The world changed forever this morning.

Today, HomeGain launched a new feature for its AgentView program, the first in a series of three revolutionary upgrades.

Starting today, real estate agents will have the ability to load their personal profiles, their “Agent Profiles”, right onto HomeGain.

This is the future of real estate marketing. It is also the future of how we will lead our lives and how our grandchildren will lead their lives.

“We are as excited about this groundbreaking feature as we were when we impacted the entire universe when we launched the first instant home valuation tool back in 2000, a tool that launched a few Zimitators,” stated HomeGain General Manager, Louis Cammarosano.

“I was meeting with a few hundred of our product managers the other day,” continued Mr. Cammarosano, “and we were thinking, ‘how can we present our agents’ best foot forward, how can we do something that has never been done before?’

Then it hit us all at once in a collective fit of the type of mass innovation that is common at HomeGain—“Agent Profiles”. Continue reading this post

New Home Sales Results by MSA – Just In!

For our member agents who use the HomeGain AgentEvaluator program to aid consumers to Find A Realtor® online, first quarter home sales results are just in.

Even though real estate sales and home prices continue a downward cycle in many areas of the country, and the economy is slowing, HomeGain member agents are closing deals and making it happen successfully for their clients.

Where exactly you may ask are these consumers buying and selling?

We tabulate sales closed by HomeGain home buyers and sellers and report by major Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

And here are the top 10 areas for both home buyers and sellers where HomeGain consumers closed sales during the 1st Quarter of 2008.

“May I have the envelope, please?”

Those MSA’s are: Continue reading this post

Well, Max and I are off to The Masters. I’ve convinced Max there are no real tigers in Augusta, GA, but I hope he’s not allergic to pollen because there will be flora everywhere.

There’s been a lot of discussion about online real estate sites lately around the real estate Blog World.

An evolving array of offerings are constantly being made, hopefully to improve the online experience and to further disseminate information, create useful partnerships and make real estate transactions easier for everyone.

I told Louis over the weekend on my blog that I see HomeGain as a main player for years to come as more agents become connected and look for an efficient, quick vehicle to make the online experience useful and profitable.

The surface has been merely scratched when you consider all the agents who aren’t yet connected to online tools. I believe many are reluctant to jump in because they fear it’ll be too complicated and time-consuming.

However, through word-of-mouth regarding results, many agents will begin to take the plunge, and if they can Continue reading this post

Don’t you just hate lenders?

You know what I’m talkin’ about. You secure a pre-approval letter, find the buyer their dream home, arrange the home inspection, negotiate repair items, remove loan contingencies, arrange the closing (or settlement for the lawyer states), and…

BRRRING BRRRING !! Your phone rings three days prior to settlement.

”Uh, this is Walter Banker from Big Bank in America. We have a problem.”

Husbands are cursing, wives are crying, and children are depressed because there is no mortgage. Sellers, their agents, lawyers, and everyone involved in the transaction are threatening lawsuits. A sad and stressful situation, to say the least.

There are three reasons for this:

a) The client’s loan originator is a liar.

Seriously. Less experienced or desperate loan originators overpromise and under deliver. They push the edge of the envelope and deliberately make promises they are unclear about. Continue reading this post

As an engineer, avid technology junkie and as my wife likes to say “all around geek”, it is just plain amazing even to me, at how fast our lives are transformed with the ever increasing technology changes that now invoke a major impact on the way we work, and interact with each other on a daily basis.

By now we all know some of the key buzz words like Social Networks, Web 2.0, Blogs, Virtual Tours, Syndication and the impact that video can have to help convey a story to prospective home buyers.

But how do these terms fit into the broader context of a Real Estate agents job function, and how do we see the broader forest for the trees?

The reason I ask the question, is because of the amount of information I consistently observe in Real Estate print media. This information often does not convey the entire message or the message is so confusing that it leads to the very thing that Real Estate agents have been accusing the media of for months now.

Scaring people!

In the case of the latter, it was clients who were not buying, in the case of the former it’s agents that are not fully engaged and embracing the technology changes because of the confusion.

So what do I mean? Well lets’ take this one step at a time. Continue reading this post

I got my Real Estate license while still in corporate sales. My wife was already selling Real Estate and as is my custom when I start something new – I read books about my new profession.

At the top of my list was the Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller and number 2 was a book called Real Estate Rainmaker: Guide to Online Marketing by Dan Gooder Richard. As it turned out, I couldn’t have picked any better books to start my career.

Quest for Online Presence in Real Estate

As I started my quest to learn how I could create a presence online, I soon realized that it was going to take some time to rank a website well enough in the search engines to make a difference in our business.

We did start a website but no one knew how to find it unless we told them directly. This is about when I stumbled upon HomeGain.
I set up an account with several ZIP codes in my area for my wife (with the AgentEvaluator™ program) because I had not officially started into Real Estate yet.

As my wife became successful in Real Estate Continue reading this post