RealTech

The tax records in REIn can be very handy for developing mailing lists for farming a specific neighborhood or sending information to absantee owners.  Here is a step by step guide on how to export these contacts from REIN and import them into Top Producer.  Although specific to the Top Producer CMS, this information can be useful for other CMS programs or doing a simple mail merge in Word.

Printable Version

With all the modern homes being constructed, there is something to be said for the personality of a Victorian Home.  Did the photo shoot for this home close to downtown Hampton today.  Love it’s charm. You can see the whole tour here.

Would you like to win a free Virtual Tour?  We are giving away a free virtual tour to an agent in Hampton Roads that is a Virtual Tidewater Fan on Facebook.  It’s easy to become a fan.  You can click on the fanbox widget on the right side of this blog or log into your facebook account and do a search for “Virtual Tidewater” to find the fan page.  Then just click on “Become a Fan”.  At the end of October there will be a drawing for a free virtual tour. There are two rules for eligibility:  1.  You are a licensed real estate agent in the Hampton Roads area (from Va Beach to Williamsburg) and 2.  You are a fan of Virtual Tidewater when the drawing is held on October 31st.

A big change has been made in the Virtual Tour Viewer that Virtual Tidewater is using and I am very excited about this change.  I have always been tweaking the tour viewer that I have used in the past, but it was a very manual process to put tours together and some of the technology was limited.  I have decided to make a change to make my process more streamlined and to better market agents listings.  The good news is agents will get a better product and the pricing will remain the same.  After switching to the new viewer yesterday the two agents I did tours for had positive comments “I do like it!” and “It looks great”.

Here  is why I made the switch:

1.  Images are in High Definition and is Optimized for the size of the screen that the tour is being viewed on. - This means no matter what computer the tour is being played on, it will look it’s best.  The images are also very crisp and clear - showing the listing in the best way possible.

2.  Full Screen -  The viewer has the ability to switch to a full screen version of the tour.

3.  Easy Sharing - The tour has a “send an email” function

4.  Social Networking - There is a “share” button on the tour making it easy to post of the various social networking sites

5.  STATS! - You’ve been asking for them, so here you are.  Agents will now be able to see tour stats that they can share with their sellers.  Weekly reports will be sent.

6. Thumbnails and easy navigation - I have always used thumbnails because I think it is important for the buyer to be able to control what they are seeing instead of being forced to sit through a whole video - folks on the internet are inpatient.

7. Easy syndication:  New service at no charge to you:  Tours will now be syndicated to leading real estate websites using neybor.com

Here is the new tour viewer in action.

I hope everyone likes it - feedback is welcome!

I was on Zillow today (following a post that someone had put on twitter), and I saw a program called “Dueling Digs” where you have actual listing photos that are currently on the market and you compare them 2 at a time and pick your favorite - After 10 photos have “dueled”  you have a winner.  I thought to myself, this will be fun - I love HGTV.  OK - let’s duel.  Well, of course I started in the higher price category and all the pictures looked OK, but for million $ plus homes they could have been better.  You could tell the difference between an agents photo and the professional.  I had to keep reminding myself - look at the home design - not the photo - but I couldn’t help it I kept choosing the better photo - maybe the one with the best view out the windows or the best composition.  Ok, Let’s try a different price range $250K to $500K.  I picked category “bathrooms”  this is the first duel that came up:

I thought to myself - “You have GOT to be kidding me.  These are the choices I get?!”  I ended up voting for the one on the left because what little you can see of it does look to be a more attractive design, but what are buyers thinking when they see pictures like this when they are looking for homes.  “Next, click.”  Is probably the answer.

I know these are both small rooms and shooting them is difficult.  Here are some simple fixes that would make these photos better - both of them are shot vertical - flip horizontal and use a wide angle lens.

The shot on the left is focused on the corner - pick the more attractive feature of the room and focus - in this case the pedestal sink.  Another option for angle is to stand on a stool and shoot from the opposite corner up high to get a shot of the sink and what is probably a nice floor covering.

On the right side - apparently they had never heard of staging! - This is such a cluttered mess the eye is so distracted it doesn’t know what to look at.  Actually, I’m thinking “They don’t have enough closet space in this house.  Next, click.”

My point is, make sure your photos don’t do more harm than good.  You want your marketing photos lure buyers into wanting to see the home in person, not click to the next house and forget the listing ever existed.  If you take your photos yourself, take your time!  A quick 5 minute walk through of the house with your camera can do more harm than good.

If you want to try “Dueling Digs”, it is quite fun!  Here is the link.

Those of you who know me personally, know that I am always griping and complaining about the monopoly REIN has had on the IDX solutions for agents.  Basically, if you didn’t have an “Active Agent” website at $30+/month, you could not have a property search feature on your website.  Across the country agents actually have a choice!  Locally, there are IDX solutions available for brokers, but agents can not participate in any third party IDX solution.  Apparently REIN wants all agents in the Hampton Roads area to have the exact same website - and a not very good one at that. Who remembers the whole paid e-pass fiasco?  But I digress.

