2007 In Review - Top 10 Home Selling Cities

Turning over a new leaf at the New Year may be a very good thing this year for some as far as the real estate market is concerned.

Something like “Great in ‘08” seems to have a nice ring to it about now, doesn’t it?

Many of us are indeed ready for a fresh start and will welcome the New Year with open arms.

Personally I think that the bad news is about all out on the table and may be overstated by some real estate pundits, at least in some markets.

I did some checking yesterday, and a number of HomeGain member agents had great success stories in 2007 with just their HomeGain business. In fact, we have agents in CA, NV, PA, TX and VA that increased their HomeGain business, based on the number of closings, from 25% to well over 100% in some cases.

Imagine that!

Those same agents increased their business, based on commissions earned, by from 20% to over 100% again. And that’s just a portion of their overall business.

While real estate news reports during the year centered on the sub-prime meltdown, increased foreclosures across the nation, falling home prices and sales, and mortgage company bankruptcies, read more

Posted by Peggy Boehm on Dec 28, 2007 under Market Trends, HomeGain Market Data, AgentEvaluator

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On The Home Seller’s Radar: Home Staging

Part 2 – HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey

In part 1, I disclosed six of the top 10 most recommended home improvements (by real estate agents). Now here’s the top four!

1. Clean and de-clutter
2. Lighten and brighten
3. Stage home for sale
4. Landscape front/back yards

In each of the four regions, West, East, South and Mid-West, all real estate agents agreed that cleaning and de-cluttering was the most valuable action in getting a home into “home selling condition.”

At a minimal cost of a couple hundred dollars, ROI of cleaning and de-cluttering your home may skyrocket into a high average of 578%. This is added home value in the range of $1,500-$2,000. The highest return on investment was in the West (837%).

Professional home staging came in second place in the South and Mid-West. On a national level, agents reported that home staging costs between $400 and $600 on average, potentially resulting in a $1,900 to $2,500 increase to the home’s selling price, and making the return on investment over 340%. read more

Posted by Jessica Gopalakrishnan on Dec 26, 2007 under HomeGain Market Data, Home Improvement

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On The Home Seller’s Radar: Kitchen and Bathrooms

Part 1 – HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey

What are Realtors® advising homeowners do when it comes time to sell their home?

Turns out it’s what every home seller wants to hear. First, it is not going to cost a lot to see a high ROI. Secondly, it’s not going to be extremely time consuming or challenging.

In HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey that included over 2,000 real estate agents across the U.S. the results were just that. The goal of the survey was to find out what agents recommend to homeowners to get their home into home selling condition and maximize their return on investment (at a minimal cost).

By the way, Home Sale Maximizer is a free, online home improvement tool for home sellers. As a Realtor®, it’s a great tool to give to your clients to help them get the home sale process started.

I’m going to list the results for the top six to 10 most recommended home improvements here in Part 1, and then reveal the top four in Part 2. read more

Posted by Jessica Gopalakrishnan on Dec 21, 2007 under HomeGain Market Data, Home Improvement

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What’s Your Lead Conversion Rate – 3 or 15 Percent?

No matter what industry you’re in, success in the online marketplace is determined by conversion.

Sites like Amazon and Wal-Mart measure not only how many visitors view an item, but how many place the item in their shopping carts and then actually purchase it.

Even though you aren’t selling goods on your real estate site, you should always be concerned with how well your site is converting visitors into leads.

Many of the real estate sites that we see convert visitors somewhere in the range of 3%-5%.

That’s really low.

Some of the other real estate agents’ sites convert higher, but most fail to convince its visitors that it is worth their time to leave their contact information in exchange for a glimpse at local listings, and, therefore, fail to produce a good ROI.

Due to the low conversion we know some real estate agents are experiencing, we always keep our eyes open for websites that convert at much higher rates to provide as examples to agents wanting to know how they can get better their ROI.

Guess what? We just figured out how to increase the conversion rate to an amazing 15%!

Interested? Read on. read more

Posted by Matt Malmgren on Dec 19, 2007 under Best Practices, BuyerLink, Leads

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