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RealBird adds Home Stager Category for us!

By Juliet Johnson

Services for Real Estate Pros with Vizzitopia

August 24, 2007 12:33 AM

Thanks to a really superb blog by David Childress "I Put my listings on Real Bird last night: so should you" - http://activerain.com/blogsview/179796/I-Put-My-Listings - I went looking for Realbird.

http://www.realbird.com/

It's a tremendous resource. It's capabilities seem infinite.

You post a listing (or a staging) on Realbird and they submit it to Craigslist, Trulia, Vast, Edgio, Google, Oodle <sidebar: don't these names sound like Pokemon cards/characters?> and wherever else you specify. Since we are always saying we "partner up" with our realtors, this is a great resource to share with them. Plus, I'm sure it does more, I'm not a tech-whizz.

A quick email to Realbird's Zoltan Szendro <yeah, I know, romance novel hero, drop-dead handsome, smart, brusque, brawny and .... I better have another cup of coffee!> and we have a home stager category.

I need the more technical among us to explain how to maximize this thing - Sue Argue, MM-East, <Melissa Marro>, Maureen, Craig, Cindy .... please?

Realbird is new and seem both responsive and willing to work with us. What else do we want them to make available? It's their mapping and visual capabilities that looks exciting to me.

Juliet Johnson does her best home staging the luxury real estate market of NJ's Essex, Union and Morris County.

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Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

PS - Zoltan, this is a fantastic list of a dream product for stagers! It blows my mind that this could actually be done!!! You will need to have really good tutorials, with simple wording, for those of us who are not particularly good at understanding tech stuff (widgets, tags, html, etc.)....

and clearly each tutorial has got to be in 3 languages - English, American and Canadian!!

Naturally, I want to narrate all the English ones. I'll send you my agent's number! (c/o www.britvoice.com)

Aug 25, 2007 09:42 AM

Kathleen Lordbock

Keller Williams Realty Professionals - Baxter, MN

Keller Williams Realty Professionals

Ah so Juliet - I understand now - yah , goot idea - hold on to befores, then say go (sold- translation factor , here ) and push publish.

aaaye (is that how it is spelled in Canadian?)

Aug 25, 2007 11:25 AM

Penny Schoenbeck

AZ Home Styling & Redesign - Mesa, AZ

AZ Home Styling

Hi Juiet,

Thanks for a really great post, I will sign up today! This is going to be such a great tool for stagers!

Aug 25, 2007 04:36 PM

Teresa Granado-Staging-Redesign-Fontana,CA.

Granado Design - Fontana, CA

My only concern is, I don't have an "office" and I don't have clients come to me. Why is my address "required" information that gets listed on a public site? You force me to "fib" if I want to register.

Aug 25, 2007 04:51 PM

David M. Childress

Howard Hanna Real Estate Services - Akron, OH

I would love to be your Realtor® in Akron Ohio!

Hi Teresa, You could get a PO Box, if you don't have one already, for your business and "checks"!

DavidC

Aug 25, 2007 05:00 PM

Teresa Granado-Staging-Redesign-Fontana,CA.

Granado Design - Fontana, CA

I could do that..yes. However, I have so many things to do now, my mail person leaves notes for me to empty my mailbox and it's directly across the street from my front door. .it takes at least 30 minutes to sort everything. I still get mail for all the kids (who have since left the nest a "while" ago) and a couple of "new" tenants living here, not to mention all the spam snail mail. I feel like a postal worker every time I get my mail. I can't do EVERYTHING! (heavy sigh, while donning my super-bag cape yet again today)
Anybody seen my ruby slippers?

ha ha ha! I'm awful, no? I should have thought of that all by myself. DUH!

Good suggestion though. I should at least check it out. Thanks David

Aug 25, 2007 05:13 PM

Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

Teresa, You sound like a weekend away would do you good. The junk mail is a pain, but I gotta confess, I love getting the mail. Part of it is left over from boarding school where we were always desperate for news from The Outside World, and the other is the checks that arrive now! It's n-i-c-e to get checks in the mail. <LOL> My problem is that my mailman can tell me if I have any that day - he looks! I'm sure that's not right.

Hey David, you really are a wise man - good idea on the P.O. box. Thanks for being so supportive with this blog. You, sir, are a gentleman.

