Raining Updates: Ads on RCG, Contributing Update, Footer Candy, New Feed, Email Tools, the HUGE list of RCG plugins and more!

There are so many updates to give, I decided to record a video to describe them all:

In the video, I talk about a number of changes and updates I’ve made to RCG recently including:

  • Rain Drop Ads on RCG… and if you’re one of the first five who signs up, then I’m willing to offer you a particularly good deal!
  • New page on how to get involved in becoming a contributor to RCG
  • Update to the theme by putting the active contributor information at the footer
  • Added MyBlogLog widget to the footer (as well as a few buttons)
  • Switched the main RCG feed over to Feedburner
  • Made it easier to email articles to others. Look for the “Email this Post” prompt at the bottom of every post
  • Speaking of email, you can know subscribe to RCG by email
  • Cleaned up the categories and hopefully made them more useful

And finally, because I haven’t done this in a while, I thought I’d list out all the plugins I’m currently using on Rain City Guide.

Plugin Description
Akismet Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One SEO Pack Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By Michael Torbert.
Exclude Pages from Navigation Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. By Simon Wheatley.
FeedBurner FeedSmith Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Get Recent Comments Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. By Krischan Jodies.
Google XML Sitemaps This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. By Arne Brachhold.
Maintenance Mode Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. By Michael Wöhrer.
Photopress Photopress adds some image handling tools to WordPress, including a popup upload and browse tool, a random image template function, and a simple album. By Isaac Wedin.
Post-Plugin Library Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.  By Rob Marsh, SJ.
Register Plus WordPress 2.5+ ONLY. Enhance your Registration Page. Add Custom Logo, Password Field, Invitation Codes, Disclaimer, Captcha Validation, Email Validation, User Moderation, Profile Fields and more. By Skullbit.
RSS Footer Allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles. By Joost de Valk.
Seesmic Enables Seesmic video in wordpress. By Seesmic Inc.
Similar Posts Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. By Rob Marsh, SJ.
Subscribe To Comments Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.  By Mark Jaquith.
WordPress.com Stats Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup On-demand backup of your WordPress database.  By Austin Matzko.
wp-cache Very fast cache module. By Ricardo Galli Granada.
WP-EMail Allows people to recommand/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP Ajax Edit Comments Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments. By Ronald Huereca.
WP Status Notifier Sends email notification of posts pending review. By iDope.

With the exception of just one plugin that will remain nameless for now, that’s the full list. If you have any questions about why or how I use any of the plugins, feel free to ask away!

UPDATE:

  • I JUST realized I also forgot to mention the “new” RCG search box.    I added a Google custom search box that searches not just RCG, but contributor websites and blogs as well.   It’s pretty slick and I was even able to integrate it with the site so that the search shows up on right on the page.

Faster than fast, Quicker than quick, Ka-chow!

While spending quality time w/ the Cars addict in my family (the 3 year old who says “I wanna see the race car movie Daddy”) got me thinking about something that moves faster than Lightning McQueen, the relentless march of high technology.

A couple weeks ago, Real Central VA, had a link to an interesting NAR Center for REALTOR Technology survey on what agents/brokers plan to spend on technology.

Some of the more interesting findings were

  • 95% of agents use digital cameras
  • 90% of them use cell phones
  • 77% of them use PCs
  • 71% have web business sites
  • 60% of agents have IDX search features on their web site
  • Sites with IDX listings generate more leads than sites without listings.
  • 30% of agents spent more than $2000 on technology in 2005
  • Less than 15% of those participating in lead generation programs are satisfied with the results.
  • 67% of agents want their broker to expand their technology offerings.
  • 84% of agents want the MLS to expand the technology and service offered.
  • Most internet leads come from broker web sites or agent web sites
  • Realtor.com was the 3rd largest source of internet leads
  • The Internet is the third most important source of leads (after referrals and repeat business), it is surprising that the majority of agents spent less than $500 to build or maintain their website, and that a super majority of brokers (67%) spent less than $1,000.

The net take away for me was that agents and brokers have an appetite for technology second only to MindCamp attendees, and yet the vast majority of them probably spend more money at Starbucks in given year than they do on their web sites! Given the importance of internet leads, the effectiveness of broker / agent web sites in capturing them, the disappointing effectiveness of lead generation problems, and appetite for more technology it seems to me that the industry on a whole is seriously under investing in technology. There are exceptions of course, but it seems that real estate tech spending is going to have to trend up. Otherwise the tech leaders around here, both inside & outside the industry (RedFin, John L Scott, CB Bain, Zillow, Trulia, etc) will increasingly make real estate professionals look like real estate amateurs.

