David’s dwindling influence at Redfin has met it’s happy PR end. Now it is Glenn full-time, all the time! 🙂
While we’ve had a few run-ins with David Eraker in the past, he always kept his chin up and I wish him the best. It will definitely be interesting to see if he sticks with real estate for his next venture.
Digging into the archives, I found this blog post from only one year ago…
After an absence of 5 days, I enjoyed reading this post from Counter Intelligence that described a situation that I’m sure is familiar to many real estate bloggers: “I’ve got to post a new article today or I’m going to lose readers.
[photopress:top_10_women_bloggers.jpg,thumb,alignright]Rudolph over at the Sellsius blog put together of his choice for the top woman real estate bloggers. It is a great list and all of the featured bloggers are worth reading. No surprise that Seattle had both both Ardell and Marlow featured on the list! They are two of the finest bloggers, male or female, Seattle or otherwise.
Other bloggers featured were:
Some others I would have put on my short list of contenders are:
Between Galen scaring us with stories of AOL mischief, and both the WSJ and USA Today treating us to stories of crime-infested houses (you can’t just “repaint” over memories), I’m thinking there is something fishy in the air and I probably shouldn’t be writing any blog posts today.
However, I can’t help but wonder: What factors do you use in choosing your client when they are dead?
The red-brick mansion that just went up for sale in Greenwich, Conn., has about everything a buyer could want. Set on 2.1 lush acres on tree-lined Dairy Road, it has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, two fireplaces and a pool. Its $5.2 million asking price is, by Greenwich standards, appealing.
The home has another distinctive feature. The basement is where real-estate developer Andrew Kissel — who had been renting the home for $15,000 per month — was found bound, gagged and stabbed to death in April. “To say the broker will need all the luck he can get finding a buyer is an understatement,” says Greenwich broker Chris Fountain, who isn’t connected with the property’s sale.
Almost 10 years after the body of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found in the basement of her Boulder, Colo., home, the Tudor-style house at 749 15th St. is on the market again.
“It’s stigmatized. It’s always been stigmatized,” says Joel Ripmaster, president of Colorado Landmark Realtors. Ripmaster has represented the last four owners of the property, all who purchased or sold the house at below-market value since JonBenét’s slaying in 1996.
Note: I went ahead and published this article today because it was brought to my attention that RCG does not do well in “real estate murder”-related search queries 😉
Jim over at the Real Estate Tomato has an interesting post about the type of content that real estate agents should produce on their blog. The question of content really boils down to how to do the best possible search engine optimization (SEO). So, here are my two cents…
The type of content you write about is almost irrelevant.
Really! I’ll repeat that…
The type of content you write about is almost irrelevant.
There is no “perfect” content or “magic bullet” that will get you to the top of the search engines and thrust you to internet lead nirvana.
Here’s the reality: It is far more important to be interesting in a real estate kinda way (hence the “almost”) than to worry about creating the “right” content.
I sincerely doubt that Hanin Levin set out to be the #1 result on any search for real estate information in Laguna Niguel. He got there because Google has a lot of trust for his site with regards to real estate and at one point he happen to mention Laguna Niguel in one of his blog posts. This is the the long tail in action, which also helps explains why Rain City Guide shows up #2 on that list.
Why does Google have a lot of trust around Hanan’s site with regards to real estate?
Because a lot of real estate sites (mainly bloggers) have linked to him. That back-and-forth of linking between related sites blows away all other factors.
Why do other real estate bloggers link to him?
Because he is interesting!
Maybe after you’ve created a real estate blog that does well in Google, you’ll decide that you’re missing a few keywords, but more likely your readers will do that for you. An recent example occurred when a reader pointed out that we didn’t have any good houseboat information. A simple post three days ago on houseboat financing has already put Rain City Guide at the top of a useful Google search.
[photopress:williams_at_christmas.jpg,thumb,alignright]The important thing to remember is the “perfect” content will only work if others are linking to you and the content is good enough to keep readers coming back for more. My guess is that people begin searching the internet for real estate information months before they are ready to talk with an agent. As an agent, you want to write content that will keep them coming back long after they’ve forgotten about their initial google search!
You could try to be interesting like Lockhart with lots of NYC real estate gossip, like Hanan by posting fascinating links on a daily basis, or like Joel by being on top of real estate technology, but more likely, you’re going to need to write about something that hits a little closer to your interests. Blogging done right is similar to all other human endeavors done right… Success will be a reflection of your personality.
