November 15, 2009
KW East Boca Raton’s November Newsletter
October 27, 2009
Social Networking & Internet Lead Generation
Generate MORE leads for LESS money!
When: November 9, 2009, 9am-4pm
Where: Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens
(4000 Morikami Park Rd in Delray Beach)
Cost: $69 (includes lunch)
Learn techniques and websites designed to increase the amount of leads coming into your site. Learn how Social Networking can be one of your BEST lead-generation options!
Hosted by guest speaker Michael Tritthart who is a national technology trainer and consultant.
9:00am-Noon: Internet Lead Generation
Techniques and websites that WILL generate business
1:00pm-4:00pm: Create a Social Networking Presence
Find out how to use Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networking sites for REAL business.
- The Who, What, Where and Why of Social Networking.
- What websites/techniques are other successful real estate agents using to generate business?
- Review sites of successful agents and learn why they are successful.
October 20, 2009
This Month In Real Estate – October 2009
Each month, This Month in Real Estate provides expert opinion and analysis on real estate trends across the nation. The aim of the consumer-oriented segments is to provide real information on real estate.
October 20, 2009
Practitioners Say Luxury Market is Up
The luxury home market is picking up, according to real estate practitioners all over the country. This trend is strictly anecdotal – no hard data yet. In fact, the National Association of REALTORS® say sales of homes priced above $2 million fell 39.1 percent in August compared to the previous year. But Barbara Feldman, vice president with Saunders & Associates in Long Island, N.Y.’s community of Bridgehampton, says, “We’ve seen a significant upturn in activity in the last four to six weeks.” And Charleston, S.C., associate Pat Broghamer with RE/MAX Advanced Realty, says buyers are “making investments in beach homes.” Kevin Schmidtchen, an associate with Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Barbara, Calif., echoes the sentiment: “We’ve started to see a fair amount more pending and closed sales here in just the last two to three months.”
Source: Investor’s Business Daily, Kathleen Doler (10/15/2009)
October 11, 2009
BOLDly going where no agent has gone before
21,000. That’s the number of transactions projected for round two of BOLD, MAPS Coaching’s latest breakthrough program! And with 22 new locations added to the lineup for 2009, living your life by design, not by default is within reach. Here are several more stats that are driving the success of agents and their market centers!
What a difference BOLD can make! In 2008, the Lake Travis market center listed 73 homes. After associates took BOLD the market center’s total listed homes jumped to 283 – a 25 percent increase!
Over the course of the eight-week BOLD program, Tim Heyl, associate with the Austin Southwest market center, took 10 listings and closed three contracts. His most recent listing was for a $2.99 million property. “If it hadn’t been for BOLD, there’s no way I would have gone after such an expensive property,” he says.
October 4, 2009
Learn to LEVERAGE yourself – the buyers side
| In The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, we declared you could be just three exceptional hires away from having the organization of a Millionaire Real Estate Agent. That’s still absolutely true. However, our ongoing research for both MREA and SHIFT has given us new insight into how these key positions evolve. Some of you got a sneak peak at Mega Camp 2009. For the rest, here’s a quick look at hiring and compensating a Showing Assistant.
Leverage is ultimately about focus. You hire talent to keep you focused on your most dollar-productive activities and they focus on everything else. After entrusting your admin and marketing chores to another person, you look for help on the buyer sales side of the business. Successfully showing homes can be extremely time intensive and help here should keep you focused on leads and listings. So who do you hire? In the past, research pointed us to a licensed buyer specialist paid on a 50/50 commission split. Today, some successful agents are first hiring an unlicensed Showing Assistant to keep their costs of sale low and their productivity high. A Showing Assistant can literally jump into the driver’s seat with your buyers while keeping you in the driver’s seat when it comes to converting buyer leads, getting signed agreements, identifying wants and needs and eventually writing and negotiating contracts. A good one should be able to successfully show homes to around three to four buyers a month while earning bonuses based on 25 percent of each deal. Based on a $5,000 average commission, a good Showing Assistant could earn $60,000 a year. This is a terrific opportunity for someone. Better yet, you get to stay focused and 75 percent of the buy-side income stays on your side of the ledger. You are still looking for someone who has the ability to grow into your Lead Buyer Specialist. So when you have someone with the ambition and proven ability to succeed with a high volume of buyers over time, your Showing Assistant earns the right to be promoted to a licensed Buyer Specialist. Your Buyer Specialist would then handle buyers from the appointment to closing and now earn 50 percent of the commissions. Again, a good one should be able to handle three to four buyer sales a month without burning out. Burnout is a key word. Once you have identified a great Buyer Specialist, you don’t want to lose them! When they burn out and walk out, guess who gets their job? You do. And you’ve already got a job. When your business is generating enough leads on a consistent basis to push a great Buyer Specialist past their ability to successful