Archive for category: Real Estate Related

There are several articles circulating on the web about how to choose a real estate agent. They all seem to say the same thing, and they all also miss out on a few important qualities that brokers and agents should possess in this day and age. One of these qualities includes the latest real estate big data technology. But more on that later.

Here are some of the usual tips these articles include when looking for an agent:

– Talk with recent clients. Sure, good advice. But be wary, any professional can always keep a handful of happy clients in their back pocket, even if 80% of their other clients were not satisfied.

– Look up licensing and certifications. Are they a member of the National Association of Realtors? Are they a Certified Residential Specialist? An Accredited Buyer’s Representative? Perhaps they are certified as a Seniors Real Estate Specialist. Doesn’t hurt to ask. Any certifications or awards are certainly helpful in determining the background of an agent.

– Pick a winner. This is subjective. How do you determine a winner? By the number of home sales in the past 12 months. By the number of their listings? Strong activity certainly indicates they have something going on.

– Check credentials.  Are they licensed? Where did they go to school?

– How long in business. This criteria can be deceiving. An agent or broker could be in the business for 20 years but they might not be the right person for you. Perhaps they are a part-time real estate agent, someone who plays golf every day and perhaps sells or lists a few homes every now and then. Is this person going to hustle for you? Probably not. But if there is someone who has been in business for 20 years and shows a tremendous track record, then you can see this person does work hard for their clients.

– Check their current listings. If people are listing with them, that’s a good sign. But also check the quality of the properties. If the agent has listings but most are just run down, low-priced properties, perhaps they are not truly leaders in the area.

– What is their knowledge of other homes in the market? This is huge. You want a person who knows the market inside and out. What homes are really selling for? Which prices are realistic, not crazily inflated? What’s the true value of certain properties? Which schools and other amenities are influencing the price and sale of homes.

Which bring us to the next point, a point missed by many articles about how to choose the best real estate agent.

This is 2015. The era of Big Data and the high-speed Internet. What about the technological credentials of a real estate agent? What can he or she bring to the table in terms of real estate big data?

Does that agent have the latest market information at their fingertips? Do they have it sparsed down to the hyperlocal markets? Can they show you a chart of home sales in particular neighborhoods?

Speaking of neighborhoods, what do they know about the surrounding area, which has a huge impact on property values and the particular amenities that home buyers want in a location?

Sure, an agent might be able to say, “Yes I know the schools. That school over there is okay and that school over there is not as popular for some reason.”

But what about hard data? Does that agent have access to student/teacher ratios? The number of students? The demographic breakdown of the student body? The name of the current principal.

An agent should not just be giving out anecdotal information they may have heard about a school, but should give a buyer access to facts. And the consumer should not have to go digging for that information, but should be able to find it on an agents website.

What about recent homes sales? Does the agent offer that information on that site as well? Or does a consumer have to surf through a myriad of sites trying to find that information and wondering the whole time if they are using a legitimate source?

Real estate is all about location, location, location. So, what is located close to the homes a consumer might consider buying?

Does the agent have any interactive maps where they can pull up, say, the closest golf courses? Or the nearest interstate? Or, the closest hospital? Italian restaurant? Gym? Bookstore?

Is that agent going to say, “I think there’s a pretty decent gym over there on Third Street.”

Or, are they going to have access to real estate big data that includes an enormous database of local amenities, such as personal fitness centers, so they can show consumers the proximity provided by each home location?

This is 2015. There are tools out there that real estate agents should be embedding on their website that gives consumers access to enormous an database of hyper-local information.

Home Junction is a provider of that hyper-local real estate big data. They have the apps to integrate massive amounts of data with any real estate website.

So consumers are going to be asking the usual questions they found somewhere on the web about how to pick a real estate agent. That list will include the usual, age-old items.

But what impact do you think an agent will have on a consumer if they show them they also have gathered this gold mine of enormous hyper-local big real estate data to help consumers make a decision on which home to buy? And they can customize that data to the personal preferences of each buyer.

That’s a question that doesn’t need an answer. It’s a given. In 2015, a time of iPads and smartphones where consumers have access to unlimited amounts of information, the impact an agent can have as a source of quality, local data is enormous.

It’s a game changer when it comes to selecting agent.

Sure, you need to address those other questions. But in this technological age, be sure to cover the technology angle.

To learn more about Home Junction and the huge local real estate big data widget you can add to your site that is sure to impress buyers, click here.

It’s no secret this country has gone through some tough economic times and is on the slow road to recovery.

A few years ago, jobs disappeared. Housing dropped. Wallets and pocketbooks shrunk.

Things appear to be getting better — the unemployment rate is declining and the demand for real estate listings is increasing in some parts of the country.

But budgets are still tight. We’re not experiencing boom times, that’s for sure.

