Allison James Estates & Homes - October 2012 EMagazine Issue 40

Sales of Existing Homes Improve as Prices Rise

5 Ways You Might Be Losing Sales through Your Website

A Global Approach to Real Estate

THE nATIonAL InTERnET BASEd REAL ESTATE BRokERAGE ISSuE 40 | ocToBER 2012

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Read Inside7 Ways to Grow Your Business now

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Index

ALLISON JAMES ESTATES & HOMES®

Address:309 Tamiami TrailPunta Gorda, FL 33950

Phone:866-463-5780

Website:www.allisonjamesinc.com

Index

Letter from the cEo

7 Ways to Grow Your Business now

Good news for Housing: Home Prices continue Positive Trend


construction Spending onSingle-Family Homes up 40Percent Since Recession Low

congratulations Team Allison James Estates & Homes

The Wolf is coming

Are you easy to work with? do you go out of your way for the other agent?

Automated clearing HousePayments (AcH)

Real Estate Marketing? Stake Your claim



What to do when your files just won’t upload

Meet our Agents

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Professionalism

James Crumbaugh IIIFounder & cEo

After 40 years in this industry I have a firm belief that if you do noT continue your education and attend the events, that will help you grow your business, then you

will be one of those Realtors that are gone from our industry, after just a couple years.

one of the greatest events of the year in the nAR national convention. This year it is being held in orlando, Florida.

I have found, over the years, this is where you go if you want to create networking opportunities you can’t get anywhere else. Plus, you have hundreds of great classes taught by the best minds in the indus-try to choose from. nAR has studies out that show the average attendee is in the top 20% of all the Realtors in the country. These are the Realtors that want to make Real Estate their lifelong career.

I haven’t missed a convention in 16 years and it was at these conventions that I conceived my idea for Allison James Estates and Homes. I have been privileged at these conventions to have networked and had private dinners, lunches and breakfast the cEo’s of keller Williams, Realogy, that owns cB, c-21, BH&G, ERA, Sotheby’s, amongst others. I have met with the Senior VP of Bank of America, and the cEo of First American Title among other heavyweights in our industry, including the heads

of RIS Media and Real Trends.not only does the attendee have hundreds of

advanced classes to choose from, but the best at-tended event is the trade show where the 20,000 + Realtors, Brokers and heavyweights go to learn about the newest trends in our industry.

Allison James Estates and Homes has since its founding had a booth at the national convention and we again have a booth this year in orlando, Florida. We feel that the exposure this brought to a new start up company, five years ago, called Al-lison James Estates and Homes was a tremendous shot in the arm and was one of the reasons for our explosive growth.

We want to extend an invitation to all our Real-tors and Brokers to attend the national convention and to stop by our booth and spend some time with us.

Also again this year we need 10 individuals that will volunteer to man the booth for two, four hour shifts. In exchange for manning the booth, you will have your E & o insurance waived for 1 full year.

If you have an interest in manning the booth, please contact Matthew at [email protected] . The first 10 people that contact Mat-thew will get an opportunity to meet hundreds of Realtors from around the country.

5to people that I networked with. I would sell the back top half to my mortgage broker for $425 and the bottom back half to my attorney for $425. In the end my listing, and myself, were getting marketed to 10,000 people every week for FREE! Start thinking outside of the box.

4. List Source – If you have ever farmed a neighborhood or done any kind of mail marketing solicitation then you

know that the percentage return is not that high, but it’s a num-bers game. The truth is that we are living in a world where mar-keters track your every move on the Internet so that they can only put ads in front of you that match your interests. Why wouldn’t we be operating in the same way? There are sites like www.list-source.com and others that allow you to buy very specific lists to market to. For example, you could obtain a list of homeowners in your county that live out of state and have owned their proper-ties for more than 7 years. Why? Because if you know that if they live out of state, you already know their pressure point. They are probably tired of being a landlord. And if they have owned for more than 7 years, they probably have equity in their properties. This is just one example of being creative.

5. Get strategic about your friendships – one of the things that has amazed me as a trainer has been that amount of

opportunities that are right in front of so many sales people that they don’t take advantage of. Remember this phrase – “If there is change, there is opportunity.” The sad truth is that you work in an industry where things like death and divorce trigger as much of a need for your services as marriage and children being born do. Statistics tell us that it takes 41 real-estate-related conversations to create one transaction but I think you can lower that number if you are strategic about your friendships. Have you made it a point to go to lunch with estate, bankruptcy and divorce attor-neys? Have you befriended your local wedding planners, videog-raphers, photographers and midwives? Maybe it is time to start…

6. Local Papers – If you go to the business or real estate section of your local paper, at the bottom of every article

is the writer’s or editor’s contact information. They are cursed with the task of trying to come up with good content each and every day and that can be an overwhelming task at times – so why don’t you help them out? did you know that less than 14% of people believe what you write in a paid ad in your paper but over 85% believe what is written about you? You should be on the phone with and emailing your paper a minimum of once every two weeks to become their go-to person when they need a quote for an article or need an idea for something to write about.

