There are many websites popping up that will take your listing and create an HTML ad on Craiglsist and other online classified sites, but none of them actaully capture leads directly from Craiglsist. My company is totally focused on getting you leads. Not only am I the CTO of Realivent, but I’m also the Co-founder of a top producing Real Estate Team (Top Producing in less then one year of business). The key is leads…you can never get too many.
Using a pretty HTML post on Craigslist will get you business, because when sellers see your add compared to all the typical text ads, it really makes you shine…and it looks like you spend the time to market your listings.

Again, there are many companies that do this, Now lets look at what Realivent does:

Our listing designer takes your listing information and creates a gorgeous post for Craigslist. We have the only tool that allows you to easily add related documents to your post. For example, you can add PDF’s docs of market stats, comparable info, buyer or seller reports, etc…The Craigslist user clicks on the document and then enters their email address, and the document gets sent as an attachment to their email account…bad email, no docs. Along with the documents, your email message gets sent. You can fully customize the email message…

So lets review. You have taken a normal Craigslist ad and create a powerful marketing tool. You are sending 3 times the amount of information to potential clients as compared to all the other posts on Craigslist.

Sure, pretty Craigslist posts help, but the Realivent Listing Designer GETS YOU LEADS!

We have also opened up our listing designer api and allow you to upload your own templates, plug in our information and you now have a custom Craigslist post branded to your marketing material and allows lead capture.

We also have a tool that allows you to post the full website created by our virtual tour editor…But I warn you, when you use this tool, you are posting a full website on Craigslist, complete with 800 IVR, lead capture, Zillow comps, unlimited images, etc…YOU MIGHT GET FLAGGED!. Why, I really don’t know…I mean I think I know why. It’s because you are posting a full website on Craigslist. To see this tool, add a listing to Realivent and then checkout the virtual tour section of “My Realivent” you will see the new Tool

Popularity: 12% [?]

I spent all weekend fixing bugs, writing new plugins and creating my first Wordpress theme. Normally I just use one of the thousands of Wordpress themes available, but I wanted to make a special theme designed to highlight listings and the real estate agents that list them!

Introducing Listing Beautifier Version 1.0

download it here

It is a clean look, with no header image or CSS customizations, YET…I plan to create admin functions that will allow you to upload your own header, change background color, text color, and menu color. This is coming soon, so stay tuned.

This theme is a 3 column theme, with 2 sidebars that are widget ready. I also included 2 templates for pages, that allow you to create a page with 0, 1 or both sidebars. I did this so I can feature properties, or home search and still have one sidebar that displays our advertising. I could not find a theme that did this. All the themes I found either showed all sidebars or no sidebars.

Try it out and please let me know what you think.

Popularity: 28% [?]

This new report from Redfin has taken off, and by just looking at the comments I think Traditional Agents (TA’s from now on) are jumping into the ring.

First off, here is an interesting comment from Glenn over on Freakonomics:

Our cost structure and our business model are radically different. Redfin has virtually no customer acquisition costs except from development of our website; traditional agents spend 67% to 90% of their time looking for new clients.

We can afford to pay our agents double or triple the industry average, so we get the cream of the crop, and those agents can focus exclusively on closing deals; customer find the home they want to buy on their own.

I just cannot believe this statement…if this is true, why would any agent in the market today want to be a TA?
The average income is around $60,000 for a TA, so if I break out my calc, I see that a Redfin agents makes around $120K and $180K respectively (someone, please check this.). This is good income for many agents.

but…

Top agents make well over $180K a year, so I find it very hard to believe that the cream of the crop is leaving the TA model for the Redfin model. Of course, if you look at the trade off…no more lead generation and no more showing homes, it might be worth it.

The hardest part about becoming a top agent is the lead generation. Anyone can master the contracts, but getting leads is make or break in real estate. So a top agent will struggle for years to create a base of loyal clients, then throw that special skill away so they can churn out contracts?

One thing TA’s can learn from Redfin, is how to create huge buzz. The wave Glenn created is not going to break for a looooong time.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Redfin recently released a report that states their agents negotiate better then other agents.
A Year’s Numbers Come in From the MLS: Redfin Agents Negotiate Better

It’s reports like this that get me going…One of my favorite classes in college was stats, so whenever I see reports that create stats based on real estate data, I just go nuts. As soon as I read the report I jumped on the MLS for San Francisco, downloaded all solds from last year hoping to get some good data and respond to this report, but unfortunately only 1 sold SFR had a Redfin agent as one side of the transaction.

