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Displaying blog entries 31-40 of 80

Use tagging to organize your featured property search

by Charlee Jacobs

If you have a lot of listings for sale, it can be frustrating for website visitors to page through them all while looking for homes of interest.  Does your website provide the ability to sort them by price or city or other characteristics? 

If you work properties in markets that differ markedly such as investment Property vs. vacation property, REOs or even rentals, this can be especially important.  Consider grouping them together by category, and then creating a specific sub-menu entry that brings up only that group of properties.

Instead of one “Featured Properties” page and menu, you could have a top-level menu “Featured Properties” and then sub-menus that appear and describe groups of properties; rentals, vacation homes, luxury homes, condos, and the like.  Each of those sub-menus can then point to a page or list of just those properties.

Your site visitors will find this far more intuitive and easy to navigate.  They can easily key in on just what they are looking for.  This may sound hard to do, but it is very easy to set up in Real Pro Gold.  I created a tag for rental listings. Under my menu item “properties for sale” you will find a dropdown item for rentals. Any Property I tag “rental” will appear on the page. See for your self.

Top-notch web presence for realtors and mortgage originators

by Charlee Jacobs
"RealPro offers a tremendous value for establishing a top-notch web presence for both realtors and mortgage originators, as well as tremendous email marketing materials and campaigns.  I have found their service invaluable to me in building my mortgage practice, and the responsiveness by their customer service team has been the best among any service provider I have used.  I highly recommend making an investment in RealPro to build your business!"
 
Please feel free to revise or add to this.
Thank you for your service!
 

Jim Markland

Website launched with leads after 2 weeks.

by Charlee Jacobs

Charlee,
Gina and I launched her new Real Pro site two weeks ago and are very pleased with the site to date. Our leads started coming in this week.

 We are focusing on transitioning  Mayes Harris Realty from the traditional realtor marketing programs to taking advantage of the many web marketing tools available today.  The Inman News webinar sponsored by Real Pro this week provided us with many great ideas, and confirmed similar ideas presented to us at a recent Star Power program here in Charlotte.  Thanks so much for your help in getting us started with Real Pro. 

 Tom Ingram

How does SEO relate to your website?

by Charlee Jacobs

People throw around the phrase “Search Engine Optimization” without really knowing what it means or how it fits their business. 

Simply defined by Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is “the process of improving volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via ‘natural’ (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. 

Now what does that mean?  Search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Google etc offer information at our fingertips, all we have to do is tell them what we are looking for.  Your goal is to get more people to the pages of your website that provide the information they are looking for.  The closer your website is to the first page of the results they return, the better chance you have of being found online when someone is searching for what you offer. 

Optimizing your site is the process taken to improve your positioning without using paid advertising.  There are a handful of things that you can do on your own without having to pay someone an arm and a leg to do for you.  Here are a few:
• Making sure your site is “visible” or “crawl-able” by the search engine spiders that determine page rank.

• Being clear on your search term strategy.  What search terms are you expecting your website visitors to search on?

• Choosing page titles, meta-tags, meta-descriptions and keywords that are relevant to your business and relevant to the content on the page.

• Adding fresh content to your site regularly, continually giving the robots “fresh reading material.”

• Establishing inbound links relevant to your site’s content.

Now understanding all of the ins and outs of SEO is much more complicated than that but there are some very basic things that can be done to help with your positioning.

 

 

 

Real Pro Systems knows how important optimizing your web site is.  We have built our sites on a search engine friendly architecture, provided built-in tools to set your page titles, meta-descriptions and key words, provided an integrated Blog, and provide initial site optimization at no extra charge!

Thank you RPS

by Charlee Jacobs

We recently release a new version of Real Pro Gold. All our clients are receiving a free upgrade at no charge. On a webianr we hosted recently, to share the updates, we received the following comment.

I love you. thank you so much!!!!!!!! You mentioned several times yesterday in the webinar that you value our business and it shows from how you treat us and improve your products. Thank you!

Sara D.
San Diego, CA

Yes, Real Pro Systems is here to support our agents. Your success is our success.

Tips from a Star- Nancy Jenkins

by Charlee Jacobs

Here is a tip from Star Power Star, Nancy Jenkins. On a recent webinar, she shared a couple of valuable tips that are easy to implement in your business.  

Thanks Nancy!

 

Fannie and Freddie Bailout

by Charlee Jacobs

This is a good example of information you can send to your clients and prospects.

'Frannie' bailout makes money cheaper, not easier

Interest rates already down on takeover

, Monday, September 8, 2008.

The government takeover of mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could mean lower interest rates for many borrowers but is unlikely to solve one of the biggest problems of the credit crunch: the shrinking number of people who can get a loan in the first place.

Fannie and Freddie will be permitted to expand their direct investments in mortgage-backed securities from $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion over the next year. With the government standing behind their debts, investors are also expected to be more willing to buy mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie.

