It won't cost a dime and will blow your clients' minds

Your clients must be freaking out about their property values. I know I am.
So what are you, the real estate professional, doing about it?
I can tell you what the agent who sold me my residence is doing about it... nothing.

No phone calls. No analysis. Not even a postcard.

Oh, and by the way... nice job.

I know that postcards cost money. And besides, something this sensitive requires a more delicate touch than a postcard offers. You can make phone calls but I know that takes time. Besides, few folks answer them these days. And door knocking might not work for you.

So what can you do as an agent (or a brokerage company) -- that won't cost a dime, won't zap your time, but will blow clients' minds?

A new twist on an old killer app

Technology, at its best, saves time and money. Your email listing alert application is one of these technologies. Here is another way to use it to your advantage.

Brian has written plenty on email listing alerts. He's offered several ways to use them to drive engagement. But what if you used your listing alert app to help past clients stay on top of the market and keep track of what their homes are currently worth? It could be quite useful in that regard, and as an ongoing reminder that their agent is on the job.

Try this:

1. Sign up past clients to receive an alert (get their permission first).
2. Set the criteria based on the location, price, bedroom, bath and square footage of the home they currently own.
3. Submit.

Let your clients know they will periodically receive emails with lists of homes similar to theirs. Thus they can check the listings and compare homes on the market as a way to monitor increasing or decreasing value.

Yes, I know that for the most part values are falling. But for better or worse, this truth helps clients. For one thing, it levels their expectations by providing a better sense of the market. So in reality this is a simple market update -- like a stock ticker sent from you, their agent.

The long term play here is when and if they ever do consider listing their home, they might, as a result of this feature, possess a deeper appreciation of the market and prices.

You almost certainly have this application on your Website -- most likely as part of your IDX solution. Take a look at where it currently resides on your site. If it's not on the home page, clearly defined with a list of benefits to the consumer, including the one I suggest here, maybe now would be a good time to bring it forward.

It won't cost you a dime and it might just blow your clients' minds.

- Davison

It's time to focus on content

How do we fulfill the promise of Web 2.0 in real estate?

Content.

Yes, content. It's been lost amid the Web 2.0 rave pulsing in our business for the past three years, a party threatened by a harsh dawn of hungover reality.

Let's be frank:

1. Most agent blogs are really bad
2. Most brokerage attempts to participate in social media deliver little more than PR value
3. Most Web 2.0 plays in the online real estate space have failed to ignite large scale consumer use

Social media is not a cosmetic for fundamental business blemishes. In fact, it may actually aggravate them. A bad blog is worse than no blog. Display of previously unaccessible real estate or community data without intense regard for quality and context does little more than pique curiosity, or, worse, create confusion. 

New applications are great, but that's the easy part. Content creation is the hard part. It's less sexy, but it is what will win in the long run. This applies both to online real estate companies and brokerages.

A friend of my mine made the statement back in the Web 1.0 boom days that "The truth is, most of the applications out there don't really work." Today, we have tons of apps that do work, but too many are empty vessels, beautiful ships light in the cargo hold.

Hello in there ...

Let me give you some examples:

Agent reviews

Consumers reviewing Realtors. A great idea! Several companies continue to chase it. But has one broken out into widespread consumer use? When you go to these sites, do you, like me, catch a wave of loneliness? The number of real consumer reviews is terribly low. I make decisions based on review sites in other categories like TripAdvisor and Yelp. The Realtor review sites aren't even close.

Why?

Well, Yelp invested in paying people to generate reviews to prime the user generated content pump; they continue to invest heavily in editorial moderation and quality. TripAdvisor spent tons of money on the marketing and distribution needed to reach consumer contributors. Code and content go hand-in-hand.

That's not happening enough in online real estate.

Local

Intimate knowledge of the community has always been a key element of a brokerage company's value. Applications for leveraging that value online abound. Yet to this day, there are very few brokerage Web 2.0 success stories.

You can guess why. Blogs thrown up without a commitment to making them useful; shoddy writing; poorly conceived video. A lack of resources for creating the sort of content that creates the magic of "engagement" we all hear so much about.

Most brokers should remove or re-purpose their PR department. Make it an editorial department. "Managing Editor" not a typical brokerage title? Exactly. I am serious. Do it today!

Until this happens, you can expect few meaningful innovations here.