BTW, that 1 transaction sold for $2,000 over asking price, so it looks like on average Redfin agents in San Francisco, doesn’t negotiate very well…I’m just kidding, but as you can see this data makes me mad.

Since I have the data from San Francisco, I think I will create some reports based on listing and selling different and the offices. Should be interesting, but again, it will not be a report to make any judgment from, I just like crunching numbers.

Back to the Redfin report. Some of the first questions that I would like to know, which will be impossible to find out is

1. How many homes were sold in Washington? 200 seems like an very low number?
2. how many total offers were submitted by redfin. What is the percentage of homes that had an offer submitted by Redfin, and not accepted?
3. 200 homes sold with Redfin, but you have 247 evaluations? and on top of that 37% of the buyers where first timers…how can a first time home buyer know if the transaction was better then working with a traditional agent? Did you survey the kids too?

I have nothing against Redfin, but this report made me mad. If you go to the blog post on Redfin’s site, look at the comments. There is one comment from a homeowner that talks about how awful it was to work with a traditional agent…yet, they continued to work with that agent? WHY? Real estate is a relationship, if you work better with a tech savvy Redfin Realtor do so, it you want a more traditional agent, then go use one of those, but if you are having problems with your Realtor, dump them…get a Realtor that you work well with…

If you go to a plastic surgeon for a nose job and they mess up, do you go back to the same doctor for a tummy tuck? Obviously some people would!
I think the saying goes, fool me once…

Now onto commissions…Commissions piss me off too, not because they are too high, but because they are completely negotiable. Right now if you ask most agents how much is the average commission, they will probably say 5%. Then ask them “Are they an average agent?”, and I would say that most will say “No, I’m better.”
Then why do you ask for 5%…if you are better, you should ask for 7 or 8%.

I got Trang on this little no win conversation the other day…Bottom line, if you walk into a listing presentation and you tell the seller that most agents get 5% commission (1.25% to them) then tell the seller that you are so good you only sell properties for 8%…AND GET IT, then you and the seller deserve everything you get. if the seller talks you down to 3% and you accept, then that’s how much you are worth. If you don’t want to pay 3% then go to Redfin, or better yet, go to BuySideInc.com where they give you 75% back.

As Rick Geha said at the KW Reunion Last week, “I can line up 100 Realtors and let them all knock the commission down until you get the agent that will sell your home for the lowest price. But do you want that?”

And I guarantee you that no Redfin agent will know more about local market stats then Rick does. Rick also posts on theharperteam.com website, where they guarantee $20K savings…and have some incredible market stats.

So please keep your reports about how much people save, or how good you negotiate to yourself, because you just can’t prove them to be viable.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I recently wrote a post about using your MyBlogLog acount for a link when you comment on other blogs. Works great except there is one problem…your avatar doesn’t appear if they show MBL avatars.

When a blog has “show MBL avatars on comments” turned on, MBL looks at the sites you author and finds your avatar and then displays it. Since you are using a url that is not in “the sites you author” your profile will not appear.

Here is the work around. Simply add your MBL account to the sites you author.

now when you leave a comment, your avatar will appear next to your comment.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Just finished reading a good post over at the RE tomato about blogging. They are right by saying blogging is not rocket science, but to be honest, I would still consider blogging to be in the early stages. Remember 10 years ago, trying to figure out email? Now that WAS rocket science.

What is the “To” for? what’s a “Subject”…I bet you remember those questions when you first tried Outlook, or Netscape.

10 years later, the questions are very very similar…What’s a ‘Post’, what’s a “Trackback”…

I’ve been talking to a lot of agents about web design, lead generation, top producer, and of course blogging. Here are a few tips I give.

1. get the word “blogging” out of your head. The Word “Blog” seems to freeze people when getting started. Honestly I don’t know why? think of it as a professional information source, or as Gary Keller said “This is my story, your welcome to jump on for the ride”

2. Keep it simple. The easiest way to blog is to find news on the web and give your 2 cents. If you look at the very bottom of the “Write Post” section in your wordpress blog you will see a thing called a Wordpress bookmarklet. Click and hold that link, then drag it to your bookmarks. Now whenever you are on a website that has a good story, just click that new bookmark you made. This will send you to your admin section and automatically fill your post with this link to that page. Write a paragraph or two (your 2 cents) and your done…simple and effective

3. If you do write a good original post, send to your local newspaper…or create a tearsheet or mass mail.

4. Don’t be afraid of negative comments. You have total control over what comments get posted on your site, and blogging is a great way to combat these negative posts.

