September 2009

Real Estate Marketing Strategy 102: Think Before You Act

by Molly Castelazo | September 5, 2009

Last week I blogged about Real Estate Marketing 101 – the first three steps that should be part of any good marketing plan. As you know, this plan is your “bible,” the document that guides you, keeping your decisions on track with your larger strategic goals. It’s the document that will make it easy to project a consistent brand in every media. It will make integrating your strategy online and offline a smooth, effective process.
Real Estate Marketing Warrior
The fourth step in creating your marketing plan is to choose your marketing media and develop your messages. “How?” you ask. Read on. . .

Step 4: Choose your marketing media and develop your messages

Now it’s time to put the rubber to the road, your nose to the grindstone, your money where your mouth is. You’re going to create your marketing campaign, based on your answers to the questions in steps 1-3. If your budget allows, think about an integrated campaign that incorporate a number of different media.

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Commentary

Home Prices “Turn Corner;” While Light At End Of Real Estate Tunnel Blinds Us!

by Charles Feldman | September 4, 2009

What’s that ahead? Is it….a corner? Is it…..THE corner? Are we about to turn it?
God, I hate cliches. But such is the case with a freshly minted Reuters dispatch headlined : “U.S. home prices turning the corner, up in 2010.”

I’m not sure if this differs from earlier reports that we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?

Actually, I sort of wonder whether the corner we are about to turn is right before we enter the tunnel, at whose end there is said to now be a light, or directly after we leave the tunnel, in which case ,wouldn’t that light at the end of it make it damn hard to see the freaking corner we are supposed to be turning?

Ok…this might be an academic question…but someone needed to raise it and it might as well be me.

Now, back to that corner we are turning.

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Real Estate Marketing

Using Voice Broadcasting through CallFire to Close Real Estate Deals

by Justin McClelland | September 3, 2009

As one that invests in Real Estate, time maximization and lead-generation are imperative. It’s ideal to utilize automation tools to outsource tasks that allow your business run efficiently and to maintain a constant influx of leads.

A way to accomplish both is by utilizing a call center. And I don’t mean usage of a traditional call center which may come to mind. Call centers with expensive set-up fees, high per minute rates, or agents who answer your business’ calls among others are unnecessary and a thing of the past.

Move into Web 2.0 by leveraging cloud computing for your call center, or a cloud-call-center. With a cloud-call-center service such as that offered by CallFire, you can optimize their Infrastructure-As-Service model to obtain great marketing results.

I’ll pose an example case-study scenario, just to give an idea of how such a service could be utilized:

Case Study for the Use of Cloud Call Center Applications

Justin is a real estate wholesaler and had a house under contract that he absolutely had to assign as quickly as he could. He gave himself a 60 day time-window in the contract to find a buyer and 20 days had elapsed. Justin turned to his primary contract-assignment options; he called the buyers on his existing buyers’ list, he placed 50 bandit signs around town, he put an ad in the paper, he blasted information about the property on the internet.

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Real Estate Marketing

Following Up On Leads: the Most Important 15 Minutes You’ll Ever Spend

by Glenn Plantone | September 3, 2009

Today’s post is the fifth in my series, “The Investors’ Realtor.” In previous posts, we have discussed thinking like an investor in order to find and gain investor clients, as well as looking for current hot spots (not necessarily in your own backyard) and going to where the investor actually wants to buy. In the third edition I explained how to start and run a local real estate club in order to gain exposure for yourself, market your services, find prospects, and network with others in your local market place. My last post detailed how to find and generate quality, qualified leads for yourself using principles that apply to all business professionals, not just Realtors.

Building off the tips shared in last week’s edition for creating leads, I would like to discuss following up on the leads that you generate. Great marketing and great lead generation are useless if you do not follow up on your leads promptly and effectively.

Following up with your Real Estate Leads

The first step I perform is to log all of my leads into an Excel spreadsheet. If set up correctly, this spreadsheet can then later be exported to an email blasting service like Constant Contact or sent using a program like Microsoft Outlook (which is what I use) to send bulk emails to these potential clients. While Outlook allows you to blast up to 50 emails at one time, newsletter sites where you pay a monthly fee for their services allow much larger email blasts from your qualified list.

The Spreadsheet
In my “new leads” spreadsheet I create the following fields: Name, Phone, Email, Source of Lead, Date, Notes, and three columns to record each of the three times that I try to make contact with a new lead.

