New Agents Guide
I’ve taken the liberty to do a little research for all the real estate agents out there taking advantage of online marketing. There’s paid online marketing and organic/natural online marketing, but both forms need to know what’s the best real estate keywords to target. “Real estate” is the highest searched term. Recent estimates say it’s searched over 500,000 times a month. So, competing for such a phrase would be almost impossible to win with the big budgets of the Move.com Network (owners of Realtor.com, Moving.com, WelcomeWagon.com & much more) or the new up and comers like Zillow.com and Trulia. (more…)
A lot of us who are both interested in buying and helping sell real estate appreciate the section of the newspaper on the weekends which lists latest properties for sale and other interesting tidbits of local housing info. However, the first section consumers and supposed “experts” in the industry should actually read the business section from the front page to the back. Why? The business section tells you what companies are coming and going, what companies are booming and which ones are busting and most importantly, it is the true pulse of what drives every real estate market. (more…)
So, doing a search on “bellevue wa real estate”, I come up as #20 on a recent search. It fluctuates and so you may have to look on the 3rd page at times (results 21 through 30) and sometimes it climbs higher. When searching for “buyer’s agent condo bellevue”, I show up on the first page. On the most recent search, I’m #7 on the first page. The funny thing is that I’m not even practicing in the Real Estate world anymore minus helping out some Realtors who contact me occasionally. Which by the way, unfortunately due to time constraints, I can’t just help out anyone for free. However, if I do help you, you will see results better than I even imagined in my first year of real estate, I believe. The question is “if” I can help you though. (more…)
So, a sister of a great past client of mine just recently asked for some advice getting into the business. While I didn’t copy the whole email here to her (for her benefit & mine ;), I did want to share one of the things that I would advise in looking at when interviewing brokerages. Actually, the first bit of advice is interview your brokers or new places of employment. Don’t spend just one week or just sign up with the first one you get a good feel. Make sure they give you the time of the day…the manner in which they treat you the day you come in for an interview is probably representative of how they’ll treat you moving forward as an agent. The other tip is that “they WANT you” instead of you wanting them. They should treat you like royalty, but you have no idea when walking in the door. Every sale you make for them moving forward with them is more money in their pockets and the day you sign with them, they’ll most likely accrue fees from you…so, they want more agents…even if they are bad agents. However, of course, a more savvy broker will look for agents that will improve their brand name, not taint it….
Anyway, here’s the list of criteria I would use when looking at a new brokerage… (more…)