Real Estate Radio USA interviewed Louis Cammarosano and me last week to find out about our latest integration—Home Sale Maximizer with AgentView.

Listen to our radio segment to find out what Louis Cammarosano and I had to say and why Home Sale Maximizer is making headlines.

On Wednesday, August 20, Barry Cunningham and Barry Johnson of Real Estate Radio USAspoke with Louis Cammarosano about AgentView—its key features, how it works and why it is a valuable marketing product for real estate agents who want to have a strong online presence.

Listen to the program!:

Continue reading this post

Most real estate agents today are inundated with emails from other agents advertising their new listings. Some days I’ll get 20-30 of these emails and another 10 or so directly to my spam folder. I wish they would all go to my spam folder because that is exactly what they are – spam.

Just for reference, let’s take a look and remember what the definition of spam is when referring to email solicitations. I’m sure they believe these to be a great use of the “new technology” known as email, but, really it’s nothing more than spam.

As agents, we already have all of these listings available for home buyers in the MLS and that does nothing to mention that buyers can find these great new listings and reduced properties simply by searching through the MLS on agent websites, broker websites, realtor.com, and all of the other 3rd party aggregator websites where buyers are searching for homes.

If I receive them, I immediately unsubscribe myself from this innovative use of spam, er, technology. The biggest reason for this is the fact that they are non-targeted to me and my market and the sheer volume makes it impractical for me to try to keep them in my mind.

Since I’m receiving so many of these emails on a daily basis, how can any agent possibly believe that I am interested in looking at this unsolicited regurgitated information from the MLS listings posted in these emails?

On listing appointments, I specifically tell my potential clients that we do not communicate with agents via spam, er, new listing emails because they are ineffective and a tool only used by agents who don’t actually understand how to effectively utilize technology to market listings to agents and directly to buyers.

Let me offer some solutions to effectively utilize some of the real new technologies to help market homes for sale rather than sending bulk messages to people who don’t need the information. Continue reading this post

HomeGain’s Blog School has been in session for 8 weeks and I have seen a great improvement in the content being produced on the real estate agent blogs. Several agents have had their posts rank on the first pages of Google for their market keywords.

Regardless of Google ranking, agents are writing useful content for buyers and sellers, content they can share with future prospects and clients. Blogging to create an archival real estate information reserve is a relatively untapped methodology. If a prospective client asks an agent a common question — what are my closing costs? — the agent need only email their blog post on closing costs.

I have encouraged bloggers to write on topics which reflect common buyer and seller concerns. They are of enduring value.

Here are a couple of examples. Mitchell Feldman in Brooklyn, who has a great conversational tone, wrote “Buyers Guide to Closing Costs in Brooklyn” and “Negotiating Tips for Sellers in Brooklyn (or anywhere else)” (love that title).

These reflect typical consumer concerns. And because of his personable writing style, the reader gets Continue reading this post

Real Estate Radio USA Inquires About Blogging School

Barry Cunningham and Barry Johnson of Real Estate Radio USA invited HomeGain’s Louis Cammarosano and Sellsius Real Estate Blog’s Joseph Ferrara to talk about the new Blogging School for real estate agents.

Listen to the radio show

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