RealTown's RealTalk

Can someone tell me how to save a post that I want to keep for reference. Also, how do I start a new thread?

Shelby Hull, Broker, e-PRO

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing you did yesterday and expecting different results!

1. What are you doing to get sales? I am getting back to basics- working my sphere, farming my neighborhood, calling on FSBO's / Expireds, working on my scripts for better presentations.
2. How are you marketing your business & listings for less expense? Learning to make better use of internet/email. Calling my SOI instead of mailing/drop bys, being more particular as to the clients I work with- "A" clients get in my car, anything else gets referred or moved to a drip campaign. (I work mostly with buyers.) I no longer will work with a buyer who has not signed a buyer agreement/contract with me. What free sites are showing results for placing your listings on (Portals, social media, etc?) Personally I don't have any listings, I work mostly with buyers. As a team we are just getting into using the internet as a tool for our listings.
3. Are open houses worth the time of day, right now? I always love to do opens, I find Sunday afternoon to be the best time. I bring my laptop and some work to be done, or a RE book if it is slow. And I usually pick up at least 1 prospect per open house. The key is to make sure you follow up, and maintain contact with them after. We are cutting down on our print advertising and experimenting with some other methods to drive people to our open houses. Some of the things are inviting the neighbors and putting up open house signage early in the week, stating the house will be open, making sure that we put the opens on Craigslist etc. We are just starting, so I really can't tell you how this will work for us. One of the things we are doing is making sure to ask everyone in the door- where did they learn about the open house.
4. How are you using the new tax incentive for first time home buyers to your advantage? I haven't really pushed the tax incentive. I mention it and I think I will send a reminder letter to all my qualified buyers in January. Don't forget to remind that this does need to be repaid over the next few years. So it really is more like a loan than a rebate in my opinion.
5. How are you staying positive in a challenging environment? As I have mentioned before, I am very fortunate that my market area is really holding pretty steady. We are seeing a slight (I think 3% is the number) decrease in sales price. And our foreclosure rate has gone up just .25%- to 1.25%. So really the only challenge I see in my market is overcoming the massive amount of negative media coverage about the market in general. There is a benefit (? Maybe) to all this negative focused media- the sellers are hearing what a bad market it is and my buyers are getting some very good deals right now. My sales are up considerably from last year- I am very thankful.

Another change that I have made- I did change brokers a couple of months ago. Changing brokers was not an easy thing for me; I had only worked for this one other broker. So there were a lot of personal verse professional pro/con conversations before I did make the decision to move. And it really did come down to it was the right business move for me to make at this time. It is a big change and I certainly am not suggesting that people look at changing brokers as a way to improve their business. Most of the above changes are part of the Keller Williams model and it seems to be working so far for me.

Kris Coutant, e-Pro

Associate Broker
The Ultimate Team
Keller Williams Realty Distinctive Properties
Serving Upstate NY - Warren, Washington
and Saratoga Counties
Cell: 518 361 5250
Office: 518 798 0040
KrisCoutant@roadrunner.com

2 other places I include a profile and or property details is HubPages.com and Squidoo.com These are great for driving traffic to your website. Hey, thanks for contributing to this thread.

I visited both of these sites. Could you give a more detailed explanation of what these sites do, how you would implement this strategy, potential results, etc?

Jim, I use Squidoo to promote individual listings, my profile etc. Note on the following links that it allows you to add Flickr slide show, additional links to your websites, Blogs etc. http://www.squidoo.com/realestateeastlansing , http://www.squidoo.com/HoltRealEstate

HubPages works somewhat the same: http://hubpages.com/profile/mbowler

There are so many FREE places to put your profile and listings that it becomes necessary to have a checklist, in the event of a price change etc that some maybe discouraged from posting. My theory is to be unique and offer more value to the consumer. If I have a price change I can update all in less than 20 minutes. It's worth it. Thanks for your comments. Mike