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A Touch of Mapping Technology for your Prelisting Package

By: Reggie · Posted on September 5, 2007 · 6 Comments

Are you using your past real estate sales to effectively market yourself in your prelisting and listing presentations? I have a cool mapping technology that will help you create a dramatic visual representation of your past successes. Microsoft Streets and Trips is a powerful software for creating mashups of your sold properties. It’s actually easier than you might think. Purchase Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008 here.

Start by gathering a list of the real estate you have sold over your career. Get the list into Excel, keeping the street name, city, state and zip in separate columns. (If you have sold homes more than once, you can create two separate lists and color the icons a different color.)

Now to import the real estate sales, start by opening Microsoft Streets and Trips.

  1. On the menu bar, click Data and then Import Data Wizard.
  2. Next you need to assign each column from the excel file to a part of the address.
  3. Select from the Data Type pull down to choose.
  4. Once you’re done, click Finish.

If everything went according to plans you will now have the sold real estate all plotted on the screen in front of you. To finalize you may want to change the icons. Go back to the menu bar and select Data and then click Data Set Properties. In the middle of the new window you can change the Symbol or create a custom one. Now simply move the map to a region you would like to highlight and zoom in accordingly. You are now ready to print.

TIP: Print the map out on glossy paper for maximum appeal.

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Email Newsletters for Real Estate Agents

By: NikNik · Posted on August 29, 2007 · 4 Comments

Real estate newsletters are a very popular form of communication. Email newsletters can be a great alternative for busy real estate agents who want to try another marketing medium, save on printing costs and reach a larger audience. Brand yourself as the local expert and offer community information. Include your latest listings and inform your clients with real estate industry news. A concise newsletter with several small informative snippets is the way to go! In addition, you can direct your subscribers back to your website and blog, as well as capture new leads. But before you can do all this, make sure you have collected, and continue to collect, email addresses and update your contact database regularly. There are a variety of online marketing websites that can help you take it from there. Try these similar, yet different marketing solutions on for size:

  1. Constant Contact
    Choose from a variety of professionally designed newsletter templates. You’ll need to insert pictures, contact info AND your own industry articles. Cost is based on your email list size. So the range spans from $15 a month for a list 0-500, all the way to $225 for lists up to 25,000! You can also create unlimited surveys and invite participation from your email list or website visitors.
  2. iContact
    iContact is an email marketing service that provides you with the ability to design a template, insert your content, send, and track email newsletters, RSS feeds, surveys, and autoresponders. Pricing starts at $9.95 per month for 500 contacts to $699 a month for up to 100,000 contacts!
  3. MyNewlsetterBuilder
    MyNewsletterBuilder gives you the ability to incorporate multi-media within your newsletter: virtual tours, audio tours, rotating banner ads, and custom template design. Free 60 day trial. Offers additional services: website design, RSS Feeds Setup, SEO, and more!
  4. EmailFusion
    If you have even less time to create content and you don’t mind spending a bit more, EmailFusion may be the answer for you. Besides having some amazing looking email campaigns, they offer professional pre-written content for your newsletter. And for those of us who prefer original content, you still have the ability to insert your own content. With EmailFusion, you can easily manage your subscribers and receive real time reports with detailed analytics. Pricing on their packages range from $39.95/month to $139/month, all include a $99 one time set-up fee.
  5. Zookoda
    Great solution for real estate bloggers! Promote your blog and your brand! With Zookoda, you can send a daily, weekly, or monthly summary of your blog content. You can also manage your subscribers and enhance your blog with custom a subscription form. For those of you that know a little HMTL, use their Zootags to customize your newsletter. (Format your picture, logo, etc.) Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE! (BTW-We use it and we like it!)
  6. Create your own with a Publisher template!
    This is a great option if you have an assistant or work in a team. And FREE! Create you own Publisher template and have your assistant fill in the local and community info, featured listings, etc. Bloggers, just copy and paste your blog content into your newsletter template. Send your email newsletter right from Publisher (File>Send Email>Send this page as message) and access your Outlook database! And for those of you that are using Publisher 2007, you can take advantage of their new email merge feature. Once you have set up a template, it’s just about plug and play!
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Kyte Offers Online TV Technology for your Real Estate Business

By: Reggie · Posted on August 25, 2007 · 6 Comments

Video has been reshaping the Internet, and it’s no different for your real estate business. Think back to your listings online, what do consumers want? Enhanced content…right? They want multiple photos, home tours and now video. So the same could be said for real estate information on your website. A text-based story would work, but imagine an article with video and photo support. Could you prove your point better? Could you also brand yourself better? I believe so!