7. Quality Investors – did you know that last year was the first year in history that over 30% of transactions were

paid for with cash? did you know that most of those transactions were not actually cash? They were quality investors who had lines of credit through hard money and private lenders that show up as cash in their offers. do yourself a favor and go to http://reia.org and find out where your local real estate investors as-sociation meets and start networking with these buyers. They are knowledgeable, quick and easy and are completely underutilized in our profession.

I could go into much more depth on each of these but the point is to whet your appetite and get you thinking. I look forward to hearing your response, connecting with many of you and an-swering your questions!

Jared James, RISMedia

Last week I called on my friend Jeff Lobb to provide what he thought were the 12 must have apps for real estate profes-sionals. This week I want to talk about seven different ways to help you grow your business in the immediate future.

Because I travel so much I get to have a unique view of our market. When sales people aren’t succeeding, I generally hear the same excuses as to why that is happening. one of the most common ones that I hear is that there just isn’t enough business out there. What I have found though is that the issue is not usu-ally a lack of transactions – the issue is that those transactions don’t have your name on them.

With that being said, here are seven different tools and strate-gies that you could leverage to change that fact.

1. Social Media – Yes, I know this is probably the most over-discussed topic on planet Earth, and while I don’t think

that you need to take a three-hour course on it to be successful, I do believe that it can still be a great business tool for you. My final two months as a full time real estate professional, I did seven transactions that came directly from Facebook. Think about it – how else can you connect with all of your past co-workers, high school & college friends and anyone else you have ever come in contact with? This is not the place to do nothing but post your listings and ask if anyone is looking to buy or sell though. The av-erage person buys or sells a house once every 5-7 years and 69% of those people consider themselves unrepresented. do yourself a favor and spend five minutes a day commenting on their sta-tus’, saying nice things about the pictures of their kids and grand-kids and updating your status’ with content that helps them get to know you on a deeper level or makes them feel better about their day. If you aren’t sure what to write, feel free to add me and check out the kinds of things that I post.

2. Listings-To-Leads – In a world where everyone is spend-ing too much time trying to prepare and learn, and not

enough time actually implementing, along comes Listings-To-Leads. What I love about this company is that they have systema-tized some of the tech stuff that so many real estate professionals want to take advantage of but just don’t have the time to learn. In short, for less than $20 a month, they give you all the tools that you need to create an amazing amount of leads off of your list-ings, leveraging landing pages, SEo and other tech-related tools. do yourself a favor and check them out: www.listingstoleads.com.

3. 10,000 Flyers – Some of us have become so awe struck by technology that we are forgetting to balance our mar-

keting and as a result end up leaving out key consumers. Here is a newsbreak – people still read the Sunday paper! I mean actually pick it up and read it with a cup of coffee in hand. You will have to check the pricing in your area but I used to create flyers of my listings and have 10,000 of them inserted into my local Sunday paper. The cost for me was $850 but I sold the back of the flyer

7 Ways to Grow Your Business Now

The case-Shiller indexes of home prices increased again when compared to the previous month or the previous year. Both the 10-city and 20-city seasonally-adjusted (SA) indexes rose 1 percent and 0.9 percent respectively

from May to June 2012. This is the fifth straight month for steady increases in the SA indexes. Since January, the 10-city and 20-city indexes have risen 3.5 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. All but two metro areas also showed positive SA May to June chang-es. dallas and charlotte declined 0.1 percent.

The year-over-year changes were also much more encour-aging than previous reports. At 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent re-spectively, the 10-city and 20-city annual changes were the first positive numbers since the end of the home buyer tax credit in 2010. Thirteen of the 20 metro areas experienced year-over-year increases and the seven that saw negatives were smaller (less de-cline) than the previous year-over-year comparisons.

Some of the positive news is the result of adjustments from

extremes. The largest peak to trough drop in home prices among the 20 metros was in Miami where prices fell 64 percent from de-cember 2006 to April 2011. From June 2011 to June 2012, prices increased 4.4 percent, third best increase of the 20 metro areas in the index. charlotte had one of the smallest total falls at 26 percent from August 2007 to February 2012 while the most re-cent year-over-year change was 0.8 percent, the smallest of the positive annual increases. The relationship is mild as can be seen in the linear approximation on the graph, but does suggest some relationship between maximum decline and recent recovery.

