Cyberhomes benefits consumer and real estate companies alike
By Reggie · December 30, 2006 · Leave a Comment
Cyberhomes, a FNRES product, offers consumers a free and robust home valuation tool. But Cyberhomes’ value goes much deeper than that! Cyberhomes allows consumers to interact with their valuation data in a totally transparent nature. For example, the consumer can make adjustments to their home based on their personal knowledge. Maybe the consumer would like to account for recent home upgrades or hand select local comparables. I’m sure this data will then become even more meaningful to the consumer. This interaction, plus Fidelity’s 100 Million plus residential ownership, sales, and mortgage records, make Cyberhomes the tool to watch in 07’.
The consumer is not the only one to benefit, so will brokers and their associates. Marty Frame has made it clear that FNRES has gone to great efforts to ensure Cyberhomes is a Broker friendly tool! Cyberhomes has the ability to display “For Sale” listings from any participating broker. These active listings will enhance the Cyberhomes tool by showing not only sold data, but active signals from the marketplace. In addition, Cyberhomes can be 100% branded by participating brokers and integrated into their own website. This gives real estate companies a solution to instantly fulfill their customers need for rich property information, but doing so in a way that allows the consumer the freedom to look and interact privately. Then as the consumer gets closer to actually transacting, it’s a simply step since they’re already on the real estate company’s site. If their consumer is on Cyberhomes.com, and clicks a broker’s active listing, sophisticated back-end rules allow traffic to be routed based on each real estate company’s desired process.
If you would like to know more about Cyberhomes, visit Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions at http://www.realestate.fnf.com/. You may also want to ready my previous post here.
Watch the Inman Stories video of Cyberhomes featuring Scott Hoen and Marty Frame.
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Create a Google Toolbar Button for Your Real Estate Blog
By Reggie · December 24, 2006 · Leave a Comment
Google’s Toolbar is very popular and they’ve made it easy to add your blog articles to your reader’s toolbar. All we need to do is make a custom button feeding off your RSS feed. This button not only makes visiting your blog easy with a one click shortcut, but it also itemizes your recent topics.
Start by opening notepad, and copy the code below into the new notepad document:
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<custombuttons xmlns=”http://toolbar.google.com/custombuttons/”>
<button>
<site>http://www.YourSiteHere.com</site>
<title>Your Title Here</title>
<feed refresh-interval=”3800″>http://www.Site.com/feed.rss</feed>
<description>Enter your brief description here</description>
<icon mode=”base64″ type=”image/x-icon”>Insert base64 output here
</icon>
</button>
</custombuttons>
Now we need to make a few edits to customize the Google button for your blog.
Start by editing the bold areas of the code above:
- Replace http://www.YourSiteHere.com with your blogs URL.
- Replace Your Title Here with the title of your blog.
- Replace http://www. Site.com/feed.rss with the path to your RSS or ATOM feed. Keep in mind Google requires RSS 2.0 or Atom Feed 0.3/1.0 XML.
- Replace Enter your brief description here with a brief description of your blog. This description works like a tooltip, and pops out when a user moves their mouse over your button.
- Now you need to think about the icon you would like to use for the toolbar. (Hint: images with 24 bits of color –RGB work best.) Once you’ve identified the icon or picture you’ll use, click here to convert your image to base64. Then copy the code it produces, and paste it over the text the reads Insert base64 output here.
- Now its time to save the notepad document we’ve been modifying. Click “File” then “Save As.” Now give the file a friendly name and add .xml after the name. For example, I named my button MyTechOpinion.xml.
Great, you’ve customized everything you need for a working button. Now you can do a few things:
- Upload the xml file we just created to your server. (My Example: http://www.mytechopinion.com/google/MyTechOpinion.xml )
- Add a link on your blog that adds the button to your reader’s toolbar. Here is what the link should like: Add MyTechOpinion to Your Google Toolbar
- Submit it to Google’s Custom Button Gallery
To visit the Google Toolbar 4 API Documentation, click here.
To view the MyTechOpinion button and related Real Estate articles, click here
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YouTube for Real Estate Marketing
By Reggie · December 24, 2006 · Leave a Comment
YouTube is turning out to be a noteworthy tool for Real Estate. I’m not just saying that because they’ll host your video for free. Let’s face it; YouTube has become an online destination. And not just for teenagers. In November, iMedia Connection covered an eMarketer report dispelling myths about the average YouTube visitor. eMarketer said, ages 35 to 64 make up the largest audience, with ages 25 to 34 coming in second. I was surprised to learn this; it’s contrary to what the mainstream media leads us to believe. eMarketer also stated ages 35 to 64 were the largest share of unique visitors. As if that isn’t enough, according to Nielsen NetRatings, YouTube was the fastest growing Web brand the first half of this year. Compile that with ComScore Media reporting over 60% of YouTubes visitors earn 60k or over annually. Now what do you think of YouTube and its benefit to Real Estate Marketing? (Read my entire post over at Ubertor Real Estate Blog.)