Penny - I'm with you - Real Bird offers excellent potential. They're being incredibly responsive. It will be fun to have the bells and whistles realtors have, only designed specifically for us. I guess we have to make sure we work in tandem with our realty partners, not in spite of or over and above them.

Aug 26, 2007 02:08 PM

Susan Smith

Rooms That Work LLC - Sandy Hook, CT

Goodness...I go out of town for a weekend, and look at how much got done! Juliet, thanks so much for making all this happen...and Zoltan, thanks for being so helpful!

I'm out of town again next weekend...can't wait to see what you accomplish then! ;)

Susan

"rambeh" - a story about a boxer with a strange accent.

Aug 27, 2007 08:14 AM

RealBird Real Estate Marketing

RealBird Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA

All-In-One Real Estate Marketing Toolkit

Hello again,

We have several updates released (one of them is big) which gets the service closer to the feature set which is suitable for stagers:

"Home stager" category added
"Home stager - Feng Shui" category added
We automatically update you to the Yellow Pages service level to advertise your business besides your projects
"Staged home" listing status added. With this option you can now freely publish your listings without worrying that it will end up on classified sites (e.g. Trulia) which only list active, for sale properties presented by agents and brokers. You can select the proper listing type for your project (e.g. Single Family or Condo) and set the Listing Status to "Staged home"
You can now use all listing widgets for presenting your projects. While the service still does not support BEFORE & AFTER photo designations, with the unlimited photo options and the built in HTML editor you can provide a full description of your project.

Embed for example the Listing Map widget into your site or blog to show your featured projects.
Or you can get a "Recent Projects" sidebar widget for your blog
And here is the big one: You can now embed Clicky, Google Analytics and MyBlogLog tracking into your property sites and you have the most comprehensive website analytics available for real-time tracking, detailed reports and via MyBlogLog, user and community centric community around your projects.

Let me know if you have questions on how to use the service and when somebody puts together a home stager portfolio with RealBird and embeds e.g. the property map widget. I would love to see the end result.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Aug 28, 2007 01:18 PM

Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

That sounds amazing, Zoltan, thank you. I'll head over tomorrow and see what I can create vis-a-vis a Staged Home listing. I think it will be great fun to see what happens when it's the same house. I've done that 3 times in 5 years now!

Aug 28, 2007 01:39 PM

RealBird Real Estate Marketing

RealBird Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA

All-In-One Real Estate Marketing Toolkit

Juliet and other stagers out there !

I just learned about this service. It may be something very useful for you and is definitely impressive as a product !

http://www.designmyroom.com

Enjoy!

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Aug 30, 2007 02:17 PM

Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

Hi Terry, It puts you on the map. LIterally. It's another way of "puking your identity all over the internet" -- remember http://activerain.com/blogsview/149903/The-Art-of-Puking

Plus, they have the ability to incorporate very fancy slide shows, with Top 20 songs and music choices. And there are some other neat things coming.

Cindy has a new post on it that you might want to check out.

Aug 31, 2007 12:51 AM

Susan Peters

Dove Realty Inc. - Seattle, WA

The Better it Looks the Better it Sells

Juliet,

Thanks for the info! Going back to posting your 'befores' before the property has closed, I would definitely hold off showing them. I can just see a buyer, who gets cold feet, using the before pics to try to get out of the deal.

Aug 31, 2007 07:23 AM

Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

Now Terry, you haven't read the post (linked above) if you think "puking" is my choice of word. I would like to sanctimoniously point out that the word and title is Justin Smith, the moderator of the CHRISTIAN REAL ESTATE group. So there!

I agree with you completely, Susan. You know it's very interesting. I never thought about the issue of B&As until particular sellers of mine earlier this month specifically asked me not to. So I brought that topic to AR, asked around, via comments etc. and now I'm reading it as a generally accepted moral and ethical practice. I think that's right. However, I find it amusing how fast we all can adopt something if we believe in it.

Aug 31, 2007 11:44 AM

RealBird Real Estate Marketing

RealBird Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA

All-In-One Real Estate Marketing Toolkit

Juliet, Susan,

Am I correct that you present, promote your staging projects for 2 distinct reasons?

