Relevant Technology for Real Estate

Some realtors treat Virtual Tours / Slideshows, and Single Property Websites (SPWS) such as www.123mainstreet.com as equivalent products. Being the inquisitive types, we investigated this in a reasonably analytical fashion.

Here’s what we found:

SPWS are a great way to consolidate all the information regarding a property in 1 place online. Pictures, descriptive text, housing inspections, disclosures, termite reports, MLS data, custom templates, etc.

Homeowners love the “vanity plate” aspect of the SPWS.

BUT HERE IS THE GOTCHA: SPWS get very little Internet buyer traffic! When you think about it, this makes sense. How many Internet buyers search for www.123mainstreet.com? Close to zero. Instead they search for a 3BR, 2BT house, in Sacramento , between $400K and $500K. The SPWS will not show up in these search results.

On the other hand, the Internet buyers who do search for a 3BR, 2BT house, in Sacramento , between $400K and $500K, will be presented with a set of listings that meet those criteria. The listings with virtual tours and multiple photos will get over 600% the traffic as those without (realtor.com).

We’ve measured traffic difference between a virtual tour and a SPWS by posting the same property with both.

The virtual tour or virtual slideshow will get 1,000 times or more the number of hits as the SPWS. (No, the 1,000 number is not a typo, and we have hard statistics.)

And interesting, but not explainable: We’ve posted the same listing with a virtual tour and SPWS to Google. Then searched Google for www.123mainstreet.com. Many times our virtual tour comes up higher in the search results! Go figure – only the search gnomes at Google know the answer.

Here is the summary:

You need a virtual tour, slideshow, etc., to attract Internet buyers. An SPWS alone won’t be effective.

But an SPWS can be very effective, and save you time, as the single online place where all the information about a listing is stored.

Providing a vanity URL or customized domain name may get you a listing – just because homeowners love them. (Any of our virtual tours or slideshows can be ordered with customized domain names, and accompanying sign riders.)

Hi Everyone!

When the market’s run its course, the smoke has cleared, the rain is gone, and the sun rises once again - the profile of the successful realtor will be very different.

The Internet will change Realtors, much like the Internet changed other industries during their respective downturns in the 90’s, such as Travel, Autos, and Personnel).

(Note: This is NOT the Lion over the Hill argument.)

Future successful realtors will be Hyper-Local Internet Realtors.
Here is why:

1) Buyers continue to spend MORE time online searching for houses prior to contacting a realtor. Searchers are getting more sophisticated, using second level search. Example: Instead of searching on San Jose Real Estate, they search on San Jose Rose Garden Real Estate. (BTW – we saw this same evolution 10 years ago at Infoseek. Users eventually became so good at drilling down with search that they completely bypassed the directory structures of Yahoo and AOL.)

2) Virtual Tours, Single Property Websites, Virtual Flyers, etc., provide more and more information, ever reducing the need to contact a realtor for “factual” information.

3) The search process will be dominated by national search sites. Research done almost 9 months ago showed buyers preferred national sites to realtor sites because they have more listings and better selection. (Realty Times - http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20080429_realtyviewpoint.htm). That trend continues with more national search sites coming online every day.

4) Latest Example: On May 14^th, Google added Real Estate to maps. Go to Google Maps, click “Show Search Options”, and select “Real Estate”. Mashups like this represent the future of real estate search. There is a limited set of info on Google itself, then links to the original listing, virtual tours, single property website. It’s hard to see what “factual” information a realtor could add to this.

5) Sellers are becoming more sophisticated. Not to mention that they are 10-20 years younger than most of us. They will spend more time and become better at using the Internet with each passing year. (Full disclosure: I’m eligible to join AARPL)

When the wreckage has cleared, we’ll find that Buyers / Sellers will value (1) Hyper-Local information; and (2) Internet expertise.

1) HYPER-LOCAL INFO.
They have any number of sources to figure out how good / bad the national and state markets are. Blogs will tell them how the county and city markets are (Will yours be one of them?)

But they will need a Hyper-Local Realtor to provide the soft and fuzzy cultural and ambiance information on specific neighborhoods - they can’t get it anywhere else.

2) INTERNET EXPERTISE:
Although they are very good at using the Internet for information, they aren’t very good at understanding how it actually works.