So where are your tech dollars going in the next year? How much do you plan on spending? How will technology change how and where you use your marketing budgets? More Zillow, Craigslist, and Google ads, and less paper-based ones?

Moving Forward…

I’ve been a little busy lately, so I haven’t had a lot of time to give an update on some of my favorite conversations around the web… Nonetheless, I’m back for an abrivated version (i.e. only 9 articles instead of the usual 10)…

Beau turned me on to a great article by Jay regarding the 30-year trend for Mortgage Rates… Interesting stuff. Also, don’t miss Jay’s tribute to Harry Ramos

I just got an email from someone at Windermere letting me know about Windermere’s new (beta) mapping platform… This is an update to the beta mapping platform they released a little over a year ago and I think they’ve made some great improvements… Here are some features I like: (1) Simple map-based search, (2) intuitive zoom feature, (3) Simple pop-up interface, (4) the filter tool is relatively straightforward, (5) viewing the details doesn’t require a page reload, (6) same with viewing the “list of homes”, (7) saving, emailing and/or contacting an agent can all be done without leaving the map view (8) simple city, state, zip box allows for easy navigation to distant locations… The only complaint I have is that the design doesn’t feel polished, but considering it is a beta and the technology works well, the design is minor…

Steve Weise also let me know about his map-based appraisal tool he recently released and asked me to solicit feedback from the RCG community… His interface is too GIS-specific for my tastes, but maybe other’s will find it interesting and/or useful.

Clever, but probably too simplistic, Rob let me know about his collection of quotes that compare the great depression to today’s housing market. Any way you look at it, he provides a good read…

Greg picked up the new Move commercials on YouTube… The latest fun news around Move is that my favorite commercial (Search) got picked up by AdForum and is currently displayed on their front page!

I really like how Zachary picked up the ball and started posting videos of his properties… They are not high art, but I think they are darn useful, especially for someone selling land in such a beautiful area!

Sometimes being a great agent means divulging the good with the bad… Osman tells us how people can and do loose money in real estate

I hate homework too!!!

The NYTimes real estate blog is officially dead. (although it is everywhere now, I first saw it on Luxury Sarasota Living). I can’t say I’m particularly sad, because the main editor seemed to have such a thing against real estate agents that his blogging on the subject just wasn’t very interesting… (Marlow also noticed this tendency of Damon).

It may be broken, but here's a plan to fix it!

Ah, finally get to catch up on reading some RCG posts. What a prolific group this is! Makes you wonder just how important a degree in creative writing might become to the average agent in the future. I’ve been busy cuz I’ve been doing alot of recruiting these days.  So, when Eric, in a recent post  wonders about the mega agent model works I can’t help but commenting that it works great for the mega agent and not so great for the mini agents on the team and especially not so great for the customers of said Mega Agent who may not want to be foisted off on a newbie. Ardell says that the industry is broken because agents don’t help train newbies anymore. Couldn’t agree more. Fact is, there are agent training programs within offices, called Mentor Programs, but they cost the newbie a lot. I just heard about one such program that offers the mentoring agent 70% of the commission! No wonder its broken, but I have an idea of house to fix at least a part of it.

I wonder if people outside of this industry know that 85% of all new agents have left the business within 2 years and that average agent income is around $32,000 below the average household income of $34,000! When we talk about the industry being broken, how could it not be when out of every 100 agents, 85 of them have under 2 years of experience practicing in an industry that demands a high level of legal education and an equally high and complicated knowledge base. I’ve blogged before about the need to raise the bar for new agents. But I don’t see it happening unless I want to get on the Real Estate Commission which I don’t want to do. Untrained agents are like driving over a train track with the train coming. Shoot, I once had a seller move out a month early because his agent misread the financing deadline for closing of the transaction! Like Ardell, I could tell thousands of other stories. Isn’t the fact that there are so many newbies who are inadequately trained but allowed to handle any kind of transaction greatly affecting the quality of service to the clients? Doesn’t this create most of the problems with transactions?

So, now I’m in a position to make a difference. I can’t affect the other agents but I can sure affect the ones at LTD. There is a huge fault with the traditional business model for a real estate company, starting with recruiting.  When recruiting, brokers use the same practices to recruit new agents that you find in multi level marketing. They point to the super agent making all kinds of money and driving the ego car and hold them as the example of what the newbie can become. It’s enticing and makes the mouth water. The newbie can hardly wait to get a piece of that fortune and so eagerly joins the firm with all the zeal and ambition that should make them succeed. They are given the standard goals: take forms classes, establish a farm, knock on doors, do open houses, develop a sphere and take floor time.  But sadly, they don’t usually succeed with this advice. At least not 85% of the time.

