New Agents Working With Buyers: It Takes A Commitment

Working with buyers is difficult. It’s no wonder most real estate agents would rather list homes and avoid spending a lot of time dealing with buyers. Home buyers are demanding, fickle, sometimes emotional, sometimes unrealistic, but always there waiting for an agent to help them.

Even though many home buyers think they want to do it alone, I’ve found most eventually ask a Realtor for help. They may not want a contractual relationship with a buyer agent, but they want assistance.

Many have gone from listing agent to listing agent and they are tired of looking for homes that way, so the buyer is in between, they don’t want to sign a buyer agent agreement but they want guidance.

If you decide to work with home buyers you will have to capture them soon and you will have to impress them with service. Most buyers don’t know what they can get from a real estate agent until they get it—then they like it.

Buyers now are going online and making a request to an agent with a website, or going through a company like HomeGain that offers help—they want listings or information about a listing or area—they are sticking their toes in the water, to see what the response will be.

If the response is immediate and it offers help, then the buyer will likely go further. read more

Posted by Mike Farmer on May 12, 2008 under Buying or Selling a Home

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HomeGain Radio: Lead Capture and Conversion

Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realty (a HomeGain Advisor and a contributor on this blog) is the special guest on HomeGain Radio.

Mitch gives advice to real estate agents and brokers for how to get leads, especially via the Internet, and how to convert a higher volume of leads into clients.

Listen to Mitch’s advice for real estate agents:

During the call, Mitch mentions how HomeGain’s marketing program, BuyerLink has helped deliver more consumer traffic to his website and boost his business.

Stay tuned for more HomeGain Radio interviews!

read more

Posted by Jessica Gopalakrishnan on May 09, 2008 under Leads, HomeGain Radio

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How Does A Third Party Vendor Partner With Realtors?

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the place of the “vendor” in Realtors’ marketing plans.

Eric Blackwell, a regular contributor on the Bloodhound Blog and who owns and operates the Southern Indiana Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Blog asked the question:

“To what extent is the third party site actually promoting themselves or are they honestly trying to facilitate the connection between client and REALTOR in the most expeditious way possible?.... It is possible IMO for a third party company to create advertising solutions that help REALTORS market homes in a way that spends less time marketing them and more time promoting the REALTOR. When you factor this criteria in, HomeGain quickly moves into spot Number 2 in terms of being a REALTOR friendly enterprise.“ read more

Posted by Louis Cammarosano on May 09, 2008 under HomeGain, Realtor

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Should You Blog Your Listings?

If there is one question that stirs debate amongst real estate bloggers, it’s whether or not it is “correct” to blog about your listings.

On the surface, this may seem like a no-brainer. Your blog is a marketing platform, it’s quite likely advertising (another subject of much debate) and hopefully people are coming to it in droves – all chomping at the bit to view, and buy, your seller’s listings.

But let’s step back and look at the big picture and take a look at the pro’s and con’s of blogging listings.

The Pro’s

Sellers want to see their listings in as many places as possible. If you have an established blog with some readership, there is no question that blogging a listing will expose it to more people. And exposure for a listing is generally a good thing.

In addition to getting good exposure for the listing, it can also provide good exposure for you. And whether you want to admit it or not, you are blogging to market not just your listings, but yourself.

The Con’s

Blog posts about listings can be boring. Take for example the typical pitch: read more

Posted by Jay Thompson on May 08, 2008 under Blogging and Social Networking, Guest Bloggers

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