October 27th, 2008
I was recently reading an article in Entrepreneur Magazine written by Robert Kiyosaki of RichDad.com. The article was titled “Rich Returns - Go Big or Go Home. Even in a bad economy, one truth about marketing still stands: You have to spend more to make more.” I can understand why you might want to stop reading there, however there was some excellent points to be made in this article. One of which is the idea that those who maintain during rough times will soar during good times. Even though this article was not specifically written with the Real Estate Agent in mind, the principles are still the same.
Below is an excerpt from this article that is definitely worth a read:
“A few days ago, I spoke at a luncheon with approximately 500 local business leaders. I began with these words: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is you will have fewer competitors next year because many of your competitors will be out of business.”
I then showed them my local newspaper, pointing to the headline “Businesses Are Struggling.” I opened the newspaper and said, “I can tell you who will be in business.” I pointed to a full-page ad for a local appliance store, “I’ll bet money that this business will be here next year. Why? Because this business is advertising more aggressively than its competition.”
I’ve written about the importance of advertising and promotion in the past. I’ve shared my rich dad’s lesson that when business drops off, many entrepreneurs listen to their accountant’s advice and cut back on advertising and promotion. That’s the worst thing you can do. When times get tough, your job is to promote more, not less.
My rich dad’s lesson was to never stop promoting: Promote whether the economy is strong or weak; promote even when you may not have the money. If you have no money, stand on a street corner at lunchtime with a sign hanging around your neck promoting your product or service. Not only will you meet new customers, but you might also save money on lunch, lose some weight and get a suntan.
Obviously it takes more than just promotion to do well. To be successful, a business also requires strong fundamentals and a desirable product or service. During tough economic times, though, even some good businesses fail; some businesses shrink and other grow. When a business closes, its customers migrate to the business that fights hard and stays open. Businesses that promote while others cut their ad budgets have a better chance of getting bigger…even if the economy is shrinking. ”
Now I hope you take a minute before you dismiss everything you just read because you think it doesn’t apply to you or to the Real Estate market in general. Although no one can tell us for sure when the Real Estate market will bounce back, we can be certain that at some point it will. So now is the time to make an impression in your local community. By being present now you will may not only survive but exceed your expectations of what can be done in this market.
If you’re ready to be the Influence in your community, Agent Influence can help. Visit our products page to find out more about our website options.
Tags: Marketing in Tough Economy
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October 22nd, 2008
After wrapping up a week at the California Association of Realtors show in Long Beach, California we are thrilled to say that we received an overwhelmingly positive response to our Agent Influence Website opportunities for Agents, Brokers & Rental Agencies.
With over 12,000 attendees at this years show it was apparent that agents and brokers were out in search of information about the current state of the industry and the tools that would help them reach out to the local community!
We wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who stopped by for your visit at our booth at the California Association of Realtors Expo last week! The show was a huge success for us and we look forward to working with many new agents, brokers and property managers in the near future!
Whether you stopped by because you are currently in the market for a website or were just curious as to how Agent Influence can help you reach out to your community, we hope you were at least able to learn a little bit more about our company and what we have to offer. (Some of you may have stopped by just to see if our vampire salesman was real or to trick-or-treat and we’re ok with that too!)
On Friday, October 17th, the LA Times featured coverage of the C.A.R. Expo on the front page of the business section. One of the leading issues addressed in the article and at the convention was how to enhance your business while the downturn churns on. Phil Jones of Coldwell Banker Coastal Alliance was quoted as saying, “Consumers want daily updates on their neighborhoods.”
With Agent Influence, our real time neighborhood statistics are just one of many features that will help you enhance your business. Branded Craigslist templates for all of your featured listings, community blogs, neighborhood stats and more, will help you become the influence in your community! Also remember that all Agent Influence websites include either in-office or online training to make sure you get the most out of your new website!
If you are considering making a website purchase, have questions about our service or would like a detailed demo of one of our website packages, please feel free to call us at 866-581-3482!
Tags: CA Assoc of Realtors Expo Follow Up
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October 13th, 2008
After years of managing national interactive marketing campaigns for some of the largest real estate firms in the country, Agent Influence’s seasoned management team knew that making tested high end web applications, technologies and tools available to local agents would provide them with an extraordinary advantage in their own communities. Agent Influence has introduced websites designed to provide an effective, affordable, local marketing option for agents and brokers. Their marketing, real estate and technology professionals collaborated to create website templates built on proven marketing principles.
