Some of Arizona’s most Successful Agents call John Hall & Associates home.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
How to Be a Successful Real Estate Agent
Even though eHow.com has an impressive amount of helpful information on their website, I never expected them to teach me how to be a successful real estate agent. However I recently came across their article titled How to Be a Successful Realtor. It takes a face-to-face, belly-to-belly approach in explaining how to achieve success as a real estate agent. Their tips and tricks are all wrapped around getting out there and meeting as many people as possible. I like it.
To reinforce their position, take a look at this chart from the 2009 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers…
Add up the percentages of clients that found their REALTOR® through personal recommendations and you’ll see it’s a large majority. What this means to me is the more people that know you are in the real estate business the better.
Take the advice from the eHow article and work on expanding your sphere of influence.
Watch ARMLS LEARNaTHON Online!!
Just in case you couldn’t make it to ARMLS’s LEARNaTHON today you can still watch it online! We’ve embedded the live-stream on the careers page of JohnHall.com so you can still “attend”.
Here’s the schedule for the day…
- 7:30am – 8:59am LEARNaTHON Lobby
- 9:00am – 9:50am Facebook Beginner Class
- 9:51am – 11:59am LEARNaTHON Lobby
- 12:00pm – 12:50pm flexmls Tips & Tricks Class
- 12:51pm – 2:59pm LEARNaTHON Lobby
- 3:00pm – 3:50pm RPR (Realtors Property Resource™) Class
- 3:51pm – 5:00pm LEARNaTHON Lobby
REALTOR® Success Tool: Web Based Faxing
Last month when AAR Past President Mike Wasmann joined John Hall & Associates we had a quick discussion about web based faxing. He wasn’t looking for the $FREE.99 MongoFax from AAR. He wanted a fax number he could put on his business cards that would forward all faxed documents directly to his email. On the flip-side, the service would allow him to send a fax as an email and have it arrive on his client’s regular fax machine. I normally refer to this as efaxing, except efax is an actual company. So in this article we’ll call it web based faxing instead.
Since my conversation with Mike, I had a chance to help teach a real estate technology class (GRI 314). Web based faxing was one of the topics and the class jump started this list. Then I touched base with a few more REALTORS® and added their recommendations to the list.
| Company | Monthly Cost | # of Pages In/Out | Overages |
|---|---|---|---|
| efax.com | $16.95 | 130 Combined | $.15/page |
| rapidfax.com | $9.95 | 300 Combined | $.08/page |
| unityfax.com | $9.99 | Unlimited/250 | $.05/page |
| myfax.com | $10 | 500 Combined | $.10/page |
| fax.com | $9.99 | 300 Combined | $.12/page |
| onesuite.com | $2.95 | Unlimited/0 | $.025/page |
| greenfax.com | $12.95 | 250/100 | In $.03/Out $.05 |
This is a list of no wrong answers. This whole list was compiled by recommendations from REALTORS® – no googling needed! 
I had to add a picture from this scene in Office Space
Each service has it’s own little quirks. For example, the amount of time varies that they’ll store your fax history. Some of the services require a special program to be installed on your computer, some don’t. Some offer toll-free numbers for free, some charge. I’ve heard efax.com is the only one that will allow you to transfer an existing fax number. However, the only company I actually spoke with was MyFax.com. The sales guy was very knowledgeable about their web based faxing technology and why their service dropped less faxes, etc. He did say a toll-free number was included in their monthly charge. If I were pulling the trigger today, it would probably be between myfax.com (sales guy I spoke with: 888.733.0000 x313) and the lowest cost option onesuite.com.
If you’re already using an internet faxing service – leave a comment and tell us who and why you like it! If you have yet to sign-up for one, well then, here’s to adding a great tool to your REALTOR® toolbox!
ARMLS Compliant Video Embedding
Before I dive into the proper way to embed videos in your real estate listings, allow me to congratulate ARMLS. Kudos to them for achieving their highest level of data integrity ever. Even though the Penalty Matrix and Report a Violation button have been cursed by some, their effectiveness at helping ARMLS maintain accurate data cannot be argued. For that, all ARMLS Subscribers should be thankful.
Rules Compliant Video Embedding
After presenting the Real Estate Listing Marketing System at our Scottsdale real estate office last month, James Wehner (REALTOR® in Scottsdale) and I had a conversation about the “right way” to embed videos in flexmls. That talk lead to a conversation with ARMLS Compliance Officer Paul Kriewall.
Turns out Rule 8.23 (Rules PDF) takes an “unbranded video” way beyond the branding of a real estate agent. It also includes pretty much everything and everyone with the exception of the “Media Producing Enterprise” – aka Virtual Tour companies or Video Production companies. What’s that mean? No YouTube embeds in ARMLS. When a YouTube video is embeded, the video player has a watermark in the lower right hand corner. Branding like this is not allowed.