Introducing Kyte.tv; their technology will allow you to create your own FREE real estate TV channel and broadcast it to the world. Your TV channel can include still photos, slide shows, video, music, voice and instant polls to help enhance your online presence and in turn, provide you a competitive edge in your real estate business. You may choose to include videos outlining industry trends, steps towards home ownership, the selling and buying process, real estate investment, or even showcase local attractions & hotspots. Of course you would also include video tours and photos of your listed homes for maximum appeal. Why not also invite colleagues such as your preferred lender to talk on evaluating loans, and improving credit. The ideas are limitless.

Once your TV channel is built, Kyte will allow you to embed it on your website, blog or even Facebook. Then every time you update your TV channel using the KTYE.tv interface, your website and blog will be updated simultaneously. Kyte has also integrated chat technology, allowing your audience to leave comments promoting your website community.

If you are interested in leveraging the latest in Internet TV technology for your real estate business don’t wait; create your own channel today!

A few other companies providing similar TV channel technology:

  1. SplashCast
  2. Vidiac
  3. Panjea
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11 Powerful Excel Formulas to Clean Your Real Estate Database

By: Reggie · Posted on August 17, 2007 · 7 Comments

Have you ever had the need to reformat a column of data in Excel? Possibly changing how the names read for a mailing list, or reformatting an address. If so you know that the right formulas can save you a great amount of time and frustration. I have 11 powerful excel formulas that will surely help out. Bring the power of Excel’s technology to your desktop.

  1. To extract the first name of a cell: type the following formula in B1 (Results: John)
    =LEFT(A1,FIND(” “,A1))
  2. To extract all of the text after the first word: type the following formula in B2 (Results: L. Smith)
    =MID(A2,FIND(” “,A2,1)+1,LEN(A2))
  3. To extract the last word in a cell: type the following formula in B3 (Results: Smith)
    =RIGHT(A3,FIND(” “,A3))
  4. To change the cell to all lowercase: type the following formula in B4 (Results: john smith)
    =LOWER(A4)
  5. To change the cell to title case: type the following formula in B5 type the following formula (Results: John Smith)
    =PROPER(A5)
  6. Change the cell to upper case: type the following formula in B6 (Results: JOHN SMITH)
    =UPPER(A6)


  1. Takes everything to the left of the comma: type the following formula in B1 (Results: Anytown)
    =LEFT(A1,FIND(“,”,A1)-1)
  2. Takes two characters after the comma. A perfect formula to extract state from the cell: type the following formula in C1 (Results: CA)
    =MID(A1,FIND(“,”,A1)+2,2)
  3. Take the last 5 characters of the cell. If you have zip +4 change the 5 to 10: In cell D1 type the following formula (Results: 99999)
    =RIGHT(A1,5)


  1. This formula will join two cells with a space in between: In cell C1 type the following formula (Results: John Smith)
    =A1&” “&B1
  2. Say you have first owner name and second owner name in the next column. You may only have second owner names for half of the list. With the standard concatenate function, you will have an “&” after each name whether or not there was a 2nd owner name. With my formula it will only add the “&” if there is a 2nd owner name. So this works conditionally checking for text in the 2nd cell. : In cell C1 type the following formula (Results: John & Amy)
    =MID(IF(ISTEXT(A2),”"&A2,”")&IF(ISTEXT(B2),” & “&B2,”"),1,100)

To use the formula to populate the entire column you will need to use the “Fill” command. For that see the following graphic:


Once you have finished cleaning and scrubbing your data, you still have one more thing to do. You need to keep the column of data you just created, but remove the formula that was used to generate it.

Begin by highlighting the column of data you just created… column “B”. Right mouse click on the column heading and choose “Copy”. Then right click on the same column heading “B” and select “Paste Special” then select “As Values” and click “OK”.

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Real Estate Agents Streamline Tasks with Word 2007

By: Reggie · Posted on July 28, 2007 · 2 Comments
In your real estate business you’ll find yourself conducting many repetitive tasks. Microsoft Word 2007 may have the technology to help save you time and effort. I’m talking about the new Building Blocks feature, similar to what was known as “Auto-text” in previous versions. In Word and Outlook 2007 a user can save snippets of content, lists, graphics and more using the quick parts tool and then apply those snippets to a document with a click of the mouse—retaining all preset formatting.

For example, say that in your Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) you consistently add many of the same components to your presentation such as your resume, company overview, pricing charts, marketing checklist and disclaimers. Rather that saving all of these items to one file, you can use building blocks to add each specific item to your presentation with the click of a mouse. Easily letting you pick and choose what to include and omit in your next presentation.

Of course building blocks are not specific to a CMA, they can be utilized for any content or graphical item—enabling you to quickly utilize content and graphics over and over. For example, items such as your signature with hyperlinks, introduction letter, staging checklist, listing syndication channels, coversheet, etc.

