Mobile Technology for Real Estate “Makes Sense” posted on February 21, 2012 by tclose For real estate agents and broker owners alike, the realization of mobile technology and its application to the…... Read more >

Mobile Technology for Real Estate “Makes Sense”
posted on February 21, 2012 by tclose

For real estate agents and broker owners alike, the realization of mobile technology and its application to the real estate industry has become a fact of business today.

With that in mind, we were curious to see what a real estate agent feels about the mobile real estate trend.

We spoke with Nicole Beauchamp, an agent with Warburg Realty in NYC. In the industry for a little more than eight years, she has watched the dawn and rise of mobile real estate, along with other recent trends. Here’s her take:

SA – What technology advances have you seen make a difference for RE in your tenure?
NB – Connectivity- and by this I don’t necessarily mean social media, but the proliferation of cell phones and mobile internet access. Everyone seems to be much more connected these days, which can be both a good and a bad thing.

When I first started selling real estate, some of my colleagues at the time wondered why I had a device where I could receive email when not at a computer. Today it is pretty rare for me to encounter anyone without a smart phone or regular access to their emails – both colleagues and consumers alike.

Generally, all of this connectivity and its effects are both good and bad. It can make communications faster and transactions run much more smoothly, provided everyone is communicating. However, when everyone (in the loop) isn’t communicating, it can feel like a log jam, which can be amplified because we have all grown used to a specific meter to our engagements and connections.

SA – How does mobile deviate/stand out from other technological advances in real estate that you’ve seen?
NB – Mobile (for real estate) just seems to make sense. So much of our lives are lived away from our homes and offices- the lines are definitely blurred. I’ve seen the shifts with consumers I have worked with, my family and friends as well as myself. I rarely leave my home, whether I am working or not, without my smart phones or my iPad. It is at times astounding how often I will use my iPad to do something even when I have the option to use a computer.

During RE Bar Camp and Inman Connect in New York this January, I ran my business from my iPad, iPhone and Blackberry for the entire week, all of which fit in my handbag- truly extraordinary! I have seen texting become a major way people communicate (whether we like it or not)-because of the ease of use and cost, as well as seemingly being less intrusive than phone calls.

Because we, in a very real sense, carry our lives in our pockets, the trend in using location-based services and mobile marketing makes sense. How often have I been in an area and wondered what great restaurant is nearby? The same seems to be true of real estate clients.

SA – What would you say to an agent that was on the fence about mobile and Smarter Agent?
NB – I would say to look around you and observe what is going on in your environment, ask your current and past clients and customers what their feelings are. Notice how people are interacting with businesses and services. As agents we are hired to help someone find a home, and should utilize the tools to streamline the process.

Real estate applications are very much part of every day real estate transactions, whether your brand has taken the step towards mobilizing your real estate brand or not. Are you ready to take advantage of the benefits that real estate applications add to your ability to build brand awareness and streamline your transactions? The time for mobile real estate is now.
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Social Media Marketing: Campaign Automation Boosts ROI Roost.com's pre-fabricated content bundles and scheduling tools have enabled some SMBs to enhance social media campaigns and save time. Social media…... Read more >

Social Media Marketing: Campaign Automation Boosts ROI

Roost.com's pre-fabricated content bundles and scheduling tools have enabled some SMBs to enhance social media campaigns and save time.

Social media marketing has a lot of plusses for smaller businesses. The fact that it's free helps. But the only thing more precious than money to a SMB is time, and cultivating social media followers can take a lot of it.

Roost is a social media management service that is winning fans among small business people because it lets them organize richer campaigns and boost their social media presence overall, while doing it in much less time. Like many competing products, it is a tool for posting to multiple social media websites at one time, or schedule posts in advance, so they are placed online like clockwork. But where Roost distinguishes itself is in guiding users on what to post, presenting them with pre-fab campaigns designed for variety (mixing status updates with photos, questions, and polls) and providing industry-specific libraries of content that can be used to fill in the blanks.

"We're trying to help the small business person who doesn't know how to do this stuff, or doesn't have time," Roost CEO Alex Chang said in an interview. "With this, they're taking 10 minutes on a Sunday night and creating a campaign that runs through the week."

Nicole Beauchamp, a real estate agent with Warburg Realty Partnership who specializes in apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, said she probably spends more like 10 hours a week on social media--but Roost still helps her do it more efficiently. "I don't want to spend 18 hours a day in front of the computer," she said.

She has configured the Roost content library to include some of her own favorite RSS feeds, "and it's nice to have it all in one window," she said. "It means I don't have to go 10 different places to find content I want to share." Also, when one of her contacts clicks on a link, the target article is displayed within a banner across the top of the page that links back to her profile and makes it easy for that contact to like or share the item. "That's a nice way to publicize my brand without begging people to like my page," she said.

