Where do a majority of buyers and real estate leads come from? Online Search, Real Estate Agent, Real Estate yard signage,etc…

Where do a majority of Real Estate buyers and leads come from?

According to NAR – National Association of Realtors, in 2007 International home buying activity;  How are consumers accessing your real estate listings today. According to the chart and marketing online, the internet is the most widely used tool in accessing real estate listings today. RealtyGo includes all your listing in a well structured and organized manner, specifically categorized and properly tagged for indexing by major search engines such as google, yahoo, youtube and bing.

Though the internet is the most popular source today for real estate search, buyers also cited information from real-estate agents (85%), yard signs (62%), open houses (48%) and print or newspaper ads (47%). Fewer buyers relied on home books or magazines, home builders, television, billboards and relocation companies.

Yard sign statistics is what we are most interested in for the purpose of this article. Even though the internet is the most popular tool when starting your home search; what happens when you find that perfect home, your desired  area or even the most charming neighborhood with all the right amenities that makes you want to jump in the car and start your search right away.

Most buyers start exploring right away, they may not even have an agent. So what’s the chances that when buyers look in an unfamiliar neighborhood for a new home or real estate investment, they also want to know about other homes, listings, and professionals specializing in real estate in the area. We would say its a very good chance. The more information a buyer can get in a shorter amount of time, helps confirm their emotions and good emotions lead to buying. So be proactive and provide buyers what they need to feel satisfied in their real estate search.

Flyer box Mobile TAG Sticker.

To help buyers along you should add a Mobile TAG to your real estate listing(s), enabling buyers immediate listing information, including photos, video tour, pricing, details and other important information they may want in order to make a valid decision. Mobile TAG’s encourage buyer interaction, which increase lead generation and additional sales. The image above shows a mobile TAG on a flyer box. This is also a great way to cut back on excessive paper and ink waste, giving end users the option of getting all your real estate listing information through a digital channel, such as their Smartphone, iPad, Tablet or any other enabled PDA device.

The internet has changed every aspect of how consumers make decisions nowadays, and that includes how people acquire and/or put their properties up for sale. So how will you use technology to practice successful real estate marketing in 2011?

RealtyGo – Your Real Estate listings Best Friend!

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Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011 | Nielsen Wire | RealtyGo_blog

The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to  friends, the internet and the world at large. The share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of respondents to a Nielsen survey indicated that their next device will be a smartphone. If we combine these intentional data points with falling prices and increasing capabilities of these devices along with a explosion of applications for devices, we are seeing the beginning of a groundswell. This increase will be so rapid, that by the end of 2011, Nielsen expects more smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones.

The Smartphone User

Slightly more males than females are getting smartphones (53% versus 47%) which is what we would expect for technical early adopter products. In terms of demographics, Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone than what their share of population would indicate, which is a trend we see in the adoption of other mobile data services. While smartphones started out in the business segment, two-third of today’s buyers of smartphones are personal users.

Loyalty

In the last six months, roughly 77% of new smartphone buyers remained loyal to their wireless operator, while 18% switched to a new provider to get their new smartphone with the remaining percentage made up of first-time smartphone buyers. Interestingly enough, the percentage of people who switched carriers and got a new smartphone is not higher than that of the average wireless subscriber.

This indicates that the portfolio of the wireless carriers in general is robust enough to prevent any wide-spread smartphone flight from one carrier to the other, with very few exceptions. The added bonus for wireless carriers is that smartphone owners are significantly more satisfied (81%) with their device than feature phone owners (66%).

Features, features, features

Smartphones show higher application usage than feature phones even at the basic built-in application level. During Nielsen’s Mobile Insights survey we asked the respondents about features they’ve used in the last 30 days. The good news for the smartphone market is that people are actually taking advantage of the device capabilities.