Melissa Rosno, Director of Sales and Marketing explains “Our website products are not just flash and style, they help agents and brokers reach out to their local communities, enabling home buyers and sellers to access real time information about their local real estate market.”
Although there are many website services available today to Real Estate Brokers and Agents, Agent Influence distinguishes itself with it’s feature rich offering uniquely focused on providing real time local market data, trends and community information. This approach is uniquely relevant in today’s market where national pronouncements on the state of property values and sales often differ significantly from what is actually happening in a local market. All Agent Influence websites include a subscription to market data reports by county, city or zip code.
Agent Influence websites include a community blog that enables Agents to reach out to their clients and develop an ongoing dialogue by posting articles about events in the community, local news or information about the Agent’s services. Additionally, Agents are able to utilize community pages on their website to feature businesses in the local area.
Proprietary content management tools help Agents to create featured property listings, utilize craigslist templates, easily update website content, manage their community blog and post businesses in their community pages.
Agent Influence is the result of a collaboration of experienced Marketing Professionals, Real Estate Professionals, Certified Search Engine Experts, Designers and Website Programmers with nearly a century of combined experience in their respective fields. Team members have completed projects for leading Real Estate and Financial Services clients such as Century 21, Coldwell Banker, CB Richard Ellis, and Ameriquest Mortgage.
Agent Influence will be exhibiting their product offerings at the California Realtor Expo 2008, the state’s largest Real Estate trade show October 14 through October 16 at the Long Beach Convention Center where more than 10,000 attendees are expected.
Tags: C.A.R. Expo Press Release
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October 13th, 2008
Agent Influence will be attending the CAR Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center October 14-16! We look forward to the opportunity to catch up with colleagues we may not have seen in awhile, current clients we have not had the opportunity to meet yet as well as those we look forward to meeting for the first time and introducing our products to! We hear the show wil be fun with many events planned throughout the three day event, including a seminar Wednesday afternoon by Environmental Activist and Actor Ed Begley, Jr. Make sure to stop by Booth #1154 and enter for your chance to win a Nintendo Wii! We hope to see you there!
Tags: California Association of Realtors Expo
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October 8th, 2008
More than ever local homeowners and potential buyers are looking for housing statistics that are relevant to their local market. Although there is an overflow of national statistics or statistics about the most devestated markets throughout the country, these figures mean very little to the home buyer or seller trying to figure out what’s happening in Long Beach, California or Rockwall, Texas.
In an effort to help agents and brokers reach out to their local communities, all Agent Influence website packages include our Local Market Data plugin which provides home buyers and sellers access to the information they have desperately been searching for: Realtime, Accurate, Local Market Housing Statistics.
Marcia Geffner of Bankrate, recently published an article about the importance of relevant local data.
Pundits love to make predictions as to when home prices will stabilize in U.S. housing markets. But even well-respected forecasters and analysts may disagree, and even if a forecast proves true nationally, your local market may behave in a wildly different way. This disconnect between broad-stroke forecasts and small-scale local markets presents quite a puzzle for homebuyers and home sellers, who need to make major financial decisions on the basis of facts, not fiction.
Two examples nicely illustrate the divergent opinions of respected economists, some of whom suggest a housing rebound is just around the corner and others of whom say a recovery could take years just to get started.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, expects a “soft” first half of this year for housing and the economy and then “notable improvement” in the second half of the year. But U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. notes in a recent speech that “most forecasters expect a prolonged period of adjustment” in housing.
Who’s right? In the long run, both comments may prove prescient because the national housing market is more than large enough to encompass a wide variety of trends in different places and on different timelines. And that means, at the end of the day, you’ll need to rely on your own best judgment to make decisions for yourself and your family.
Local data may be more meaningful for homebuyers, sellers
So how can you figure out when home prices and sales hit bottom and begin to recover in your neighborhood? You may need to do your own research to find the answer. Dig up facts and figures about your own city or town and then combine that data with information about national trends to formulate your own conclusions.
Plenty of data are as close as your keyboard, though the process of sifting through it may take quite a lot of time and thoughtful analysis. If you’re tempted to skip out on what may seem like a burdensome homework assignment and instead rely on your own gut instincts, you might want to take a tip from Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate in Los Angeles. He says, “some investors are very instinctual and this has worked out well for them, but most of us rely on the acquisition of information.”
