Author Archive

Here at Geek Estate, we’re going to undertake a fun iniative in 2012, which will be called “Geek Build 2012” (maybe we’ll do this again next year). What is it? Building a local real estate website/blog (or several) from scratch, with all decisions voted on by the Geek Estate community. And documenting the entire journey here on Geek Estate. Over the past few years speaking to agents all over the country, I often get asked how to build a local blog that consistently generates leads … Read More »

In any vertical, the goal of a business website is to help you make money. Real estate is no different, meaning your local real estate website needs to bring you clients in order to be worth the time and money it takes to operate it. In the real estate vertical, the vast majority (let’s just call it 80% conservatively) of your website conversions WILL occur as a result of buyers searching for properties on your website and registering for email alerts or updates — but you … Read More »

Here is a video response by Fred Glick to the Abbott Realty Group’s decision to pull their listings. This is going to be an ongoing discussion for most of 2012 I would guess, as brokerages and agents around the country decide whether or not listing syndication makes sense for their businesses (I think it does). [via AGBeat]

What are the best and worst real estate agent/broker websites on the web today? Best Here are two of the best in my mind. MSQRealty.com What’s not to like? My prediction — this will be the best site in the entire industry within 6 months. I’ve seen some of the new stuff Dominic has been working on the last few weeks (such as new “building” pages) — and they are wicked cool. Disclosure: Dominic Morrocco, a partner with M Squared, and I are good friends, … Read More »

Every home has a story — some long, some short. The history of a home includes a lot of things, depending on the age of both the home and the community it resides in. In the case of my parents home in Sammamish, that includes but is not limited to: Photos of the outhouse from 50 years ago Photos of the hideous red carpet that used to be in my bedroom The transaction date and price from the 1920′s when my great great grandparents bought … Read More »

If you want to know what consumers (aka your clients) think about ARG’s decision to pull their listings (Geek Estate coverage here, here, and here), look no further than the comment thread of this article in UT San Diego. A few comments from buyers/sellers/home owners: Andrew M Why Does Abbott view it as the intellectual property of the real estate company when it’s a series of picture of MY house and details of MY house (which are all publicly available) that I’m trying to sell to … Read More »

Well, here we go again — add one more brokerage, ARG, to the list of brokerages abandoning listing syndication in 2012. Since regular readers already know what I think on this topic given the Edina article I wrote, just head over to Jay’s blog and read his take. It’s spot on. Who’s next?

We all need to make money from the activities we spend our time on. Social media is no different. Every so often, there is talk about social media being a waste of time and the ROI not being there since most agents can’t directly attribute transactions back to clients they received from social media. But, make no mistake about it — there are agents and brokers making money from social media. But not in the way that you think. You want to know how agents … Read More »

What do you currently use to handle your voicemail? I’m guessing it’s either Google Voice, your standard voicemail that comes with your mobile phone, or some other add on service you’ve randomly stumbled upon along the way. Sure, regular voicemail works. But we all know it can, and should, be better for real estate agents. For starters, when someone leaves you a voicemail, you’d like to know what property that person is inquiring about so that when you follow up (within minutes) you’ll already be … Read More »

We know open houses are a fantastic place to meet with potentially extremely warm buyer leads. We know your conversion is going to suck if you don’t gather contact details and follow up. We know buyers want more info (read: data) about the property they visit in person. We know many buyers look at multiple properties in a given day. We also know that many regular folk (read: non techies) think iPad’s are “cool” to interact with. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it was drop dead … Read More »