We’re pleased to announce our 2008-2009 Advisors Group and welcome our latest member, Mike Farmer.

Over the past year, since the Advisors group was initiated, we have received invaluable insight into our real estate products. By continuing to meet with this influential group of agents and brokers, we will be further enabled to focus on bringing improved customer service as well as enhancements to our marketing solutions that we provide to other real estate professionals.

Advisors have also recognized the exclusive group as an opportunity to network with each other, brainstorm and strategize.

As the 13th member of the HomeGain Advisors Group, Mike will join the original 12 members from the 2007-2008 Advisors, which includes: Continue reading this post

We are pleased to have Mike Farmer, Owner/Broker of Mike Farmer Realty in Savannah, GA as the featured real estate agent in the HomeGain Agent Success Newsletter for August.

Mike is also an AgentEvaluator member and a HomeGain Blog contributor.

In our exclusive interview, Mike discusses his strategies behind successfully offering and securing homebuyer representation with 24 out of 25 buyers.

Why and when should an agent get a contract with home buyers? What’s the best way to explain a buyer’s contract? What kind of commission is negotiated?

Listen to Mike Farmer’s advice and find out!

I annoyed a whole lotta folks on Bloodhound Blog. I told everyone that the parents were a better demographic than the kids and the RE.net cried heresy! Apparently, Web 2.0 agents have adopted the mantra of the very demographic I suggest they target;

Never trust anyone over 30.

That’s good advice for cell phone companies. If you’re in the real estate or lending business, you might focus your marketing efforts on the cash-heavy, real estate lovin’ Baby Boomers. Now I’m not suggesting you ignore the Gen X and Millennial demographics, I’m telling you they may not be worth your hard-earned marketing dollars until 2015. Ironically, Millenials may very well Twitter through their 20s, having conversations with agents, and turn to their parents for advice when it comes time to make the big home purchase. A Boomer-focused marketing strategy then could have double-barreled results.

Those darned Boomers influence EVERYBODY, don’t they?

I say, “if you you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and it would appear that most online marketers (including Web 2.0 real estate agents) are doing the exact opposite.

I promised to talk about ways to target the Baby Boomers, in a series, and wanted to invite the HomeGain Nation to join in on the conversation before I return to the series on Bloodhound Blog. In Part Two, I reveal that there are actually TWO demographic groups among the Baby Boomer generation: one is pretty well off and one is filled with angst. You can profit from both of them but you better treat them differently. The cool part is that all Baby Boomers LOVE real estate, regardless of their sub-demographic. Continue reading this post

In our exclusive interview with Mike Farmer of Mike Farmer Realty in Savannah, Georgia, Mike describes how expanding his reach on the Internet – from providing content on consumer facing real estate blogs to providing advice to the real estate community online to maintaining his own websites and blog – has changed and grown his business.

Listen in to hear Mike Farmer’s real estate advice:

Highlights of the call:

Mike discusses what he’s experiencing as most challenging in a down market, like the Continue reading this post

Yesterday I was having a cup of coffee and a slice of blackberry cake in a coffee shop downtown Savannah. When everyone else finished their drinks and snacks, they left the plate and cup. Not me, no, I pick up behind myself, so I took my plate and cup to the front like I always do at such places and offered it to the person behind the counter. Now, a person who has a scintilla of service running in their veins would have accepted the plate and cup, thanked me and smiled.

Not this person posing as a customer service employee, no, she looked at me, slightly annoyed, and said, “Actually, would you take that down to the end of the counter?” I started to ask her if she wanted me to wash it, too. I just laughed and took it down to the end of counter, knowing no thanks was forthcoming (and there wasn’t).

This is an example of someone wanting a paycheck with no clue what it means to provide customer service. Did I get my coffee and blackberry cake? Yes. Was it good? Yes. Will I go back? I doubt it. The reason I won’t go back is because I can get the same good coffee and cake down the street with better, more personable service. I tried this place out and it failed to make me want to go back.

When I hear people confidently say about our profession—“I’m in the business of selling homes, dammit, not in the service business or socializing business or friend-making business, but the home-selling business!”—this appeals to my Hulk Hogan side, but it also leaves me unsatisfied with the posture.

Two people can be good at selling homes, yet one will be successful long term and the other will fade away into obscurity and mediocrity—why? Because of service. Continue reading this post

After the dot.com bust it appeared the initial promise of the internet was vanquished and the naysayers were right, that only geeks were using the internet and that business on the web couldn’t be conducted for profit.

So much for naysayers. The internet is now used by every bubba, grandma and you-name-it around the world. The internet is fulfilling its promise and rapidly becoming a standard tool of business, advertising and communication.

The argument is over whether real estate agents should be using the internet to conduct business. I’m sure there are successful hold-outs, and it’s probably true that many agents don’t have a comprehensive internet plan to conduct business, but it’s now pretty much a no-brainer that the internet is the place to be for real estate business.

NAR is addressing the issue, agents are getting their own websites, brokerages are putting together plans and every conference, workshop and seminar has something to say about it.

Many of us are way beyond all that and our main concern is just how best to utilize all the possibilities now that we’re in the middle of it. For those just starting, I’d suggest catching up fast by reading blogs like Bloodhound, Agent Genius and, Continue reading this post