Archive for category: Real Estate Related

The Fiscal Times recently issued its “Real Estate Trends to Watch in 2017”, and it’s certain that a mobile-ready real estate website is one strategy to put on your to-do-list next year.

This is because 2017 will be a year to focus on the Millennial home buyer.

According to Fiscal Times, the scenario is coming to together to convince Millennials that now is the time for them to be homeowners instead of renters. Because they will be the primary driver of real estate sales.

Here’s why:

1. Millennials are coming into money – this age group, people born in the 1980s, have now reached a point where they have advanced in their careers and are starting to earn a decent paycheck.
2. Millennials are creating families – they are also reaching the point where they are marrying, though later than average, and are starting families.
3. Mortgage rates are going up – Americans are used to record-low interest rates. But we all know those won’t last forever. Experts are predicting they won’t. Interest rates are already starting to rise and financial experts say they could reach 4.8% or 5% compared to the 3% range they’ve been in. Rising rates will be the catalyst that prompts many Millennials to make a move and buy a home.
4. Mortgages are getting easier for first-time home buyers – banks and lenders are warming up to Millennials in regard to financing. It will be easier for them to acquire a home loan.
5. Foreign buyers will be buying less – there was a nice rush of foreign investors fueling home sales for a while. But now that interest rates are rising, home prices are rising and the dollar has appreciated, you will see few homes purchases from this group. That’s even more of a reason to target the Millennial home buyer.
6. Cash buyers will slow down.

Okay, so pundits like Fiscal Times and other experts say 2017 will be the year to focus on Millennials. Sounds easy right.

Not so fast. This is the group that was born with an iPhone in their hands.

For one, this is the mobile internet generation. Desktops – they hardly touch them. Laptops – sure, they have one but that is not their primary means of communication. Because the device of choice for Millennials is their smartphone. And that means your real estate website must be fully mobile ready.

Sure, you finally might have your website looking the way you want it to look on your desktop. But that’s not how Millennials will see your site. They will be looking at it from their phones, which as you can imagine has a whole different appearance than a large monitor.

That means images must resize and load correctly. That means text must reconfigure and be legible. That means it must be easy to determine navigation.

And all of this reformatting must happen quickly.

Every time all of these functions do not take place, you could be losing the buyer of a $500,000 townhome.

To be sure you have a real estate website that is mobile-ready, consider the best content management platform out there – WordPress.

WordPress developers know mobile is huge. So the site is fully-coded for mobile. On Apple iPhones, Samsung smartphones , IOS and Android.

Real estate website providers such as Home Junction, can create WordPress real estate websites that are mobile-ready and fully functional on a phone (or tablet).

They not only can do that, but they can also provide plug-ins that can integrate hyper-local data onto the website.

Millennials are sticklers about using their phones to gather information. They want the ability to get answers to their own questions before saying one word to a live real estate agent.

With the right data plug-ins, you can provide MLS listings, recent sales information, home values, etc. All current. All hyper-local down to the neighborhood. All integrated with MLS and a map.

If we’ve learned anything in 2017, it’s that things change. BIG time. If your real estate website has not changed recently, you will be behind the times.

It’s déjà vu all over again as the real estate business in California is heating up. That basically means brokers and agents need to be on top of their game with a responsive WordPress real estate website and the best data in the business.

Real estate folks in other parts of the country need to pay attention. California has always been a bellwether state. What happens in Calif, eventually happens everywhere else.

Here are the numbers. In the past four years, the state has issued 95,000 new real estate licenses. That means there are nearly 100k new agents out there who all want listings and sales.

Brokers are becoming increasingly aggressive. In five years, from 2009-2014, more than 1,000 new offices have been opened by brokers just in Southern California alone.

Real estate companies are recruiting new agents left and right.

Why the rush? Here’s the prize: Real estate sales in Southern California, like the desert in Death Valley, are hot.

