I love free stuff and am always thankful when I learn about it. Here are some websites that I use very often and they have helped me save time and money.

Slideshare.net

This is a presentation sharing website. You can upload just about any document or presentation and share it with others. I like to embed the presentations on my website. You can track how many times your presentation has been downloaded. It is also fun when your presentations are marked as favorites.

Google Docs

I use Google docs to store my documents online. Documents can be uploaded, saved, printed, and shared. Documents can also be converted to pdf files making them easier to send as email attachments. I got tired of certain documents being on my home computer and I needed them when I was at the office. No worries, now I just go to Google.

Picassa

Another great Google product. Upload your pictures to create slideshows. You can add text and music or voiceover. Google will also send it to Youtube.

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Here’s some quick advice for AgentView real estate agents to manage that new blog you may not know what to do with:

1. Blog articles are great but they do take time to write. Generally, the first ideas new bloggers have for topics - how-to’s, hyperlocal news - have been done before by other bloggers. It’s hard to differentiate yourself starting up a blog.
2. So do something different. Think like a journalist; watch out for real-time housing market news and be the first to report it.
3. Take notes at the tour marketing meetings, subscribe to the feeds of local online news and real estate publications.
4. Think in sound bites. Whenever you hear something interesting, write a sentence or two in the blog. Be efficient, don’t take more than 3 minutes per idea. Use a cellphone to write it if you’re in a tour meeting or open house.
5. When you see an interesting article online, cut and paste the article title and create a link to it.
6. If you write down several ideas per day, you soon accumulate a whole portfolio of ideas and facts that will be displayed on the blog. This content is just as revealing about how you develop business and help clients as blog articles.
7. You become a go-to source for your market. Prospects will come back again and again to see your new “sound bites”. After all, you’re the only one reporting on a daily basis… this is compelling to a committed home buyer or seller. Analogy - if I’m doing a stock purchase, I’d much rather analyze it in real time on Marketwatch.com than pick up the current Business Week magazine.
8. You’ll soon realize you can expand on the sound bites to construct more detailed blog articles. You’ll lose your writer’s block.
9. Finally, it’s easier to automate the whole process of “reporting” using a variety of micro-blogging and bookmarking applications like Twitter , Friendfeed, Tumblr, Delicious and Diigo. This is another story.

To learn more about HomeGain’s AgentView product, click here.

Let me start by saying that for the longest time, I was TOTALLY against “forced registration” (requiring visitors to provide their contact information before viewing the MLS). I not only did not force registration on our brokerage website, but I also wrote about why others should not do it either. In short, I was firmly planted in the “that’s a bad thing to do” camp.

Over time, I softened my position somewhat, when people would tell me that they were having success with it. I still would never do it, but I could not argue with their success.

First, Morgan Carey at RealEstateWebmasters.com told me that I needed to at least try it. Great. Nope. I still would not budge. In my heart, I thought that asking folks for their information

a) was unfriendly

b) it would drive traffic to competitor sites

c) would lower the quality of the lead

d) would result in more obscene emails from unhappy visitors

e) and any increase in # of registrations would be offset with an overall net loss in closings…well, you get the idea (grin).

As more and more people started reporting to me their successes (an example was Wayne Long, who was kind enough to share exactly what was happening on his site with me), I finally decided to TRY it. The folks that I visited with at the REW conference were helpful as well. Almost all of them had already made the transition.

How did it go?

Here are the results:

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Market update provided by Wendi-Mae Davis Broker Associate/Real Estate Counselor at Connect Realty, Director of the California Association of Realtors (CAR), and Vice Chair Land Use/Environmental Committee

A quarterly Wall Street Journal survey of housing data in 28 major metro areas shows that the glut of unsold homes listed for sale is shrinking in most of them. Locally, in El Dorado County, the listing inventory has continued to go down for the last six months. Metro areas with the biggest drops in for sale signs include Sacramento and Orange County. Southern California saw sales jump 65% from a year ago—More than one-third of those sales were from foreclosures. In Sacramento, we saw sales go up 82% from last September with 64% of those being bank owned properties. El Dorado County sales are about 30% to 50% bank owned real estate.

Where Sacramento home prices are heading is tough to predict.

We have the election results, the U.S. government bailout program, the continued commitment of major lenders to modify thousands of existing mortgages, the law SB 1137 that went into affect on September 8th that slows down the foreclosure process. (Ask me for full details) And, of course, the stock market slide in October.

Ok, some good news and some bad so what happens next? That’s where the challenge of predicting the market comes in.

Click to learn more about Sacramento real estate and Sacramento home prices on HomeGain.

Click to view Sacramento homes for sale.

Read more real estate market updates

Congratulations to Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realty in Suntree, Florida for submitting the winning video to this year’s Agent Appreciation Campaign video contest in October.

Watch the winning video!

As the winner of ‘Best Agent Video 2008′, Mitch will receive a “Max package” filled with orange gorilla goodies, plus a Flip Ultra camcorder as prizes.

Mitch provided insight to one of the Agent Appreciation Campaign’s collateral giveaways, 50 Reason’s to Use a Buyer’s Agent.  It’s the perfect tool to give to home buyers who may be wondering why they should use an agent to buy a home.

Another collateral item was a white paper, titled, “9 Ways to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty“. Please let me know if you are interested in either and I’ll forward you the PDF/s.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the video contest.

We look forward to next year’s campaign!

We are all pretty much in agreement now that people are looking for homes on the internet. So my question is: What is the make up of a great Real Estate website?

I have some ideas and maybe others in this community can help me expand on those ideas. I am thinking of reworking my site “Homes in Columbus GA” and would love to hear your thoughts. Here are a few things that I have been thinking.

1. Search Capabilities. A great Realtor Website should first and foremost have great search capabilities as most potential clients want be able to search homes in your area. If you are worried about giving this information away – don’t be - because someone is going to provide the information and you want to be the one they turn to for info. a) Map Search
   b) Lots of ways to search: Subdivision, Areas, MLS #, City, etc.
   c) Pictures
   

2. Visual Appeal. A great site should also be pleasing to the eyes.  a) Colors should be pleasant and indicative of your company and personality
   b) Uncluttered - just like staging a house
   

3. Memorable. Check out my friend Cal Carter’s site for Gulf Shores Condos – Gotta love that Crab!

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