Recently we sent out a couple hundred Maxes to HomeGain customers.  We received quite a few emails from delighted real estate agents across the country. Here is one we received from Debra Gravelle, of Moses Lake Realty Group in Washington:

“Hello to my friends at HG!

Yesterday I got the news that I would be listing a home for $525,000 from a BuyerLink lead. Yippee!!!

I  took a listing about two weeks ago and we have a contingent on a home they want to buy. This listing referred me to their Mom that has a home on Moses Lake to sell.

So that means in the last three weeks:

Two listings from your leads. One of them will buy with me as well.

One referral from one of those leads that happens to be his Mother.

That is a total of four transactions when the listings sell and we are priced right.

What a treat when I got home and Max was in the Mail. 

That was the icing on the cake for a banner day. Max is my hero.

I took him to the office today and he has the best seat in the house. He rides a pig that has wings and of course he holds on to the wings so we can soar together.

See for yourself.

I have attached a couple of pictures of the two of us.”

Continue reading this post

HomeGain looks forward to visiting with its customers and meeting new Realtors from around the world each year at the National Association of Realtors® Conference & Expo. In 2008, the NAR trade show was held in Orlando, Florida. Many real estate agents were delighted to win the featured prize, Max, the HomeGain gorilla, and speak to our cameras.

Thank you to all of our video participants! We look forward to seeing everyone again next year.

Bethanne Baer
Coldwell Banker
Orlando, FL
AgentEvaluator Platinum Club

Bob Kimball
Keller Williams Excellence
Timonium, MD
AgentEvaluator Platinum Club

Continue reading this post

I know that there are so many of you out there who read this blog and are excited about taking your business to the “next level” by using the Internet. 

Lately, at The eHomes Realty Network, I have been getting a lot of inquiries about the cost to get your Internet business off the ground.  Below are your basic costs to get going.  The marketing program you choose will vary from area to area. 

Website

I’m a big believer in using “template websites”.  There are many choices in custom websites also, but I prefer to put my money into marketing and generating business.  Most template websites are 90% customizable, affordable and already have a ton of generic content.  You can easily spend $10,000 - $20,000 on a custom site. 

IDX

Over 90% of the real estate leads we capture at Tropical Realty of Suntree are from people registering to view home listings on our website.  I highly recommend an IDX vendor versus your free MLS providers IDX.   There are multiple IDX companies available.  HomeGain offers an IDX website with their AIMS product. We will be launching our 100MPH Marketing Software in about a month for the state of Florida.  However, it won’t be available nationwide for some time.  I also recommend iHomefinder.com. Their tool is very easy to use, reliable and has a good capture mechanism. 

Pay Per Click

Using pay per click can be very costly if you don’t know what you are doing.  If you are using Google and/or Yahoo!,

Continue reading this post

Thousands of real estate professionals descended upon the HomeGain booth to learn about HomeGain.

On Saturday and Sunday Mitch Ribak and Joe Ferrara participated in our “Meet the Experts” program.

Joe gave blogging tips to visitors to the HomeGain booth and Mitch talked about how to use HomeGain’s Buyerlink in connection with capturing and converting leads.

From Friday until Monday, Realtors lined up to win their own Max and to pick up a Max button.

We will have a complete report on NAR later this week.

Here is Max hanging around on Friday afternoon waiting for the show to begin!

What were your thoughts about the NAR Convention & Expo this year in Orlando, Florida?

Louis Cammarosano

As a guy who does search engine marketing, I believe in testing. I test a lot.

During a typical week, I will visit quite a few real estate websites. This past week, I took the opportunity while visiting them to “Mystery Shop” 50 of them. I was not mystery shopping to see who had the prettiest website or the coolest interface, or the most search criteria.

I was simply registering with my name, phone number and email address to see who called me back first. This post is a BASIC report of what I found.

(Note: I am going to do a more detailed study on many more sites in about 2 months for publication – if you would like a copy of that study, shoot me an email! – it should be out in December / January and I would be happy to share it with you. It is going to not only include how quickly people responded, but HUNDREDS of examples of their responses as well).

Out of the 50 real estate websites that I registered for, I did not receive a callback or contact at all on 27 of them. (I was STUNNED at that one.) Nine of them called me back within two hours. By the end of 24 hours Continue reading this post

Last week Mitch Ribak, Founder of eHomesRealtyNetwork and MelboureHomeSearch.com, visited our team here in Denver, Colorado for a training and knowledge transfer exercise. Mitch and I have been keeping in touch since November 2006 after I met Mitch resulting from one of HomeGain’s Winning Agent Calls.

When I first met Mitch I was just a team of one trying to figure out this whole Internet Marking thing. I was reasonably comfortable with the website development, however I was struggling with how do I bring customers to my website and then convert them to leads then to clients and closings. A friend of mine had connected me to HomeGain’s BuyerLink product so there I was.

I had a website and some good marketing but now what do I do with it?

The same month after listening to Mitch’s presentation I had my first Internet client under contract. Yippee! I was on the running to making my first million, NOT.

With much continued effort I continued to find limited success, touching base with Mitch once every 3-4 months when I would find myself struggling the most. He would help me get over the hump then I would hit the ground running again. Continue reading this post