In fact, it seems as though everybody is looking for a bargain these days. Stores are offering more BOGO’s (Buy One Get One Free). There seems to be a deluge of coupons in the local newspapers, in the mail, and in email. And this is something to be considered when wondering how to market properties.

When trying to figure out how to market properties, a map-based, neighborhood IDX search platform like SpatialMatch can assist you in helping buyers who are very cost-conscious.

For example, with SpatialMatch, you can point out all the discount stores in an area. Maybe a Super Wal-Mart is only five miles away. As you know, it’s human nature to shop at the places that are closest to your home.

So, living near a Wal-Mart can have tremendous appeal to a family on a tight budget. It will literally save them thousands of dollars over the course of a year. Pointing this out on your SpatialMatch platform could be just the tipping point that closes the deal. Same thing with other budget stores — Costco, Sam’s Club, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Dollar Tree.

Take gas stations for example. Everybody needs to buy gas. But that darn price seems to rebound upward just when you think it is going to drop like an annoying badger. Just four years ago, gas was less than $2 a gallon. Now it hovers around $4.

Someone on a tight budget would surely appreciate you showing them a few corners where the gas tends to be cheaper and the stations more competitive. Or is the location near a major highway that makes it easy for commuting? There’s a gas and time saver right there.

What about things to do for fun? Is a park located nearby? A family can have a ton of fun just hanging out at park all day with a soccer ball and a kit. Sure beats a day at Disney, dollar-wise.

Obviously, this is a sensitive subject for brokers and agents and has to be handled delicately.

Conversely, SpatialMatch can help seal the deal if your clients are well-to-do.

Ask them what they like to do for fun, what types of restaurants they prefer, where they like to shop.

If they want to join the most expensive golf club in town, only prefer to eat at a restaurant with a fancy, hard to pronounce French name and shop at Neiman Marcus-type places, well, SpatialMatch can point that out as well.

Again, hyper-local is a great sales tool when figuring out how to market properties. Pointing out that exclusive tennis club just down the road or that fabulous spa across the street could just be one more factor that tips the deal .

The point is, nowadays more than ever, location matters.

Your expertise as the hyper-local expert is going to matter.

And rather than telling people where things are, your ability to point them out with the use of a detailed, super-heavy searchable database of local amenities embedded on your website is going to make a difference as well.

A local search tool like SpatialMatch is not very expensive. But the rewards you can gain from it can be very lucrative, no matter what situation your clients are in.

Check it out here.

I was sitting around the other day with a bunch of friends who had lived in my area for quite a while.

I mentioned a funky and delicious restaurant I had checked out recently.

They had never heard of it.

And they were quite impressed with my local knowledge.

This got me thinking about how real estate brokers and agents can use this strategy to generate a larger following on social sites such as Google +, Facebook and Twitter.

If you want to increase your social media followers, the key is to keep finding those “hidden gems.”

Another key is to have the right tool to display the location of those precious treasures. That’s where the IDX and lifestyle search engine SpatialMatch can be a huge help.

Here are some ideas on how to get people to pay attention to your posts and increase your social media followers:

First, scour your neighborhood for those out-of-the-way places. Go off the beaten path. Take a different route home, and you might uncover a lovely bookstore, antique store or café you never knew existed.

Another source is your chamber of commerce. Even if the business is not a member, chances are people in the office know about it (because every business is their prospect for membership).

Find an old restaurant in town or a group where seniors gather. Ask them. They might surprise you.

Another idea is to cross the town or county border  (which you will find designated on SpatialMatch as well).

You would be surprised how many people consider going to another town or county the same as traveling to France. So, find a cool place just over the border and blog about it. For example, I was tipped off recently to a restaurant just over in the next town that did not disappoint. Sweet potato crusted grouper with horseradish… yummy! Can’t find that in my neighborhood.

Next, point out the location of the treasure on SpatialMatch, which is an enormous, colorful, map-based database of homes for sale and area business, schools, amenities etc. You can pinpoint the location on the map and then email the link or post the link on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This will bring them back to your site and, thus, increase your social media followers!

Throw in a home that you have listed nearby as well. You can do that on SpatialMatch. You can show both properties for sale alongside neighborhood gems. People looking to buy are going to find that very cool. People looking to sell are going to picture their home on your site, looking good.

Think about it. This is not only a great strategy, it’s a fun strategy. Your job literally involves finding interesting places to eat, hang out, shop, jog, etc. Why, you would become a regular Frommer’s travel guide.

But what’s great about your job is that rather than helping sell travel books for $19.99, you’re selling $100,000-plus homes and using this strategy to generate listings for more $100,000-plus homes.

Now that’s gotta be a “gem” of an idea.

To learn more, visit  SpatialMatch here.