Jennifer Roberts, a marketing coordinator at Tom Kadlec Honda in Rochester, Minn., said the dealership uses Roost to schedule campaigns of social media posts that include content from Honda and each of its car brands, as well as relevant automotive articles from the Roost library. She also adds a healthy dose of her own content, such as customer quotes and photos taken at the dealership. Even with the benefit of the content library, doing the job right still takes some creativity and a personal touch, she said. "You're not having to go out to the Internet to find all the material, but you're still recommending it all."

Before she discovered Roost, she had been using Ping.fm, a more basic service for posting to multiple websites, but the scheduling facility in Roost made a big difference, Roberts said. "I'm not here in the dealership on weekends, but I can still have things set up to post with Roost."

The Roost model is somewhat like that of Hearsay Social, except that Hearsay caters to the local representatives of global or national businesses, feeding them content that has been blessed by the corporate office while leaving them the freedom to pick and choose and personalize the posts. The smaller businesses that Roost caters to are more likely to be on their own, but its content libraries serve the same purpose of providing a starting point for social media broadcasts. Roost users operating in the same region are also encouraged to form networking circles, where they agree to share each other's posts for broader distribution. Because the service is specifically targeted at local businesses, one of the metrics that the service provides is a score showing how many fans of the page are from the target geographic region--as opposed to random connections from around the web--so they know if they are reaching their target market.

All the Roost services offered so far are free, although Chang said premium offerings to round out the freemium model will follow by the end of the year, priced at $10 to $40 per month. "We'll still have the free version because people need to see if they are getting a return from this before they start paying," he said.

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NYC’s Social Media Diva, Nikki Beauchamp’s Advice: Go Mobile “Thanks for the info re: app … if you have plans to present in the future, would love to know/attend!” Rhonda and other rave reviewers…... Read more >

NYC’s Social Media Diva, Nikki Beauchamp’s Advice:
Go Mobile

“Thanks for the info re: app … if you have plans to present in the future, would love to know/attend!” Rhonda and other rave reviewers comment after native Manhattanite and New York City real estate agent Nikki Beauchamp’s panel discussion on “Apps to enhance productivity for real estate agents” at REBNY. Scrolling through her page made me want to take notes of all the great ideas for posts and questions. Nikki has it dialed in, but what I really wanted to know was what her advice would be for businesses and professionals to get going on social marketing?

Nikki’s immediate response was, “I’m all about efficiency, so for me #1 is being mobile”.

My initial reaction was, mobile = expensive and teeny tiny text. Nikki explained the gap between those who can’t seem to get moving on the social web and those who are not mobile. They do go hand in hand. If efficiency is key, then the ability to operate away from the office, which now includes everything from email to keeping tabs on posts, comments, likes, tweets, and updates, while on the go is essential.

Don’t worry, she didn’t leave us hanging there… she did add a #2 to her words of wisdom for social marketing…

#2, Refer back to #1. Efficiency is key. Use tools to help you tame technology, take the power back and don’t allow it to run your life. (Don’t just rely on Facebook or Twitter.) As Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and others took off running, new and equally agile runners joined the race. Some have been sprinters (disappointing apps that have come and gone) but many are in it for the distance and have become almost a replacement tool.

Nikki often relies on Roost’s Social Marketing Platform to schedule out posts and create campaigns. It came as no surprise that she would be one of Roost’s first users on the iPad. “I was so excited about Roost on the iPad, not sure if its Christmas in July, or an early birthday present!” exclaimed Nikki, “I checked it out and thought wow, now its truly a bonus as I can adjust as needed from anywhere… not needing to be tethered to my computer.”

Nikki describes that even if she has created a campaign, she can always go into Roost to tweak it, change it, or add something to it if something more relevant came up (which happens so often in today’s up to the second news cycles). “The fact that you have a feed and can customize it, you can do almost everything from one place. As an example, I have my blog, my broker’s blog, and several other favorite news sources pulled into it- I really don’t have to go far.” Focusing on 3rd party tools that are functional will be your key to efficiency. Start off with learning new ways to attack the problem, which, for most is limited time.

“People have to figure out how to be efficient and make it work for them. The problem with not using 3rd party tools like Roost is that you don’t have multiple hours throughout the day to dedicate to marketing yourself.” So really #1 is #2… both lead you back to efficiency and taking control.

Using Nikki’s advice, find tools to spend a minimal amount of time, whether its once a week or every few days and schedule out your content. Then use mobile technology and 3rd party tools to keep on top of it to remain connected and engaged with your followers.  Figure out a system that works for you and get resourceful, otherwise, you will loathe social networking and view it as a chore.  Once you get yourself into a rhythm, you will see that the benefits of social marketing outweigh the amount of time it takes to keep it going…. and you just may discover that it is actually a lot of fun along the way too!