As economic curing continues across a broader segment of the country and the inventory of both existing and new homes dwin-dles, nAHB expects modest home prices increases to continue with some stronger improvement in the places that had the larg-est declines.

RISMedia

Good News for Housing: Home Prices Continue Positive Trend

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Sales of existing homes are strengthening and prices con-tinue to rise, stoking confidence in the housing market’s recovery.

According to the national Association of REALToRS®, resales of single-family homes, townhouses, condominiums and co-ops grew 2.3 percent in July from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.47 million. The measure took an unexpected fall in June.

Resales jumped 10.4 percent compared with the same month last year. Economists at the association believe sales could reach 5 million next year.

nationwide, prices were on a tear, with the median rising 9.4 percent from a year ago to $187,300 last month. The increase is the largest since a 10.2 percent boost in January 2006.

demand is stronger due to low mortgage interest rates and rising rents, according to Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief econo-mist.

But “the market is constrained by unnecessarily tight lending standards and shrinking inventory supplies, so housing could eas-ily be much stronger without these abnormal frictions,” Yun said in a statement.

Though first-time buyers made up more than a third of resale clients, in normal housing conditions they’d constitute 40 per-cent. Many are still being pushed out by investors making all-cash offers, even though the ranks of such buyers are shrinking .

distressed homes, which include foreclosures and short sales, made up 24 percent of sales in July, down from a quarter the pre-vious month and nearly 30 percent a year earlier.

The median price of a single-family home was $188,100, up 9.6 percent from the same period in 2011. Sales of such proper-ties rose 9.9 percent over the same period to an annual rate of 3.98 million.

RISMedia


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Construction Spending on Single-Family Homes up 40 Percent Since Recession Low

According to the census Bureau, private residential con-struction spending fell slightly for the month of July, af-ter three successive months of gains. The July value of private residential construction put in place was down

1.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. despite this small decline, which was driven by the volatile measure for home improvement spending, the overall trend in residential construc-tion spending has been positive, with July’s total standing as the second highest monthly tally since the beginning of 2009.

construction spending on new single-family homes was up 1.5 percent on a month-to-month basis and is up 19 percent from this time last year. Moreover, since bottoming out during the sec-ond quarter of 2009, the nominal dollar value of spending on new single-family homes has increased 40 percent. While the recov-ery in home building varies from location to location, the overall positive trend is expected to continue into 2013.

However, it should be noted that the current pace of activ-ity remains significantly below historical norms. For example, the July 2012 total is just 42 percent of the residential construction spending total of July 2003.

Multifamily construction spending increased 2.8 percent dur-ing July and has experienced gains in each of the last 10 months. overall, spending on new multifamily units has significantly in-creased by 68 percent from its low point in August 2010. con-

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“Construction spending on new single-family homes was up 1.5 percent on a month-to-month ba-sis and is up 19 percent from this time last year.”

Congratulations, Team Allison James Estates and Homes

We keep growing rapidly, and we are hav-ing a lot of success. If you look at the sales data for all brokerages here in Temecula

Valley YTd (8 months), we have now, for the first time, achieved the #1 ranking! This is ahead of cold-well Banker, Tarbell, keller Williams, century 21 etc...

Listing Brokerage Sales, $ VolumeAllison James Estates & Homes $35,259,800coldwell Banker Res-Vail Ranch $34,712,468keller Williams RE-Tem Valley $34,183,250Rancon Real Estate $29,043,621Homesmart $28,929,196other $741,075,094

All data was gathered from public MLS data.Thank you all for being successful and propelling

the company forward. James Crumbaugh III, Founder & CEO of

Allison Jame Estates & Homes

struction activity is expected to level out over the remainder of 2012, but we anticipate multifamily starts to remain well above 200,000 through the end of next year.

The home improvement category experienced a noticeable decline in July, falling 5.5 percent. Remodeling activity has re-mained in a relatively tight range for the past two years, although the drop in July may be related to limited mid-year weakness for existing home sales. It is also worth noting that the section 25c tax credit for making energy efficiency upgrades to existing homes expired at the end of 2011, which was supporting some remodeling spending.

RISMedia

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At the corporate office of Allison James Estates and Homes we know how important it is to keep advanc-ing our Technology and the tools that we offer to our agents. We are proud to announce that we have con-

tracted with Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies to roll out the first of many new and exciting tools we will be offering in the upcoming months.

