Ideas for Staying in Touch With Clients
Stay in Touch Regularly:
The power of frequent contact should not be underestimated. Research tells us that you have to get in front of clients often to win repeat business. Lifelong clients are developed through regular, frequent and consistent contact.
Here are a few easy ideas for keeping in touch with your clients and turning your customers into repeat clients:
- Once a year, send out replacement 9-volt fire alarm system batteries with one of your address labels attached.
- Send out gift certificates for local restaurants every time your clients give you a referral.
- Get personal by keeping a record of key dates, such as birthdays and anniversaries, and send them a card to let them know you remembered.
Ultimately, you can't buy customer loyalty...you must earn it. Your past clients are your very best market, as they will return to you and refer others to you as long as you stay in touch and provide excellent service. Past clients can lead to a steady flow of new clients through people you have already built a base of rapport and trust, and an increase in the level of referral and repeat business.
Inman News Original Article:
30% of Homes Bought this Year will be by Investors
Read Original article here: RIS MediaHarvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies has just released a report outlining the fact that climbing interest rates and cooling speculative demand is putting pressure on the housing boom while at the same time hiking rental demand in all sectors of the U.S. That’s good news for anyone who acquired rental properties at the right time, and a possible window of opportunity for investors still motivated to sell or exchange property before prices decline any further.
According to the National Association of Realtors, there are 191,400 fewer apartments in the country primarily as a result of condo conversions. With all the condos on the market, many longtime renters stopped renting because they were able to take advantage of historically low interest rates and purchased the condominiums as their first homes. The NAR now predicts that renters will be paying about 5 percent more in rent than they did last year. If true, that would be the highest increase since 2000.
Homeowners and smaller investors with some flexibility in their living arrangements might want to consider renting out their existing properties while either waiting things out or looking to exchange.
Real Estate News provided by the Christian Real Estate Network
Is your Real Estate Site Generating Leads?
To read the full article, click Here:
RIS ArticleCommentary by Mike Parker
It’s no secret that as things get a little tighter and everyone is looking to maximize results from every tool in their arsenals that the first tool real estate professionals should consider is their Web site.
"I have a good one!" is the prevalent opinion (Before saying that you have a good one, please remember that over 80% of all Americans rate themselves as "above average" drivers. Just as 80% of drivers can't be "above average," neither can 80% of real estate Web sites!). Are you getting any sales from your Web site? You should be, for the Internet is where people look for homes. If you are not, there might be some simple things you can do to change the situation.
Unfortunately, it is often the case that although the site may look pretty (or not), from a performance standpoint, well, it's frequently a "handyman’s special." We know this because the first thing we look at when someone contacts us is their Web site and the home page and title tags on that Web site. You would be surprised to know that we have commonly found situations where the site builder FORGOT to finish the title tag, making the site impossible to be found by the search engines. What is a "title tag?" Well, go to any site. Hit "view" on your horizontal navigation bar, then scroll down to "page source." A window will open, showing you your title & meta tags, things you may not be familiar with or never thought it necessary to focus on.
You do need to focus on your title tag, however, for with a poor one, it is exponentially harder for you to be found when anyone goes looking for a neighborhood. Generally speaking, you don't want your tag too long or too short but you DO want it to tie in to key words on your homepage and to the towns you truly service. As an example of how simple this fix can be, a new customer had "Central Pennsylvania Homes for Sale" as his title tag with his business in Harrisburg.
New Sex Offender Real Estate Website
USA Today Article:Private housing developers are joining a surging number of communities that are telling convicted sex offenders who need a place to live: "Not in my backyard."
A Texas-based company, I&S Investment Group, is breaking ground this summer on a 154-lot development in Lenexa, Kan., that will bar registered sex offenders. If someone is convicted of a sex crime while living there, the subdivision will fine the person $1,500 daily until he or she moves. The group has sold out all 150 lots in its first such development in Lubbock, Texas, begun 10 months ago, and plans to offer 250 more lots there this fall.
"The sex offender deal has improved demand. It's probably increased our sales three to four times," says I&S partner Clayton Isom, 24. "We're fighting sex offenders head on."
Another Texan, Taylor Goodman, today launched a website, Blockwatcher.com, listing homes for sale that have no registered sex offenders living within a half-mile radius. He says only 20% of available homes will qualify.
"These guys are just everywhere," Goodman says of roughly 567,000 sex offenders registered nationwide. The site carries disclaimers, however, noting that thousands of offenders haven't registered and thousands more have listed phony addresses.
The new private efforts complement an accelerating push by states and cities to bar sex offenders from living near schools or playgrounds. Hundreds of cities, including more than a dozen this year alone, have approved such ordinances, some of which block out entire downtowns.
View the rest of the article here
Voip Technology Utilized by the Real Estate Industry
Inman News Article -The Internet is a goldmine of information, but occasionally you hit a wall where you need a real person to answer a question.
Albert Clark saw that wall about seven months ago when he was booking some complicated flights through Continental Airlines online at about 11 p.m. He'd already spent a lot of time entering information about his trips when he had a question about the airline's cancellation policy.
Clark said a button popped up on the Web page he was viewing and asked if he had any questions. He clicked on "yes" and his phone rang in less than two seconds, he said.
