NY Houses 4 Sale

Local Queens Realtor Plays with the "Big Boys"

When I started to blog over a year and a half ago, I really had no direction, no idea what I was doing or where this would take me.  I have never declared to be the authoritative blog.  I don't go heavy into the politics of Real Estate and I steer clear of the heated discussions about Zillow, Redfin or any new technology.  I have never quoted anything Latin on my blog and I certainly do not air out my laundry on my blog. 

But I still blog.

I blog about my local area.  I stick to what I know and I know Queens Real Estate.  Sure there are agents who sell more and some that list more than I do.  But none of them blog.  I am almost the only Realtor that even has a blog, let alone blogs the way that I do.  There are blogs that talk about their listings and blogs that repeat what articles say word for word, like snipping them out of the newspaper.  But I feel that I have stood out. I am doing what no other Realtor or Company is doing.  So for right now, I shine. 

This past August, Ralph Roberts published a book "Foreclosures for Dummies" and believe it or not,  he added me as a contributor!  I was very flattered and so thrilled to get my complimentary book and I have read it from front to back.  My take?  Anyone who is looking to buy foreclosures should read this book.  Right now you can buy it in your local Barnes and Nobles book store or you can click right here to go directly to Amazon.com. 

More News:  Tomorrow , er Today, I will sitting on a panel for the LIBOR MLS TECH FAIR.  How cool is that?  I will be speaking at the sold out event with the "Big Boys".   Sitting with me will be Blog Tour Boys, Sellsius, Dan Green from The Mortgage Reports and Linda Davis from Eastern CT Real Estate Blog. 

Hopefully, after tomorrow I will begin breathing again and I will update you on the skinny about blogging, but for right now I am feel all hyped up and nervous.   

eeney meenie miney moe...

Friday Linking - just some of the articles that I read these past few days.  I am going to kick it off with ....

1.2 Million and Falling - by True Gotham

Why Do You Blog? -  by Zillow Blog

500 real estate blogs to watch - by Pittsburgh Homes Daily

BEST AND WORST real estate blogs - by RSSPieces

The Very Sad House - by miOaklandCounty

"The proof is in the puddin'" Range Pricing part 1,275! - by Bryant Tutas on Active Rain

"Why Have A Website At All?" - by The Real Estate Tomato

Thats it guys... Have a great weekend!!!

Realtors - do you use the internet?

"When asked where they first learned about the home purchased, 24 percent of buyers identified the Internet, up strongly from 15 percent in 2004 and only 2 percent in 1997. Although most buyers use an agent to complete the transaction, 36 first learn about the home they buy from a real estate agent and 15 percent from yard signs; five other categories were 7 percent or less".  Home Buyer & Seller Survey 2006

The proof that people are using the internet to search for homes for sale is proven to me everyday.  In my office, on the average 85-90% of my calls for either homes for sale or apartments to rent come from some source on the internet.  It may be a paid site that we use or our own website, which generates about 70% of our leads of buyers or renters.    There is a shift beginning to take place here.  There are now more and more Seller's Calling my office because they see us prominently on the internet.  The ways of marketing is not from the local papers and the major publications, it is the Internet.    Sellers now use the internet to see who is advertising.   

So in addition to the normal questions you would ask a Realtor, think about adding these 10 new questions when interviewing an agent. 

1.)  How many hits do you get on your website a day, a month?

2.) Do you have a blog as well? 

3.)  Do you advertise on the internet?  Paid sites as well as free sites?

4.) Do you use pay per click?

5.) Do agents in your office have their OWN websites/blog?

6.)  Do the people who use your site, HAVE to register to view MY home?

7.)  When you get emails, what would you say is the NORMAL rate of responding is? 

8.)  Do ALL of you agents have email?

9.)  Do your agents on their own, advertise on the Internet?

10.) Are my open houses advertised on the internet as well? 

11.)  Do you have high rankings on the internet? 

This would be a good start.  I know for a fact alot of Realtors here in Queens NY, would have a hard time answering most or all the questions. 

RainCityGuide...

Here’s a lesson for all of you: Note that I freely admit we don’t know jack about RE, and yet we were still willing to consider a discount broker where we would be essentially on our own. That’s the value proposition that agents offered in our eyes. It wasn’t about the money that we might save with a discount broker - it was about not seeing any benefit to working with an agent, period. The question was, is it a bigger mistake to work with an agent that may very well work against our interests, or do it ourselves and risk making some huge novice mistake that even the worst agent would catch? We were full of fear at either prospect.  A buyer makes an excellent post over at RCG.