That could push the rate for a 30-year fixed-rate conforming mortgage down from 6.35 percent last week to "well below" 6 percent, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Rates are already coming down to around 6 percent today, but it will take 30 to 45 days to get a sense of how the takeover will ultimately affect rates, said John Courson, chief operating officer of the mortgage Bankers Association.

Today's lower rates "could be a one-day reaction," Courson warned. But the Treasury's actions have "put a safety net under (secondary markets where mortgages are sold) that restores investor confidence ... that should be a driver that leads to lower rates."

In a commentary for Moody's Economy.com's Dismal Scientist newsletter, Zandi said lower interest rates won't stop further house-price declines, but "raises the odds" that those declines will not exceed 5 percent to 10 percent of current levels.

Columbia Business School real estate professor Chris Mayer has estimated that higher borrowing costs -- as reflected by the unusually wide spread between mortgage rates and Treasurys -- has increased the cost of owning a home by 10 percent to 20 percent (see story).

With the government's explicit backing of Fannie and Freddie's debt, Zandi and others think the spread will return to levels more in line with historic norms.

"The immediate impact, already in evidence today, is clearly that the spreads between U.S. Treasurys and Fannie and Freddie securities have gotten a lot narrower," said Robert Satnick, chairman of the California mortgage Bankers Association. "A tremendous amount of uncertainty has been taken out of the conforming mortgage market."

Dan Green, a loan officer for Chicago-based Mobium mortgage Group Inc., sees mortgage rates improving in the short term, which will make homes more affordable by lowering borrowers' monthly payments. But Green, the author of The Mortgage Reports Blog, sees a recovery in housing markets tied less to mortgage rates than to the availability of credit.

Until would-be home buyers and homeowners who have been "frozen out of the mortgage market in the last 12 months" have access to money, "a recovery won't be as quick as it should be," Green said.

While Congress has raised the conforming loan limit -- the ceiling for mortgages eligible for purchase or guarantee by Fannie and Freddie -- many borrowers in high-cost markets remain in "jumbo loan" territory.

Congress and the Bush administration have been allowing Fannie and Freddie to purchase and guarantee mortgages of up to $729,750 in high-cost markets until the end of the year. But the cap will be lowered to $625,550 on Jan. 1, and in markets where home prices didn't head into the stratosphere the old $417,000 conforming loan limit has remained in place.

So far, Fannie and Freddie haven't done much with the authority they were granted to purchase and guarantee mortgages above the old conforming loan limit. But with an infusion of capital from the Treasury, "they will have the financial muscle to do what Congress originally intended," Zandi said.

Because Fannie and Freddie aren't allowed to turn jumbo loans into guaranteed securities that are purchased by investors, those loans are costlier and harder to obtain. That's an especially acute problem in high-cost markets like California, where many homes are priced well above the conforming loan limit.

Satnick said it's too early to judge the impact of the takeover on the "nonconforming" (jumbo) loan market, but he doesn't expect the spread between the rates for conforming and jumbo loans to grow any wider. That means that if rates on conforming loans do come down, jumbo rates should follow suit.

Courson also expects jumbo and conforming rates to move in sync, although the margin between conforming and jumbo loans won't necessarily narrow, he said.

Those seeking a loan that falls within Fannie and Freddie's limits must still cope with higher fees and tightened underwriting standards instituted during the downturn. Many borrowers are being told to bring larger down payments to the table, if they can get a loan at all. Fannie and Freddie have eliminated zero-down loans, and many private mortgage insurers are requiring minimum down payments of 5 percent in declining markets.

Green said many of the changes Fannie Mae instituted in its latest version of its automated underwriting system, Desktop Underwriter 7.0, are more subtle and have not been widely publicized, but have a real impact on housing markets. When purchasing investment properties, for example, borrowers can't use rental income from the Property to qualify unless their loan-to-value (LTV) ratio is 70 percent or less.

"If you are getting $2,500 a month in rent, and making a 20 percent down payment, to Fannie and Freddie that $2,500 doesn't exist," Green said. "When you get into the deep, dark changes in the guidelines, it goes beyond (loan-to-value ratio), but to a desire of having a risk-free loan."

In announcing a $2.3 billion quarterly loss last month, Fannie Mae officials said the changes they've made to Desktop Underwriter helped reduce by 80 percent purchases and guarantees of the kind of mortgages that accounted for most of their losses. Fannie Mae said it would stop buying Alt-A mortgages -- riskier loans often made with little or no documentation -- altogether by the end of the year.

While critics have derided Alt-A mortgages as "liar loans," they can be the only option for some buyers, including investors and the self-employed. Alt-A loans aren't inherently bad, but did perform poorly when other risks were "layered" on top of them, Courson said.