Finally, Jim, it would be wrong to write this whole article without giving you the link you’ve earned by being interesting… So, here’s my link to a great marketing article from the juiciest real estate tomato in northern california! 🙂
Ardell asked about the meaning of “web2.0” yesterday and David G of Zillow gave an easy-to-understand definition that Web2.0 is the “read/write web
This past week, Top Producer quietly rolled out a home valuation tool, called HomeInsight, for a few markets in California and Washington*. I was not part of developing the tool, but I like it enough to pass along the link to Rain City Guide readers before the local media picks it up.
What differentiates this product from others is that it not only includes sold data, but also real-time listing data. The result is a page of information for each home that includes:
[photopress:image002.jpg,full,centered]
However, as with all things that sound too good to be true, there is a catch. In order to pull live listing information, the servers pulling this data have to go through an agent’s connection with their local MLS. (Don’t ask me to explain why, and definitely don’t ask Robbie, but anyone reading RCG for a while knows that the MLS’ have rules!) The result is it takes 5 to 15 minutes for the request to go to the local Realtor’s Top Producer account and then for the Realtor to initiate a report that pulls the data off the MLS servers (yes, a server call to the local MLS is necessary each and every time a request for a snapshot is made). Consequently, the only way to get your snapshop is from a link sent via email about 10 minutes after you complete the form.
So, how do you get a market snapshot for your home? Simply go to HomeInsight and fill in the required fields. (Remember it is only available in a few places right now!*)
If you don’t want to fill in the form, live in another part of the country, or feel guilty about sending people like Jim Reppond a “false” lead, then you can also check out this dummy snapshot filled with made up data.
And as much as I hate disclaimers, it is important to note that these are my opinions and my currently employer is not responsible for what I write on Rain City Guide.
* This tool is currently only available in parts of California (Hemet, Huntington Beach, Laguna Niguel, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Mission Viejo and Norwalk) and Washington (Bellevue/Eastside, Bremerton, Everett, Federal Way, Greater Seattle, Puyallup and Tacoma)
[photopress:sleepless_in_seattle.jpg,thumb,alignright]Just received this in my inbox and I’m clueless as to the answer.
I’ve searched through your site but I’m wondering if you have any advice on buying a houseboat in Seattle.
I’m looking to spend up to $220K plus moorage, but I know very little about how I finance these. I hear it’s complicated and requires a larger down payment.
Any advice?
Any Rain City Guide contributors and/or readers with Houseboat experience?
If you haven’t seen it, Microsoft released a demographic tool that gives the estimated demographic for a search term and/or URL. Just for fun I threw a few of the major real estate technology sites (as well as the search term [real estate], kept track of the results, and that pushed this chart out of Excel:
[photopress:real_estate_search_demographics.gif,full,centered]
So, assuming that Microsoft’s numbers are correct, what patterns emerge?
Note the obvious: Microsoft only has demographic information on people who give it this information. This means that the data is just as suspect as the Alexa data.
For many, “Pressing the Flesh” (talking with potential clients/competitors/vendors/media/etc) is the most valuable part of any conference, and for better or worse, the most valuable part of my day yesterday was spent connecting up with others.
I can’t say that any of the presentations I attended yesterday were particularly interesting (i.e. worth blogging about) including the one that I participated on as a panelist. Then again, I was really the wrong person to be speaking on a lead conversion panel as my contribution to the 2-hour discussion was about 5 minutes where I stated my experience was that blogging provides leads that are easier to convert than typical internet leads because you’ve already built up a relationship with the person when the contact you. Beyond that, I couldn’t offer much to the discussion, so the two hours were dominated by the panel’s sponsor discussing their (very cool) product. All things considered, I’ve met tons of people from Top Producer who would have done a much better job than me speaking about the ways that agents are using internet tools to convert leads. It’s too bad none of them were asked to be on the panel (especially since their top marketer product was nominated for an Innovation Award).
I’m always interested in controversy and being relatively new to the industry, I’ve found it interesting the extent to which major industry players boycott these conferences because of the way that Brad Inman has been known to push his own agenda. While pressing the flesh at the conference has been very interesting (and almost definitely a valuable long-term experience), I’m left with the strange feeling that I’m taking part in a massive dance orchestrated by Brad.