Louis's Blog

Having just returned from Inman Connect and read my normal dose of blogs this evening, it seems the topic of marketing predominates.

What about other skills realtors have and need to develop?

Are these skills being subordinated to the craft of being a realtor?

This issue is raised over at the HomeGain blog.

Your thoughts are welcome on Real Estate Marketing? Basta! Enough!

Over at the HomeGain blog, we have been accepting regional updates from Realtors across the country.

These updates give the state of the market in each region. The realtors discuss days on the market, home prices, the impact of foreclosures and REO properties on their markets and other market indicators.

So far we have received updates from cities and towns in California, Oregon, Maryland, Georgia, Texas, Massachusettes, Hawaii, Florida and Ohio.

For you English majors we also have an update on the Zenith Real Estate market. Zenith is the fictional town that George Babbitt, Realtor, hailed from in the novel "Babbitt" first published in 1922.

 In an exclusive interview George Babbitt gives the state of the Zenith Real Estate market in 2008.

When working with a marketing company its probably important to ask - Who is your primary customer?

It could be that the company that you send your profile to or provide content to makes the bulk of their money from advertisers. 

That means satisfying their advertisers is their bread and butter. Sure they love your content as it draws visitors to their site and helps with their SEO, but do they value realtors other than as sources of content for them?

HomeGain's mission is the success of realtors.

We aggregate hundreds of traffic and lead partners and spend millions of dollars a year to send traffic and leads directly to realtors.

If we ask you for content, its on YOUR page with no other third party advertisers.

If we send leads or traffic to you, we send it ONLY to you (unless you are participating in our agent evaluator/compare realtors program).

For more on how HomeGain works exclusively for realtors see:

The Success of Realtors, Not Buzz is our goal

How Does a Third Party Vendor Partner with Realtors?

HomeGain on the HomeGain blog

This is a distinction that is lost on many realtors as they claim that homegain is competition.  HomeGain does not sell real estate. We are an internet marketing company.

We do what many individual realtors can not do on their own, namely aggregate hundreds of partners to drive visits and leads to your web sites, organize a market place for consumers to compare realtors  as well as provide valued added services like blogging instruction or offering free landing pages.

In many respects HomeGain is like Costco, we use our bulk marketing power (SEM, SEO, HomeGain name recognition and partner network) for the benefit of our members - NOT for the benefit of third party advertisers.

HomeGain makes money when Realtors are successful, not advertisers.

Many realtors complain that consumers often insist that their home is worth a certain amount. Their reason for this belief? They are armed with a ZESTIMATE from Zillow, so it must be so.

You can show them all the comparable sales you want, but as Mark Twain says "people will believe any thing they see in writing"

So they stand by their Zestimate.

In this case its best to show them that automated valuations are a dime a dozen.

You can show them HomeGain's valuation of their home.

Try it here.

HomeGain invented the original instant home valuation tool back at the turn of the century -click here to learn more.

HomeGain, however provides a range instead of an exact estimate, as we believe that instant home valuations are inherently suspect and don't cover  "unzillowables".

HomeGain believes that only an appraiser can properly value your home and a realtor can properly asses the value that they think THEY can get for you home if they act as listing agent.

Showing other instant homevaluations to consumers helps to disarm of the authority of their "Zestimate".

Show them a HomeGain estimate but  don't stop at HomeGain

you can also show them home valuation tools from:

realestateabc

eppraisal

Cyberhomes

Housefront

Realtor.com

Coldwell banker

And THEN you can explain comps, your experience and what you think you'll be able to sell their home for  them.

In a market of declining property values agents across the country are encountering listing appointments with trepidation. Clients it appear seem to hold it against the agent when they give an honest appraisal on what they think they can tell their homes for.

Linda Davis writes about the difficulty in relaying the message to customers regarding the potential (lower) sale value of their homes in "Delivering the Bad News" http://blog.homegain.com/delivering-bad-news-real-estate-agent

Another blog post by HomeGain Blogging Network member Paul Blackburn called "Your House is NOT Special" argues to let the potential customer know that their house is not worth as much as they think it is before you ever meet them by posting as such in his blog!

http://www.homegain.com/realestate-blog/il-dekalb/paulblackburn-5413690/why-your-home-is-not-special?post_id=1714