 

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Facebook referrals require deft touch Real estate pros turned off by automated requests By Bernice Ross, Thursday, June 2, 2011.   Inman News™ Most highly successful agents have a strong referral…... Read more >

Facebook referrals require deft touch
Real estate pros turned off by automated requests
By Bernice Ross, Thursday, June 2, 2011.
 
Inman News™

Most highly successful agents have a strong referral database. Good old-fashioned referral strategies still work today, but the strategies that utilize traditional marketing can bomb when applied on social media sites. The question is, what does work?

For years, trainers such as Brian Buffini and Joe Stumpf have emphasized the importance of asking for referrals from past customers and from your sphere of influence. Agents using this approach normally ask for referrals as a postscript at the end of each of their marketing pieces and their email:

"If you know someone who may be thinking about buying or selling a home, I'm never too busy for your referrals."

This approach is based upon the traditional advertising model, which is sometimes called "outbound" marketing. Outbound marketing strategies attempt to create awareness about the services you offer.

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The challenge is that outbound marketing strategies fail miserably on social media. Case in point: Can you imagine ending every one of your Facebook posts with a request for referrals?

In contrast, "inbound" or "word of mouth" marketing is about having others make recommendations about your services. In fact, one of the easiest ways to build your business is to provide value to your friends and followers on social media. When they "Like" or "Retweet" what you post, you have a third party who is recommending you voluntarily. The voluntary nature of the recommendation is what makes this so valuable.

Enter BranchOut and Stik

BranchOut and Stik are both Facebook applications that work much the same way that LinkedIn works, except they use Facebook as their database. You can post your resume, connect with friends, and determine who among your friends are the most influential.

I recently interviewed Stik co-founder Jay Kierak as well as Rob Runyon and Philip Kiracofe about their vision for Stik. According to the Stik website:

"When you need to make a big purchase -- whether it's a new house, a mortgage refinance, an insurance policy, or a retirement investment -- it's critical to find a professional you can trust. Unfortunately, many people still work with unknown salespeople, who may not have their customers' best interests at heart. This can cause big, painful problems -- ask anyone who has ever taken out an interest-only mortgage or bought a used car that's a lemon!

"By helping you find professionals that your friends already know and trust, Stik.com takes the worry out of important purchases. As we say at Stik.com, Stik to who you know."

The Stik application uses "Likes" and referrals to create better search results. The system also aggregates testimonials, recommendations and Likes.

Stik claims to make consumer search faster, more efficient and more reliable. To illustrate, when someone needs a referral to a mortgage broker, the Stik system goes through your friends and their friends to identify the most highly recommended individuals. The system brings the results back and displays them in rank order.

Currently Stik has approximately 3,000 sign-ups per day, with 25 percent business professionals and the remaining 75 percent consumers.

The challenge in the real estate industry

When I polled my Facebook friends about Stik, their responses illustrated the disconnect between what the developers hoped to achieve as opposed to how real estate professionals view the application:

•"I have received numerous requests and I've ignored every single one of them. I have no plans to use it. It actually is quite annoying." --Alyssia Essig

•"Recently I have been besieged by both Stik and BranchOut requests from lots of people that I hardly know. It gave me a very uneasy feeling about granting permission to all of my FB data to passing acquaintances. I have ignored/deleted all requests and do not plan on changing my mind absent a compelling reason." --Thomas J. Murphy

•"I'm not using it (Stik). Seemed like an interesting idea initially. Recently, there seems to be a sharp increase in usage and requests. I no longer see the requests. I blocked them as spam (as I did with BranchOut). People are free to connect with me for business purposes on LinkedIn. I'm not about to recommend anyone just because, whether it's on Stik, BranchOut, LinkedIn, or any type of reference." --Nikki Beauchamp

•"I was very optimistic when I first wrote about this a few months ago, but have since changed my mind. As Nikki Beauchamp was saying, users blast our request for recommendations and it (Stik) just spams everyone's walls ... I equate it to the Facebook Events feature -- a good tool gone wrong." --Jimmy Mackin

While Stik may be a powerful application, the agents above were repulsed by the automated requests for recommendations from people they didn't know well.

In most cases, when agents ask for a testimonial or a referral, it's done either face-to-face or by phone. In contrast, most of the people using these automated systems are blasting them out to everyone on their Friends list, even if they don't know them well. Rather than building connections, they're destroying them.

Here's the bottom line: If you are going to use a system such as Stik or any other automated referral system, don't ask someone else to recommend you unless you know them well enough that they can comment about you and your business. Furthermore, make sure they are happy to make the referral before you send the request.

 

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Postling ramps up functionality with two new features Nikki Beauchamp, real estate agent in NYC, has made a huge name for herself in bringing social media to the forefront of the industry. Beauchamp says…... Read more >

Postling ramps up functionality with two new features

Nikki Beauchamp, real estate agent in NYC, has made a huge name for herself in bringing social media to the forefront of the industry. Beauchamp says her biggest frustration has been the inability to know when someone commented on her business page.