Isn’t it time to connect with our agents?We will be rolling two unique solutions to manage our com-

pany’s front office and website needs.

WOLFconnectWoLFconnect is a powerful, integrated office system designed

to help everyone in our company become more productive, effi-cient and in touch – from the home office, company office or any other location with internet access. WoLFconnect keeps agents &administrators informed on listing changes, company news, up-coming classes and company events. WoLFconnect gives Broker/owners a real time window into company activity. Agents will be connected to their lead management, financial snapshot, person-al and company file, showing updates, important reports and so much more, online – 24/7 WoLFconnects tools can be modified to each individuals needs.

key Features & Benefits• Lead management and distribution• Showing scheduling and tracking manager with alerts and

great reports• Interactive and customizable home page with options

such as a rotating company photo album• drip marketing with step by step custom capabilities, al-

lowing you to really personalize messages• Event creation and management with easy-to-use track-

ing• In/out board to keep a handle on who is in and out of the

office which can be used for vacations or off-site manage-ment

• File storage for sharing important documents with office staff and agents

• Accounting reports for your agents with confidentiality access rules

• Full message center• econcierge

These tools and more will be at no extra charge to the agents and will be the way for us to truly have a Virtual office commu-nity.

globalWOLFAs an Add-on Module to the WoLFconnect program,

globalWoLF manages the design, customization, support and maintenance components of our new national and agent web-sites. Additional features include: Bing mapping, listing Enhance-ments, Lead management, Home Hunter personal property search, robust open House and Listing Search Functions, Web Traffic Reports to name a few.

Ready to take the next step?With our globalWoLF Website Solution you get all of the fea-

tures, benefits and power of WoLFconnect, plus a public website solution, integrated lead generation, agent website tools and so much more.

key Features & Benefits• company/Agent Website with custom features• My Home Hunter” offers your clients new listing notifi-

cation, the ability to save searches, favorite listings and request a showing on listings

• unique uRL per Listing• Easy-to-use editing tools for customizing company and

agent websites• Listing Enhancement tools for adding as many as 100 pho-

tos, custom titles per photo, additional remarks• Lead Management tools auto distribute leads, lead track-

ing• Enhanced contact Management that includes auto email

letters

Showing ManagerAccessed through WoLFconnect, the Showing Manager helps

staff quickly schedule showing appointments and manage show-ings for your agents.

key Features & Benefits• Email and text message showing notifications to the List-

ing Agent as well as the Showing Agent• Track inspection, appraisal, and other follow-up appoint-

ments• Track follow-up feedback• Listing data is fully integrated into the showing solution• Showing Reports• conditions synchronized from brokerWoLF on pending

deals

The globalWolf corporate and agent level Websites will have-Full IdX intergration to you MLS.

This is just the beginning of the tool box of technology that the corporate office will be building in the upcoming months.

Matthew Crumbaugh, President ofAllison Jame Estates & Homes

The Wolf is Coming

“We are proud to announce that we have contracted with Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies to roll out the first of many new and exciting tools we will be offering in the upcoming months. ”

11Automated Clearing House Payments (ACH)

Allison James Estate & Homes corporate of-fice is excited to provide additional services to facilitate faster transmission of agent re-ferral payments and commissions. With the

implementation of a more advanced banking system through Automated clearing House (AcH) funding and payments, corporate accounting can deposit your funds directly to your account in a matter of days.

Automated clearing House (AcH) forms have been sent to all agents to complete. If you have not re-ceived this form, please email Jill Lemons, Agent Rela-tions coordinator at [email protected]. All agents who would like to have any commission payments that may be received by the corporate office, direct depos-ited into their account must also submit this form to the Accounting department.

AcH allows us to clear checks within a 72 hour pe-riod and direct deposit your funds to your account thereafter. currently accounting is processing pay-ments back to the agents on Tuesday and Thursday of each week. This provides a much quicker turn-around than previously available, where many agents would wait over two weeks to receive payment on their clos-ing.

Effective october 20, 2012, ALL agent referral checks will be transmitted via the AcH system and di-rectly deposited into your account. If we do not have your form, we will retain your referral payments until it is submitted. If you have any difficulties with ob-taining the information from your bank or getting your form signed off, please contact Jill for assistance.

Should you have any questions, please contact Agent Relations.

Jill W. Lemons, Allison Jame Estates & Homes

Are you easy to work with? Do you go out of your way for the other agent?

The company asked how we do it. How is our Riverside and north county, cA one of the fastest growing groups nationwide? We were 5 agents 19 months ago and now over 100 agents!