Listings

I won't subject you to another rant about listings coverage on online real estate sites (though that is definitely relevant to my post here), so let's just look at the larger quality issue. Listings are the most valuable piece of real estate content a broker or media property can display. We have apps for creating listing shows, video listing presentations, mobile listing delivery and more, yet too many listings still evidence few photos, crappy photos, all caps agent comments and just generally bad merchandising.

You can telepathically transport listing alerts direct to my cerebral cortex based on my mood and geocoordinates, but if the content is sloppy, you're not really nailing it.

What do we do? Brokers, get tough with agents. No more typo-ridden comments and poorly composed photos. You can't merchandise a listing online? Take your license somewhere else. NAR: Include minimum standards for online listings display in your Code of Ethics. I'm not joking. Getting online marketing right is no longer a benefit or differentiator, it's a solemn obligation to sellers.

Street of dreams

Online real estate has been like a ride down the Las Vegas Strip for the past three years, an Electric Circus of Ajax, Ruby and Mirrors. It's delivered some great things, but I am becoming more convinced that it is time to pull off to the side, grab a cup of coffee, and work on fundamentals.

Like content. 

-- Brian Boero

The killer real estate app time forgot

In 1998, Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation won an Inman Innovator Award for its "Personal Retriever" app. Personal Retriever delivered listings to consumers via email based on their search criteria.

There were companies doing this before Coldwell Banker -- iHomefinder and SOAR Solutions come to mind -- and hundreds have implemented it since. It's usually called "email updates", "homes via email", or "listing alerts".

It was a killer app then; it is a killer app today. It was Web 2.0 before we even knew what that was.

Think about it. A listing alert app:

• Distributes the content consumers desire most, based on user-defined criteria
• Delivers this content to the user on their terms
• Gives the user total control -- they opt-out or change preferences at any time
• Has value to buyers, but also sellers, nosy neighbors and investors
• Creates engagement, surfaces preferences, and "incubates leads" for practitioners

It's a win-win for consumers and practitioners -- one of the real highlights of the online real estate story.

But ... the vast majority of brokers -- in fact, darn near all -- have failed to implement this application well.  This killer app sits under their nose while they bemoan the lack of buyers, struggle to understand the Web 2.0 phenomenon, and persist in blanketing neighborhoods with postcards and newsletters. More accurately, it usually sits within their company Website, an elegant feature made grotesque with graphics, confusing language and pages optimized for the IT Guy.

The online players, on the other hand, have mastered the email alert form, even though they have less to gain from it. Take a look at how Trulia handles it. It's a thing of beauty: Easy to find, simple to sign up, and  explained in plain language.

Why have brokers missed the mark?

• Crappy vendors
• Inertia
• Distraction
• Lack of internal marketing and tech resources
• Complacency brought on by the dot-com crash and high-as-a-kite market

The good news, of course: This can be fixed. There are some great new vendors, including companies like Terabitz, Roost, and Diverse Solutions that have brought a new sensibility to the IDX world. Costs are falling. Good designers are legion.

It's a matter of focus, of sweeping away the clutter that's accumulated on your Website over the past few years. It goes something like this:

• Scrap your old Website
• Create a new one
• Put IDX search on the home page. Make it dead simple (don't call it "Quick Search" if it's not quick)
• Put a strong call to action for "Listing Alerts" at the top of every search results page
• Make sign-up a matter of an email address and password
• Apply best practices for deliverability and design to the email template (alt text, etc.) and put your contact information in a prominent call-out
• Consider including relevant neighborhood information in the alert
• Make opting out and changing criteria easy

The rest is marketing. Every ad in every medium should include a call to action to "Get property alerts direct from the MLS" (unless you live under the dominion of an MLS that won't let you use "MLS"). Every agent in every open house should replace the business cards from the broker tour scattered on the kitchen table with a property alert sign-up form.

This is a back to basics endeavor. But it's absolutely necessary. Any company looking to embrace Web 2.0 should make certain they also nail the real estate killer app time forgot.

-- Brian Boero

(disclosure: Terabitz is a 1000watt Consulting client)

Dysfunction junction

That still describes the meeting of online progress and practitioner performance far too often. This alert hit my inbox a couple days ago:

As of this afternoon there's still no photo. What a bummer.

-- Brian Boero