The percentage of people who use their phone for only voice communications drops from 14% among new feature phone owners to 3% of smartphone owners. The use of the built-in camera and video capability jumps by almost 20% for both categories, due to the generally better quality and user friendliness of the features. Smartphones also often have a better speaker which translates into more frequent usage from about half of feature phone owners to about two-thirds of smartphone owners. Not surprisingly the use of Wi-Fi increases 10-fold from 5% for feature phone owners to 50% for smartphone users to satisfy the need for fast downloads.

RealtyGo supports both QR Code real estate information retrievel and SMS/MMS Text Messaging.

via Smartphones to Overtake Feature Phones in U.S. by 2011 | Nielsen Wire.

Facebook Deals: A Powerful New Social Media Tool For Your Business | RealtyGo_blog

Do your friends like the same deals as you do? Facebook is betting they will!

In their most recent effort to achieve total global internet dominance, Facebook recently released further details on its “Deals” feature.  Similar in concept to Groupon, Facebook Deals allows users to purchase daily-deal vouchers through Facebook.com.  Currently, Facebook is differentiating itself from other group buying sites by only offering deals that provide social interaction. On their website, Facebook states, “Deals gives your business the opportunity to offer people unique social experiences that they can do with their friends. This encourages people to share their excitement about the experience you’re providing, not just the discount you’re offering. For example, some businesses may offer people a 5-course tasting menu, a rock climbing lesson, or a concert package.”

Facebook Deals: The Basics

Once you have made the decision that Facebook Deals is right for your business, contact Facebook through the Deals signup section of their website. Facebook may ask you to provide two pictures for your business.  As with Groupon, you will need to enter information such as the product offered, the discount, and any other relevant information.  With this information, Facebook will list your deal in a format attractive to Facebook users (your potential customers, there are many of them).

Once created, your deals will reach Facebook users through the following mediums:

In short, Facebook Deals will get your business’s name out in front of many Facebook users within your geographic area.  The deal you create will attract current and new customers to your business, while Facebook’s social networking platform will encourage these customers to share the discount offers with their friends.

We believe Facebook Deals will present significant competition to Groupon, LivingSocial, and other group buying sites.  Although late to the game in social commerce arena, Facebook is famous for perfecting an idea, executing, and taking over the market.  For example, look at the outcome of the Facebook/MySpace battle.  What gives Facebook a leg-up over Groupon is their already enormous user-base as well as their social network platform, which is the most advanced in the world.  When a consumer makes a purchase through Facebook Deals, potentially hundreds of their friends will be notified of this, usually not the case with Groupon.

RealtyGo

What Buyers Need to Avoid Doing! | RealtyGo_blog

What Buyers Need to Avoid Doing!  | RealtyGo_blog

I keep on saying it and I’ll say it again….  The Mortgage Industry has gone back to the future.  Underwriters are looking at loan applications the old way.  They are looking at everything.

A 780 FICO score, money in the bank and job . . . Not too long ago if a buyer had two out of three of these,  they were almost guaranteed a loan approval.  Not any more.

Underwriters are looking at the contents of that credit report, they are looking at the source of the money in those bank accounts, they are looking at the pay checks and tax returns even if the buyer is a salaried employee.

Make sure your clients are prepared and well counseled.  Preparation and proper expectations will cure 90 percent of the problems and delays buyers are having in today’s mortgage market.

Below is a list of “rules” all mortgage applicants should follow.  It will make their life easier and yours.  The only call we want to hear the week of closing is,  “Docs are at title and the wire has been ordered.”

Share this with all your clients regardless of who they are.

Things you should avoid before and after making application for your mortgage

Congratulations! You finally found the house of your dreams. Your offer has been accepted by the seller, you have been pre-approved for the mortgage. It looks like you’ll qualify. The closing is only weeks away, and you’re feeling pretty good. It’s smooth sailing from here, right? Probably….

… However, more than one buyer has had the wind knocked out of his sails at some point in a real estate transaction by the mis-steps described below. If at all possible, steer clear of the following until AFTER you have gone to settlement.