Part of the problem is the upside down business model in the traditional company. This model and the model taught in broker training, is that once an agent has earned enough, typically $50,000 and splits this 50/50 with the brokerage, then that agent no longer earns money for the company, and is, in fact, a drain on the office, supples, training, etc.  Instead of being tied to the ongoing success of the agent, the office does just the opposite and depends instead on recruiting new agents instead of developing what talents they already have. Why, because their model is make $25,000 from as many agents as they can. Thus the revolving door.  Agents that carry heavy listing farms are also recruited but not for the reasons many might think. The heavy listing agent is sought after by almost all companies because they get the companies name on the streets with signage and have listings advertised to get the phones to ring. Do sellers know that their home isn’t advertised in the paper to necessarily get it sold as much as it is to take up print space and serve as image marketing? Plus the phone rings at the office to give the ‘up’ agents leads thereby providing a way for a new agent to get business.The newbies often do the open houses, not to sell the home, but to develope clients.

But what I think is an even greater cause of this failure are the many, many hats an agents wears, all requiring a different personality, skill and intelligence level. They must understand and implement all of the forms used in listings, sales, Federal forms and laws (asbestos, lead paint, fair housing) without which they can look at jail time and/or fines, disclosure subleties, etc. A typical agent must also learn how to read people, how to know just when to push and when to hold back. They must be strong enough in a listing presentation to sell themselves as the best while empathetic enough to work with buyers and understand their points of view. A good buyer’s agent must know how to perform a buyer consultation.and know how to find the exact right house out of the many thousands that are on the market, and not have buyer’s remorse.   A typical agent must know geography, house styles, demographic trends, know how to price, employer information, school information, church and communtiy information, transit information, structure and design.  Additionally, this practice requires a high level of negotiating skills, assistance during the inspection where many deals take a nose dive, plus the ability to stay on good terms with other agents in the market place without which they are doomed.   Agents are asked for advice on mortgage progrmas, title issues, need to understand and explain builder addendum (if that’s possible) and warranties, understand the escrow process and data base management, etc.

This is but a small list of the knowledge and skills an agent must have or fail. But, as if that weren’t enough, they have to be able to wear a marketers hat, as well. What is the best way to attract clients? How do you ever set up those lucrative programs aimed at building a referral base. Do you advertise in magazines, newspapers, online, do you buy lead sources like House Values, do you blog, do massive mailings, do you establish a farm?  Who will build a web site and teach how to make it a useful lead source. And on and on.

Do you see why it is ludacrous to ask all these skills of one person? How could any well balanced individual know all of this stuff and still have a life. Even the mega agents who scale as Eric has suggested might be a good real estate model, these agents must be even more talented since now they must also be managers, and, worse, they are ultimately responsible for errors made at any level by the team, any lawsuits, ommissions or mistakes by the assistant will be born also by the mega agent.

What we see in other companies in America are several different departments with different specialties and responsiblities.  When I owned two restaurants, a nightclub and a boatyard and marina, as you might imagine that I had 10-12 departments reporting to me at any one time. And I certainly didn’t know how to repair a twin screw diesel engine nor could I entertain as well as the All Male Revue! I contracted out marketing, I hired bookkeepers, I paid well for department heads that were specialists in their fields. Why not have a real estate company set up the same way, i.e., with different departments doing what they each do best. The agent should be the person who is face to face with the clients, not the person who is mailing out postcards or doing the research on the different lead generator sources. Even deciding how to outsource the different parts of the job is time consuming.  Each agent should work with the PART of the business that best suits his or her personality style, and you determine this with a personality assessment and lots of coaching, i.e., if you want to work at night and you are not shy and have a commanding presence, you’d probably like being a listing agent. If you get your kicks out of assisting someone in finding their dream house, you’d probably love working with buyers. If numbers fascinate you and you love the work of high finance, you’d probably prefer investment real estate and if you can’t tear yourself away from watching a home get built, you’d probably love new construction. For the well connected, whether by church, networking groups, family, and all kinds of social groups, and you love to give parties, then a referral based practice might work best for you.

Agents need to know themselves and find their own best fit in the business, then I firmly believe that they will succeed at a much higher level and make it through the first two years better than if they follow the typical one size fits all advice of their broker. Or, worse yet, take every referral coming from the relocation department and only make about 30% and lose belief in themselves.  As the agent grows, learn the ropes and learn what they love to do best, then migrate throughout the different departments within the company and take on more challenges.

