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Survey Options For Your Real Estate Business

By: Reggie · Posted on February 12, 2007 · 1 Comment

I was recently engaged in a conversation about Surveys in Real Estate and I stood behind my view that agents should use these tools! Do you really know the interest level of customers visiting your open home? Do they have vital information to share if you ask just the right question? Why risk it, today there are tons of survey options designed to make the creation, deployment and tabulation easier than ever! Now with hosted solutions such as SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, and Survey Monkey anyone can capture the information they desire. And if you’re interested in hosting your own survey tool, take a look at Dominion Webs’ DW Survey script.

With your survey tool of choice, you can easily create a template survey for various situations. To start, you should have a “Prelisting Presentation Survey.” This template will be used when you land a new listing appointment. Simply forward it out via email with your prelisting packet, and you’ll have a chance to collect valuable seller feedback before you have the listing presentation. As a result you can address any issues brought up by the survey.

You may also want to gather feedback of potential buyers as they leave an open house. This is a great opportunity to find out their true intentions. I’ve heard various stories about transactions being saved by discovering information through consumer feedback. A few other ideas may include a survey of the selling party after you didn’t get a listing, or follow up a successful close with a post-closing satisfaction survey.

For tips on creating a survey, take a look at eHow’s article.

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Google Maps for your Real Estate Buyers Tour

By: Reggie · Posted on February 4, 2007 · 2 Comments

So you’re going out to show real estate…have you thought about giving your buyers pinpoint driving directions? And then your directions sorted in best line-of-travel? Google Maps new “Add Destination” feature is the perfect solution.

  1. Visit http://maps.google.com.
  2. Click Get Directions, and then add your starting location.
  3. Enter stop #2 as the destination, and select Get Directions.
  4. Click Add Destination on the left-hand side and enter location #3.
  5. Repeat step #4 as needed.
  6. Now click and drag the addresses to the best order based on the visual displayed on the map.

If you would like to email the directions or send the directions as a link to your buyers, just click the corresponding link above the map. Your resulting map will guide you in the best route you selected while also displaying drive distance between locations.

**Mapquest also has a similar tool. Check out Athol Kay’s story here.

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Real Estate Neighborhood Marketing

By: Reggie · Posted on January 14, 2007 · 5 Comments
Would you like to dominate a particular neighborhood? Would you like to provide the community with instant access to local information? How about providing your target neighborhood a community calendar, recipe exchange, classified ads, community news, local jobs, school information, merchant exchange, games for the youth and more? That’s what I thought! You can already see the power right? Blogs are one way to do such a thing, but Connecting Neighbors is a tool that’s built to do just that…right out of the box.

Connecting Neighbors was founded in 1999 and won the 2002 Inman Innovator of the Year award for the most Innovative Use of the Internet. In January 2005, Connecting Neighbors was acquired by Reply.com. As a result of this purchase, connecting neighbors has continued to grow and add serious features. Most importantly, they help real estate agents provide value to local homeowners while displaying your knowledge and commitment to the neighborhood.

From my experience, many real estate agents are continually struggling to brand themselves in the neighborhoods they compete in. Historically these real estate agents have done direct to consumer advertising via postcards, flyers, newsletters, block parties, sponsoring community events and more. These items all have varying degrees of success.

One thing we know is that the Internet is forever changing the typical homeowner. These individuals want immediate access to the information they seek, in a transparent nature. With Connecting Neighbors real estate agents can purchase these website solutions and lock-in their neighborhood! As Connecting Neighbors will only sell one site per area. Be the first real estate agent to provide your community local knowledge!

See an example here
To sponsor a neighborhood, click here
To search for a neighborhood, click here

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Free mortgage calculators for your website

By: Reggie · Posted on January 11, 2007 · 2 Comments

If your real estate website is one of the many consumer facing sites that still link to 3rd party mortgage calculators, you are in luck! NextStudent has recently unveiled 20 free, easy-to-use, plug-in-play mortgage calculators. NextStudent provide both ASP or PHP code to place on your site. If you are interested, take a look at their examples here.

NextStudent now provides the following calculators:

Affordability Calculator
Buy vs. Rent Calculator
Canadian Mortgage Calculator
How Much Income Do I Need to Qualify Calculator
Interest Only Calculator
Interest Only With Prepayment Calculator
Loan with Interest Only Period Calculator
Mortgage Length Calculator
Mortgage Payment Calculator
Mortgage Principal Calculator
Payment per Thousand Calculator
Second Loan vs. PMI Calculator
Should I Pay Points Calculator
Should I Refinance Calculator
Should I Use Heloc Calculator
Standard vs. Biweekly Calculator
Tax Benefits Calculator
What If I Pay More Calculator
What Is the Real APR Calculator
Which Loan is Better Calculator

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Cyberhomes benefits consumer and real estate companies alike

By: Reggie · Posted on 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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YouTube for Real Estate Marketing

By: Reggie · Posted on December 24, 2006 · 1 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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Have you experienced VREO Real Estate Dashboard?

By: Reggie · Posted on December 16, 2006 · 5 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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Microsoft Live Local offers Free Phone Calls

By: Reggie · Posted on 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.