Some of Arizona’s most Successful Agents call John Hall & Associates home.

Monthly Archives: December 2009

Goodbye 2009! Hello 2010!

by on Dec 31, 2009 | Legal Issues, Technology

Did 2009 seem like the year of e-newsletters to anyone else?  I think AAR went digital with their publication Arizona REALTOR® Magazine in January.  PAR went digital with the Phoenix REALTOR® Forum, and ARMLS’ digital magazine Wave hit inboxes in August.  I’m not sure if going green or saving green was the bigger motivator???

As far as electronic communication at John Hall & Associates, we wrote fewer blog articles, but got more traffic and more interaction in 2009 than in 2008.  Blog traffic increased 40% compared to 2008.  The number of posts decreased 15% while comments increased 15%.  Here is a quick review of 2009, according to our Phoenix real estate blog…

January:

  • We had a kickin’ kick-off event for our agents with Rick Mack, Jim Sexton, and a panel of successful agents.  The feedback for this event was awesome.  Agents especially loved the information shared by Attorney Rick Mack.  In fact he’ll be giving an encore presentation at our 2010 Kick-Off Event scheduled for January 12th.  Jim Sexton and Tom Farley will also be presenting updated market information and law changes.
  • At the end of January we launched the Phoenix Real Estate Toolbar to help make life easier for agents in the Valley of the Sun.  We’ve had 243 installations thus far, averaging just over 20 a month.

February:

  • Feature Code Friday is born!  I think my favorite feature code highlighted was Near Light Rail.  (See March for how Feature Code Friday evolved.)

March:

  • AAR’s Winter Conference in Prescott was an awesome event!  Partly due to the fact 2 of the 4 person technology panel are members of the John Hall & Associates family.

April:

  • The first of what looks like many RE Bar Camp’s in Phoenix took place.  It attracted hundreds of people from all over the country, facilitated excellent techno-learning, and was a successful day for the planning committee.

May:

  • HVCC goes into effect May 1st.
  • Our brokers, Jim (his report) and Marge (her report) attended NAR Mid-Year conference to explain to Arizona Senators the importance of bringing changes to our state in regards to short sales and REO’s.

June:

July:

August:

September:

October:

  • ARMLS begins publishing WAVE.
  • Jim and Marge get elected to the Arizona Association of REALTORS® Board of Directors.

November:

  • NAR Conference and Expo 2009 and RE Bar Camp hit San Diego hard!

December:

  • AAR announces relationship with Mongofax.

The end of the year always reminds me of a funny quote I heard from a friend, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end the faster it goes.”

Enjoy 2010!

Are you ready for the new GFE’s?

by on Dec 30, 2009 | Careers and Training

Effective January 1, 2010 we’ll be seeing new Good Faith Estimates (GFE) and new HUD-1 statements.  John Rapasky (Counsel Mortgage) and Allison Hudgins (Old Republic Title) ROCK!  They prepared an awesome class for agents at the PV office Tuesday.  It was packed with excellent information.  Not only did the class shed some light on the in’s and out’s of the new forms, it also covered what to expect as title companies and lenders get used to them.

Did you notice in the slideshow above that a property address is now required for a lender to issue a GFE?  That’s a big change.  Expect to see more “Loan Worksheets” for home shopping borrowers in 2010.

After the class John Rapasky posted an article on his blog about the new GFE. You want to bookmark his article so you can reference it the first time you’re presented with the new version.  As he says, “…a closer examination of this form is necessary to safeguard against misleading information.“  Also from his article are some of the new GFE omissions that loan-shopping borrowers may need to be aware of.

Thanks again John and Allison for the excellent info!

House of Refuge East – Final Tally

by on Dec 30, 2009 | Charity

We Did It!!!!!

Actually, we went above and beyond our goal! As of Tuesday, December 29th, we raised $5,470 for the House of Refuge East (HRE). We would like to extend a big thank you to all who contributed – not only monetarily, but also of your time. We were not only able to supply HRE with all of their requested Holiday Meals, but also supply them with Fry’s Gift Cards to use throughout the year!

Thank you again to all who helped make other’s Holiday Season just a little brighter!

Colleen Kolb

Intranet Update: Our Real Estate Agency Docs

by on Dec 28, 2009 | Property Management

You know the fillable PDF’s on our company intranet?  Well, we’ve changed them… slightly. The red text and buttons are gone.  Even though the text and buttons wouldn’t print, we’ve found the paperless agents never ran into that feature.

This upgrade affects most of the documents in the Company Forms folder and the Leasing and Property Management folder.

Company Forms Fillable PDF’s
Cancel Listing Agreement – Conditional X
Cancel Listing Agreement – Unconditional X
Contract Coversheet X
Cure Period Notice Buyer – Educational
Cure Period Notice Seller – Educational
Direct Deposit Form
Direct Withdraw (Automatic Payment) Form
Due on Sale Disclosure Addendum X
General Release X
Home Inspection Warranty Disclosure X
Home Tour Request X
Late Fee Waiver X
Listing Transfer Authorization X
New Agent Referral X
Non-MLS Listing Form X
One Party Compensation X
Open House Sign-in Sheet
Out of Town Report X
Outside Field or Area of Expertise X
Owner/Agent Addendum X
Owner/Agent Checklist
Pool Safety Notice
Post Possession Agreement X
Pre-Possession Agreement X
Referral Agreement – Inside Company X
Referral Agreement – Outside Company X
Sale of Business Addendum X
Technology Form X
Walk-Through Form X