Cars are a good analogy: Everyone can drive one, but few of us can fix one. Or perhaps closer to home: I grew up in the Internet age. My kids can certainly text message faster than me, but they have no clue what is the difference between FTP and HTTP, why the home network needs a RAID system, or how to connect to a network drive or printer.

By the same token, the vast majority of sellers will not have the expertise to market their home on the Internet.

So…..How do you become a Hyper-Local Internet Realtor? Our opinion in the next newsletter on May 28th

Did you know that your eWalk “My Account” allows you to update the Listing Price and MLS Number on your PDF Flyer? And, actually, if the MLS data has updated and given us a new Listing Price, then your PDF Flyer is updated automatically. All you have to do is login to your eWalk account and click the flyer link.

It seems that many folks like to email or call with updated pricing information, and ask us to update their flyer, when in fact they could just login and update the price and print their flyers in an instant.

All you have to do is login to your eWalk account at: www.ewalk.com/login Enter your email address and password (if you forgot your password, just click “Forgot Password”, enter your email address and we’ll send your password in a few seconds).

Once logged into your eWalk account, click the flyer link next to the tour/listing that you want to be updated. If the price isn’t updated, then close the flyer window and click “Edit Tour Info” next to the tour/listing. From the Edit Tour Info screen you can update the Listing Price and/or MLS Number. Once saved, go back and click the flyer link again. The Listing Price and/or MLS Number will be udpated on your flyer.

If you need more changes like paragraph/bullet wording or photos swapped, we can do that for you, but we charge $20 to update your PDF Flyer. Also, if you need us to print more flyers for you, please email or call and we’ll be sure to print/ship right away.

Hi Everyone!

You may have noticed that we changed our tour interface recently! We’ve spent a lot of time making sure everything works correctly - but - please call us if you see anything you are unsure of !

You can click here for examples: eWalk Tour Directory, or copy and paste http://www.ewalk.com/directory.cgi into your browser.

We’ve increased Hits: Reducing Click Fatigue by eliminating a click and page re-load. All thumbnails are on 1 page so viewers can see ALL stills and Panoramic Scenes by just selecting the appropriate thumbnail.

Increased YOUR visibility by moving Realtor Contact Info to a more desirable “higher ” position on the page.

Every tour now includes:

Super-Sized Photos and Panoramas! You’ll marvel at the detail in these giant wonders.

Embedded Maps - both regular and Super-Size! - Includes Streets AND Satellite Image

The Slideshow portion of our tour can now be customized from the Realtor Control Console :

Transitions include Blend, Move/Blend, Fade In/Out, Bubbles/Blend, Bubbles, Left to Right/Blend, Left to Right, Pin Hole, Photo Flash, Star Blend, Random

Slide Duration can be changed to any of 3, 4, 5, & 6 seconds)

Music is now included on every tour! All settings can be controlled from your Realtor Control Console

Default is “ON” but you can change it to on or off for your all your tours. Users can turn it on or off on a per tour basis

Music selection includes Classical, Easy Listening, Jazz, Mood, R&B.

Tours also include a link to property information, Realtor.com, and the MLS

“My Account” is where you can manage your virtual tours. (This section was formerly named the “Realtor Control Console”, but we thought the name was confusing.)

When you get a chance, please check it out at www.ewalk.com/login. You need your email address and your password. If you can’t remember your password, just click “Forgot Password”, enter your email address and we’ll email your password in a few seconds.

Once you login, you’ll notice several things.

1. Active Tours

2. Contact Information

3. Media Settings

Let’s focus on the Active Tours section for now. For each tour, you have the ability to

1. Upload Photos: allows you to add your own photos to your tour.

2. Sort/Rename Photos: re-arrange or re-name the photos in your tour. You can also remove photos using this feature.

3. Edit Tour Info: update listing price and description. (Note: We do try to update the listing price using MLS data that we retrieve on a regular basis. At the minimum we retrieve MLS Data every 7 days.)

4. Tour Statistics: View your tour hits; they are updated every 30 minutes.

5. Download Photos: you can easily download tour photos here.

6. Distribution Status: Where your tour has been loaded, e.g., which websites we post directly to.

7. Flyers: if you purchase flyers from us, you can view/print them by clicking the flyer name next to your tours. Price information is updated automatically on our PDF flyers.

