Turning over a new leaf at the New Year may be a very good thing this year for some as far as the real estate market is concerned.

Something like “Great in ‘08” seems to have a nice ring to it about now, doesn’t it?

Many of us are indeed ready for a fresh start and will welcome the New Year with open arms.

Personally I think that the bad news is about all out on the table and may be overstated by some real estate pundits, at least in some markets.

I did some checking yesterday, and a number of HomeGain member agents had great success stories in 2007 with just their HomeGain business. In fact, we have agents in CA, NV, PA, TX and VA that increased their HomeGain business, based on the number of closings, from 25% to well over 100% in some cases.

Imagine that!

Those same agents increased their business, based on commissions earned, by from 20% to over 100% again. And that’s just a portion of their overall business.

While real estate news reports during the year centered on the sub-prime meltdown, increased foreclosures across the nation, falling home prices and sales, and mortgage company bankruptcies, Continue reading this post

Part 2 – HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey

In part 1, I disclosed six of the top 10 most recommended home improvements (by real estate agents). Now here are the top four!

1. Clean and de-clutter
2. Lighten and brighten
3. Stage home for sale
4. Landscape front/back yards

In each of the four regions, West, East, South and Mid-West, all real estate agents agreed that cleaning and de-cluttering was the most valuable action in getting a home into “home selling condition.”

At a minimal cost of a couple hundred dollars, ROI of cleaning and de-cluttering your home may skyrocket into a high average of 578%. This is added home value in the range of $1,500-$2,000. The highest return on investment was in the West (837%).

Professional home staging came in second place in the South and Mid-West. On a national level, agents reported that home staging costs between $400 and $600 on average, potentially resulting in a $1,900 to $2,500 increase to the home’s selling price, and making the return on investment over 340%. Continue reading this post

Part 1 – HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey

What are Realtors® advising homeowners do when it comes time to sell their home?

Turns out it’s what every home seller wants to hear. First, it is not going to cost a lot to see a high ROI. Secondly, it’s not going to be extremely time consuming or challenging.

In HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey that included over 2,000 real estate agents across the U.S. the results were just that. The goal of the survey was to find out what real estate agents recommend to homeowners to get their home into home selling condition and maximize their return on investment (at a minimal cost).

By the way, Home Sale Maximizer is a free, online home improvement tool for home sellers. As a Realtor®, it’s a great tool to give to your clients to help them BEFORE the home sale process started.

I’m going to list the results for the top six to 10 most recommended do-it-yourself home improvements in this part 1 real estate blog post, and then reveal the top four in Part 2. Continue reading this post

No matter what industry you’re in, success in the online marketplace is determined by conversion.

Sites like Amazon and Wal-Mart measure not only how many visitors view an item, but how many place the item in their shopping carts and then actually purchase it.

Even though you aren’t selling goods on your real estate site, you should always be concerned with how well your site is converting visitors into leads.

Many of the real estate sites that we see convert visitors somewhere in the range of 3%-5%.

That’s really low.

(We regularly take an interest in our customers’ lead capture web page because if they don’t do well, they certainly won’t continue as a HomeGain subscriber.)

Some of the other real estate agents’ sites convert higher, but most fail to convince its visitors that it is worth their time to leave their contact information in exchange for a glimpse at local listings, and, therefore, fail to produce a good ROI.

You really only have a few seconds before a reader moves on!

Due to the low conversion we know some real estate agents are experiencing, we always keep our eyes open for websites that convert at much higher rates to provide as examples to agents wanting to know how they can get better their ROI.

Guess what? We just figured out how to increase the conversion rate to an amazing 15%! Continue reading this post

Firstly, I want to thank the many of you who have emailed me and thanked me for my blog entries.

I try to only write things that I feel will help you become either a better real estate agent or broker. The Internet can be a huge money pit if you don’t know how to use it properly.

Believe me; I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars perfecting what we do here at Tropical Realty in Melbourne, Florida.

Now to my main point.

I have received this question several times over the past few weeks: “What do I do with all the leads I get that have no phone numbers?”

I figure I should probably set the record straight. Each time I get the question I cringe at the thought of these real estate agents throwing their money down the drain.

My immediate reaction is always, “What do you think you should do with them?” Of course I usually say that to myself so I don’t hurt their feelings. Continue reading this post

This month two HomeGainers, Matt and Tim, traveled across the country from the San Francisco Bay Area to Atlantic City, New Jersey for NYSAR’s Triple Play Convention & Trade Expo.

Between the two of them over three days, they met almost 1,000 Real Estate agents from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania! Wow!

Congratulations to the drawing winner, Maryanne Cifaretto of Diane Turton Realtors, who has won a $200 American Express® gift card!

Thank you to all the Realtors® who stopped by our booth and made our trip a success.

We’ll see you there again next year! Continue reading this post