**I just want to add that this should serve as a wake up call to all agents/brokers who feel that getting more and more will be better.  When you grow to big to fast - things start to cloud your judgement.  Agents/Brokers need to take a "Chill Pill" and realize that the consumer who would use our services feel that they would be better off alone or with a discount broker.  I find this very disturbing...

Wearing the badge...proudly!

                                 

Web 2.0 ? HUH??

Larry Cragun, from Mortgages undressed pointed out to me that I missed the concept behind the meaning of Web 2.0.   I was quite embarrassed about not knowing what web 2.0 was.  Sure Ihave heard of it, but I did not understand it, so I set out on a mission to understand the meaning of Web 2.0.  When I Goggled the term Web 2.0 I came up with 769,000,000 Results.  While I was reading about the origin of how and where this terminology came from, unbeknown to me, there was a Web 1.0. HA!  I never knew that.  I can not ever consider myself a tech-savvy person, I am coming into this era as a newbie, so if I should get a term wrong, or an example wrong or what have you – please go easy on me, I am clearly just learning the ropes!

From O’Reillynet.com, this illustration shows the 1.0 era Vs. the 2.0 era.

This article is an attempt to clarify just what we mean by Web 2.0.

In our initial brainstorming, we formulated our sense of Web 2.0 by example:

Web 1.0		Web 2.0
DoubleClick	-->	Google AdSense
Ofoto	-->	Flickr
Akamai	-->	BitTorrent
mp3.com	-->	Napster
Britannica Online	-->	Wikipedia
personal websites	-->	blogging
evite	-->	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	-->	search engine optimization
page views	-->	cost per click
screen scraping	-->	web services
publishing	-->	participation
content management systems	-->	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	-->	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	-->	syndication

To go on a bit further, Wikipedia defined Web 2.0 “as a collaboration and share information in a new way”.    Wikipedia finds it easiest to define Web 2.0 by associating it with companies or products that embody its principles. Some of the better-known Web 2.0 entities include Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, digg, Shoutwire, last.fm, and Technorati. 

Although I can’t claim that I understand this anymore than before and I clearly have to do more reading about the “Long-Tail’ and RSS Feeds.  I do know what they are but the complete understanding them I am not grasping.  With reading about Web 2.0, I have come to understand that instead of creating ownership, we are creating a shared information “highway”.  I understand now that the optimization comes from more than just having meta-tags and keywords be relevant, that the linking is what drives more users to your blog.  I can say that understand now that Google is more than just a search engine, they are one of the major components of the WEB 2.0. 

If anyone else has a more of a description for me – please let me know. I am eager to hear everyone’s take on this. 

Home Buyer & Seller Survey Shows Rising Use of Internet, Reliance on Agents

Homeowners who try to sell "by owner" miss out on a HUGE chunk of buyers.  I will tell you why. Every morning when I get into the office, which is between 8:15- 9:00 I have at least 20 - 40 emails to respond to .. And I don't mean just cut and paste.  Respond, as in answer questions, give call backs, etc, etc.  I am amazed everyday, that MOST of my emails come between the hours of 11PM and 2 AM.  Sometimes even as late early as 3-4AM (that's usually on a Saturday night).  BUT, here is what I have found.  The Internet savvy people are the smarter buyer.  They know the information already, like how much is the taxes, how many bedrooms, how many baths, school district (if the agent filled all info out right) and so on.  So, the buyer has done their legwork, where do I come into play?  You see I have been behind the scenes, sending emails of our new listings, MLS listings and so on.  They are getting the sites where I advertise YOUR home.  I must automatically - without by doing- send out 100's of emails to potential buyers.  Whereas the for sale by owners, have the signs, have the newspapers, have the open houses, just like I do - but they don't have my EMAIL Clientele base that JUST MIGHT BE LOOKING FOR A HOUSE THAT YOU ARE SELLING! 

Nine out of 10 home buyers use a real estate agent in the search process, but use of the Internet to search for a home has risen dramatically over time, increasing from only 2 percent of buyers in 1995 to 77 percent in 2005; it was 74 percent in 2004. The next largest source of information for buyers is a yard sign, mentioned by 71 percent of buyers.  Click here to read the full article from MLSLI.com

Google is now into dating??

OK OK, I know I said I was going to write about Real Estate in Queens and such, but.. here is what happened - I was on Google, I heard that Google is starting to make a MLS system, so I was - strictly for your benefit, trying to get some articles regarding such.  But, like many times, I stumbled upon something else, GOOGLE IS  NOW INTO DATING.  Wow, what has america come to, we have set up ourselves so well, that we will not ever, have to leave our homes - ever!  Ok - so I went off base just a touch..