And, don’t forget to click “Email Coupons” in the main Menu - if you send a Coupon to a friend who becomes a new ewalk customer, then you receive a 20% discount coupon in return.

It’s astounding the number of different ways viewers get to our virtual tours!

40% - Links on Other Websites

18% - Direct to eWalk

18% - Searches on Google, et all

18% - Links in emails

2% - MySpace (first time this has shown up)

Breaking down the Links on Other Websites:

-Most come from Craigslist

-The majority of the non-Craigslist links come from the Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow, Redfin, ZipRealty, the corporate websites or the local MLS website.

-The Coldwell Banker websites are most popular corporate websites, followed closely by Intero and Alain Pinel. We get very little traffic from RE/MAX, which is puzzling since their website is one of the most popular.

Searches are primarily on Google and MSN Live. Yahoo is conspicuously absent. Searches tend to either be for “ewalk”, “123mainstreet.com”, or something like “davis real estate”.

Links in emails are a surprisingly strong source! Most of the clicks came from Google mail, Yahoo mail, Comcast mail, etc. Very few clicks came from corporate mails systems such as cbnorcal or interorealestate.

And….drum roll please…MySpace showed up this month. This is the first time a social networking site has provided any significant traffic.

Disclosure: This is Ron’s story as best I have been able to determine by using the web. Unclear how much is Urban Legend. Corrections, comments, and additions are more than welcome!

Wonder where the late night cable TV infomercials came from? Well, you can blame inventor and marketer extraordinaire Ron Popeil.

Born in a family of inventor / marketers, he had a tough childhood. Shuttled between foster homes, and his grandparents, he ultimately went to work at Woolworth’s with his Dad. It was here that learned to read consumers, knowing what products and features would work, and which wouldn’t.

He went on the county fair circuit in Illinois after inventing the “pocket fisherman” in the 1950’s. Customers would approach his booth, take a look at the invention, and think / say, “That’s really great, but what on earth would I do with it?” And so they would walk away.

To keep them from leaving, Ron quickly came up with “But wait, there is more”, and would throw an extra trinket into the deal, often a wood block or knives from behind the booth.

This helped – but too often he would hear “Great, I’ll be back after I get some Cotton Candy”. Knowing that this was a death sentence, e.g., he would never see them again, he came up with the coup de grais, “And if you buy now” to close the deal.

In that late 50’s, Ron took the format to the new media called “TV”. (Urban legend says it was the Ed Sullivan show.)

The results? In 2005, he sold his company Ronco for $55M.

As for the rest of us, we have his legacy. Every late night cable TV infomercial follows the same format: “But Wait, There’s More”, and “If You Order Now”

Hi Everyone!

We are doing a limited announcement of a “Shoot’em Yourself” Virtual Slideshow to our existing customers and the folks that read this blog.

This means that:

• You shoot the pictures and upload them to our website.
• We create the tour and post it to the sites below. Order Now

BTW - hopefully we come up with a better name in the next 2 months

The price of this full featured tour is just $19 from now until July 1st! (The price will be $49 when we publicly announce the tour on July 1st.)

This tour is comparable to the “Hitmaker” shot by our professional photographers. (Example, Click Here) Features include:

Virtual Slideshow with:

• Choice of (new) music and transitions
• Mapping
• Links for your website and blog
• Weekly Statistics, emailed to you every Monday

Posting to:

• Google, Trulia, Vast, Ooodle, Zillow, Geebo, Homeseekers.com, Homes.com and company websites where available.
• craigslist “Do It Yourself” Ad: with a few clicks from your ewalk account, you put an HTML ad on craigslist. It’s stunning, and certainly stands out among the other black/white text ads.
• A link to post to your MLS - available from your ewalk account.
• Realtor.com (optional; may have additional $25 cost)

We are telling a limited number of realtors about this product. You won’t find any mention on our website, nor any advertisements in the media.

What’s the catch? By doing a limited announcement to a small group of realtors we get a chance to tweak the features on the tour. So if you don’t mind, we will ask for your comments e-mail after the tour is done.

The tour MUST be ordered online, at www.ewalk.com.

WHEN YOU ORDER, YOU MUST PUT “DIY” IN THE COUPON CODE BOX!