Thank you REIN for finally having MLXChange PRO for agents.  If you are not taking advantage of the client gateway features now available to you included in the price of your quarterly dues you are missing the boat of web 2.0 and being interactive with your clients online search.  This is a great feature, but you the agent must control the search - most Internet shoppers like to be in control, not be controlled.  Now for $10 a month you can add the search feature to this “client gateway” site.  The search feature is user friendly, makes it easy to inquire about a property, see virtual tours and more photos, map the property and “keep the property” to print a list.  If they have registered for an account they can save their properties and write notes about them.  These saved properties can be seen in the Client Manager from inside MLXChange.  One thing I do not like is it is not clear to someone who hasn’t registered for an account that they CAN create an account and save their properties.  You may want to make note to this on the homepage before someone begins the search.

If you want to see a search in action, here is the REIN Demo Site

While this is an affordable option for an IDX solution, please don’t think that it is a viable option to use for your only website.  The MLXChange Pro website is really only useful for IDX.  You really can’t customize it to include community information, blog posts, videos, etc.  Today’s online consumer wants more and to stand apart you need to put effort into a website to make it local and personal - otherwise they can just search for property on the national sites such as trulia, realtor.com, and cyberhomes.com.  So, create a great website, then embed or link to your client gateway for the search feature.

My internet surfing brought me to a  site tonight that I thought could be useful for real estate agents.  issuu.com is a free service that turns your documents (Word, Powerpoint, pdf) into attractive magazine-like publications to be viewed on the web. These publications can be embedded in websites and blogs and forwarded to your friends on Facebook.  You can also add it to a Facebook Fan Page.    Hmmmm…..How could an agent use this I thought.  Well let’s see some possibilities:

1.  Publish your listing brochures - Here is an example of one I designed

2. Create a buyers or sellers guidebook

3. Pre-listing package - Forward the URL to a prospective seller

4.  For Sale By Owner or Expired Listing Guide

5.  Online Personal Brochure

When it comes down to it, any piece of paper you would hand a prospective client, could be uploaded to this service.  I’ll have to do some reasearch to see how to best add this to other real estate websites.  Any other ideas?  Please leave a comment!

Recently Facebook came out with the “Fan Box” Widget that can be added to websites.  These can be added to pretty much any website where you can edit the HTML, but this post is going to focus specifically on Top Producer(TM) Real Estate Websites.

1. If you don’t already have one, get a fan page on Facebook.  This is a great way to share real estate information with your clients and friends on Facebook.  To create a fan page, just go to any fan page (like the Virtual Tidewater Fan Page) and down at the bottom left of the page click “Create a Page for my Business”   - Just follow the steps to create your fan page.

2.  Add some content and get some fans! - There is a function to suggest your page to your friends (you can pick specific contacts)

3.  Near the top of your fanpage (under the profile picture) Click on “Add fan box to your site”

4. You will have a few options You can do a “become a fan” button, include your stream and/or include your fans pictures.  If you are adding this to your TopProducer Website, you are limited on how tall your widget can be, so select either stream or fans, but not all three.

5. Before you copy and paste the HTML, you will need to change the width of the widget to 170 px to fit within the size of the TopProducer Widget.  To do this simply change the width code within the HTML as follows below:  (Facebook says that the widget must be a min. of 200 px, however I was able to get it to work at 170 px.)

Once you have changed the width you can copy the code.

6.  Go to the administrative area of your TopProducer Website and Click on “Edit Site” and then “Manage My Web Boxes”

7.  Under “Add a New Web box”, Click on Custom Message

8.  The editor will appear with a box to type a message,  you need to click on the HTML editor on the bottom left.  (The <> symbol next to the pencil).

9.There will already be some code there - do not delete it.  you will need to paste your code within the existing code.  Paste your code that you copied from Facebook as follows:

10. Click on the pencil to go back to the text editor and you should see “your fanpage name on facebook”, but you will not see the entire widget.  Click OK and insert the fan page box on the pages you want it to be seen.

I hope I made this a clear as possible, but if something is unclear please feel free to leave a comment.  For more information of Top Producer Websites you can visit the Virtual Tidewater Website.  I am a Top Producer Certified Professional and Reseller, so feel free to contact me with any questions about Top Producer and how it can help your business.

I am excited to say that CFC Web Services is now Virtual Tidewater.  Since only my husband and myself knew what CFC meant I decided to make the change.  Look for a new look coming soon on the website.  All the services are the same, just a name change for now!

In a recent Trulia Blog Article buyers are now twice as likely to search for open houses online than in the local paper.  In fact, they state that the open house filter on Trulia has increased 39% since the start of 2009.  I have put together a list of  websites that agents can market their open houses online.

1. Realtor.com - if you have “Showcase Listings” (and you should)
2. Trulia
3. Zillow
4. Craigslist
5. Company Website
6. Personal Website
7. Facebook - Have your seller post it to their profile too
8. Twitter
9. OpenHouse
10.  In your MLS (Hampton Roads market - REIN)

I’m sure I’ve missed a few?  Please comment if you know of more.