Wonderful Current Apps for Real Estate Agents

Published April 25, 2016 by Real Estate Leads

RealEasteLeads_ca_appsb Although no two agents are identical in how they get organized and conduct their business. Each will have a unique set of needs and preferences that dictate what real estate apps they use. Having said that, there are several smartphone, tablet, and desktop apps real estate agents and brokers should try that they may not have heard of yet. We’ve listed dozens of the top-trending ones for 2016 below.

For the sake of providing a list of the best business apps you may not know about already, we’ll leave off the obvious ones, like those for social media accounts, and instead focus on new and trending apps in 2016 that can support your core business activities (real estate marketing and sales). Also, since this is not the end-all, be-all list of the most popular apps for agents and brokers, we’d love to find out what apps you use to enhance your bottom line, keep in touch with leads and clients, and conduct other tasks. Ask 1,000 real estate agents what the best apps for business are and you’ll get 1,000 distinct lists featuring an array of different tools.

FlowVella

FlowVella is a simplified platform that is helpful with comparative market analysis (CMA) presentations and consultations. You can add images, video and audio clips, and create attractive slides. Then you can easily share your creations with prospects. Win clients with FlowVella!

Other good choices: Swipe, Bunkr, & Haiku Deck

Waze

Get where you are going fast! Even if you leave for showings well before they begin, traffic is always in your favour. Waze provides a solution to the conundrum of knowing the best route to take wherever you are. You don’t have to worry about ending up in a traffic jam on the highway or stuck behind construction crews for miles, thanks to this innovative app which crowdsources info on traffic situations pretty much everywhere.

Other good choices: Voyager, Scout, & inRoute

AM Open House

AM Open House is a digital guestbook. It has real estate-based CRM integration with several platforms with automated follow-up emails. This app will help you with your showings and make each of them into more of a success. After an open house, this app will help you share how the event went with your seller clients; including how many prospective buyers showed up and notes on those who came through the door

Other good choices: Open House Manager, & Open Home Pro

Localeur

Localeur will help you find great restaurants nearby. This app will discover the best diners, cafes, bistros, and other great meet-up spots in the local area along with social recommendations similar to Yelp but with higher quality reviews. Quickly invite prospects, clients, & colleagues to the highest rated places; thereby increasing inspiring confidence in others.

Other good choices: HeyLets, Zomato, & Yelp

Concur

Business trips, come the hassle of recording/expensing purchases. Concur, allows you to easily share your spending tabs with your manager. Take photos of your receipts: and you’re efficiently and accurately covered for food, lodging, and other expenses. It will also help you stay under budget.

Other good choices: Expensify, Neat & Xero

Mailbox

Real estate agents constantly dialog with leads, clients, and associates every day. Smartly organizing your inbox is possible through great email apps like Mailbox; which helps your organize folders for particular types of email you receive, setting reminders & tasks based on those emails.

Other good choices: IQTell, Zero, & Inky

1Password

Keeping in mind every password for every website account can make you go bananas – and potentially waste a lot of your valuable time – that is, unless you use a helpful app such as 1Password.

Other good choices: : LoginBox, oneSafe, & SplashID,

DocuSign

Closing deals and finalizing paperwork for a variety of tasks is no longer something you need to complete in the office. DocuSign has become a highly trusted name in the real estate sphere, and for good reason. Its app simplifies a once-headache-inducing duty among agents and brokers. Going paperless is a pretty big trend in the real estate community today that can streamline your work.

Other good choices: HelloSign, SignEasy, CudaSign & Authentisign

Evernote Scannable

Going entirely paperless will never really happen, but there are ways to deal with paper via some top-notch apps to hit the iOS and Android marketplaces, including this one from Evernote. Scan receipts, offer sheets, and any other files that are vital to your real estate transactions by using Scannable and save yourself from having to use an actual scanner back at the office to ensure everything is digitally saved.

Other good choices: OneReceipt, CamScanner, & Shoeboxed

Infinit

lnfinit offers limitless-size file sharing at super-fast speeds. This relatively new storage and sharing app (and includes a desktop client too) facilitates sharing photo & video, videos, docs, and many more types of files between smartphones & PCs.

Other good choices: Box, Dropbox, & Google Drive

RescueTime

With RescueTime you can maintain consistent rhythm with your social media posting, blogging, email marketing & other promotional tasks that will you reap the benefits of your inbound efforts. This tool can substantially aid your constant endeavor to master digital marketing. It keeps you on track to complete all of your daily tasks and that can make the most of your business day.

Other good choices: MyLifeOrganized, Freedom, Focus Booster

Would you like to super-charge your career with 40+ fresh & real leads per month? Just contact us for for information on our Canadian Real Estate Lead marketing system.