If you have any questions please call 800-711-4980, x0 between the hours of 8:30AM and 3:00PM, M-F.

Thanks!

I’ve got an all black, customized mini cooper with bunch of performance stuff on it. I’m the envy of all of the local high school kids. They all noticed when I recently got the windows tinted - and - ooed and ahhed over how cool the car looked.My wife? She didn’t notice for a week, and then only after I told her about it!Similarly, when shopping with her, I invariably get confused over which is the good stuff, and which is the junk. Much to her disdain.Is this the reason why realtors continue to post listings with no pictures or bad pictures? They don’t recognize good from bad because it’s not something they are interested in, or have expertise in?We continue to see many listings on the Internet with either no pictures, or poorly shot pictures. Here are some of the latest statistics, portions of which are excerpted from an article by Gar Benedick on RIS Media, 4/1, 2008.Point2 (point2.com) conducted a study monitoring listings over a 30-day period which clearly showed:•· Properties with one photo generated approximately five views and 1.37 leads, •· Listings with 21 or more images received over 77 views and close to 11 leads. Clearly, the listings that added 20+ photos generated nearly 10 times the number of leads and over 15 times the number of views.Another study relating to the number of photos a listing posts compares photos to the number of Days on Market (DOM). The findings show that listings with more photos sold faster. This is the shake down on the photos to Days on Market (average) analysis.- 1 photo = 70 DOM
- 6 photos = 40 DOM
- 16-19 photos = 36 DOM
- 20 photos max - 32 DOMAnd listings with fewer photos sold for less. The Closed NET Price as a percentage of the Original Price also showed a direct correlation. (These findings are based on 2006 numbers and are again estimates.)- 1 Photo = 91.2% of Original Price
- 6 or more = 95% of Original Price

According to these findings, a $600,000 home, sporting only one photo, could sell for as much as 3.8% LESS or a loss of over $22,000, just because there was only one photo accompanying the listing. More amazing is the fact that only 12% of agents posted the maximum 20 photos.“Photography, photography, photography” will soon replace “Location, Location, Location” as the new catch phrase when selling. When you look at the difference between photos taken by a professional and ones taken by brokers/agents with digital cameras, it’s not hard to see that you get what you pay for.But the majority of the listings in Silicon Valley and the Sacramento area continue to have no pictures, the “drive-by shooting” of the front of the house, or very bad pictures! Why is this?

We recently did photos for a client who - while we were there - asked us to take some pictures with her point and shoot camera for her flyers. Our professional pictures would have been available the next morning, but she didn’t want to wait - she wanted to do her flyers that afternoon.So we shoot the pictures - with predictable results. Without a wide angle lens and flash, the rooms looked cut-off, and appeared small and dark.  They were terrible: Bathrooms were the worst - you end up with just a picture of the toiletBut the realtor was ecstatic with the pictures - she thought they looked great! So in a flash of understanding it came to me - most realtors don’t recognize the difference between a good and bad picture.

So my question is: Do you think most realtors don’t realize they are taking bad pictures?

Here are some statistics we found interesting, plus a conundrum we are unable to solve. (eWalk announced Tour Statistics in Sept. – You can check it out by Clicking Here)

Personalized URL’s (www.1234MainSt.com) do SURPRISINGLY WELL at driving traffic. You might consider one on your next listing.

In the last 2 weeks of September, we got hits from over 500 referring sites. We get hits from 10 foreign countries, including China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Peru, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, and Canada.

Our stats show that Trulia at only .3% of total traffic. But Trulia is dramatically understated. Trulia pushes traffic to the listing brokers site, so a buyer on Trulia who clicks on a Coldwell Banker listing will be taken to the Coldwell Banker site before they click on the virtual tour. So our stats show the buyer coming from the Coldwell Banker site.

For those negotiating price decreases with their sellers: Sixteen of 24 metro areas experienced price declines during July 2007 compared to July 2006, with the most severe price drop in Sacramento, where the price per square foot fell 12.7 percent year over year.

Conundrum: 72% of Sacramento agents did at least 1 transaction in the last 12 months, compared to 55% of SF Bay agents over the same time period. But – sales activity in the Bay area has been MUCH higher than Sacramento – any guesses on how to interpret this?