Aiding the sales of an active, for sale property - Marketing a listing
Presenting a past project (e.g. an already sold property) - Marketing your skills and services to gain new business

If it is so, in which context posting B&A pictures a problem for sellers. I would assume in case 1, when you are promoting an active property. I don't see a reason why it would be a problem with past sellers on past projects? Please advise on this, so that we can design a system which fits the real-world scenario of your business processes. If the above two are both valid value-propositions for stagers, which one is more important for you. Promoting and presenting current, active, not-yet closed projects or past projects (portfolio) ?

RealBird can be readily used for marketing an active listing, scenario 1, if B&A photos are not a requirement for those. We do not yet support marking photos as Before and After, so for scenario 2, where you do want to promote the skills which led from "before" to "after" we will need to add more features.

I think by reading all these posts and assuming that the above two scenario are where the benefits for you are, the following should be the most important next features we need to add:

Interface to be able to mark B&A photos for past projects
Ability to add listing agent/broker to flyers so that distribution to 3rd party sites do not interfere with their terms of use.

Please let me know your opinion.

Thanks

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Sep 02, 2007 03:11 PM

Susan Peters

Dove Realty Inc. - Seattle, WA

The Better it Looks the Better it Sells

Zoltan,

I'm a Realtor who only stages my own listings and I would never post before pictures until the property is closed and the buyers have taken possession. Typically I use my 'before' pictures on my own website and my brochure. I just started posting them on AR and my most recent 'before' is about 6 months old.

I'm not quit sure if this answers your question, but feel free to contact me for any clarification you may need.

Sep 02, 2007 06:39 PM

Juliet Johnson

Vizzitopia - St Johns, FL

Jacksonville Photography & Digital Marketing

Zoltan,

You SEE the impact of a stager's work when looking at the B&As, but none of that matters if the home doesn't sell quickly and at its best possible price.

Some of us provide property marketing add-ons, but only to widen the buyer pool. Posting the listings really isn't our job; it's the realtor's. We can't even show the property let alone get involved in offers.

So the primary benefit to us is the B&A capability fitted into a MAP. This way we can visually illustrate our experience by region. Different towns have different personalities. This diagram will show that we are conversant with those subtleties.

We then want to be able to post that information anywhere a realtor might be looking for it. Our marketing is to Realtors, first and sellers, second.

A much lower priority is our ability to support a realtors' marketing efforts. In my own market, for example, I would be thought to be interfering is I posted my staging shots where the listing agents should be. However, that is NOT the same across the country.

Not sure this helps at all, Zoltan. Maybe we organize a conference call for later in the week?

Sep 03, 2007 11:30 PM

RealBird Real Estate Marketing

RealBird Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA

All-In-One Real Estate Marketing Toolkit

Juliet,

As always, thanks for the explanation. It is absolutely necessary to understand your business process to be able to develop a product which delivers benefits to you. The upcoming week is very busy for us, as we are ready to launch our MRIS coverage for our Map-based IDX search service (oops, did I just leaked that info :-) but I will check back to schedule a conference call as soon as possible.

Thanks again for this great post and conversation.

-- Zoltan

RealBird.com

Sep 05, 2007 12:50 PM

Heather Klein

Emmy & Me Interiors - Naperville, IL

Emmy & Me Interiors

Juliet,

Thank you (which I'm sure you are receiving a lot of that) for this great addition for home stagers. It says a lot when colleges in the industry share information and resources that help broaden the power of our profession. Thanks again, I'm checking it out as soon as I'm done with this.

Heather Klein - Emmy & Me Interiors, Naperville, IL.

Sep 05, 2007 02:26 PM

RealBird Real Estate Marketing

RealBird Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA

All-In-One Real Estate Marketing Toolkit

Hello,

I thought I drop a comment to let you all know - who participated in Juliet's discussion above - that we are giving away an Apple iPod Touch, Apple's newest stunning gizmo. We have released a new version of the free RealBird Listing Publisher. It is now optimized for iPhone and iPod (renders differently than on regular browsers) To celebrate this release, we started a sweepstakes with iPod Touch being the prize. No purchase necessary. Home stagers can participate of course. Read more here.

Thanks

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird.com

Sep 13, 2007 03:49 AM