for my husband's website, www.SandToSeaProperties.com.

Many agents ahead of me in Activerain points have few blog posts, so I'm told they probably invited agents who are prolific bloggers, log in daily, etc., and I understand that.  I play by the rules, and if the rules give them points for that, that's fine.  Since being "active" on activerain for some months, I've come to believe (at least for now, one day prior to Raincamp!) that it's not the number of points that matter, it's the hyper-local content that is helpful to people trying to get as much information about their real estate locality as possible: schools, types of homes available, bargain prices perhaps on HUD-homes, shopping and restaurants, what the area has to offer.  To b*stardize a phrase, "Blog it, and they will come."

So let's say another Activerainer goes searching for an experienced real estate agent for their client who is needing or wanting to downsize the price of their home while perhaps expanding the size of the home for a growing family or downsizing it for efficiency in the Temecula, Murrieta or surrounding area.  I'd like to spark a debate on how they find a competent, even wonderful, experienced, well-trained real estate agent to take the referral, happily and promptly pay a referral fee, and most importantly give the client the utmost in real estate representation.

MY ANSWER:

I'll start: I needed a buyer's agent in the Folsom area for a long-time friend buying there.  I started by googling folsom real estate.  Not finding websites of realtors who seemed the right fit for my friend, I went to the "internet pro" ePRO website, wanting to find someone up to speed with technology.  If I had to do it now, I would start on Activerain and google the area, reading blog posts and going to realtors' websites until I found an agent who had closed quite a few transactions and also had a tone that I thought would match my client's needs.

As for that Folsom real estate agent, I finally found an ePRO whose web site reflected professionalism, personalization and a great deal of full-time real estate experience, June Balazs - http://www.junebalazs.com.  I made a phone call to her, which she picked up.  And throughout the transaction she replied promptly, professionally and proficiently via email and phone, and my friend happily had her purchase of a short sale done with a 23 day escrow (I did the loan needing a quick turnaround with that Short Sale bank waiting months to approve it and then giving us 25 days to close it, but that's a blog for another day).  Here's a screenshot of her home page:

So I'd like you all to chime in on how you choose the agent to handle your client referrals.  Would it be activerain points, quality of the AR posts, reflection of experience at closing many transactions in the locality, extra training, or other factors?  A combination?  I look forward to your feedback.

Thank you!