Orange County saw nearly $19 billion in homes sales as of September this year. That’s the highest it’s been in 12 years after the Great Recession. Los Angeles homes sales generated $25 billion this year, an increase of a whopping 78%.

The whole Southern California region, in fact, experienced $55.7 billion in home sales this year.

That’s a big bucket of commissions.

This boom in real estate has also been great for the economy overall—title companies, mortgage companies, home inspectors and others are benefiting nicely. An estimated 60,000 new real estate related jobs have been added in the past six years.

One major reason for the boom has been incredibly low interest rates. Who knows how long those will last?

However, as you can see by the number of new agents and new offices, a bunch of people have their eyes on those commissions. In fact, one observer said it looked like there was a new real estate office opening up in a strip mall every week.

How to Compete? Use a WordPress Real Estate Agent Websites

Sure, California is the home of high-tech. It’s the birthplace of Hewlett Packard and Apple. You can be sure California real estate agents are  equipping themselves with the latest in high-tech tools as well. In this type of competitive market, a shoddy, outdated website just won’t cut it.

That’s why a real estate website built on a WordPress platform is a must. WordPress is the gold standard right now for building a website.

It’s super-easy to use, the coding is built to be easily read by search engines such as Google, and it’s highly-responsive for smartphones and iPhones.

The other big factor that makes WordPress great is the ability for the average broker and agent to adapt quickly, adding hyper-local content to meet rapid changes in the marketplace. Say for instance, the school board announces they are building a new middle school. With a WordPress real estate website, an agent can quickly add information about the school and optimize that page to be seen in Google and Bing rankings.

Speaking of content, data providers such as Home Junction can help brokers and agents tap into massive databases of local content: school enrollment, recent homes sales, property trends, etc. All this can be fed into the agent’s website so they are seen as the agents with THE local knowledge.

When you have $55 billion in property sales taking place in an area, it’s like a feeding frenzy. Only the tech-savviest  brokers and agents will thrive and survive. Be sure you have the tools to be one of them—a WordPress real estate website and current real estate data.

Go here to read information about Southern California’s hot property sales.

What do wine and real estate content have in common? According to web guru Gary Vaynerchuk, quite a bit.

You might have heard of Gary. He’s the guy who built a $50 million empire selling wine—all on the internet.

The guy loves social media. He wonders why everybody doesn’t love it as much. He certainly believes real estate agents can have similar success if they embrace this technology wholeheartedly.

He advises agents, to ask themselves this question:  “Do you believe in the power of the web or not?”

If you do, then he says, “go deep.”

To put it simply, his mantra is “Social Media = Business.”

But there’s a caveat if you are going to embrace social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc.

“The first rule about content marketing is you have to actually generate content. You actually have to have something to say,” Gary notes. “That is the key ingredient to building a personal brand online.”

In his book, Crush It!, he makes this observation: “Great content is also about telling stories, and that’s true even if you’re in retail or B2B or consumer services. If you’re a real estate agent and your area is Clark, New Jersey, then you should want to tell me everything about Clark that makes it unique. Tell me the story of the town, not just the home you want to sell. Make me care about the place as much as you do.”

Use Local Data to Create Real Estate Content

Okay, here’s where the hype hits reality…

Real estate agents are busy. They are out there all day long showing houses, organizing agent tours, and preparing for open houses. They are networking at breakfast groups in the morning and business events in the evening; attending and participating in charity events.

On top of that, there’s this other entity called a “family” which can take up quite a bit of an agent’s time.

It’s not exactly easy to become a real estate content machine like the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world—filming YouTube videos, feeding tweets on Twitter and constantly posting photos of wine bottles on Instagram.

So here’s a solution. Interesting real estate content is the key to the kingdom on the web. Why not equip yourself with content-enhancing tools?

For one, make sure your real estate website is based on WordPress, the most popular and effective content management system in the world. You can even have real estate website experts such as Home Junction set you up on a WordPress in very little time.

With WordPress, you have an easy tool to post real estate content. WordPress started out as a blogging tool by a pair of young developers whose mission was to create a very simple way for the average person to become a blogger.