Greatly Extend Your Marketing Reach With Video

Published April 18, 2016 by Real Estate Leads

Are you already using video to market your real estate agent services? If you haven’t gotten around to it yet, here are a couple statistics that might get your attention.
It has been studied and found to be that consumers are much more likely to purchase a product after watching a detailed product (or service) video.
Desktop video has evolved a tremendous amount in the past decade, making it not only an extremely attractive marketing medium, but also an affordable – even free one. The complexity of creating quality video content requires only a couple of hours of learning; dramatically opening doors up for businesses of all kinds and sizes. It is simply not the big production effort or expense that it once was. A few basics to consider. An agent without a video on their webpage at this point is only shooting themselves in the foot.
Your phone could be perfect for the job.
Believe it or not, these days some professional commercials and even entire movies are being shot entirely on smartphones. The video quality on a modern phone is perfectly suitable for an internet delivered marketing video. The video needs to be shot keeping basic video techniques in mind, an iphone or android phone should capture a perfectly acceptable level of quality. If you do have access to higher resolution, quality camera equipment – great, but the phone you likely already have in your pocket or purse is adequate to get you started.
Keeping it simple
Simplicity is most often the best. Nail your average client’s problem and solution in the most direct way possible, and then chances are you have just made an effective video. Some special effects are a nice embellishment but don’t overuse too many distracting effects. That being said, using an appropriate backdrop image, or simply staging yourself in the right setting is one of the best effects you can add to your video. There are many tutorials about the basics of producing a video which you can easily Google for.
Begin with your story
It is still critically important to outline, storyboard and narrate a clear compelling story or message. You should give understanding to your audience, about how your agency addresses their issue or challenge. The way your video communicates and bridges the problem between customer challenge and business solution is absolutely key. Shorter videos are better; not many people wish to hang out staring at a long, rambling, self-promotional video. Directly address your customers’ pain points or typical interest and clearly highlight your business solution.
Sound & lighting are incredibly important
Some of the most important basics of videoing is the importance of audio & lighting. Getting it nearly right is not that complex , but missing the dartboard in either of these areas can actually devastate the persuasion level your video. Your video should not be overly bright or dark, regarding your lighting. Thinking ahead about how you’ll assure quality audio is a critically important aspect too. Using an external microphone on your phone, if possible, or a secondary recording device that you can dub over your video in post edit is a worthwhile touch to increase your audio quality. Most online video basics tutorials will have simple suggestions on best practices in both aspects.
Editing tips
The raw video of your shoot has to be decent quality overall, however editing, (also known as “post production”), turns good footage into something marvelous. Whether you have an iphone or Mac; there are nearly 100 or more freeware editing tools available. (See download.com ) iMovie on Macs is just one example. These free, or low-cost tools typically offer more than enough production power for most basic videos.
Posting/Distributing your video(s)
In one word: Youtube. There are dozens of video platforms within reach on the internet for small businesses. Some are: Vimeo, Vidyard , Wistia; and many others. If your website is based on WordPress many themes today have video player options for uploading and displaying videos. Youtube and some other platforms make for easier embedding or social -media integration.
It is easy to get pulled into complexity as you start to get familiar with video self-promotion, but when it comes right down to it – shooting and editing a great video doesn’t need to be complicated at all.
Start frugally by utilizing your phone (and maybe a friend’s phone too for cutaway angle(s) and perhaps a third for best audio capture.) Keep in mind lighting and audio. Use free or low-cost video editing software and publish your video through one of the many platforms and you can expand from agent to video marketer practically over a single weekend.

Would you like to super-charge your career with 40+ fresh & real leads per month? Just contact us for for information on our Canadian Real Estate Lead marketing system.

On the Art of Selling Foreclosure-threatened homes

Published April 11, 2016 by Real Estate Leads

With so many Millennials and others now forced to buy into Vancouver’s and Toronto’s steep homes prices (or remain rather homeless), that will likely lead to a increase in foreclosure rate into the foreseeable future; as perhaps under duress of a weaker economy in the future, they could be forced into foreclosure in perhaps droves.

If you have clients which have recently received a foreclosure notice; they probably feel like they have suddenly or completely lost control of their situation. This presents an agent with a great chance to prove their capabilities. Particularly in a strong market, one option would be putting their home up for sale. Not only does this allow your client to sell their home and repay their lender in full, while mitigating the foreclosure – but most importantly it helps protect their credit rating.

A foreclosure never benefits the homeowner. But when faced with that hard choice, your client can sell their home and still come out well. Here are some tips for selling a home before a foreclosure on your client:

A. Be the Right Real Estate Agent

Some agents actually specialize in selling homes for people dealing with foreclosures and “power sales”. Such agents understand the urgency of their client’s situation and work extra aggressively in finding immediate buyers for their home.

