Technology and Real Estate

Technology and Real Estate

 

I’ve come to enjoy saying that the Real Estate Market has changed and watching the person I am talking to immediately start nodding their head. Like when I tell one my old “stories” to family members and a small smile creeps to their lips and they recognize the story. (I don’t  tell jokes, I tell ‘true’ stories).  I wait for the nods and then stop them with: “But it has not changed just in the way you are thinking.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, it has changed because of the short sales, the foreclosures, and the great retreat in house prices.  But it has changed in another, more lasting way.  The media and pundits have been giving lip service to the free flow of information on the internet, but the real estate marketers and home buyers have ultimately embraced technology in a huge way in the last six months.

“Technology has changed the way buyers shop, Realtors market, and  how deals are closed.”

The clients search for houses, not agents, so a web site that sells the agent generally gets very little traffic or staying power. It’s about the search for a home and the easier we can make that; (with a map search, for example) the more information rich we can make that, and the more pictures, virtual tours, financial information, and the more content rich the web site experience is, the more likely it is that there will be a match between the broker and the prospect. 

The most popular real estate site in the world in Realtor.com.  Compare two listings is Realtor.com. The first one HERE is one of our listings, it has many pictures, lots of content, and is an ENHANCED listing (at extra cost to us).  The second listing (here) is a standard listing (free to the agent), it has fewer pictures and less content.. While both listing give information it is the first listing that will go further serving the client and giving him the content rich environment he is looking for.  (If you are going to list your home, make certain that your agent pays for enhanced listings on Realtor.com for your home. Ask her!)

From the agents view point, it is important to know WHO is searching, because at the end of the day, we make our money by selling a home.  If we as agents fail to serve the client, we will fail to “capture” him or her, and we fail to build a lasting relationship.

Today’s internet marketing is all about lead capture, getting to know your client. If we don’t know who we are serving, it is impossible to build anything except a one way relationship.

In order to encourage a client to tell us who they are as they search for their home, we need to give them reason. We also need to make them comfortable enough to share their personal information.  We do this but offering valuable reports and personalized information like  Market America Realty Market Snapshots,  Broker Price Opinions, Comparative Market Analysis, and immediacy of information that they can not get elsewhere. For example if you  click on Market America Realty Market Snapshots, you will be sent to what is called a landing page. In exchange for some personal information about you, we prepare a customized report for you. We also pay for placement on top sites like HOMEGAIN. Sites like Homegain, Zillow, and Trulia all charge us for search placement and lead capture.  But again, it’s about the content rich search for homes experience for the buyer or seller.   In addition to paying for top placement for our own website: www.marketamericarealty.com , we also pay these tops sites for helping sell our homes.

If you come to our Market America Realty and Investments, Inc. office you will be invited into the ZIP room.  In the ZIP room is a 50 inch flat screen TV hooked up to the internet. On this TV we will tour you, via Google Maps, our own website, and Street View features.  You can virtually drive around the neighborhoods you are interested in, starting from a satellite view we zoom into the various neighborhoods, giving you a clear orientation, we then can zoom to a street view and give you street level views courtesy of Google. Pick a home and we can go inside on a virtual tour. Want to go see it? We schedule the showing and we are on our way.

While we are driving we pull out our iPod to check on the listing information on a home we pass. We have subscribed to myAgent IDX, a free application for you, a GPS guided tour of for sale homes right in your hand.

At Market America Realty and Investments, Inc. we are cloud computing; all our files are accessible by our authorized agents from any where, any time, any internet connected device, including smart phones.  When we take pictures of a new listing, the pictures can be up-loaded to our files from the field.   Need to change a shared document? Change it and it changes on all agents computers immediately.  Got a new lead?  It’s texted by our software directly to the agents smart phone  Got a new voice mail?  It will be emailed to you on your phone.

Our phone system is also on the cloud.  Call for a residential sales person and all agents on duty will get the call. Need to take an hour off fromn the phone because you are with clients? Use your smart phone to tell the system you  are busy or forward your calls to your team partner.

Agents need a form for a listing?  Download it from the cloud. Need to know what REO listings have just come is?  Our agents can sign on to the cloud and read the latest summary, if they happen to be looking at it as it is updated, they will see the update take place.

Yes the market has changed, and we are changing with it.

 

 

Six Reasons I Bought a House this Week

Six Reasons I Bought a House this Week

 

For the past three months Gail and I have been looking for a home to buy. Every few days I would check out new listings in the area we chose. We toured a few homes a week.   We made an offer on a home on Wednesday.  The offer was accepted. We still need to qualify for the mortgage and complete our home inspection, but I foresee no obstacles t a successful close

 

Here are the reasons we bought now:

 

1.   Prices have hit bottom.

 

Market America Realty and Investment Group has over 116 listings, One third of them sell for above the ask. In Lee County, the median price home is 4% lower than one year ago at $91,000, but this number is pulled down  by the large number of REO’s that the banks are clearing away. Ask any Realtor in town working with buyers and you will find that the hot price points are between $250 and $350,000 Here we are seeing increases.