These suggestions are merely that—suggestions. No one is saying, flat out, that bad things will necessarily follow if you do any of the below.  They are offered as cautions. Many buyers seem to view the mortgage application procedure as a static action, a snap shot of their financial lives at a given moment in time. It’s not. It’s an on-going process that takes into account everything you do right up until the day of closing.

• Do not take on new debt. The temptation is strong. There are so many big purchases that people want to make in connection with a move: appliances, window treatments, furniture, etc. When you add to this the fact that, today, everyone offers easy terms and no money down—well, why not just do it? Answer: because you will change what the mortgage industry calls your “debt-to-income ratios” (the relationship of your income to your debt).
• Do not move money. In preparing for payment required at closing you may be tempted to consolidate accounts.  Contact  me before you move your money.  We may require additional documentation and verification of those accounts.  Trying to re-trace your steps can be confusing and delay the process.
• Do not make unusual deposits into your accounts.  Unusual or irregular deposits could indicate undisclosed debts.  The underwriter will need to know and document the source of those funds. If you do have an odd deposit, make copies of all the documents so that it is easily sourced.
• Do not change jobs. If at all possible, try not to make a career move during the time between your mortgage application and the closing on the home you are purchasing. But, you ask, “What if it’s a BETTER job, for MORE money, in the SAME field?” Still, try and wait until AFTER closing. One of the factors mortgage companies consider is length of present employment; they are partial to stability. At the very least, changing jobs initiates the need for more paperwork, and may delay your closing.
• Do not pack too soon. Well, go ahead and pack your clothes and dishes. But do not pack your bank statements, tax returns, or other important paperwork. Most especially, do not pack your checkbook! More than one buyer has had closing delayed while a friend or relative hurried over with additional funds because the checkbook was in the moving van.
• Do not lease a new car. This should go under the general heading of “no new debt.” It is highlighted here because, for some strange reason, many buyers do run right out and lease a new car during the time between mortgage application and closing! As with any debt, this will change your “debt-to-income ratios” and may cause you not to qualify for your mortgage.
• Do not sell something unless you have proof you owned it. This can go under odd deposits.  Discuss this with me before you sell.

In short, do nothing that negatively impacts your ability to qualify for your mortgage loan, or initiates a new round of paperwork. If you have any doubts about doing something that may affect your ability to qualify for your mortgage loan, please consult me  before you do it.

Special thanks to Nino Pascale for this email article!

RealtyGo – Your Real Estate Listings Best Friend!

Adobe Is Watching Every Click | LinkedIn | RealtyGo blog

Adobe Systems ( ADBE – news – people ) Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen is counting big numbers: 4.9 trillion Web display ads will be shown this year, he says. In the last quarter of 2010, 100 million smartphones were sold worldwide. This year there’ll be 17.7 billion downloads of mobile applications, creating a paid-apps market worth $15.1 billion.

Almost every ad and app out there, along with most of the business and consumer-oriented content on the Web, is going to be tracked and responsive to some entity’s remote control. That entity, he hopes, will be Adobe.

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“Everything is changing!” says Narayen during an interview at his hotel suite in Salt Lake City during a break between meetings with some of the 700 companies here for the annual customer summit run by his subsidiary, Omniture (OMTR – news – people ). Adobe bought Omniture for $1.8 billion in 2009 because the Orem, Utah software firm makes the Web’s most successful tracking tools. Its annual conference gathers people who spend 30% of all Internet ad dollars.

Narayen got blasted for paying 24% over Omniture’s share price, but it looks like a good move. Omniture’s revenue is growing 20% a year while sales of Adobe’s better-known creativity programs like Photoshop and Illustrator were repeatedly hit in the recession. Adobe’s Flash software, the standard for rendering graphics and video online, is taking a p.r. beating by Apple ( AAPL – news – people ), which refuses to use it in its phones and tablets. Yet Adobe’s stock has kept pace with Apple so far this year. Earlier this year Narayen picked up another audience-tracking tech firm, called Demdex, to further entrench his position among companies that manage, analyze and act upon what people do on the Web, particularly around selling stuff.