"They knew what page I was on. They knew where I was in the transaction so I didn't have to start from scratch," said Clark. And that was when he realized this option had to be made available on real estate Web sites.
The Internet is a goldmine of information, but occasionally you hit a wall where you need a real person to answer a question.
Albert Clark saw that wall about seven months ago when he was booking some complicated flights through Continental Airlines online at about 11 p.m. He'd already spent a lot of time entering information about his trips when he had a question about the airline's cancellation policy.
Clark said a button popped up on the Web page he was viewing and asked if he had any questions. He clicked on "yes" and his phone rang in less than two seconds, he said.
Clark in January launched realPING, a push-to-talk VoIP button that connects Web site visitors with a real estate agent's telephone. VoIP, which stands for voice over Internet protocol, is a technology that enables people to make phone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular phone line.
Some three-quarters of consumers end up transacting with the first real estate agent to respond to their inquiries, according to the National Association of Realtors, and Clark was betting that a push-to-talk device on a Realtor's Web site would help facilitate that relationship.
"The Internet has spoiled consumers," said Clark, principal partner of the Scranton, Pa.-based company. "They want everything accessible. They are looking at 900,000 homes in California and they want agents to get back to them."
Consumers surfing an agent's site with realPING simply click on the "talk to me now" or "push to talk" button the agent has set up, enter their phone number and receive a call within seconds.
Though agents may not be able to answer the consumer's question at the moment of the call, they can at least be the first responder and "set the table for tomorrow morning's call," Clark said.
RealPING takes it a step further with what Clark calls a "pagepush" capability. During the call the agent can push Web pages, virtual tours and other things directly to the caller's desktop. For example, a caller might ask about homes with pools while on the agent's Web site and the agent can enter a few digits on his or her phone that will push a Web page to the caller's desktop. The page can include listings information, virtual tours, mortgage prequalification information or anything the agent wants to set up.
New Anti-Flipping Rules
Inman News: Only the actual owner of a home can sell that home with Federal Housing Administration financing, and in an attempt to discourage flipping, homes sold within 90 days of purchase won't be eligible for FHA financing, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ruled Wednesday.
The rules provide that property acquired by the seller is not eligible for the buyer to obtain an FHA-insured mortgage unless the seller has owned that property for at least 90 days. The seller must also be the owner of record.
HUD published the final rule Wednesday tightening regulations against property flipping in its mortgage insurance programs. The rule goes into effect July 9, the agency said.
In general, "flipping" refers simply to reselling a property very soon after it is purchased, but all too often, property flips involve mortgage fraud or predatory lending practices. HUD's regulations focus on flipping involving property resold a short period of time after it is purchased by the seller for a considerable profit with an artificially inflated value, often abetted by a lender's collusion with the appraiser.
FHA financing will not be available for homes sold within 90 days of purchase, according to a mortgagee letter from HUD. Sellers will have to provide additional valuation data to sell properties between 91 and 180 days after the last transaction, in cases where the new sales price is 100 percent or more higher than the previous sales price, the mortgagee letter said.
Christian Real Estate Agents
Search Engine Positioning for Real Estate Websites
(We will be having a discussion about this in the forums if anyone is interested in learning more about organic or PPC search enging marketing.)
Inman News Article --"The auction mentality makes big bucks for search-engine companies such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. Click fraud is another huge issue that few discuss. In contrast, organic clicks actually help you achieve better placement.
How can you maximize your return on your Web advertising campaign with a minimum amount of cost? Going organic is the solution.
There are two primary ways to advertise on search engines such as Google, MSN or Yahoo. The first is called "pay-per-click." This type of paid placement is based upon how much you are willing to bid to be placed above other bidders. In contrast, "organic" search placement is based upon how well the key words on a given Web site match the search terms the user selects. It is also based upon how many people click through to the site, whether or not they stay on the site, how long the site has been in existence, as well as a host of other complicated factors.
Given that organic search costs you nothing and pay-per-click can be quite expensive, obtaining good organic search placement can be a huge win for your business. For example, I recently received an e-mail from a man who was trying to market a condominium project using pay-per-click ads. He was paying $20,000 per month and getting virtually no response. As this example illustrates, pay-per-click programs can be extraordinarily expensive. Prices are especially high if you're bidding in a metropolitan area or against well-funded companies who specialize in Web marketing."
Buying a Home with Re-Sale Value
Buying a Home with Re-Sale Value
Before you can actually pick out a house, you need to choose what cities or communities you would like to live in. There are many factors you should pay attention to, not only for yourself, but because you intend to eventually sell the home to someone else. Carefully choosing your community is the first step in "location, location, location" and can help maximize your future potential resale value.
Economic Stability
When choosing a community for your purchase, it makes the most sense to buy in a city with a viable and stable economy. Five, ten, or even fifteen years from now – when you want to sell your home – you can have a reasonable expectation that your community will still be a desirable place to live.
In addition to residential neighborhoods, there should be a healthy mixture of commercial and business districts. These not only provide jobs to the local residents, but also add an income source that the city can use to upgrade and maintain roads and city services.
In fact, you should take a drive and see how well the community is maintained. You have probably heard of "pride of ownership" when referring to an individual home or an automobile. Look to live in a city that demonstrates community pride, as well.