And here are the Leasing and Property Management documents…

Leasing and Property Management Fillable PDF’s
5 Day Notice X
Deposit to Reserve Residence X
Lease Extension X
Lease Purchase Checklist
Management Agreement Extension X
Notification of Residential Rental Property
Property Management Agreement X
Property Management Checklist
Release of Liability X
Rental Application and Credit Report Authorization
Rental Walk-Through Checklist
Trust Account Breakdown X
W-9 X

ListingBook vs Flexmls Portals

by on Dec 23, 2009 | REALTOR® Marketing, Technology

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ARMLS has been talking about Listingbook for the last month or so (product flyers and launch information pdf). Have you heard of it? The product flyers were included in the last issue of WAVE, and last Friday all subscribers received an email that shared the launch information (scheduled January 19-22) along with the website you need to visit if you would like to sign-up for Listingbook.

For those that haven’t heard of it yet, Listingbook is a client portal system that you add your contacts to… kind of like the flexmls portals. This of course prompts the most popular question I’ve been hearing, “How is Listingbook different from the flexmls portals?”

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How to separate a multi-page PDF file

by on Dec 17, 2009 | Technology

I had some good techno-talk at the Scottsdale office party yesterday. One of the topics was how to pull an individual page out of a multi-page pdf file.

The user has Office 2003. This matters, because if you’re using Office 2007 your computer has a similar tool by default. I’m pretty sure Mac’s come with a pdf writer as well.

So for those that need a pdf tool, I recommend Cute PDF writer. It’s free, it’s simple and it works. You can find it here… cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

There is a download button on the left side of the screen.

This installs a new “Printer” on your computer – only the output is not a piece of paper, it’s a pdf file.

So now when you’re looking at the multi-page pdf, click print and tell it which pages you would like to “print”. Choose PDF Writer as the printer and then print. Automagically a new pdf file will be created with the selected pages.

Happy PDF’ing!

Social Media Workshop – NAR 2009

by on Dec 8, 2009 | REALTOR® Marketing, Technology

Notes from Dustin Luther’s Session – Defining the Social Me
(John Hall agents can listen to it here.)

You have to be knowledgeable about what you’re doing. The social media world will not hide your ignorance.

Critical piece of social media is to be able to recognize opportunity and make it work for you.

The HUB
You need to have a hub for all your social media efforts. Dustin says your hub is made up of four components.

1. Website (blog or not) – You need to have your own domain name.  Create a nice logical base

2. Dynamic Content – How am I going create content that is going to engage? Most commonly it’s a blog, but it doesn’t have to be – just have constant content that people will engage with.

3. Home Search – you have to have a good home search.

4. Lead Management – The real estate agents that are doing well are the ones that have good lead management systems.  Personal opinion – this separates the good from the great.

The STRATEGY
You have to promote yourself – don’t rely on others to get the word out about your content for you. Tell everyone about it.

FOF Marketing (Friend of Friends, Followers, Fans).  Create interesting content – promote it to your friends and they will share it with their friends. This is the magic of social media.

How can I get my friends to market for me?  It’s not about what you tell your friends, it’s about what are your friends going to tell their friends.

Social media marketing is all about getting your network to share – you figure out what they want to share and you’ve figured out social media marketing.

Twitter and Facebook are pulling ahead – not sure how to crack Linkedin.

Facebook Connect for blog comments – automagically shares comments with their friends.

You have to create content about what is interesting to you otherwise you won’t stick with it. People can tell when you’re writing about something with no passion.

My take on this session:
I like that Dustin had an entire section about the HUB. It’s the major piece that is going to be able to convert traffic to business. I feel NAR/AAR should have as many classes on how to set up an effective HUB as they have on how to interact in social media. Without a good hub, you are cutting into the amount of leads that you could be generating from your social media efforts.

Moral of the story, social media marketing is dependent on multiple pieces. Once you get your HUB working properly and you develop systems to handle the leads effectively/efficiently, social media becomes one (potentially great) avenue of traffic generation.  Figure out what your friends want to share with their friends and you’ve got it made!

What is MongoFax?

by on Dec 7, 2009 | Technology

Only the newest $FREE.99 tool all Arizona REALTORS® are authorized to use.  MongoFax turns faxed documents into emails.  There are no accounts to set up.  No passwords to remember.  All you need is this cover page. Fill in the appropriate email addresses (hand-written or typed) and use it as your fax cover page.  MongoFax does the rest.

When the cover page is used correctly, MongoFax turns your entire fax into a PDF document and sends it to the email address specified on the cover page.  Fill in coverpage, put on top of documents to fax, send to the fax number on the cover page.  Your work is done.  Then the email address you specified on the cover page receives an email with the documents attached as a pdf.  Make sense?

Who benefits?  AZ REALTORS® that have a fax machine, but are not comfortable with or don’t have a scanner.

In a sense, the AAR / MongoFax relationship just turned all our fax machines into fax quality scanners.  If you have anything you would like scanned to a pdf simply fill in the cover page with your email address and fax to the number on the coverpage.  Within seconds of faxing, you’ll receive a pdf of the documents.

Paper faxing (insert sigh) soon to be a thing of the past.  Just in case you are looking for a more robust electronic faxing tool, check out onesuite.com. Their plans start at $1/month.