This week HomeGain announced in a press release that its commissions based award clubs for its AgentEvaluator® product has grown to include 900 HomeGain members. HomeGain award club members have now earned over $100 million dollars* worth of real estate commissions since 1999 when HomeGain was founded!

“We are pleased to add 15 more HomeGain members to our commissions based award clubs,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “In today’s market finding a quality real estate agent is a priority for many home buyers and sellers. With HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator program, consumers can find and compare Realtors® to help them with their real estate transactions.”

“HomeGain has been a great referral source for us throughout our careers,” stated Robert Gosalvez & Gary Shapiro of Intero Real Estate Services in California. “We recently became Diamond level referral agents; as a result, we’ve been going on more buyer and seller interviews. More often than not, we are successful in taking the listing once we’ve had the opportunity to interview or been selected to help the buyer, so HomeGain has played a large part in our success.”

Club members inducted since December include: Continue reading this post

Social media relationships are all about comfort level… after all you haven’t even met yet.

The new world of social media allows people to connect initially online, and then hopefully in real life at a conference, event or an arranged meeting. Simply put, the face to face meeting cements the relationship on a tangible emotional level. The operative word is emotion. The social media conversation that leads to a business relationship is conducted primarily through chat, email and a perusal through blogs, Facebook profiles and Tweets. Since there may be no tangible face to face feedback, the emotional criteria for gauging a virtual relationship based on a batch of text-based interchanges is not “what are they saying, what is the content?”, but “how do I feel about this virtual relationship?”. It’s about comfort level.

The art behind social media relationships is to make people feel happy.

If you’re providing valuable content, your readers thank you. If you’re a great joker, your readers laugh. It’s all about good will, and your online presence should mirror this message.

Most people on the social media don’t give a second thought about how they present themselves to the world, living by the “this is how I am, so take or leave it” credo. That’s ok. Just be considerate of the fact that comfort levels can deflate if you’re lauding Glenn Beck in San Francisco, or supporting socially liberal causes in Utah. Labeling is easy to do on the social media because it’s a text-based media; everybody has seen examples of rants that devolve into labeling and context twisting.

If you’re in the business to work with as many people as possible, it’s not hard to make good will a social media objective. Unless of course, you are inclined to work with people who also share your life philosophies… I have heard many stories by folks who have built businesses by being ardent and outspoken in their beliefs, and it seems to work for them.

Pat Kitano will be speaking at HomeGain Nation on Monday, March 1, 2010, about social networking trends and advice for real estate professionals.

Have you ever wondered how to really capture and convert leads?

Have you read posts on here from me and others that are getting tons of sales each year by using HomeGain’s BuyerLink product along with great lead conversion systems?

Do you want to add 12 sales, 24 sales or more a year to your bottom line?

If this sounds good to you, then let me show you how. In one week from today, on March 1, at the HomeGain Nation event in San Francisco, get ready to learn the tricks and secrets of lead conversion.  I have spent the last 8 years working to increase our lead capture and conversion rates.  It’s not rocket science, but it does take a strong work ethic and a great solid system to make it happen.

I will demonstrate how to capture leads and more importantly how to turn those leads into customers for life.  This is a step by step process that I have developed so that my agents, regardless of experience.  It’s all in the systems and on March 1, I’ll be revealing this for you to learn.

By this time next year you will be having your best year in real estate.  Why?  Because the system I teach works.  This past year we sold 311 homes with 90% or more of those from the BuyerLink product we buy from HomeGain. Our goal this year is 425 home sales.

I’ll be giving away a few copies of my new book, of which Louis Cammarosano (General Manager at HomeGain) wrote the foreword, titled “100MPH Marketing for Real Estate“.

See you there!

We recently received a notice (see image on right) from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) stating that 861 people have inquired about HomeGain.com over the past few months — to which the BBB replied that HomeGain is BBB Accredited and BBB rated A+.

HomeGain is dedicated to continuing its efforts of providing its real estate professional customers with the best customer service it can, and its consumers (home buyers and sellers) with the best free services on the internet possible.

Some recent feedback from agent customers:

• “Holly is wonderful.  She is responsive, informative, honest and extremely helpful.”
• “Great company.  You are a great business partner.”  (Eric Pakulla, RE/MAX Advantage Realty)
• “I like your program, I pay you when I get paid, it works well and is consumer driven.”
• “Tried them all and your site is the only one that works as far as capturing leads.  Gabriel is a cool rep as well.”
• “The HomeGain team is remarkable and helpful in every way. I appreciate all of them.”
• “Value received, and customer service.  I sold my first house on-line with HomeGain BuyerLink, now I am a Top Producer with RE/MAX!”
• “I love HomeGain! My favorite lead source….if you were to create a brokerage, I would be first in line to run an office for you here in SoCal!”
• “Wonderfully run organization.  Everybody is winning with what you are doing, unlike many others out there who try to do what you’re doing.”
• “I have used many other internet lead generation companies and HomeGain is the best without question! Working with them is always very nice. Karina does a fantastic job for us! The quantity and quality of the leads we get are great! I would recommend HomeGain to anyone — it is a very good, solid company!

Read more HomeGain reviews from Realtors and consumers (about working with Realtors they found through HomeGain).

Read more about HomeGain being rated A+ by the BBB.

Most of my business comes from the internet but I still cherish referrals. In my opinion they really are the best and most inexpensive leads. If you look most markets you will probably notice that the Realtors who focuses on referrals are usually the largest producers. These leads generally don’t come in vast quantities like internet leads but the quality is much better.

Here are 5 tips to help get more referrals:

1)    Satisfied Customers

You won’t get too many referrals if you don’t provide good service. Clients who are happy with your service are more likely to refer people to you. Keep your name in front of your past customers consistently. They will forget about you if you don’t touch them often enough. Unfortunately, I have found this out the hard way.

2)    Networking

Do you spend time at networking events? This can be a successful way to generate referral business. People do business with people they know and like. It is not uncommon to see several Realtors at networking meetings. Make networking fun and not a chore. If you get some business out of it that is great, if not at least you had a good time. Continue reading this post

HomeGain recently announced the latest survey results which revealed the top 12 low cost*, do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvements for people getting their home ready to sell.

Not only can you get regionally-personalized home improvement recommendations online, you can also have an actual “sliding” brochure for use in your office, car or where ever you are!

The Home Sale Maximizer slider reflects the same information as you will find online –

1. Simply move the slide to look up your area
2. See how much each home improvement will cost you
3. Determine how much each improvement will increase your home’s value
4. Get a potential return on investment (% ROI)
5. View how many Realtors recommend it

Request your FREE 5 home improvement sliders now

By submitting your request, we will mail five (5) sliders to you at no cost. For questions or to request a larger quantity, please send us an email.

Try the online Home Sale Maximizer™ home improvement tool

Also DOWNLOAD the instant home values and home sale maximizer widgets for free. See examples…

Continue reading this post