So my search began for a non-branded, free, commercial content acceptable video host and embed tool. Bottom-line I struck out, but if you remove free from the search criteria we have some winners. Here’s what I’ve found…
90 Days to Real Estate Success
90 Days to Real Estate Success is an archived article from REALTOR® Magazine, but I think the advice is timeless. Working hard, creating structure, and planning for success are all actions that lead to… a successful real estate career.
A couple of other resources in the article are the Week-by-Week Guide for new agents and the 4 Tips for Curing a Sales Slump (scroll to the bottom) for experienced agents.
Buckeye Rental Tax Increase
ATTENTION: PROPERTY MANAGERS
The TOWN OF BUCKEYE has notified us that the rental tax rate for BUCKEYE increased to 3%, effective October 1, 2010.
Beginning with rent deposited in October, rental tax for BUCKEYE properties will be calculated at the new rate of 3%. If you have any questions concerning this tax increase please contact the Trust Department at (602)953-4043.
Type on any PDF for $FREE.99
We’re trying out a new presentation tool today – prezi.com. Hopefully this works to explain a simple to use website that allows you to type on any pdf document. Just in case the show doesn’t display, we’re talking about fillanypdf.com. Here goes nothing…
5 Tips To Successfully Explore RPR
REALTORS® Property Resource (RPR) was launched for ARMLS subscribers on October 5th 2010. This nationwide database of parcel information, market statistics, and community demographics is organized behind a REALTOR® only login at http://www.narrpr.com. Bookmark the site. Memorize your login. This will be one you check out more than once.
I recommend you give yourself about a half an hour for your first RPR experience. You’ll need your NRDS number (What’s my NRDS number?) to initially set up your account. After your first sign-in, you’ll be able to access with your email and a custom password – you won’t need your NRDS number every time.
On your first login you’ll be able to set your default market areas and start your exploration.
Resource: RPR Help Desk
5 Tips For Successful Exploration
1. Be on the look out for tabs! They usually have great things in them. If you see tabs, click them.
2. Be aware of the “Deeper Search” link. It hold lots of good search fields.
3. Watch for the ‘Report’ button. This is quick access for getting the data out of RPR in a PDF format so you can share it will sellers, buyers, or leads.
4. It’s okay to fill out your Profile! Your Profile information is automatically added to the property and market reports. Be sure to add your logo (or picture), company name, website, et cetera.
5. Last but not least, look up your house! Although the estimated value may cause you to flinch, I like starting with something familiar.
Once you’ve explored, come back and share what you like/dislike.
I’ll start. I like the market reports. I’m thinking REALTORS® will be able to offer them to website visitors in exchange for contact information. I dislike the fact the intro video is 27 minutes! However, if you’d like to see home value heat maps in action fast forward to 4 minute mark.
Okay, your turn!
What Successful Agents Look For In A URL Shortener
What is a URL shortener? It’s a tool that takes a long url and makes it shorter. For example: http://public6.superlativestudio.com/Search.aspx?segmentid=2901151&rid=29214&htmlfile=835036.html and http://goo.gl/WSYy take you to the same place.
Google released their URL shortener to the public last week and has been welcomed with open arms. Not only is it simple and free to use, but it allows you to share usage statistics with others and it automatically creates a QR Code for your other marketing materials!
Click-through Statistics
When you share a goo.gl shortened link in twitter, facebook, or any other site and people click on it – they are tallied. In the 6 Step Real Estate Listing Marketing System I talk about adding a URL to the photo captions. Ideally a short, trackable URL would be used.
Let’s say your short url is goo.gl/umo0 (this is a link used in a popular techcrunch article). To view the usage statistics the creator of the link can simply click the Details button. It opens up a new page with a chart showing the click volume and a few details about the clickers.
If you’re using the short link in your marketing materials for a particular listing – email the details page link to your seller. Now they can see click-through traffic as well.
QR Codes on Listing Flyers
If you’ve started to use QR Codes in your real estate business, goo.gl can save you time. Add .qr to the end of any shortened link to access a savable QR image. Using the same short link from above as an example it would be http://goo.gl/umo0.qr
What do Successful Agents look for in a URL shortener?
1. It’s okay to use for commercial purposes.
2. It’s trackable (aka: it gives you click-through statistics).
3. It’s $FREE.99
How accurate are Zestimates in Phoenix?
So I was checking out a great post by Arizona Real Estate Agent Elizabeth Newlin on the AAR Blog yesterday. In it she referred to Zillow as a jolly green giant toe sucker. Hilarious.
Along comes the newly named CEO of Zillow Spencer Rascoff to comment on Elizabeth’s impressive insult which opened a quick back and forth between the two.
In the dialog, Spencer acknowledges “Agents and Appraisals will always be more accurate than a computer model.” and he shared a link to the Zestimate Accuracy Reports.
Phoenix Metro Area received an accuracy rating of 2 out of 4 stars. Here are the numbers…
Zestimate Accuracy in Phoenix, Arizona
| Within 5% of Sales Price | Within 10% of Sales Price | Within 20% of Sales Price |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 38% | 61% |
Pretty cool response from the CEO if you ask me.
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