We need a new model. We need to create companies where the agents are treated as individuals and trained as such. Where it’s acknowledged that they can not wear all the hats at once.  We need to have all the effective marketing in place and offer assistance with implementing it. We need to provide FREE leads to our agents. We need to create an economic model where the agents continuing success is directly tied to the continuing success of the office.  We need to give agents the reason to stay loyal to the company and to take away all the stumbling blocks to success.

It’s a huge order, but doable. I know and it works. Start out with bright, likeable and agressive people, have programs set up in the different fields within real estate so there is enough diversity, have the marketing materials and programs researched and implemented so that the agent can be with the client and do what they do best.  Have the negotiation, legal and transactional support to augment the knowledge base of the agent, and mentor and coach as long as necessry. This is no Walmart model, nor is it a Costco model. It’s not the super agent model where only the super agent makes a good living, it’s a Super Office model where all can do well, all are supported, teamwork is highly regarded and there is incentive to grow the company, too. A happy and successful and nutured agent will cure this industry of what ails it. 

Marketing Messages

A message different than any I’ve seen.

We see real estate ads everywhere: The huge Realtor or Real Estate Office centric billboards, shopping carts, sitting benches at bus stops or supermarkets, radio ads, at malls, various print media, internet, etc.

[photopress:T.Jones.JPG,full,alignleft]

And then this. Is the message effective?

Paying for the Privilege of Marginalization

The real estate industry is a funny place…

There is an obvious tension between the industry players who win through cooperation and the individual agents who win by differentiation. It kind of reminds me of the Tragedy of the Commons in that the actions that individual agents are taking in their best interest are slowly breaking apart the well oiled machine that is today’s real estate industry.

In particular, I’m thinking of all the agent money that is currently being poured into advertisements for companies that are building tools designed to marginalize the role of real estate agents. Joel Burslem picked up on one example when he mentioned that Topix (jointly owned and run by the newspaper publishers: Gannett, Knight Ridder and Tribune) is getting into the FSBO market. If this is not a clear enough signal of the newspaper’s intent, the fact that the Tribune recently purchased forsalebyowner.com should make it clear that the newspapers are now the competition…

While it may be in best interest of individual real estate agents to put ads in local papers, these ads are funding companies who are clearly attempting to completely disrupt their industry. (Don’t even get me started on the irony that a bunch of real estate professionals in Seattle are giving content to the PI that will likely be plastered in FSBO ads before long!).

But it is not only newspapers where agents are paying for the privilege of creating their own demise. Every time an agent buys an ad on Google, they are helping to fund a tool that is clearly meant to marginalize them.

I’ve been holding my tongue on this issue for quite a while because I’m sure a good argument could be made that I’m too biased in that I’m viewing the topic through my employer’s tinted glasses. Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder if agents are going to get hip to the fact that they really should be using and/or creating their own media before the commons are destroyed.

[photopress:houses_on_hill.jpg,full,alignright]

[photopress:heathbillboard_1.jpg,thumb,alignright] Russ and my exchange regarding whether or not Broker’s will ultimately have to deal with complaints about an agent’s blog, reminded my of this “Got Real Estate” Billboard.

It had mixed reviews nationally. Given Wendy works in Belmont Shores where lots of people have seen her with her husband and children, and dog of course, in her bikini, it really wasn’t a big deal. But it made national news when she was fired because of the billboard. Another broker picked her up immediately (no pun intended) and she actually got a lot of business in support of her, when people heard she was fired.

In agent forums, a lot of people from those landlocked states thought it was indecent and unprofessional. But in Belmont Shores CA, someone walking around in a business suit and pumps would actually look weirder than someone walking around in a bikini. When I worked in Manhattan Beach, I had to change my whole wardrobe. I actually stopped traffic when I walked around in my East Coast business attire, pinstriped business suit and white sneakers, like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. My broker told me I had to ditch my Philly digs if I was going to “work the beach”. I compromised and bought some really cool black Sketchers.

What do you think about Wendy’s billboard ad?

Moving to Seattle?

I recently began an ad campaign on google that places an ad when someone searches the term “moving to seattle”

Did you click on that ad to get to my site?

If so, I’d be especially interested to know what type of information that you are looking for! Is there something specific you would like to know about Seattle?

If you wouldn’t mind taking a minute to write a comment, I would sure appreciate knowing how I could serve you better!

Seattle walk