5. your website or blog is not the end, it is the beginning. You now have to promote your website. I see so many agents get Top Producer and spend hours and days getting their action plans ready, and think the website will magically produce leads. This is completely opposite, spend time on your website, until you have the leads coming in, then get top producer. I’ve made countless e-commerce websites, and most people thought that it was really easy, just put up a site and let teh traffic come…buy some adwords, buy some links. This business will fail, and e-commerce site is the exact same as a brick and morter store…Your real estate website is the same.

6. Forget about SEO. Here is a good quote pulled from the tomato, by Teresa Boardman

Wordpress blogs are so great because they take care of all this for you. It’s not perfect, but it is good enough for you to forget about your page rank, and focus on getting the info to the public…page rank will follow.

7. Lastly, it is just a blog…it’s fun, it’s new, and you better get introduced because video blogs are right around the corner, and pretty soon everyone will have their own commercials.

If you haven’t tried blogging yet, go jump over to propblogs.com and try it. write some posts, gets some themes, I guarantee in less then an hour you will be well on your way to blogging bliss!

Popularity: 5% [?]

We’ve just added a bunch of new real estate related Propblogs themes.  If you have any real estate themes you want to share, just let us know.  Also, did you know you can instantly change the look of your site by clicking on a new theme ?  In the summer your property blog can be a “Beach House” and in the Fall you can switch it to “Fall Seasons”.  If you already have a propblog setup and want to change it to one of our new themes, just go to ‘Presentation’ >> ‘Themes’ and click on the new one you like. There may be some formatting changes, but you’ll get a quick idea of what the blog would look like.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Remember the “Where’s Waldo” books? Try to find this little guy with a hat in a sea of people…Well here is the Where’s Waldo of web Logos…Can you find the Trulia Logo?

Actually its pretty easy, it’s right there in the middle. It is the only Real estate Logo on there…For now (Please add us:)) .

The site is called www.thelogohomepage.com and is large, and still growing logo site. They also use snap to give a quick preview on mouseover. It loads fast and even though at first it seems overwhelming, it really is a good way to get traffic. About 3-4 months ago I saw a site on the news about airfare estimation/predictions…but I forgot the name. I just found it again on logohomepage, it’s called www.farecast.com

Cool site, I’ll check out every now and then to see new logos, and get ideas…

Popularity: 9% [?]

I was reading a post on condodomain, about a crackberry???? and email addiction. Good post, but you will never get me to turn of my automatic send/receive…I noticed they had a pingback from this website called loanrates.com. I’m pretty sure that lonerates is scraping the posts from CD, and you really can’t stop them, but you can remove the pingback automatically using a wordpress plugin called no referrer At least the site was providing a link back to Condodomain, unfortunately they also displayed the entire post so there is no reason to visit condodomain from this site.

We had the same problem, until I found the no refer plugin.

Even though comments and pingbacks are “no follow” tags, they still get clicked on which is why these sites auto post using xmlrpc, instead of just grabbing your rss feed.

The no refer plugin comes with a large list of sites that are blocked and wil no be able to create a trackback on your blog. You can also edit this plugin and update the list as new websites start scraping your content.

Also, you can also tell Google adwords department that a site is using your content to generate adword revenue, and they will shut down their account. This is preferred because image having a large amount in your adword account and then losing it all.

We have added the no refer plugin to Propblogs.com to protect all the blogs created there. Once you create a blog, just activate the plugin. You cannot edit the file listing the violating websites, only I can, so it you are having trouble with a site spidering your stuff, just let me know and I will add the site to list.

Popularity: 7% [?]

What’s hot for 2007? well at least what’s hot for january 2007…I’m sure there will be another trend in February.
The newest, hottest trend is MyBlogLog linking.

You can leave your website url when you comment about a blog post on the owners site, which will create a link back to your site, but most comments maintain a “no follow” tag so id doesn’t help your page rank. There are plugins that remove the “no follow”, but it really doesn’t help the owner of the commented blog so why use it?

So why not send them back to your MBL account, where they can see more about you, your other sites, you posse. I’m going to do it from now on. Good stuff, if you ask me. I hope to grow my posse, because to be honest, I’m having Posse envy…there are some communities over 3000!

in other words, join my community please

I found this information thru MBL and eventually this site: doshdosh.com

Popularity: 7% [?]