Floor plans have been a standard element in builder marketing materials for years. Recently there have been a number of positive statistics relating to the use of floor plans in the U.K.

Several of the larger property portals there are promoting the fact that properties with floor plans receive 30% more interest than properties that don’t.

It seems like it’s an affordable marketing tool for Realtors. There are some real estate floor plan solutions out there at $10 or less per plan. One such company we’ve seen is Metropix – a floor plan creation solution for real estate professionals. Within this solution, there are multiple ways to create a floor plan, including a “draw your own service”, which costs $9.99 for 48 hours use.

It looks like it’s easy to use, too. For example, if you don’t want to draw yourself, there’s an “AutoDraw” feature that converts a rough sketch/plan into a professional floor plan for you. You can decide mid-way through to upgrade your “classic floor plan” into an interactive floor plan with photographs and/or a 3D floor plan or Walk-through.

What’s your opinion as to whether Realtors would market homes and properties with floor plans? Do you currently use a floor plan solution as part of your marketing? Would such marketing be well received by U.S. consumers?

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

I started working with AgentView, formerly known as Source4Sellers, mid November 2006.  Since then much has changed with my business model and with AgentView.

My business grew from a fledgling concept to a full team model.  I had started the month before with HomeGain’s BuyerLink.  The traffic from BuyerLink helped build my faith in Internet marketing and build my lead database.  Even then, I knew that HomeGain was very interested in my success and building a true business partnership.

The AgentView product suite continues to develop and is now a full service ad-free solution which highlights and promotes the participating real estate agent.  When I first started with the product, the Source4Sellers solution contained an agent profile and a full CRM with built-in email campaigns.  Now AgentView is so very much more.  Some of the features include:

• Agent Profile
• Homes For Sale
• Home Values
• Agent Centric Blog
• Local Information
• Home Seller Tools

Agent Profile

The AgentView blog offers so much opportunity to help promote the area real estate agent and my Denver real estate website in an ad-free environment. This page is about the agent and their credentials.  The “Have a Real Estate Question for Brian?” is to the right of your contact information as a call to action.

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Here’s a unique co-marketing business model that combines RateWindow, the wholesale mortgage rate engine and HomeGain’s AgentView to give teams of mortgage brokers and Realtors an innovative online marketing presence. Using RateWindow and AgentView together will help position the Realtor and mortgage broker as a team solution for their local client base.

Please let me know what you think about the new marketing model.

I’ve been a fairly big proponent of open source software for some time.  For those of you not familiar with the open source movement, it’s the idea that many developers across the world, working together through peer reviews, can develop evolving, superior products. 

Open Source software are typically described as “projects,” rather than products, as there are typically many more releases/revisions than commercially driven products, and there are many more collaborators, who often contribute a small amount of their time.  Open Source projects are typically labors of love for programmers.

You probably already use some open source products.  Firefox is extremely popular, in a large part because it is open source.  The reason there are so many cool add-ons and extensions for Firefox is because the source is “open” to other developers to put together these cool tools. 

In contrast, Internet Explorer has little in the way of customization because Bill Gates et al don’t want anyone messing with their code.  The same rings true for Wordpress -– lots of extensions/add-ons because it’s open source.  You’ll notice that the larger a project is, the more stable the releases, and the more customizations that are available.  Be careful of really small projects unless you like tinkering and are ready to invest some time.

One of the most attractive aspects of open source is the price: It’s free!

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If you can’t use a professional to take your listing photographs, avoid these visual mistakes.  The photographs below were chosen to emphasize errors.

1. Exterior photo with distracting elements

These include cars, bicycles, trash cans, pets, children, etc. This example also has several other mistakes — it doesn’t capture the entire house exterior; the angle does not flatter the house; and trees obstruct the view. Are you selling the house or the car?

2. Subject too far away

Get as close as to can to your subject.  This common mistake can easily be corrected by cropping.  The objective is to have the image fill the frame.  Use Photoshop or any of the many free photo editing tools like Paint.net or Picnik.com. Many computers come with a basic photo editor.  Mine has Micrsoft PictureIt! and it works great.

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