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Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, YouTube, unique visitors
Does your real estate website provider supply you with prewritten content?
By Reggie · December 19, 2006 · 6 Comments
Thanks to the Blog Swap RSS Pieces put together, Stephen Jagger of Ubertor is our guest today. Ubertor serves the real estate industry with agent and broker software. I would like to thank Stephen! Here is his post:
Stephen Jagger, Ubertor - Many of real estate website providers supply prewritten canned content on the web sites they sell to real estate agents. This canned content comes in many forms:
- Free Reports
- Top Tips
- Buying Tips
- Selling Tips
- plus much more…
Google says “we try hard to index and show pages with distinct information“.
What does that mean?
Canned content, generic content and content provided to you is not helping you… but actually hurting you.
Write your own Free Reports, Top 10 Tips, Sellers Bonus Material, etc… be courageous, be opinionated, take a risk, tell people what you think and be UNIQUE.
Google, Yahoo and MSN are looking for unique, quality content that they can provide to their users. Someone searching for Vancouver Real Estate is looking to find the best website about that topic. The search engines are looking to find that website (actually the top 10 under than term). To get your website to come up under the keyword term you are trying to target start by reviewing these points:
- Start Blogging
- Google likes sites of at least 100 pages and pages of 300-500 words/page
- Get rid of your canned content and write your own
- Write about the term you want to be found under
- Write about the term you want to be found under again
- Comment on other blogs that compliment your industry
- Use WordTracker.com or a service like it to view actual searchers searching for that term
- Engage your visitors, request comments, feedback, questions
- Keep your solds within your website - never delete or hide them
- Blog, Blog, Blog and then do it again
Blogging has proven to be the most effective way to gain exposure within the search engines.
The real key: Write for your readers - then review for the search engines! - not the other way around. Google’s mantra is “Be Good Not Evil” Bloggers’ mantra is “Write for your Reader, Good will follow”
Take a look at what the other real estate bloggers had to say that participated?
Transparent Real Estate’s Pat Kitano vs. Zillow’s Drew Meyers
RSS Pieces’ Mary McKnight vs. Future of Real Estate Marketing’s Joel Burslem
St Paul Real Estate Blog’s Teresa Boardman vs. Phoenix Real Estate Guy’s Jay Thompson
3 Ocean Real Estate’s Kevin Boer vs. SLC Real Estate’s Nigel Swaby
Issaquah Undressed’s Larry Cragun vs. Maury Properties’ Andrew Maury
Chicago Home Weblog’s Geno Petroche vs. NY Houses 4 Sales’ Christine Forgione
Jonathan Dalton’s Phoenix Arizona Real Estate Blog Jonathan Dalton vs. Bonnie Erickson’s Real Estate Snippets Bonnie Erickson
The boys of Sellsius vs. Real Estate Tomato’s Jim Cronin
ML Podcast’s Michael Price vs. FamousAgents.com’s Elise Wright
My Tech Opinion’s Reggie Nicolay vs. Ubertor’s Steve Jagger
Redfin’s Glenn Kelman vs Rain City’s Ardell DellaLoggia
CondoDomain’s Anthony Longo vs. miOaklandCounty’s Maureen Francis
The San Diego Home Blog’s Kris Berg vs. Urban Dig’s Noah Rosenblatt
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Tags: real estate, dell, MyTechOpinion, real estate agent, blogs, future of real estate
Have you experienced VREO Real Estate Dashboard?
By Reggie · December 16, 2006 · 2 Comments
It’s almost time for those New Year’s resolutions for your business, so I thought I would dig into the past and focus on a piece of technology that you likely now about, but intimidates many…VREO Real Estate Dashboard for Tablet PC’s. What do you think of the idea about being “paperless?” It’s possible; all it will take is a few key investments in technology and you could enhance your business forever.
VREO’s Dashboard helps real estate agents capture a signature on any Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF or image file by using a Tablet PC and stylus. The signing process is very similar to the typical signature experience of pen and paper. Also VREO’s Real Estate Dashboard can send and receive faxes electronically. So once you have the required signatures simply fax or email the document to its desired location without printing!
VREO’s Real Estate Dashboard is built on a secure vault. This is where you would import transaction documents and forms, for quick access and signing. The vault is continually backed up and synchronized with VREO’s facility in Agoura Hills, California. Obviously you need anInternet connection for this feature. Using the vault you can also assign permissions to contacts involved in the transaction so they can access documents online. If your Tablet is stolen or misplaced, you can easily retrieve another copy via the vault. Meanwhile the documents on your lost PC cannot be opened without a Password. If you’re wondering, VREO’s Real Estate Dashboard employs a proprietary binary encoding format –DSD, or “Dashboard Serialized Document”.