I know it sounds so basic but when you are in a deal with someone, the way you handle yourself and counsel with your client goes a long way to help the companies reputation and the desire for the agent to ask about AJI. Are you going out of your way to make them want to accept your offer the next time? Are you “deliberately differ-ent”?

Set your self apart from your competition and oddly, that draws them to you, even if its out of curiosity.

We have a different spin that we promote to our group. If you are positive, helpful and professional... that goes a long way! People want to do business with other forward thinking, positive, professional peo-ple. If that is a “group”... people tend to want to be associated with that group.

our agents attract other agents because they go the extra mile for the other agent in a transaction and set themselves apart from the av-erage agent who just normally does “what’s necessary” to barely get the job done. don’t be that average agent!

Some people are bold and willing to just promote the company at all avenues and thats great, but so many of us are busy promoting our business or not comfortable in the avenue of recruiting so we have to find another way. That way is as simple as doing what is right! Go the extra mile. do things before they are asked of you. Have your lender keep the listing agent updated. Send the listing agent a thank you card after closing. Just set yourself apart and they will want to do business with you and more than that, they will want to know more about the company that is breaking records all around town.

We just announced that our little AJI group of 100+ agents is the #1 company in closed sales year to date!!! HuGE Accomplishment! We are not only playing with the big boys, we are beating them!

Another thing that we do within the virtual business model is to promote a slightly modified version or combination of the traditional model with virtual twist. We have networking events to allow agents to get to know one another or invite other agents to find out more. We host educational events and we started a monthly broker open house on steroids that each of our agents can participate in. It brings the AJI name out into the industry light in a positive, fun, professional way.....

Good is the enemy of Great; so be Great, you have have the option to make that choice! Set yourself apart from the average agent and be deliberately different, your actions will speak as loudly as your words in this case!

Goran Forss, Allison Jame Estates & Homes

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Like you, I struggle with the idea that to succeed, a real es-tate professional is expected to be an expert in all aspects of business. Brokers and agents are bombarded with all kinds of training they ‘must’ take, coaching they ‘need’,

technology seminars they ‘have’ to attend, ‘must-go-to’ confer-ences, marketing this, SEo that and so on. It’s overwhelming and in my opinion, not the best use of time and resources for most.

Marketing is one of those subjects that are not only complex but unfortunately, and respectably so, hardly well understood.

Although a single article will not cover everything there is to know about marketing, my hope is to leave you with a critical thought that stands to change your business, how you think of marketing and help shape your efforts in this area.

If all you do is re-program your business to address this single principle in marketing, you could set a new foundation for solid growth – even market dominance.

Simply said, it’s niche marketing. carving a piece of the pie for your business where you or your organization becomes known and referred to as ‘experts’ in a certain market segment.

The kind of market focus that inherently lends to the buildup of expertise that eventually no one else can claim overnight, truly setting your services apart.

This is the sacred part of the recipe for success in real estate. And for that matter, any business.

Whether you like donald Trump or not, the man knows a thing or two about marketing. In one of Trump’s early Apprentice TV show episodes, he noted that if one could not pin point their tar-get market with the tip of a needle, their business will fail. Yes, fail!

The typical business person or entrepreneur could keep go-ing in circles implementing different strategies, changing things around, blaming the market for this or that, yet without address-ing this single most important catalyst, limitations and challenges typically persist. don’t take this to heart though. It applies to any kind of business.

consumer product giants figured this out decades ago. A com-mercial that depicts 6-12 year old kids playing soccer in the yard, sliding on the field with their white socks picking up those famil-iar hard to remove grass stains while mom looks over from the kitchen window with a smile, does not happen by chance.

key to getting the box into the right household and the differ-entiating positioning in the marketplace is the laser sharp target marketing.

Examples abound. Just examine TV advertising campaigns by the world’s most successful brands, and you’ll start to notice more and more of a common approach.

Mind you, you’ll never again watch a commercial for its own sake, without making judgment or conclusions.

Another extremely important outcome – and opportunity to further validate the value of niche marketing, is more effective

use of your marketing resources.Imagine splitting $1000 advertising dollars to convince 20 peo-

ple with different issues, requirements and needs that your prod-uct is the right solution for each of them. The results can in no way match the impact of directing all these advertising resources towards just one group of 20 people that shares the same issue or need. They’ll be exposed to your message more frequently, across a number of mediums. They’ll hear about it on the radio, glance at it while passing a billboard, see it in the paper, hear about it from a friend and read about it in your newsletter or the local paper. And they’ll relate to it each time.

