If you already have the e-reader device, Kindle, you know how cool it is and you may well be ahead of the game. You can now find the HomeGain Real Estate blog on Kindle.

If you haven’t heard about the Kindle yet, it’s about the size and weight of a paperback book, just 1/3 of an inch – about as thin as a magazine. No PC is required, just download blog posts and books from anywhere. You can read for days without recharging. Plus, with its new text-to-speech feature, Kindle can read every newspaper, magazine, blog, and book out loud to you. Pretty nifty.

The Kindle is much more friendly on the eyes than other portable devices like the iPhone and Blackberry as the screen is larger and not back lit.

To access the HomeGain Real Estate blog on Kindle, just type in “HomeGain” in the search line on your Kindle.

Learn more about Kindle on Amazon.com

Questioning whether a real estate blog is worth your time?

Successful blogger, Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams Realty, explains how to utilize the AgentView Blog feature to generate more traffic to your website, increase efficiency within your business, and more!

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At 8:58 pm last night, I received a call from a Kitchen remodeling company who wanted to follow up on the estimate they had provided me; in June of 2005! It took this company (I’ll save them the embarrassment of being named) 4 years to execute a basic follow up which has to set some type of record. There had been no contacts, no drips, no anything and then a call out of the blue. Even though four years is quite the exception than the rule, it did get me thinking about responding to Real Estate leads.

For four years, HomeGain has told its agents that to win business, you need to get back to your leads quickly. We would preach that response to buyer that registers on a website should happen within the first day or not all. If a phone call can’t be made; a personalized follow up email is just as good as long as the effort is made. More times than not, a customer would interject and dictate that the reality of lead response depends on the individual and not overall best practice. Some agents only take calls during particular hours; others are often busy with showings while many more claim they are just too busy to make the calls until their schedule allows. 

Was our advice about quick response wrong? Should reality replace best practice as the key to acquiring and converting online buyers and sellers into leads? I was beginning to think so until I stumbled upon a fascinating survey conducted by Dr. James Oldroyd at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and later MIT.

Dr. Oldroyd surveyed over 500 companies across all aspects business to see how they generated and converted leads on their websites.  The organizations from different industries, country of origin, yearly revenue and size all reported the same theme; not responding as quick as you can to online leads severely diminishes your opportunity to convert and close the leads. In fact, if you wait long enough to call you’re actually causing more harm than good the longer you wait!

Let’s look at some of the findings: Continue reading this post

Since we launched the HomeGain Green Real Estate Campaign last month, I’ve been working with (and learning from) Realtors who are Greening their business and marketing green homes, including Jeffrey Bastress of StartPoint Realty in MA — who, by the way, did an amazing webinar for us in April in anticipation of Earth Day.

The word is out on Green Real Estate. More people are becoming green conscious and, for the sake of business, as Realtors, it may be in our best interest to be able to work with home buyers and sellers who have the environment in mind, even if being Green doesn’t inspire you personally.

One particular blog post I’ve read recently is on Y.I.M.S Blog and it says:“Going Green is not just a buzzword but a movement that is being forged in the forefront of consumer’s minds, as more and more Americans think greener about their purchasing decisions.” He hits it on the nose. Green is starting to influence how consumers purchase real estate. It’s already having an impact on many of us in real estate.

Being able to effectively market green homes to sell for your homeowners or to help home buyers find homes that fit their Green criteria may take some preparation. If you aren’t Green designated, you might want to consider getting that under your belt. It doesn’t take long to complete the course (whichever one you choose) and it’s certainly affordable.

For now, however, to get you started about thinking about going Green, here are…

5 GREEN tips for Realtors®:

Continue reading this post