“Briefly, when Facebook ‘accidentally’ changed the layout-I loved that notifications were a default feature-much as is the case with my personal profile. But-thankfully, I heard about Postling in the fall,and started using it. I loved that I received an email notifying me of a comment-it allowed me the freedom to NOT be tethered to my computer. The recent Postling addition of being able to reply directly via email is even better! I look forward to continuing to use Postling as a way to remain engaged and connected with my (hopefully) growing community on my fan page.”

 

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Manhattan Sales Soar in Q1 By Andrea Brambila  Created 2010-04-02 01:00 (http://www.inman.com) Sales of Manhattan apartments shot up in the in the first quarter of this year compared to the same…... Read more >

Manhattan Sales Soar in Q1
By Andrea Brambila 
Created 2010-04-02 01:00
(http://www.inman.com)

Sales of Manhattan apartments shot up in the in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2009, according to two quarterly market reports.

Condominium and co-op sales rose 96.5 percent, to 2,348 units, from 1,195 units in last year's first quarter, according to a Manhattan market report [1] prepared by real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel Inc. for Prudential Douglas Elliman. At the same time, sales fell 5.1 percent from 2,473 units in last year's fourth quarter.

A separate report for Brown Harris Stevens showed a 92 percent increase in sales from 2009's first quarter to 2,299 units.

"The first quarter of 2009 was dramatically impacted by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the number of transactions was at their lowest point," said Hall. F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, in a statement.

"As we come out of the recession, we have seen a steady growth in activity and in the average sales price achieved. Although these values remain down, it is encouraging to see that sales are taking place at a healthy rate."

While closings rose dramatically, median prices were still down compared to a year ago. The median sales price dropped 11 percent to $868,000 from $975,000 in the first quarter of last year, according to the Miller Samuel report. Median prices fell 10 percent to $820,000, according to the BHS report. Miller Samuel noted a 7.2 percent median price increase compared to last year's fourth quarter.

"Most of the activity we've seen has been up to $800,000 from the first-time homebuyer credit. We have seen some activity in the ($1 million) to $3 million price range -- there was none in the 4th quarter," said Gea Elika, founder and principal broker of Elika Real Estate in Manhattan.

"The problem there has been the lack of inventory. We're waiting for that inventory to hit the market about the second week of April. The inventory that's out here, some of it's stale and has been on the market over a hundred days."

According to the Miller Samuel report, days on market in the first quarter fell to 124 days, a 39.1 percent improvement compared to last quarter and a 26.9 percent improvement compared to the same period a year ago. That contrasts some with the BHS report, which found days on market remained flat at 119 days from the same period last year.

Listing inventory fell 23.1 percent quarter-over-quarter to 8,027 units, and rose 17.2 percent from last quarter. The market's inventory absorption rate -- 10.1 months -- improved considerably compared to 2009's first quarter when it was 26.2 months. ...

The BHS report noted that sellers have received a bigger percentage of their last listing price for the last three quarters; this quarter that figure rose to 96.2 percent. Listing discounts fell to 5.4 percent from 12.4 percent for the same period last year, the Miller Samuel report said.

Both reports are based on public record data. The Miller Samuel report also includes data that it and Prudential Douglas Elliman collect.

In terms of apartment size, studio sales took up less of the market share compared to the same period a year ago -- 12 percent compared to 15 percent -- while apartments with three bedrooms or more rose to 16 percent of the market, up from 10 percent.

The luxury market -- the top 10 percent of co-ops and condos in terms of sales price -- saw a 30.5 percent quarter-over-quarter median price decrease to $4,583,125. Compared to last quarter, that's a 21.2 percent improvement.

Real estate agent Nicole Beauchamp of Pari Passu Realty in Manhattan is somewhat skeptical of the rosy numbers comparing last year's first quarter to this first quarter -- "realistically (it) couldn't get much worse!" -- though she has noticed the market improving.

"Where interest rates are currently is spurring a lot of the current activity. Not only are prices correcting, but rates are at a point where it isn't astronomically expensive to borrow money. I am seeing a lot of activity in the under $1 million range, as well the luxury market," she said.

Homes in the luxury category were on the market for 19.6 percent fewer days -- 193 -- compared to last quarter, but for 26.1 percent more days than in 2009's first quarter when homes were on the market for 153 days, according to the Miller Samuel report.

"The return to more normal levels of sales activity over the past three quarters was fueled by low mortgage rates, improved consumer confidence as a result significant gains in the stock market and the first-time buyer and existing homeowner tax credits," the report said.

"There remains concern in 2010 over the potential for rising mortgage rates, expiration of tax credits and an economy that has not established significant improvements in unemployment and mortgage financing terms."

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