A higher rate of exposure to a single minded message via a combination of channels delivers the ‘frequency of exposure’ necessary for enhanced conversion. Frequency with a message that hits home (insightful, relevant messages that touch hot but-tons to make people stop and take a closer look), builds familiar-ity. With familiarity and frequency, trust and awareness for the brand evolves. And when the need arises, the product or service is top of mind with the prospective buyer.

This is one critical aspect of marketing that makes the phone ring.

It’s also a key catalyst that helps organizations weather tough times better than others, or do exceptionally well in good times, almost always contending for the top market share spot in their business.

In real estate, a niche may be military personnel, seniors, empty nester, university students or corporations who frequently relocate staff. Each of those areas of speciality, and the respec-tive audiences draw and respond to different messages. In fact, completely and entirely different stimuli drive each. As time passes, the insight you build around your chosen niche will turn into a goldmine of knowledge that shapes all your communica-tions. Website, business cards, voice mail, brochures, advertising, social media and others. If you’re a broker, having a team that specializes in a certain niche, itself, gives your business a unique competitive edge.

Search engines would also start to pinpoint your business more frequently, for your target group inherently searches using terms relevant to their lifestyle and needs. Integrate those into your online messaging.

And if you have strong knowledge or expertise in the distressed property, foreclosure or online real estate auction markets, high-light these facts in your niche-focused marketing communication. The auction space, a $58 billion dollar market in 2011 is a rap-idly rising segment that nAR (national Association of REALToRS®) projects will make up 1 of every 5 property transactions in the u.S. within 4-5 years. So go pick your target market and go after it! change everything.

Roger Noujeim, CrackerJack Agent

Real Estate Marketing? Stake Your ClaimMarketing is one of those subjects that are not only complex but unfortunately, and respectably so, hardly well understood. If all you do is re-program your business to address this single principle in mar-keting, you could set a new foundation for solid growth – even market dominance.

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Although there are a lot of creative ways to make your website a lead-generation and lead-capturing machine, there are also some things you might be doing that could totally thwart your plan of attack. certain web-

site elements are imperative for any online success strategy, and without them, you could be flushing money down the toilet.

Here are five mistakes that could be hurting your website sales:

1. Your site is too generic. People want information that re-lates to them. They want to land on a site that answers

the questions running through their mind. They want to get real information that relates to their needs. A site that gives cookie-cutter information will result in cookie-cutter leads. Have spe-cialized buttons like “Rental Properties,” “Waterfront Homes,” “Foreclosure deals” and more to give consumers what they really want. Also, sell the vision. change the photos on your home-page to relate to their needs and the markets they are interested in.

2. Your MLS search is broken (and you don’t even know it!). I can’t tell you how many times I come across websites

that, when I test the MLS search, have no lead capture compo-nents built in to grab the lead, and actually link out to a competing listing agent. To make sure your system is foundationally strong, pretend you are an active buyer. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were the buyer and asked for more information, who would get the lead? Are there ways to schedule an appointment? Map the property? Email to a friend/spouse or partner? You are only as strong as your weakest link.

3. calls to action are missing. To get the highest engage-ment with folks, you need to give them compelling rea-

sons to want to learn more or take the next step. Every page in your site should have something of value that entices visitors to ask for more. calls to action, such as, “know the 14 costly Mis-takes When Selling Your Home. Get the E-book now! Free!” will kick up lead generation and start the relationship process.

4. Your follow-up is lacking. Studies have shown that 68 percent of sales are lost due to lack of follow up. If you

have an MLS search and call to action, but are missing the piece where those leads funnel into an automated email campaign, then you will lose the connection and they will move on. It is imperative that you are positioned in front of prospective buy-ers when they go to the next step. If you are not staying in front of them during the home-selling or home-purchasing processes, they will not engage.

5. You have no lead management/tracking. It’s great to gen-erate a lead, but when it comes to understanding your

potential buyer or seller, you need insights into what they are searching for and how long they are engaging. Your IdX (MLS search) should have tools in place for you to be the “FBI profiler” so that you know how many leads are coming in, what follow-up plan they are on, what listings they are saving in their searches, and what they really want.

It’s all about understanding your target market and connecting with them differently than your competitors do. Have a system that effectively generates leads and connects and follows-up ef-ficiently so you can streamline your hours and maximize sales.

Tricia Andreassen, RISMedia

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When examining the overall picture of global real es-tate business in the united States, the facts speak for themselves: International buyers now account for $82.5 billion of residential purchases; global

business fared a 24 percent increase over last year; 27 percent of REALToRS® deal with international clients. This is just a slice of the data provided by the 2012 nAR Profile of International HomeBuying Activity, which strongly suggests that international business is a sector of the market that simply cannot be ignored.