Narayen is building into Adobe’s content-creation tools the planning, tagging and tracking software, plus newer technology that plumbs Twitter and Facebook for information about how people, ads and products are seen. With the right analytics built in, an ad can get automatically tweaked to improve response, or maybe a new app is created because someone raved on Twitter. “It’s a huge opportunity for us, if we can step up to it.”

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Adobe does not break it out, but about $1 billion of its $3.8 billion in revenue last year came from big corporate sales, the kind that would combine creative tools with some analytics. The rest of its revenue is from sales of individual software. In the near term Narayen thinks this new market is worth more than $10 billion. He envisions, further out, selling services around these insights. “We can be the mission-critical company for digital experiences and not just a products company,” he says.

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Virgin America, which gets 70% of its revenue from its website, uses Adobe software to track where its passengers click to offsite so it can craft the right mix of search and display ads. Hearst uses Omniture to test how its readers click on Web stories. It tested “royal” stories and “celebrity weddings” stories, and found people were obsessing on so-called storybook weddings more than on storybook royalty. The editors ordered up more celebrity wedding stories.

Narayen could get bought or beaten along the way. IBM ( IBM– news – people ) just announced it will deploy 1,000 consultants and 1,200 salesmen into its “smarter commerce” initiative, dedicated to helping advertisers figure out the real costs and effectiveness of their online marketing. Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ – news – people )’s new CEO, Leo Apotheker, used his first public appearance to talk about the growing importance of data-analysis software to HP.

Google ( GOOG – news – people ) gives away a somewhat more primitive service than Omniture’s called Google Analytics, but Google retains its own file of the data people plug into it. If Google Analytics is taking business from Omniture, there is no evidence of it from the outside. The market is still growing fast.

Adobe Is Watching Every Click | LinkedIn.

Ten Reasons Why Real Estate Professionals will benefit from Social Media | RealtyGo_blog

Doesn’t the image depict the way real estate is headed in our near future, if not already a necessity for most Agents to survive today when working with tech savvy clients, banks and/or any third party entities requiring analytics or reporting tools to reveal consumer patterns, as well to prove a real estates agents prior success in this tough market.

There are lots and lots of Real Estate Professionals that still aren’t quite convinced though when it comes to Social Media especially when it applies to them. It could even be as simple as the “Fear of the Unknown”. Its easier to dismiss new practices and stick to old traditions, but what if you could keep your traditions of real people networking in your community, which is still a very valuable trait to have, and update your online presence with out doing anything different then your use to. Would you take advantage of it. RealtyGo offers agents, brokers, real estate professionals, Vacation home owners and for sale by owner the ability to offer potential buyers, renters, investors and new customers easy engagement tools using modern day technology. Your Smartphone is a good example, place RealtyGo’s QR Codes anywhere you want to offer consumers information about your real estate listing(s) (flyer box, rider sign, real estate signs, print ads, digital ad space, like craigslist, zillow, Realtor.com) and allow the end user to choose their method of contacting you. This doesn’t mean you have to take you phone number off your signage or change anything your currently doing, RealtyGo  just makes it easier for you to interact and communicate, update, showoff, edit and promote your real estate listings and business using Mobile phones and the World Wide Web. Don’t think for a moment that by not offering consumers the means to get immediate information that you are some how helping your business, end users can google anything and find all the information they like about any real estate listing by searching online. It may be better for you and your clients if you show consumers information you want them to see at first look,like updated photos, remodels that have been done, positive information, because if you leave it up to the end user to go searching out in the wild wild west, we call the internet for information on your real estate, they may find old, non relevant information, old pictures, a previous owner or lister and even get distracted along the way and forget about your real estate listing all together. Make it easy for potential buyers to get immediate information and communicate with you, auto schedule appointments and leave notes about your property, which they can later review and use as a point of reference when making a decision to move forward.