manage them all, the Showing Assistant concept reenters the picture. Now your Buyer Specialist has the opportunity to hire a Showing Assistant of their own. The Showing Assistant is still paid on a 25 percent bonus; however, that money comes out of the Lead Buyer Specialist’s half of each commission. Effectively, you continue to earn 50 percent of each buyer transaction, while the Buyer Specialist earns 25 percent and the Showing Assistant earns the final 25 percent as a bonus. Any buyer transactions your Buyer Specialist closes without the help of a Showing Assistant would still be on a 50/50 split. Now your Buyer Specialist might successfully help four buyers on their own and another four with the help of a Showing Assistant. That’s now eight closed buy-side transactions each month. And with an average commission of $5,000, your Buyer Specialist has the ability to gross as much as $180,000 a year while just personally showing three or four buyers a month! Showing Assistants may come and go—each auditioning for a shot at being your Lead Buyer Specialist. But once you find one, hiring and managing Showing Assistants moves from your plate to theirs. You have found your leader for working with buyers. Any additional help needed to keep your buyer transactions on track becomes their issue and opportunity. Showing Assistants can save you money on the frontend, reduce turnover on the backend, all the while providing the best possible service to your buyers. Click here for a video highlighting The Organizational Model and MREA. (with Jay Papasan) |
September 27, 2009
Seven ways to attract first time homebuyers
So with the clock ticking on the 2009 Home Buyer Tax Credit (which expires at midnight on November 30), how can you attract your unfair share of first time homebuyers? Here are a few ideas that can add a few closings to your list of things to be grateful for on Thanksgiving Day.
1. Create Urgency. In your marketing and prospecting, make sure potential buyers know there is still time and that they need to get moving today!
“Ms. Buyer, in this market, it can take 45 to 60 days to close on a home. So working backwards from the November 30 deadline, you’ll want to have an accepted offer no later than mid-October. That leaves only a handful of weekends to get you preapproved by a mortgage lender and identify the right first home for you. So you see we need to get started today to take advantage of this opportunity….”
Remember, they have 8,000 reasons to get moving.
2. Hold a First-Time Buyer Seminar. Work with other agents and your vendor network to make the presentation happen. The goal is to get face-to-face with potential buyers fast. You can host it anywhere—a library, community hall, school, place of worship or you can even turn an open house into a “First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit Info Center.”
3. Exchange E-books and Books for Appointments. Use a special e-newsletter to your sphere, a Facebook or Twitter post or a Craig’s List ad to offer free copy of our e-book “$8,000 Closer to Home” or the book Your First Home in exchange for a free, no obligation consultation.
4. Target Your Buyers. Take advantage of our First Time Homebuyer Surveys to target a select audience for your offers. For example, the KW survey indicates that 51% of those buying a first home with the tax credit are aged 25 to 30 and fully 46% are married. A quick look on Facebook tells me there are more than 31,000 Austinites between 25 and 30 years old who are engaged or married. How about a Facebook ad with the headline “There’s still time to claim your $8,000 Wedding Gift!” Offer the book as a hook for a free consultation.
It’s as easy as clicking on the advertising link on the bottom of your Facebook homepage and just follow the queues.
5. Trumpet the Opportunity. Average home prices have fallen back to Earth. Mortgage interest rates are at historic lows. Homes today are at their most affordable levels in terms of the monthly payments since the 1970s. Toss in the $8,000 tax credit and the door to home ownership has been kicked off its hinges. Does your sphere know this or have they been reading someone else’s headlines? Tell them. Our monthly This Month in Real Estate videos will back you up.
6. Know the Facts. Your potential buyers will have lots of questions. Share the First-Time Homebuyer Video and the one-page fact sheet to answer their questions and get them on the path to home ownership.
7. Create an Action Plan Today. To earn your unfair share of first-time home buyers before the deadline, put a plan of action in writing. It’s as simple as picking one or two strategies you can implement in the coming week and then blocking time on your calendar to make them happen.
My wife, Wendy, and I still own our first home, a small bungalow in Central Austin. About two weeks ago our renters contacted us and said they wanted to buy. Wendy guided them through the process and just this week they made an offer on a new construction short sale marked down about $60,000. In the end, they didn’t qualify for the tax credit but the deals to be had were too much to pass up!
So don’t let your buyers (or yourself) think it’s too late. It’s not. Act today and you can still have a full plate of closings come Thanksgiving weekend.
September 17, 2009
Eight Steps To Your First Home
Looking for a new home can be an exciting and challenging experience. Having a real estate professional that takes the time to understand your unique needs and lifestyle is important.
Our associates work hard to not only find the perfect home for you, but also to handle every last detail of the purchase process, from negotiating the terms of sale to recommending moving companies.
To help you get started on buying your new home, take advantage of these valuable resources.
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