As an agent, did you know that real estate fees are negotiable? To help in the situation, you can find more foreclosure-threatened clients advertising yourself as an agent that is willing to accept a lower fee; to help offset the expected lower that market level selling price. Lower fees could mean saving thousands of dollars for your client, money which can be used as a down payment to get them into another less costly property. You might just be able to find two deals in one! See how that works?

B. Make It Look Good

The next task on your list should be to get their home in the best possible condition. Take over management of the clutter. Be heart-less about de-cluttering . If they don’t need it or love it, then urge them to get rid of it. If possible, encourage them to move their items, such as extra furniture, and store other over-plentiful items in boxes then into storage to make their home look bigger.
Next, make sure the home has good scrub. The windows should be all washed. Dust and clean floors and air out each room; the scent of Pine-Sol is so much more refreshing that cigarette odors and dust. If your clients are incapable, source a cleaning company.

The exterior should get a once over to help brush up curb appeal. If their liquid budget affords it or if you feel you can trust them, under contract to guarantee you are eventually reimbursed,a fresh coat of paint can go a long way, too.

A clean and airy home sells much faster than one that is cluttered. As your client needs a quick sale, make it easiest for a buyer to fall in love with the house.

C. Make Sure You Don’t Forget Marketing

To sell your desperate client’s home quickly, you also need to advertise assertively. If they are super desperate, maybe buy it from them yourself, or offer it to a friend for at low cost; knowing that it will be easily flipped for a higher price later.

Arrange for the best photographs that you can budget. Post free ads online on sites like Craigslist & Kijiji. Repost your ad on your FB page and ask friends to pass it on. Use any ways and means there are to promote the listing. The more people who see this special deal, the better the chance you’ll find an interested buyer quickly.

D. Get Legal Help

Because your clients have received a foreclosure notice, contact a real-estate lawyer if necessary. You also need to know how much time they have before the lender can take away their home. Depending on your circumstances, they usually have between 30 and 90 days.

E. Provide The Lender with Regular Updates ( great referral source )

Throughout the process, it is a bright idea to keep in contact with the lender. Keep them up-to-date on your progress as selling agent. Show them that you are motivated to help your client solve the problem. Let them know how hard you are working to produce “their money”. By being cooperative, your client might get extra support from their lender. They have the power to put the foreclosure process on hold, and to give you a little extra time to help your client sell the home; and naturally at a higher price than a rushed sale. There are no guarantees ever that lender will give you and your client an extra break, but it can’t hurt to ask/try.

Final advice

With a foreclosure, time isn’t usually on your client’s side. But by swooping in and acting quickly, you can often find a better solution that gives your client back some control over their lives. A recipe for real-esate success can be by helping others save themselves from disaster; usually a referral gold-mine.

Would you like to super-charge your career with 40+ fresh & real leads per month? Just contact us for for information on our Canadian Real Estate Lead marketing system.

Vancouver & Toronto will continue this spring in leading sales of luxury homes in both average price and quantity.

Published April 5, 2016 by Real Estate Leads

The GTA will most likely lead the market for dwellings over $1 million; as sales gather even more momentum and prices continue to rise. Good growth is also expected in Vancouver especially in Vancouver’s top-tier residential market. Increases in sales of homes priced over $4 million are expected. We expect both markets have good potential for significant gains and heightened demand and insufficient inventory to drive price escalation; and seller’s market conditions are expected to stay.

Canada’s weak dollar has made real estate more attractive to domestic & foreign buyers. Other market fundamentals have and will continue to have positive impact on market for dwellings of more than $1 million across Canada this spring.

In Alberta’s largest city, Calgary, continued economic instability due to trouble in the oilfields will keep increasing the number of homes available; further contributing to a decline in prices in markets for top-tier residences and for more typical homes.

Steady economic growth indicators in Quebec have enabled a balance in the Montreal market. Sales numbers of top-tier detached single-family homes, attached homes & condominiums are anticipated to be comparable to 2015’s levels.

In Vancouver, the first 2 months of this year saw sales of homes valued at more than $1 million increase 23% yearly to 770 units, of which 560 were single-family home sales – a 17% increase.

While the GTA remains attractive for foreign investors & immigrants; local demand will remain the main market driver. The Toronto market has seen a 62.5% increase in home sales topping $1 million; up to 1,650 units. 1,487 were single-family homes.

In comparison, the home sales of $1 million or more went up 23% in Montreal; 80 units in the first two months of the year. That’s a similar number as in Calgary, equivalent to a 1% decrease comparatively to 2015.

Would you like to super-charge your career with 40+ fresh & real leads per month? Just contact us for for information on our Canadian Real Estate Lead marketing system.

Archives

All posts for the month April, 2016

Wonderful Current Apps for Real Estate Agents

Greatly Extend Your Marketing Reach With Video

On the Art of Selling Foreclosure-threatened homes

Vancouver & Toronto will continue this spring in leading sales of luxury homes in both average price and quantity.