Do I have your interest peaked? Here are the steps to start taking advantage of this hot technology in Microsoft Word 2007.

  1. Open or type the content you would like to reuse, and highlight it.
  2. Select the Insert tab, and then locate the Text grouping.
  3. Select the arrow on the Quick Parts button.
  4. Select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.
  5. The Create New Building Block window appears.
    1. Name: Name your quick part.
    2. Gallery: Choose the Gallery to store the item.
    3. Category: Choose your category. I recommend creating a category for real estate.
    4. Description: Type a description for the building block.
    5. Save In: I recommend keeping the default Word location.
    6. Options: Choose to insert only the text, text as new paragraph or text on its own page.

    Adding a quick part to your document:
    1. Open a new or existing document.
    2. Click Insert tab, and then click the Quick Parts button.
    3. Click on the desired Quick Part to add to the document where the cursor is placed.
    4. Repeat as necessary.

    Are you still not sure how this technology works? Watch this quick video for more info.

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    New Email Stationery Technology for Real Estate Agents

    By: Reggie · Posted on July 6, 2007 · 8 Comments
    Email stationery has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Real Estate agents like this particular technology because it allows them to brand each email with their photo, logo and website links to drive consumers back to key features on their website such as search the MLS and featured properties. Even prospecting features like newly listed homes by email, buyer/seller tips, ask the expert, etc. Think of email stationery as a simplistic form of viral marketing!

    The email stationery technology became largely popular because of Microsoft Outlook support. However the challenge has always been that if you send emails from a blackberry, cell phone or other text email client you will not be able to take advantage of email stationery because of its HTML requirements. That is until now! inboxFX has created a very interesting web-based technology to tackle this very issue.

    inboxFX, a Canadian company, has designed their technology to wrap their custom email stationery around your plain text email message after it’s been sent, but before it arrives in the recipients inbox. The inboxFX solution works in two ways. First you can choose to use the inboxFX SMTP mail server as your outgoing email server and it will automatically wrap your stationery immediately after you click the send button. However if you use Microsoft exchange technology, or would like to selectively choose who can see the email stationery, you may want to use their second option.

    For this simplistic approach you can send to any email address and simply add “.inboxfx.com” to the end of the recipients email address. For example if I wanted to send my stationery to john@acme.com, I would send the email to john@acme.com.inboxfx.com and the template email stationery would be added before delivery. This solution will work with any email system…even from your MLS.

    inboxFX pricing is volume-based, to see the pricing matrix click here. For a series of inboxFX email stationery examples, click here.

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    Using Video in Your Real Estate Business

    By: Reggie · Posted on May 26, 2007 · 7 Comments

    Last year when Real Estate agents spoke about home tours online you could almost guarantee the tours were going to be compiled using a combination of still photos, stitched into a tour. (Photo Story etc.) Well that’s all changing as we predicted in November. Why are video tours and video presentations in Real Estate catching on? Well that’s mainly thanks to YouTube for making previous awkwardly large video files easy to share.

    What else is it about video that’s so compelling? If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, what’s video worth…10,000 words? Video allows the interested party to get even more realistic imagery and hear audio which means less to read online. Video also convey’s emotion when produced correctly.

    Now just because you have a video camera doesn’t mean you should start making your Real Estate video tours and video presentations for your website. You need to first address the idea of professionalism. You are not trying to film “The Blair Witch Project” you are a professional Real Estate agent trying to position yourself and the homes you represent as a wonderful opportunity for interested parties. To do that successfully, your video should have flow. If you are filming a house, bring your tripod to get smooth, level shots. Use well lit areas, and zoom-in for maximum impact. When these tools are used in the right combination, your Real Estate video will capture the essence of what you are trying to convey.

    How do I get started?
    Obviously, you will need a video camera, tripod and corresponding accessories for the actual video sessions. Also look into a microphone to attach onto your lapel. This will help remove the echo sometimes caused by using just the video recorders built-in microphone. Also pickup a lightweight, easy to collapse tripod.

    In regards to video editing you will need a fairly powerful computer. Using an old PC will definitely test your patience. The right software is also important. If your price-point is FREE*, you are in luck Windows Movie Maker is a decent program. (*Free if you have a registered copy of Microsoft Windows) With Movie Maker importing video is a snap. You can easily add text, transitions and special effects. The result will produce good quality video for web display. For Real Estate agents using Microsoft Vista Premium or Ultimate you will also be able to burn high-quality DVD’s with Movie Maker HD.

    If you are still on XP and are looking to create offline high-quality videos on CD, I recommend Adobe Premier Elements 3.0. This program has been a hit for years, and packs a ton of power from its big brother Adobe Premier Pro. Premier Elements is around $100 and now works with Windows Vista.

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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