Helping You Compete In Your Market

Competition in some HomeGain markets can be challenging. To succeed, an agent must effectively differentiate themselves or potential clients won’t select them to be their agent.

Unless a homebuyer or seller is directly referred to you in the offline world, it is likely their first impression of you will be your picture, name, a tag line, and maybe another detail or two which they saw on a mailer or another ad source.

Every day and in every market, potential buyers or sellers receive far more similar invitations to do business with you and your competitors than the number they receive when seeking an agent through HomeGain.

While these ad-based marketing methods can be effective (or you wouldn’t use them), they don’t allow you to really differentiate the value of your services from that of your competition, to comprehensively market your services, or to tell a potential client what you can do to meet their specific needs.

Unlike much of offline real estate marketing, Continue reading this post

People love pictures.

Homebuyers REALLY love pictures of homes and buildings and parks and waterways and anything that will help them gain a better feel for the place they will be moving. (I’m assuming an out-of-town buyer who is unfamiliar with the area.)

If you have a website with a photo album function and the ability to write text below the pictures, I suggest you utilize it, and if you don’t, then I suggest you set something up you can link to.

Photos are a great way of making your site useful and worth coming back to. But photos are only one part of it, the power of the photo idea goes beyond just the picture, plus Google doesn’t do photos, so it won’t help with search engine placement just to have pictures.

Having the ability to place text below the image serves two purposes—

The most important is it allows you to tell the story of the city to the potential buyer and to inform them of important facts about the city (or neighborhood, or area, or particular house), and it helps with search engine placement so you can be found online.

I suggest having the albums categorized into different areas or neighborhoods or Continue reading this post

Appointed Vice President of Product

From the sunny peninsula that has given us Pavarotti, the Ferrari, the Lamborghini, Valentino, Armani, the Radio, Risotto, Pizza, Barolo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Michelangelo, and a few sailors that discovered America, Italy sends the new world another of its favorite sons, Salvatore Giammarresi.

Dottore Giammarresi, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Palermo, joins HomeGain today as Vice President of Product.

Dr. Giammarresi’s career stops have included Engineering Program Manager of Products at Electronics for Imaging, Senior Localization Manager of Products at Kana Communications and Director of International Product Management at Homestore (now Move.com) where he focused on product definition, planning, positioning, functionality, life cycle and management.

Salvo brings to HomeGain a wealth of product experience that should benefit our customers. He will lead an already strong product team.

“I am delighted to be joining HomeGain at a point in time during which it seems to be experiencing a Renaissance of new ideas and innovation,” said Dr. Giammarresi.

Salvo’s arrival coincides just in time for the launch of the second of a trilogy of features to be released next week.

For all of our tifosi (fans) in Italy—and for the benefit of Salvo’s family, I have translated the foregoing in Italian. Continue reading this post

HomeGain Employees Update Management and Peers on First Quarter Accomplishments

Earlier this week we held our first all hands meeting of the year at the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville.

In addition to the entire HomeGain team, Dan Jauernig, Chief Executive Officer of Classified Ventures, and Tim Fagan, President of Classified Ventures Real Estate, were in attendance.

I opened the meeting by reaffirming our commitment to customer and employee satisfaction.

We received updates from almost every HomeGain department.

Many of the presenters, selected from amongst the ranks to address their peers, were doing so for the first time. They were well prepared as they had received public speaking training earlier in the year.

The feedback regarding the speakers’ presentations was overwhelmingly positive.

Here are some comments by fellow HomeGainers on the job well done by the presenters: Continue reading this post

Last week, I posted an article in which we named the Top Ten MSA’s in the country where HomeGain buyers and sellers transacted in the First Quarter of 2008.

I included feedback on current market conditions in the Top Five areas from our top performing agents who closed those sales. Now, here is the latest information on the MSA’s ranked 6 through 10.

Again, a common theme among our member agents to working successfully in challenging markets is to educate our clients and, as Heidi Mueller says, to “manage expectations of the home sellers and buyers.”

Please feel free to join in and post comments about your local market conditions.
And the cities are… Continue reading this post

My opinion on the current Real Estate market I think it is a Buyer’s market. The average time to sell a home is 3-6 months. Buyers are offering contingent contracts and asking for substantial closing cost credits.

We are still seeing a lot of 100% financing or very little money down.

CDA and NEHEMIAH government and privately funded down payment assistance programs also require a large seller contribution. Often these programs are paired with an FHA loan as well. With the new FHA limits in our area, we expect to see more offers come in that are FHA pre-approved.

In regards to percentages of asking price vs. original list price, I think if the property is priced correctly, it should sell for asking price relatively quickly. However, if the property is priced too high, it will sell for approximately 6-10% below original list.

Unfortunately we are seeing a lot of foreclosures in our area. I receive quite a few calls a week to help sellers with “short sales” as well. Banks and mortgage companies are willing to work with homeowners in distress, but it is not a quick or easy process. Continue reading this post