Have you ever watched Million Dollar Listing?  It’s a show on the Bravo network where three 30-somethings sell real estate in Malibu and Hollywood.

With their luxury cars, weird haircuts, and super-wealthy clients, this almost seems like a fantasy reality show.

Their names are even trendy – Madison, Chad and Josh (what, no Biff?).

I watched it the other day and almost fell off the couch when one of the young men proudly declared, “I don’t sell just real estate. I sell a lifestyle.”

Like nobody, including the rich, has ever heard that saying before. Yeah, right.

The young man and, frankly, anybody who is going to use the lifestyle approach would be wise to let sellers know they not only use that strategy, they have the tools to back it up.

Because on Million Dollar Listing, the harsh reality is that there are quite a few million dollars homes in Los Angeles and in a down market, as you can imagine, the sellers are extremely demanding.

To show sellers you are really serious about marketing the lifestyle of a property, you can embed a tool such as the SpatialMatch IDX and Lifestyle search engine directly onto your site.

This type of tool not only provides a colorful, user-friendly showcase for homes for sale, but also a geo-based platform that shows the location of the home in relation to neighborhood amenities such as schools, restaurants, parks, golf courses, etc. The database is extensive and up-to-date with hundreds of layers of relevant, hyper-local information and is an excellent way of marketing the lifestyle of a property.

Say for example, an agent is going to market a home with a huge wine cellar, not unheard of in California, for sure. With SpatialMatch, you could also point out the distance of the property from that cool wine store everybody talks about. Or that hard-to-get-into restaurant with the world-renowned sommelier that people would love to have visit their table.

Another home might have an indoor gym. Well, that fitness buff probably also likes to go for jogs in a great park with running trails, or visit the exclusive gym.

For as calm and collected as these folks appear on Million Dollar Listing, you can tell they are under a lot of pressure.

Take some of that pressure off by giving yourself the right equipment to make sales happen. When someone buys a $9 million dollar home, you can be sure they are examining all factors.

Using the SpatialMatch neighborhood database platform, you can provide more of those factors in your favor.

Who knows? The location of that wine store/bistro/golf course/ park/stables could be one of the that tips a buyer…or gets the listing.

When you see the eye-popping commissions these young people make and you see them driving their Mercedes away with a big smile on their face and the California sun shining down on them, well, that whole idea of selling a lifestyle certainly looks much more appealing.

There’s an example of how a Malibu home for sale appears on SpatialMatch below.

For more information on adding they dynamic lifestyle marketing tool to your site, click here.

 

There seems to be a bunch of very unique laws out there. I’m not talking about regulations against speeding or stealing.

But laws concerning big ticket items — Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, or the Law of Large Numbers.

There’s one law that everybody in the real estate profession should be familiar with: The Law of Geography. It was developed by a brilliant American-Swiss doctor of geography, Waldo Tobler.

The First Law of Geography states: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

Now most “laws” seem to be a simple matter of common sense. Regarding gravity, yeah, what goes up, must come down. And regarding the Law of Large Numbers, if you test something numerous times, you tend to get a reliable prediction of the outcome.

The same could be said for Tobler’s treatise. But there’s something else going on here to pay attention to. It’s how location affects the attraction of a certain home. There are many implications.

You may live in a place like New York City, with its multitude of fine restaurants and theaters, but you find yourself spending 50% of your time in that diner across the street.

Or, a buyer who doesn’t like any of the properties you are showing, can be sold on the fact that one property is right down the street from L.A. Fitness, where in reality she will be spending a large amount of her time. And she knows it.

Or take a seller who fails to notice, and you the expert get to point out, that their property is within five miles of a baseball field, tennis court, racquetball court, jogging trail and golf course. Something that is very marketable.

This is where a tool like SpatialMatch comes into the picture.

With SpatialMatch, you can show the interconnectedness of any property with the amenities surrounding it. In a very close proximity, as low as half a mile, a few blocks. Marketing real estate using geography has never been easier.

Using the IDX functionality, a user can choose a home with their preferences — number of bedrooms, square footage, etc.

Then, with the home information still open on the screen, they can search through the enormous database of neighborhood information to see the amenities that surround the property: restaurants. hospitals, parks, schools. etc.

All this information is displayed on a map. With searches that can be saved and emailed.

And this powerful tool resides on your real estate website, not someone else’s. So you retain that prospect as your client. They won’t be lured somewhere else.

Tobler was born in 1930 and created a few geo-spatial tools himself. If he were active today, he  just might have created software like SpatialMatch.

For when it comes to marketing real estate, it’s smart to obey the law.

That’s Tobler’s law of geography and the importance of things close by.

To read about the “first law of geography” go here.

To read about this interesting cartographer-type fellow, click here.

 

For a demo on how to use SpatialMatch to market local properties, click here.