 

2.   Choices will dwindle

 

Here in our Downtown Fort Myers office we bring in our Cape Coral agents and Fort Myers agents every Wednesday (in fact this coming week our new Naples office will be attending). More and more we are seeing agents raise their hands  and talk about a buyer they are working for that can’t fine the right house. I am reminded of the pricing strategy at some discount stores where they lower the price on certain goods every week. You can find an item you want and you may come back next week hoping for the discount but you find that it’s been sold already.  We have quite a few buyers we are working with that have made three or four offers – and lost them all to a higher or earlier buyer.

 

3.   Interest Rates are  low and on the way up

 

Gail and I were able to get a 5/1 arm at 3.75%. (The rate is locked at 3.75% and then will not move more that one point at the end of that five years) But these rates will not be around very long. According to today’s paper – rates are still below 5% across the board.. The government is going to stop facilitating mortgage backed securities. On March 31, the Federal Reserve will stop buying these securities.  Trust me, interest rates will be going up

 

4.   I want to lock in “Save our Homes” at today’s prices.

 

Our home will be homesteaded as it will be our primary home.  I am pleased that I will lock in the homestead at today’s prices. My taxes increases will be set at today’s prices and the amount of the increase will be set.

 

5.   Right House, Right Neighborhood.

 

Of course we had to find the right home in the neighborhood we chose. Location, location, location.  Could we have found more home for less money?  Probably.  But not where we wanted to be.  When you are looking for a home, become an expert in the area you are looking.. You will know that a deal is good when it is presented to you.

 

 

6.   House had the right things wrong with it.

 

The things this house did not have, I know I can add or create from the existing space.  It has good bones and will give us a base for improving our value, increasing our investment, and insuring a long and happy home.

 

 

 

Are you upside down on your mortgage

Are you upside down on your mortgage? Which one of These Travelers are You?

 

I have this vision of two different people traveling two different paths to the same goal.   One traveler is carting luggage over one shoulder and two bags in one hand, a brief case in the other, and his carryon tucked under his arm. He is a mess. He keeps getting jostled by people passing him because he is going so slow., mentally our first traveler is bogged down not only his baggage, but he is worrying about missing his plane. He cant get his last meeting  out of his mind, and his preoccupation with his  thoughts make him miss the signs along his path that would give him directions to his gate. By the time he gains enough concentration to figure out where to go, he missed his plane.

 

Our second traveler travels light.  No baggage. No thoughts about his last meeting.. He can concentrate on where is gong and how to get there. He sees his directional signs as they appear.  Not only does he get to his plane on time, he gets there with a clear enough presence of mind to board first, get an isle seat, and get a pre flight  beverage which he sips while planning  his next venture.

 

Ok, corny, sure, but I was having a discussion about foreclosures, short sales, upside down loans, overdue credit cards bills , and the ethics of stopping payments on a mortgage  and indeed bankruptcy with my dental hygienist yesterday. While my eyes were closed and I couldn’t  talk because of the prodding and poking  happening on my teeth, I thought of that analogy in trying to explain that moving ahead and getting free of the shackles of financial stress.

 

I have a number of friends that described almost a feeling of weightlessness once a decision was made to move forward without the baggage of debt, upside down mortgages, large house payments, and the fear of their own ethical and financial demise.

 

You may recognize yourself as the first traveler.  You need to be the second.

 

I am not an attorney. I cannot and will not give legal advice and any one in a tough financial position should consult a good attorney. If you need a reference to one I am happy to oblige.

 

I will tell you that it will be very difficult to move forward with your life and to begin the journey of rebuilding your finances and you life if you still carry all the baggage you have now and try to travel a path to your goal of financial freedom if the path is strewn with obstacles.

 

 

Real Estate is not a Zero Sum Game

Real Estate is not a Zero Sum Game

 

In chess, at the conclusion of the match, there is one winner and one loser. Pretty simple. Zero sum.   A zero sum game is a term used in game theory to describe both real games, and situations of all kinds, usually between two players or participants, where the gain of one player is offset by the loss of another player, equaling the sum of zero. The win (+1) added to the loss (-1) equals zero.

 

Negotiations in business and real estate, if to be successful, must conclude as “positive sum”, both parties must gain.

 

In Florida real estate and indeed locally here in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, the vast majority of sales are either short sales or cash deals on foreclosed homes.  The rate for foreclosure notices is leveling off, but more and more of these are being absorbed by buyers.  It would appear that many of the sellers are losers and the buyers are winners. This is often the perception in a buyers market, which indeed we are now experiencing.

 

But real estate is not a zero sum game. Florida is going through a normalization of market, a stabilization, if you will.    We know we are close to a stabilized market n residential homes sales when we begin to see increases in prices.  Indeed this is the case in single family homes  in some neighborhoods.

 

Prices for homes are normally negotiated between a willing seller and willing buyer. Short sales , sales of a home to a party for less than a seller owes to a bank,  add a third party to the negotiation; the bank. The successful sale however, is still