In November, FNRES (Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions) and VREO launched an e-Signature Initiative. “The centerpiece of the effort is bundling VREO’s Real Estate Dashboard e-signature software for Tablet PCs and FNRES’ TransactionPoint transaction and document management platform.” Read full press release from FNRES.
Click here for a free trial of VREO’s Real Estate Dashboard
Click here for review of Tablet PC’s
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Tags: real estate, dashboard, technology, MyTechOpinion, real estate agent, Microsoft
Microsoft Live Local offers Free Phone Calls
By Reggie · December 13, 2006 · Leave a Comment
Google Local and Microsoft Live Local play an important role in quickly accessing local information on the Web. I’m sure you realize the positive impact these features have on their advertising revenue. I’m also sure that’s why Microsoft has gone forward with this very silent launch of Live Local free phone calls. It’s much like the Google Local free click to call feature.
To see Live Local free call in action, visit Live Search and enter a business. After searching, you’ll see markers added to the map. Use your mouse to hover over a specific marker, and click “Call For Free”. Enter your phone number, and then your phone will ring and the call will be connected. I should mention that if you connect using the free call feature on your cell phone you will still pay standard airtime charges.
Interested in adding your business?
If you’re interested in taking advantage of Microsoft’s reach, and ability to display your business information for free, click here. If you find that your information needs to be updated click here.
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Yankee Blog Swap
By Reggie · December 12, 2006 · Leave a Comment
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Zillow Adds "For Sale" Listings
By Reggie · December 7, 2006 · Leave a Comment
Overnight news with Zillow.com announcing its move to allows agents and home sellers to post their home on Zillow at no cost. They will not be able to post property photos and descriptions. Real Estate agents will also be able to post their contact information, photo and direct link to their website. This seems to be a growing trend and race to create a centralized real estate database. If you would like to read up on this topic, take a look at Drew Meyers, Zillow Blog, Bloodhound and TransparentRE.
What’s really changed with Zillow?
- Agents and home sellers can publish listings for free on Zillow
- New Wiki Features (i.e. Encyclopedia on Real Estate.)
- Owners can post a “Make Me Move” price on Zillow
More information coming soon!
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Pre-Listing with a Technology Twist
By Reggie · December 3, 2006 · 1 Comment
Okay, let’s talk tech. Start by visiting SinglePropertySites or Listing Producer minutes after scheduling your listing presentation. If you don’t have an account, create one for free. Use their tool to make a website devoted solely to the property. These companies do not charge a fee until you make the site “Live” with its own domain name (ex. 1122mainstreet.com). However they do have “free view” options. For example, SinglePropertySites will establish a temporary URL. Simply copy that web address into a template flyer promoting the service and you have a pre-listing dazzler!
Also briefly cover listing exposure; its a big topic these days. The seller wants to know that you have reach and access to buyers. Flex your technology muscles by briefly speaking about your means for promoting their home via the Internet. Include, but go beyond MLS, Realtor.com and Homes.com, use sites like Postlets to build and submit professional classified ads. Once you make the ad, Postlets will submit your listing to sites like Edgeio.com, Google Base, HotPads.com, Oodle.com, Propsmart.com and then you can copy the Postlets HTML for Craigslist.org, LiveDeal.com, and Backpage.com…I think you get the idea. It’s a highly effective way to blanket broadcast your listings for maximum exposure!
Why not also take this opportunity to build an online pre-listing presentation survey? This is a great opportunity to learn any concerns or fears the seller may have with listing their home. For example, the idea of showing times may be stressful to a household with children, or maybe it’s pricing in this changing market. Knowing these concerns before you meet will not only help you prepare, but it will allow you to tackle these issues with the seller head-on! If you are looking for a survey solution, try Survey Monkey or Zoomerang. You can also use these survey tools to make a questioner for the seller to ask other agents. Dirk Zeller’s talks about the idea here. He says “I always sent this to knock out at least half of the other interviewees. I
obviously knew the answers, but most of my competition had no idea.”
So all of the ideas are powerful, but remember that your pre-listing presentation is just an introduction. Make sure not to overwhelm the seller with too much information. You’re just trying to position yourself as the expert!
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FREE Google Maps for your Mobile Device
By Reggie · December 1, 2006 · 1 Comment
If you are like me, you depend on your smart phone for so many things. Well now you can add detailed directions and real-time traffic to the list. That’s right, Google Mobile offers those services and much more such as Gmail, Google News, Google Search, SMS and Blogger access. See the full set of free offerings here. These tools have the same simplistic approach we typically see from Google, but now accessible on the go. If you’re curious whether your device is compatible, check out Google’s list of compatible devices.
To get started, visit http://mobile.google.com/ on your compatible phone.
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