The tool was so effective, in fact, that the developers eventually created a version where you could build an entire website using WordPress. That technology also took off.

Now, many of the most popular content sites in the world use WordPress.

Why? Because it is so easy to use. Any agent can learn how to post their own local real estate content. Any time of day or night. They don’t have to wait for a webmaster. They don’t have to pay for a webmaster to do it.

WordPress is designed to be search engine friendly. Google bots love it for ranking because the code helps Google easily determine what each page is about. That’s not always the case on sites with bloated or sloppy coding.

Now you have the best possible platform for content. You have an efficient, fast way to post fresh content and distribute it on social media.

Here’s another tip: Hook up with a real estate data provider, like Home Junction, to put unique, hyper-local data on your real estate website.

Gary Vaynerchuk may be a whizz at coming up with things to talk about regarding wine. There’s always a new bottle of wine to review. But for anybody who has stared at a keyboard wondering what to heck to write about, having a hyper-local data provider is a godsend.

With Home Junction, for example, you can get feeds for all types of local content, including:

• Property Sales Data
• Home Pricing Trends
• Local Demographics
• Local Cost-of-Living Indexes
• Local School Data
• Local Businesses based on Distance

That’s not only content, it’s authoritative content. Super local real estate content.

Which Facebook post do you think is going to catch the eye of prospects? The one you post, “Gee, I just love the weather today, it’s nice and cool.”

Or, “Here is a graph with the latest trends in Home Sales Pricing in xyz neighborhood.”

You might think you can’t be as successful as Vaynerchuk. But remember, he’s selling $29 bottles of wine. You are selling $600,000 homes. Invest in yourself to boost your personal brand. Turn yourself into a content-generating machine by acquiring the best tools on the market to do it.

That’s how you go deep. Do this right, and at some point, you will be buying a bottle of wine recommended by Gary Vaynercuk to toast your increased success.

Here’s a link on Inman’s with Gary’s advice on real estate content.

Apple. Facebook. Google. By now, everybody knows these are the heavy hitters when it comes to technology. It’s not like they became behemoths by mistake. Or acquisitions. Or monopolies protected by Congress.

They are recognized leaders in their field because they just do tech better.

There’s another tech company that is rapidly heading in the direction that will place it in this elite electronic group of household tech companies. It’s WordPress developed by Automattic.

By now many people have heard the name WordPress. Maybe just a smidgen of a mention overheard here or there. WordPress is not a top of mind company like Facebook because it’s not something consumers interact with on a regular basis (Or so they might think. But more about that later).

WordPress gained popularity about 13 years ago when it was first released by two young men as a very simple platform to use for blogging.

They made it so easy that the average Joe and Jane could easily download the software and start blogging in minutes.

People loved it.

In fact, people loved it so much, growth skyrocketed. The company that started WordPress soon realized, “Hey, we got something here.”

Fast forward to 2016. WordPress is very close to becoming the go-to content management system for basically all content.

In IT circles, it is certainly a well-recognized brand. One reason is because the platform is open-sourced, so thousands of developers are creating improvements in the form of plug-ins and other tools for people to use.

Basically just like what happened with all those iPhone apps.

After those two entrepreneurs first started out to make blogging easier, this platform now powers 26% of the entire world wide web. Think about it. That’s enormous market share.

A platform that started out as a simple blogging site for recipes and rants, now has more than a quarter market share over all other platforms. In fact, managers at WordPress have their sights set on 50% market share.

Consider this: 50,000 new sites are created every day using WordPress. It’s now available in 50 languages.

Each month users publish 41 million new posts using WordPress, resulting in 15 billion pages of text.

Those pages are viewed by more than 409 million people every month.

The evidence is there. People might not realize it, but there’s an awfully good chance they are reading something presented on a WordPress platform.

Think about it. WordPress owns 26% of the Internet. That’s competing with Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. (In fact, Facebook uses WordPress for their own content).

