Have happy clients? Share the Smiles — with HomeGain!

HomeGain has launched a new campaign for Realtor members, called Share The Smiles, in which real estate agent and broker members can send HomeGain photos of their satisfied clients for publishing on HomeGain.com.

Here’s how it works:

1. Take a photo of your clients in front of their new or sold home. Even include yourself in the photo.
2. Email one photo per client (less than 1MB each in size) up to 5 clients and we’ll post them online for the world to see!
3. Feel free to include the names of your clients (and all your contact info!) and/or a 1-3 sentence review or description for each photo.
4. As a HomeGain member, you’ll receive 25 Max Rewards Points per photo/client!

Submit your photos today!

About Max Rewards Points and see your account balance.

Although HomeGain was not an exhibitor this year at the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) Annual Conference & Expo in San Diego, California, we sent our best representative, Max The HomeGain Gorilla, to greet hundreds of Realtors as they entered the real estate trade show over the weekend.

Did you spot the Max-mobile truck? (See photos below) Let us know if you did!

Max-mobile at the NAR Annual Expo in New Orleans

HomeGain.com recently conducted its third nationwide home improvement and home staging Home Sale Maximizer™ survey (previously conducted in 2003 and 2007) to reveal the top 12 low cost*, do-it-yourself (DIY) home improvements for people getting their home ready to sell.

Nearly 1,000 REALTORS® responded to the survey. (See complete survey results)

Referring to the charts below, the top home improvement per region by return on investment (ROI) is:

• Home Staging (West and South)
• Clean and Declutter (East and Mid-West)

Lightening and Brightening is the 2nd most popular home improvement project in all regions that Realtors recommend to home sellers, except for in the Mid-West, where Landscaping takes 2nd place.

By price increase, the top home improvements are:

• West: Updating Kitchen and Home Staging (Tie for $2,500 each average home price increase)
• East: Updating Kitchen (average of $3,500 price increase) followed by Painting Interior Walls and Painting Outside of Home (Tie for $2,500 each in average price increase)
• South and Mid-West: Updating the Kitchen (average of $2,500 price increase)

The top most recommended home improvement Realtors advise their seller clients are:

• West and East: Clean and Declutter (98%)
• South: Clean and Declutter, Lighten and Brighten, Replace or Shampoo Carpets (all tie with 98% recommendations)
• Mid-West: Paint Interior Walls and Replace or Shampoo Carpets (both tie with 99% recommendations)

Complete Regional results are as follows:

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HomeGain and CyberCity 3D announced a new partnership today (read PRWeb press release), which provides HomeGain’s real estate agent members the ability to display CyberCity’s 3D Virtual Viewing marketing products directly on HomeGain.com.

3D Virtual Viewing promotes homes for sale through the Google Earth™ API virtual globe. It provides an interactive, 3D model of the home designed to increase web advertising exposure and attract consumers searching for their next home.

See 3D home listings on HomeGain.com

HomeGain Realtor members can now link their CyberCity 3D models to their property listings directly from their AgentView product. Agents simply enter the 3D model URL in their HomeGain® account for that listing and a “View in 3D” button will automatically appear on HomeGain’s Search Results and Listing Detail pages linking the Google Earth™ API 3D model to the home listing.

Congratulations to Realtor® Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams Realty in Tampa, Florida for being the next $50 winner of the HomeGain Agent Appreciation contest!

A HomeGain member since 2006, Andrew is an AgentEvaluator® Gold Club member, an AgentView member as well as a HomeGain Blogger. “That’s fantastic!” commented Andrew on hearing the news.

The correct answer to “How Many Max Gorillas Are There?” is: 10!

As the Agent Appreciation celebration comes to a close, we are also pleased to announce the Grand Prize winner of $100 — Laurie Hill of Desert Gem Real Estate in Surprise, Arizona.

Laurie has been a HomeGain member since 1999. She is an AgentEvaluator Platinum Club member and a BuyerLink™ real estate agent. “Yeah, that’s great,” said Laurie. “I’ll gladly accept the honor and the $100!”

Thank you to all weekly surprise participants for making it a great Agent Appreciation month. See you next year!

I’m not sure if it’s the real estate downturn, but my phone has been blowing up with online advertising vendors lately.  I monitor my advertising revenue very closely, so I ask a lot of questions when talking with their salespeople.

Salespeople like to throw around big numbers to entice you to buy, so it’s important to ask for the proper metrics when analyzing different potential advertising sources.

Here’s a breakdown of what you should measure, and what to ask:

1) ROI (Return on Investment) is the bottom line number that you need to use after you have given an advertising source long enough to perform.

ROI is simply how much you’ve earned on an advertising source divided by how much you’ve spent.  So, if you’ve earned one $6000 commission from Website A, and spent $2000 advertising there, your ROI is 3:1.  You’ve earned $3 for every $1 you spent.  Most advertising sources won’t track their customers’ ROI because there are so many “real world” variables that can create different results for different buyers - predominantly how well each customer can convert.

2) Conversion Rate is the number of leads you get per click.

If you have different types of leads (contact requests, registrations, property info requests) then it’s best to track the bottom line conversion rate, and then crunch it down to conversion rate for each lead type.  So, if you get 100 visitors in one month from a traffic source, and you get 5 registrations, 2 contact requests, and 3 property info requests, then your conversion rates are as follows:

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