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Real Estate Wholesaling

REO Wholesale Deal: Step by Step

by Stephani Davis | September 3, 2009

I often get questions from aspiring wholesalers about the steps involved in an REO wholesale flip.

In today’s article, I’ll walk you through one of my most recent deals from beginning to end..

While checking the MLS about a month ago, I noticed a property that just hit the market. It was located in an area that I have done quite a bit of business in, and have several buyers looking for deals in..

Wholesaling REO Property Success: Case Study

The property was listed as a 2/1, and was priced at $11,000, which is a phenomenal price for this area. I recently sold a similar property in the same neighborhood for $25,000 so I knew this was priced right, and was out the door to look at it within minutes of seeing the listing.

Once I got to the property, I was pleasantly surprised. Aside from the fact that the house smelled like a curry factory, it was in great shape. It also had 3 bedrooms instead of two, which was just icing on the cake.

I rushed home to write up an offer, and had it submitted within the hour. I made the offer directly to the listing agent, allowing her to make both sides of the commission, as well as the $3,000 selling agent bonus that was being offered.

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Real Estate Investing

High Unemployment & Rising Foreclosure Rates: Yet Homes Sales are Increasing…

by Peter Giardini | September 2, 2009

As real estate investors everyone of us have to be thinking… “how in the heck do I profitably navigate in a market as defined in the title of this article?”

And that is the million dollar question, which I will respond to in just a minute, but first lets look at a few of the facts:

A Look at the Current Housing Picture

Let’s start with the economy. Depending on who you are listening to, we are either at the bottom, still moving downward or possibly even worse. If you invest in California, Michigan or Ohio you don’t need to be told the state of your economy… it stinks! The message here is that if people aren’t working, they will not be buying real estate or making good renters.

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Real Estate Investing

How to Organize Your Rental Property Payments To Make Your Life Easier

by Jason Hanson | September 2, 2009

It’s the beginning of a new month which means it’s time to pay all of the bills on my rental properties. This includes multiple mortgages, multiple HOA dues and payments to owners of some of my lease option properties. So, how do I keep track of all this without going crazy?

First, I use online bill pay. If you’re still writing checks you are unnecessarily wasting a lot of time. Before I started paying my bills online I would sit down once a month for what seemed like hours to pay all the bills.

I Recommend this Rental Property Software

After I pay all of my bills online, I next record my HOA, mortgage and rent payments in Quicken rental property manager. This is the simplest property management software I have found. Plus, when tax time comes around, all you have to do is hit “print”, then hand your accountant the rental documents and he/she will take care of the rest. If you don’t have an accountant yet and you own multiple properties, ask for referrals from other investors you meet at your local real estate meetings. Or, you can use BiggerPockets.com (this website) to locate investors near you.

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Financing Real Estate

How to Generate Private Money: Steps 1 & 2 of 6

by Ryan Moeller | September 1, 2009

Finding financing is the biggest challenge for most investors. I previously wrote How to Generate Private Money, listing the 6 steps in brief. Over my next few posts I will break down each of these steps in detail; we’ll start with the 1st and 2nd steps today.

Step 1: Pitch your opportunity to everyone

Goal: Get face to face meetings, get referrals, lots of them!!

Solution: Use an effective elevator speech, get prospects salivating to learn more and get the meeting. Always ask for referrals.

Solution 2: Give out free quality information. Giving out free information via articles, seminars, conference calls, webinars, etc is a great idea as it will build credibility, people will come to you and it makes it much easier to build trust. Set up the meeting and ask for referrals.

Elevator Speech: An elevator speech is simply a 15-30 second speech that tells what you do, what is in it for an investor and gets them salivating to learn more or refer others who might be interested. You want them to ask questions, but do not under any circumstance answer them.

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Commercial Real Estate

The Top Ten Reasons Why Now is a Great Time to Buy an Apartment Building

by Ted Karsch | September 1, 2009

Prices are Falling — Prices for apartment buildings are steadily dropping. Many apartment building owners paid way too much for their properties over the past few years and now their properties are worth less than what they owe. Apartment buildings are starting to show up as foreclosures across the country and it is further pressuring prices to the downside.
Forced Appreciation — You don’t have to wait for real estate prices to go back up to increase the value of your apartment building investment. You can increase the value of you apartment building by increasing the rents, cutting your expenses or by making physical improvements on the property.
Less Competition — Many investors are under the false impression that owning an apartment building is more difficult than owning single family homes, therefore their is less competition for prime properties.

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