Just like Apple, Google and Facebook have such huge market share, there’s a reason for WordPress’ success.

Rather than get technical, we’ll sum up those reasons in three simple statements. WordPress is a leader because it’s:

– Easy to use. The interface is intuitive and once you get the hang of it, you don’t need to wait for a webmaster to make changes for you. As anybody with a website knows, this is huge.

– Easy to make SEO friendly. This is a technical item, but just know that WordPress was built with a coding architecture that is very simple, clean and well-organized. Which means that search engines like Google love to scan WordPress and find it easy to index the site.

That’s a big plus when it comes to ranking on Page One of Google, Yahoo or Bing for target keywords. To put it simply, high rankings are basically free money falling from the sky. That’s not always the case with other real estate websites that have bloated, broken code.

– Easily Customized. Because it is open-sourced, there are so many things you can do with WordPress. Developers around the world have created thousands of themes and nearly 300,000 plug-ins to create the site you want, just the way you want it.

WordPress for Real Estate Websites

As a real estate professional, you are not just a blogger. You are basically an information resource like CNN.

WordPress has tremendous potential for real estate websites with so many options available. Which can be challenge because too many options can become overwhelming. How do you know which ones to pick? Which ones are best? How to set them up? Make sure they work? Across all web browsers? On all mobile devices?

The smart strategy is to hire a professional team who will know which options to add and set up your website on WordPress just the way you want it with easy to use navigation, nice big photos of properties and the ability to quickly add and change content.

Companies like Home Junction specialize in producing WordPress real estate themes quickly and effectively.

So when it comes to real estate websites, get on the WordPress train! It’s going places.

Here’s an infographic on the tremendous growth of WordPress.

How important is neighborhood data? A recent article in US News & World Report talked about real estate trends that a person in Chicago should consider before they sold their home.

One paragraph was particularly interesting about how “Neighborhoods Matter.”

In the article, the writer goes on to talk about how what surrounds a home can have a tremendous impact on its sale price in addition to the property itself. Properties that are near nice restaurants and stores will fetch more than homes located far away.

Then there are parks. Parks are huge. People love the idea of walking out of their home and into a green space, no matter what size. Their children need fresh air and exercise. Their dog needs to go for a walk. (By the way, the odds of a home buyer having a kid or a canine in the US are very, very high). Just a little patch of nature has big value to home buyers.

Unique neighborhoods are golden. Everybody wants to live near the newest trendy downtowns, a place where there are cool bars and a popular arts and theater scene.

Then there is the question of public transportation. Take Chicago for example. How close is an “L” train station? Traffic on major highways is bad enough; how many lights does a person have to wait through just to get to the expressway?

The key point is this attention to neighborhoods doesn’t just apply to Chicago. Or just New York City or Los Angeles. The concern for neighborhood is universal. And there are hyper-local tools that gives real estate brokers and agents an advantage when it comes to promoting neighborhood data.

One such tool is SpatialMatch developed by Home Junction. This software was basically built around the whole “neighborhoods matter” concept.

With Home Junction data and their special SpatialMatch tool, rather than tell home buyers (and sellers when you explain how well you can promote their location), there is an actual map integrated into a broker or agent’s website to show them the local assets. (You can also order a data-only version of this resource of local amenities).

A neighborhood data widget is also integrated with the local MLS and a massive hyper-local database. So in essence, a broker can pull up a property or type in an address and instantly display all the local neighborhood amenities surrounding it.

This process is incredibly persuasive and powerful since what it does is show a prospect how great the location is that they are considering. That strategy can be as powerful as the home itself.

Say for example, an agent has a drab 3/2 townhouse they are trying to sell. It looks just like the other 50 townhouses in that community and frankly, not a whole lot different than other townhouses around the state.

So, the agent walks the buyer through the property. White walls, beige carpet,  half-shiny appliances, blah, blah, blah.

You can only get so excited about this type of listing and if you pretend to be overexcited, well, people can certainly see through that.