To harness this rapidly growing trend, the national Association of REALToRS® launched an international response on their official website found at REALToR.com®. Since the launch of nAR’s inter-national efforts in november of 2011, the site has grown at an ex-ponential rate. The listing count has increased by over 60 percent as the site now sees nearly over 4.4 million active listings, 1.4 million of which are international and represent 22 countries. The data continues to speak volumes, as nearly one million unique visitors visit the website monthly from outside the u.S.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for us to not only be more receptive to buyers from other countries, but for folks in other

countries to be receptive to the opportunities that might exist in a recovering economy,” says Moe Veissi, 2012 nAR President. “For buyers in the u.S., this includes expanding their interests outside the borders of what they’d normally think were accessible.”

Given these opportunities outlined by Veissi, it makes perfect sense that nAR would want to streamline and simplify the buying process for international buyers who have proven their merit and continue to be reliable contributors to our overall housing mar-ket. According to Eleonore Rojas, Principal Product Manager of Move, Inc., the leader of the Move network of real estate related websites that includes REALToR.com®, international clients make up 4.8 percent of u.S. residential sales and have been much more active since the launch of REALToR.com® International.

“It’s very important for customers to have a space where they can take advantage of these options,” she says. “Engagement of our consumers has increased pretty substantially. compar-ing June 2011 with June 2012, we saw a 40 percent increase in searches from other countries on REALToR.com® and REALToR.com®/International combined.

In addition to working with 22 countries, REALToR.com® is


15adding more countries to its system on an almost monthly basis, most actively working with partners from canada. There is also discussion of integrating additional content from Europe, in par-ticular, Greece.

“That is quite an increase from the 11 countries we launched with. I predict we’ll add quite a few more by our first anniversary,” says Rojas.

Where Are Global Buyers Searching?Assessing further, who is searching and where they are search-

ing have become very important segments of data when consid-ering international clients and business. Although varying from month to month, the following countries have expressed the most interest in properties stateside: canada, Australia, china, India, the uk, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico and Japan, all of which are consistently in and out of the Top 10.

Where buyers from each country search also varies. Accord-ing to Rojas, canadians prefer Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Florida; Europeans and Australians gravitate toward Southern california, Vegas, Florida and new York; Mexicans tend to like Texas, califor-nia and Vegas; chinese shoppers look for Southern and northern california, chicago, Miami, and Vegas.

Some trends aren’t surprising, as with the case of chinese buy-ers, or those from Brazil, who tend to focus in on Florida. Proxim-ity becomes a leading search criterion for many. other trends are a little more calculated, such as Germans searching in Los Ange-les, San Antonio, Las Vegas, colorado Springs and Miami – all of which are homes to u.S. Military bases.

Although international buyers fluctuate in their u.S. city pref-erences, some cities do frequent the most-searched list. Accord-ing to nAR and REALToR.com®, the following cities were the most searched by non-u.S. consumers throughout the month of May 2012:

1. Los Angeles, calif. 6. chicago2. Miami 7. Houston3. Las Vegas 8. San diego4. new York 9. Fort Lauderdale5. orlando, Fla. 10. San Francisco

Veissi believes that in conjunction with these major markets profiting and flourishing, micro-markets are sure to be on the bound as well. Word of mouth is a powerful tool working in our favor as foreign buyers and investors return to their homelands and parlay their thoughts and feelings about certain locales.

“You have that energy that exists because folks like to be with people they know and the best recommendation frankly is from somebody you have faith in and are close to,” says Veissi. “That’s how these micro-markets begin to develop. I think you can look at the major markets as remaining major markets across the board, but I think you’ll see some other minor markets begin to develop as buyers become more Americanized.”

Las Vegas: A Closer LookTo truly understand the impact of international business in our

country, lets take a closer look at one of the more prolific ma-jor markets working within the global market today: Las Vegas. Although many refer to Vegas using the trite moniker “Sin city,” Las Vegas has so much more to offer foreign investors. It’s clean, convenient and easy to navigate. It has 24-hour medical facilities within a short distance of almost every area. And yes, there is that whole entertainment factor. Add in the lack of income tax, incentives for business owners, and low-humidity weather, and

it’s easy to see why Las Vegas is such an attractive option for non-u.S. buyers.