"It's the risk layering -- high LTV, no income verification, no FICO -- that's where those loans get into trouble," Courson said. Although the MBA does not advocate a return to "some of the ill-conceived credit practices" that helped produce the current crisis, it would encourage the government, in its role as conservator of Fannie and Freddie, to reconsider some of the recent guideline changes.

One reason Fannie and Freddie instituted new fees and tightened guidelines was the need to generate revenue and raise capital, Courson said. With the government preparing to provide $100 billion each in backing for Fannie and Freddie, that's a less immediate concern.

"I think there were some loans they made a decision not to make that may well become available" again, Courson said.

The government takeover is viewed as a short-term solution -- the Treasury Department's authority to backstop Fannie and Freddie expires at the end of next year. It will be up to the next administration to determine whether the government will step in and take over the role Fannie and Freddie played in the mortgage markets, or perhaps spin them off as private companies once they return to health.

Courson said the crisis presents an opportunity to take a step back and look not only at how Fannie and Freddie might be fixed, but at the secondary mortgage market as a whole. One question to consider, he said, is whether the Federal Home Loan Banks could be allowed to purchase and securitize loans made or purchased by their member banks.

"This is an opportunity to take a blank sheet of paper, and ask what is the best structure, without limiting ourselves to what we've got," Courson said.

In announcing the takeover Sunday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said there is an inherent conflict in the way Fannie and Freddie are structured -- as private companies that aim not only to generate profits for shareholders but fulfill a public mission as defined by Congress.

Lender & Agent Partnering for Leads

by Charlee Jacobs

If you are looking for ways to share leads with a Lender and split marketing costs, Real Pro Systems has a proven solution. Read the testimonial below. These are great results.

Charlee,

I've been using RPS for just over a year now. I partnered with a local Real Estate agent who uses the Real Pro Systems as well. We share marketing dollars to generate leads through a program called ProLeads that Real Pro Systems manages. Over the last year I've received over 100 leads and have closed over 10 of them.

In addition, I use the system to send the eNewsletter to other Realtors in my area (I have over 1100 of them on my list). I've gotten great response. It helps keep me top of mind and I get a lot of referral business.

My goals were to find an easy to use system that was affordable, was easy to use, included a website, follow-up tools (newsletter and drip campaigns) and great customer service.

I made a great choice.

Thanks Real Pro Systems

Carl Bulgini III

 

The Power of the eNewsletter

by Charlee Jacobs

If you are looking for seller leads, the newsletter is a great way to drive prospect, both buyer and sellers, to your stealth sites. The testimonial below demonstrates the power of an effective newsletter.

"After sending the newsletter out one evening, we received 4 seller leads, of those 1 appointment request and 3 CMA requests, and 15 buyer registration leads the next morning. 

Real Pro has helped us manage and track our internet leads.  We use the Real Pro drip campaign for all website registrations and leads this past year.  I like having a system that my team members can easily use and understand.  I have the reassurance that we are not losing valuable leads through lack of follow up.  We track our leads using the notes section for each Prospect.  Any team member can review notes for a lead with dates of contact and communication all in one place. 

We have learned that quick responses to our internet leads helped us double out lead conversion to appointments. 

In addition, now we are able to track our leads more specifically using the Visitstat feature offered through Real Pro.  I really like the feature of being able to track more specifically the website traffic with the help of the Visistat feature."

Karen Jolley

The Buckley Jolley Real Estate Team

Are you using Market Snapshot? Check this out.

by Charlee Jacobs

 

I know you are always looking for ways to generate leads. I received an email form an agent that sent out a blast to his database and I thought is was clever.  For those of you looking for ways to get prospects to take action on something like Market Snapshot from Top Producer, this is a good example of what to say.

"One of the things I really do not accomplish as well as I would prefer is to keep you up to date on all the services that are available to my customers and friends that are not "in the transactional mode".  With the market a little slower these days I am trying to catch up and do a better job of keeping you informed. 

With real estate in the news practically every day ,  one of the things that people want to know is exactly how that translates in their neighborhood.  I subscribe to a couple of services that answer that question in very informative ways.  The most popular by far is a service called "Market Snapshot" you can get an email delivered to your in-box at the frequency you desire telling you what homes in your immediate neighborhood are selling for, click on the link to bring up a form and take a look !!  
 
Link to your Market Snapshot goes here!
 
You can cancel the service anytime you like so please take a look, I think you will like it !
 
While I am writing let me also let you know I have just put three properties under contract and expect to close them in the next thirty days... not bragging.  My point is that I have some time in my schedule to work with new buyers or sellers.  So if anyone you know is in the market to buy or sell real estate I sure would appreciate you referring them to me, and you can rest assured that they will receive first class service."
 
 
D. Rose CRS , SRES
 
Here are the results form this blast.
Charlee,
 
 
I actually got about twenty requests for the "Market Snapshot" and it motivtated one seller to call and list with me. She is a motivated seller as she is leaving the area.
 
Dave
 

Displaying blog entries 31-40 of 80

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