However, the excitement can be created when that agent pulls out their laptop and starts showing that couple all the really exciting attractions in the area.

Home Junction has a database of businesses, schools, parks, highways and other critical hyper-local addresses built right into its geo-spatial database. So every amenity can be pulled up with distances included relevant to any home listing.

A savvy agent can point out there’s a Starbucks nearby that the couple can bicycle to. Over here there’s an enormous, tree-filled park with some outdoor fitness equipment and exercise stations. Nearby is an super-popular sushi restaurant that quickly reaches capacity at 7 pm. But since this property is so close, the couple can be there by 6:30 pm. And after dinner, there’s that fun brew pub across the street that features folk singers and bluegrass music every night.

Get the picture? Neighborhood data can be a beautiful thing, especially when showing a property that has minimal charm.

Yes, neighborhoods do matter. Be sure to have the best hyper-local real estate tools embedded on your site. Show buyers and sellers that promoting a neighborhood matters to you as a broker or agent as well, and that is why you have this technology at your fingertips.

You know how it goes. You get a new listing and emphasize to the seller how important it is to make a good first impression. But what about taking your own advice and making sure your website makes an attention-grabbing first impression? Real estate data can help you do that.

According to web designers, there are certain key elements that you must have on your web site to capture the interest of visitors. After all, research shows the average person will spend less than 15 seconds reviewing a website. Poof, then they are gone and so is all that potential. A lost opportunity to perhaps sell a sizable home. Or gain a great referral. Vanished.

Of course there are basic items that should be on your checklist—page load time, for example. If your site is too slow, that’s a sure way to lose visitors.

Another factor is the appearance. Is the site pleasant on the eyes?  Or are there too many garish colors or images that make it difficult to look at?

How about pop-ups? Is there an annoying pop-up screen blocking a view or does the pop-up offer a visitor something in return for their email address?

What about navigation? Is everything easy to find? Can they easily search for homes in their area? Find out information about you? Find other resources that every home buyer needs?

Which leads us to this point about real estate data. One of the key questions that needs to be answered when a person visits a website is what is the “value proposition” that this site offers.

A visitor is asking, “Does this real estate broker or agent offer the answers to my questions? The solutions that I need to help me make this nerve-wracking, scary decision to buy a $250,000 home or a $2.5 million home?”

In essence, what a home buyer is seeking is more than just pretty pictures of homes and yards. They need data. Valuable real estate data about recent home sales in the area. Information about trends in home prices. What about the cost of living index in this market? Is it super expensive? Or reasonable and something I can live with?

What about schools? Where are the closest schools? What’s the student/teacher ratio? How many students are enrolled? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Providing this data adds tremendous value to your “value proposition.” Real estate data on your website can create this impression:

• This real estate agent has ALL the information I need, not just home listings.
• This broker obviously goes the extra mile for their clients by providing this valuable real estate data.
• This real estate agent or broker is obviously a pro because they know there’s more to buying a home than just photos of living rooms and kitchens.

You can also extend that power of your real estate data by supplying tidbits on posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.

Finally, and this is a key consideration, providing detailed real estate data also tells a consumer, “This is an agent I can trust to help me with this major transaction.”

Sure, some people might think data is just a bunch of boring numbers. But it’s more than that. It’s how that information influences someone’s perception of you. It creates the image in their minds, in those 15 seconds, that this website is obviously a valuable resource.

With advances in big data today, it’s amazing the amount of hyper-local information a broker or agent can provide on their website with a few lines of code. Data that will be a differentiator in any marketplace crowded with other brokers and agents. Data that could mean the difference between losing a customer or gaining a new client; a sizable commission check and a precious referral.

True, it’s important that a seller clean up the yard, paint the front door, shampoo the carpets and complete a huge list of other projects required to create a great first impression. But when it comes to real estate data, adding this resource to a website is actually a very easy and simple project.

Call Home Junction to find how you can use real estate data to boost that first impression for yourself.