“Las Vegas is an international mecca and practically every transaction has some global element to it,” says Tamara Tyrbous-lu, broker-salesperson and educator for Realty one Group in Las Vegas. “Practically all of my business is either directly or indirectly related to this niche, whether it’s consulting for a developer in Brazil, cooperating to procure purchasers for a casino in Macau, representing buyers from Egypt or mentoring agents on how to market their properties and listings abroad.”

Speaking of global elements, one of Tyrbouslu’s current buy-ers is an Australian who works in South korea and handles his finances in Hong kong. “He’s looking to retire to Las Vegas, which is a growing trend I am witnessing in our marketplace,” she says.

Tyrbouslu is also a nAR certified International Property Spe-cialist (cIPS), a designation that provides brokers and REALToRS® with the knowledge, research, network and tools necessary to help globalize one’s business. Thanks to her cIPS training, she has an entire network of “elite and enlightened industry leaders” at her fingertips. “My best referrals come from cIPS designees and they are the first agents I seek out when referring clients to an agent elsewhere in the u.S. or the world,” she says.

According to Tyrbouslu, international investors are typically practical with their finances. “They have been watching the mar-ket; they are patient-minded; and they are sensitive to market cycles and seasons with reasonable expectations of returns on their investments.”

The American marketplace in general has plenty of pros to of-fer international buyers, including property rights, the ability to insure title, political, social and economic stability, and religious and cultural freedom. For these reasons and more, areas like Las Vegas are active and thriving with part of the thanks due to this international niche. “We are truly a place that honors everyone’s freedom to worship as they choose, and celebrate multicultural-ism and diversity,” she says.

A New Boundary-Free NormalThanks to a landscape of ever-adapting technology, society

and the real estate industry have reached a new normal. This new normal is without boundaries, revitalized by an influx of informa-tion, proving that open possibilities are on the horizon for any interested party regardless of location. Through this modernized looking glass, the world is a bit smaller, bringing stateside oppor-tunities to the shores of Brazil, South korea, Ireland, and beyond. Buying a Tuscan villa, a Spanish hacienda, or a homey abode on the water in croatia seems more possible now than ever before. With more and more REALToRS® working with international cli-ents today, servicing this niche has never been more important.

“We definitely have a much more engaged consumer audi-ence from non-u.S. visitors than ever before, and that was why REALToR.com® International was one of the big services that we wanted to offer,” says Rojas. “At the end of the day, our main goal is to connect real estate professionals with consumers to pro-mote homeownership, and we saw a very big opportunity to ser-vice another audience.”

“There’s a lot going on today that maybe 20-30 years ago, peo-ple wouldn’t have worried about,” adds Veissi. “Today, we’re not only worried about it, but we’re involved and want to be progres-sively proactive so we can accommodate not just those investing in America, but those Americans who would like to find second, third or fourth homes overseas.”

Nick Caruso, RISMedia

Everyone has been there, minutes before your documents are due and the website just won’t accept your upload. Should you start over again? Try a different browser? Toss the computer straight out the window?

All of the above are viable options (maybe some more than others), but this month, we’d like to pass on a couple of tech tips that may make this scenario play out a little better—not to men-tion save you the cost of replacing your now destroyed Pc.

nine times out of ten when we receive a support call for docu-ment upload issues it boils down to one common problem: file size. Your one or two page documents upload just fine, but that pesky 24-page contract just won’t go. Let’s say the current on-line document management system accepts files up to about 4-5 megabytes (MB) in size. To check the file size of your document, right-click on the document and select “Properties.” If it is above

the recommended 4-5MB range then it’s time to check the dPI (dots per inch) settings on your scanner software. By dropping the dPI to a lower but still legible setting, you should be able to get almost any document below the limit.

You could also check a few other settings in your scanning soft-ware: black and white vs. color and image quality settings. Black and white tends to produce smaller files, and “Image Quality” settings can be changed to “low” as you should be working with mostly text documents and not photos.

The next time your files refuse to upload to the cloud, try a few of these options—and remember, a quick email to the Support Team at [email protected] requires a lot less time than replacing your smashed Pc.

John Joyce, CEO of Republic Technologies Corporation, leading the IT Support efforts for Allison James Estates & Homes

What to do when your files just won't upload

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THE nATIonAL InTERnET BASEd REAL ESTATE BRokERAGE

I want to personally thank all who have helped grow Allison James Estates and Homes® to the successful, virtual real es-tate company it has become!

Jessica WithersVP of Agent Relations

941-677-2544

We, at Allison James Estates & Homes®, understand that our own agents are the Best Recruiters! Everyday we add new agents to the company that you, our realtors have referred.

Allison James Estates & Homes - October 2012 EMagazine Issue 40

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