Supply of for-sale homes a key indicator
If you don’t want to indulge in that much research, zero in on the most important statistic, which, Gabriel suggests, may be the supply, or “inventory,” of homes that are for sale in your local area.
“There is a whole litany (of factors that affect housing) — home sales, housing starts, building permits, house prices — and all of those are important indicators,” he says, “but the inventory numbers in particular are really important.”
The inventory of for-sale homes in a local area is usually measured as a number of months’ supply at a current pace of sales. For example, in March 2008, the inventory of existing single-family detached homes for sale in California was 7.6 months, which means it would take that long to deplete the supply of for-sale homes at the current sales rate, according to the California Association of Realtors.
The general rule is that more months of supply indicates a weaker housing market. Many months suggests plenty of homes are for sale or the pace of sales is slow. Those conditions are indicative of a market that favors buyers. Few months suggests a limited number of homes for sale or the pace of sales is fast. Those factors are indicative of a market that favors sellers.
Many local Realtor associations and multiple-listing services, or MLS, collect and publish this type of information. Ideally, the data should be segmented by locale, type of home and price range, though that degree of specificity is rarely on offer.
Housing starts increase supply of for-sale homes
Two other important housing market indicators are residential building permits and new-home construction starts, according to Gabriel. Bernard Markstein, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders, or NAHB, in Washington, D.C., agrees. These indicators are measured by local government building officials and the U.S. Census Bureau. A spike in permits or starts may indicate more optimism among homebuilders, but can also suggest a dramatic rise in the supply of for-sale homes in the near future.
Housing starts generally are a better leading indicator than housing permits because “housing starts turn into homes for sale very quickly,” Gabriel says.
The NAHB’s Web site offers access to a wealth of forecasts and economic and housing data from the association and government agencies.
Markstein also cites local employment trends and unemployment rates as important indicators of local housing market conditions.
“Employment is important because ultimately people need a place to live, and if people are moving into an area because employment is expanding, that will be positive for homeowners,” he says.
Most local newspapers publish stories about large employers’ hiring and downsizing plans as well as unemployment figures. Employment data also can be obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Homebuyers and sellers can also glean useful insights from reports and newsletters published by the Federal Reserve and its 12 district banks, Markstein suggests. Each of the banks puts out its own periodicals about local economic conditions, and these reports usually contain sections about the outlook for commercial and residential real estate. The Fed’s Beige Book and map of the district banks may help you locate these reports.
Quality of data is crucial to good analysis
Much like do-it-yourself remodeling, personal economic analysis is not without certain pitfalls.
Risks of do-it-yourself analysis:
• Inaccurate, incomplete, faulty or outdated data, which may be misleading.
• Small-scale surveys, which may suffer from sampling errors.
• Individual data points, which may not represent a true trend line.
It’s important to track inventory, starts, unemployment and other figures over time and compare them to historical highs, lows and averages to understand their importance, Gabriel suggests.
“Look at these numbers relative to the typical level that would exist in a period of economic growth to see whether the levels are aberrantly high or aberrantly low. Look over a long time frame and measure existing levels relative to, say, a long-run average to get a sense of where (the market) is in the cycle,” he says.
And remember: In housing markets, “a long time frame” usually means a number years, not just a few months.”
Posted in Financial News, Market Information, Marketing Tips | No Comments »
September 8th, 2008
We understand that today’s climate in the real estate industry poses a greater marketing challenge to agents than ever before. It used to be that an agent could simply list a home in MLS and expect multiple offers within a matter of days. Under current market conditions properties are taking weeks or months to sell and clients have put increased demands on their agents to aggressively market their homes. Agents have to find cost effective methods of marketing a property to the satisfaction of their clients while minimizing the risk of overspending on real estate that may take months to sell.
After years of managing national interactive marketing campaigns for some of the largest real estate firms in the country, we know that making these web applications, technologies and tools available to local agents provides them an extraordinary advantage in their own communities. Agent Influence websites are designed to provide an effective, affordable, local marketing option for agents and brokers. Our professionals created a website built on proven marketing principles. Our website products are not just flash and style, they help agents and brokers reach out to their local communities, enabling home buyers and sellers to access real time information about their local real estate market.
Agent Influence website and marketing options are built on proven results from years of real estate marketing experience and tested market research. We don’t believe that feature packed data driven websites should be reserved only for the big guys with large IT departments and unlimited marketing budgets. We’ve done the sophisticated work of incorporating these features to simplify their cost and availability to you.
Tags: About Us
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