Ten Reasons Why Real Estate Professionals will benefit from Social Media:

1. Brand Exposure (Facebook 500+ million users, Twitter 300+ million users, Linkedin 80+ million users etc)
2. Your Competition is already there and has a following that you have to catch up to!
3. This is how your potential clients find information about Real Estate (buying, selling etc)
4. There are conversations being had about your Brand and Industry that you NEED to respond to!
5. Gives consumers and other professionals a better idea of WHO they are dealing with – Transparency!
6. You will benefit from the Community style flow of information and find out things you otherwise wouldn’t have, enabling you to update your business model. I mean lets face it, every great company has to eventually make changes to keep up with new trends, especially since were in a Global market these days, buyers from outside the U.S. daily.
7. You will be an Industry Leader – Not Follower!  Early adopters of dynamic practices are winning big!
8. You will find NEW ways to conduct and streamline your business!  Growing a client base and professional Network, not only traditionally within your immediate community, but also abroad through the world wide web.
9. You can call yourself the “Neighborhood Expert” and your profiles,articles and new methodology will support that claim!
10. Technology and Business Models are evolving and so must you!  Lastly everyone else is doing it and you don’t want to be the one guy or gal NOT doing it!

RealtyGo makes it easy to use, apply, utalize and share your mobile real estate listings and business with advanced technology like QR Codes, SMS/MMS Text messaging, GPS and more.

RealtyGo – Your Real Estate Listings Best Friend!

Global Real Estate Market

How to get leads in todays real estate market…, The industry has come a long way! | RealtyGo_blog

“The Future Of Real Estate Lead Generation – Building Lead Generation Machines”

….Darin Persinger

UI

We wanted to post this article we received from Darin. This is a great article and really reminds you how far technology has come. Darin talks about building a machine of sort for lead generation. For us at RealtyGo we believe the internet is the “Machine” and interacting with it efficiently can increase your day-to-day activity and make you more efficient in your business practices. RealtyGo offers Unified Communication which is a set of products that provides a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types. RealtyGo offers easy to use UI (user interface) as well as Best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices to promote your mobile and web based real estate listings like no other company can.

Enjoy the article and tank you Darin for the email and  your personal experience.

I got my real estate license in 1997.

Things were different then. Much different.

My real estate lead generation consisted of phone calls to expireds and fsbos.

I did print ads and I literally had to take the ad to the newspaper because we couldn’t fax, scan or email the pictures.

Real estate lead generation was all about “spray and pray.”

The Future Of Real Estate Lead Generation

The future is now and the future of real estate lead generation, I believe is about building machines.

Lead Generation machines.

The great thing about inbound marketing is that it is a machine.

You build the machine, aka a blog post or social media strategy, implement it and it can run on its own. When you wake up in the morning, you have leads from people that registered on your IDX or people that opted-in to your On Demand First Time Home Buyers Webinar.

Sure, back in 1997 I might have had a voice mail waiting for me in the morning on the office voice mail system, because of an ad I ran in the paper. But every week I would have to run another ad. Every week another trip to the newspaper. Every week another few hundred dollars spent.

Building A Lead Generation Machine

What I did in 1997 was truly grinding it out. I wasn’t really building a business. Sure I could create systems and processes, but if I stopped showing up, the leads stopped showing up. I was in the business of real estate lead generation. You shouldn’t be.

You should be in the business of building lead generation machines, and then let those machines go and do the real estate lead generation.

Back in 1997 if someone sold 100 homes a year, they were a balla! Now  you hear about many real estate agents selling 200, 300, 500 homes a year. Sure some of it is because of big REO contracts, but its because they have built lead generation machines.

Technology, the internet and social media have giving you an opportunity to building lead generation machines.

The question is: Are you taking advantage of this opportunity? RealtyGo – Your Real Estate Listings Best Friend!

Also, keep in mind my belief is you can automate tasks, you can’t automate relationships.
My suggestions is go to work on the building of lead generation machines and focus on the relationships those machines create.

Stay Productive,

Darin Persinger

RealtyGo – Mobile that Accelerates your Business!

Unified Communication