How to stop worrying and learn how to love ChatGPT (and its uses in real estate)
There is a lot of excitement about the promise of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, and a lot of confusion about some of their (false) promises. There's also no small amount of anxiety about the future of the industry as automation becomes increasingly popular, widespread, accurate, and inexpensive. Do agents need to worry about their jobs? Or can AI be a tool for good? This article will attempt to answer some of these questions, with a (little) help from ChatGPT itself (but we can assure you, most of this article was written by a living, breathing human).
What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
Last year, we predicted that artificial intelligence was one of the top trends to watch in real estate tech. We couldn't have been more right. Since then, broad-scale application of AI has taken off, and innovative companies are finding novel ways to use it in every single industry.
But what is artificial intelligence (AI)? Let's recap: AI uses the power of computers to do things that used to be reserved for humans: "seeing" and recognizing things from pictures, recognizing and processing human speech, making complex decisions, writing text, and even driving cars. AI relies on vast amounts of data, computer programming, machine learning, and deep learning. It is incredibly complex, and until very recently, was reserved for a select few and the scientists working on the models that power it.
How can AI be applied to the real estate industry?
Real estate is a data-driven industry, and artificial intelligence has the superpower of being able to sort through and spot patterns in data faster than any human ever could, and faster than computers traditionally could in the past, too. This means that there are dozens of applications for AI in the real estate space, including:
Property search and recommendations: More accurate and more personalized property searches based on consumer preferences and needs.
Market analysis and accurate pricing: AI algorithms can look at historical data to identify trends, current market conditions (when provided), and predictive analytics to estimate exactly what a particular property will sell for.
Chatbots and virtual assistants: Chatbots can help brokers and agents serve consumers better by being available 24/7 to answer questions and provide support. The buyer or seller's agent can pick up where the chatbot left off when they log back in.
Is AI going to put real estate agents and brokers out of business?
Real estate has always been a relationship business. It's about who you know, who you can connect to whom, and how well you serve your clients. Tech tools are a great way to serve them better, but without human connection, your business will be sunk before it even sets sail.
AI can help real estate professionals save a lot of time and think outside the box. It can speed up brainstorming, writing listing descriptions, editing text, finding higher quality leads, and more. But it is not a replacement for professional expertise. Not convinced? Here's what ChatGPT has to say itself:
How can real estate agents and brokers use ChatGPT?
There are many ways agents and brokers can use tools like ChatGPT to make their work easier. Here are a few that we came up with ourselves:
1. Listing descriptions
Sometimes, the inspiration simply isn't flowing. In some offices, an admin writes all the listing descriptions being input into the MLS, not the listing agent, which means that during busy periods, an admin could be writing a dozen descriptions in a single day. By the tenth one, they're probably running out of things to say. A tool like ChatGPT can help write a great first draft.
Our headquarters is in Newport Beach, California. To test this tip, we asked ChatGPT to write a 150-word listing description for an unlisted property down the street from our office. This is what it wrote (we have not made any edits except redacting the address):
Introducing [address], a captivating residence nestled in the desirable Newport Beach, California. This stunning property offers a harmonious blend of modern elegance and coastal charm. The meticulously crafted architecture showcases a timeless appeal, while the location provides convenience and tranquility.
Step inside to discover an inviting interior flooded with natural light. The open floor plan seamlessly connects the spacious living areas, creating a perfect environment for entertaining guests and enjoying everyday living. The gourmet kitchen boasts top-of-the-line appliances, sleek countertops, and ample storage space.
Retreat to the luxurious master suite, featuring a private balcony and a spa-like en-suite bathroom. Additional bedrooms offer comfort and versatility for family members or guests. Outside, the landscaped backyard invites relaxation with its lush greenery and a serene patio area.
Conveniently situated near pristine beaches, renowned schools, and vibrant shopping and dining destinations, this residence offers the epitome of coastal living. Don't miss the opportunity to call this house your home—an idyllic sanctuary in Newport Beach.
Is this description perfect? Far from it. But it is a highly perfectible first draft that the listing agent or admin can customize with the relevant details. They can even ask additional questions or provide additional details (like number of rooms, featured amenities, etc.) to refine the description even more, or ask ChatGPT to make it sound more luxurious, more casual, or easier to read.
2. Nurture campaigns
Nurturing new leads is one of the most important things real estate agents do. Considering that real estate leads can take months, if not years, to convert, keeping them warm is key. We've shared our own tips for effective nurture campaigns, and ChatGPT can be a helpful resource for designing a whole persona-based nurture campaign and even creating a first draft of the emails you can send. We asked ChatGPT to design a five-email nurture campaign for a first-time homebuyer, and here are the subject lines of the five emails it suggested:
Welcome to the Exciting World of Homebuying!
Discovering the Perfect Place to Call Home
Let's Find Your Dream Home!
Crafting a Winning Offer for Your Dream Home
Closing Day Is Almost Here!
A great nurture campaign is the foundation, but the most efficient, successful agents also have a real estate CRM to help them put their campaigns into action.
3. Social media posts
Social media is a goldmine for real estate leads, but it can also be a tough medium to master. And while tips abound to help real estate agents get the most out of social media, sometimes, it's just too challenging to come up with relevant, readable content on your own. This is where chat ChatGPT can come in handy: type a prompt like, Please help me write three tweets to encourage potential homebuyers to visit my open house at noon on Sunday, and watch as ChatGPT helps you write and format three tweets, complete with hashtags. You can edit them, find the perfect listing photos to go with them, and schedule them to post throughout the week.
Better yet, you can pair tweets that ChatGPT helped you write with an automated social publishing tool like Constellation1's Digital Marketing Suite, which puts your social media marketing on autopilot and generates relevant posts from your active listings, industry news, real estate tips, and more.
We thought there must be other ways ChatGPT could help agents, so we asked it to suggest the top three ways it can help make brokers' and agents' work easier. Here's what it said (shortened from the original output, but not substantively edited):
Lead Generation and Qualification: ChatGPT can engage with potential clients, capture their information, and qualify leads.
Customer Support and Information Provision: ChatGPT can handle basic customer inquiries, provide information about properties, schedule appointments, and answer frequently asked questions. This frees up agents' time by automating routine tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex client needs and providing personalized assistance when required.
Market Research and Insights: ChatGPT can be trained with up-to-date market data, enabling agents to quickly access information on property prices, market trends, and neighborhood demographics.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways agents and brokers can harness the power of ChatGPT. However, the first claim about being able to generate and qualify leads is an interesting one. If you ask ChatGPT to elaborate on how to do this, it gives you a whole list of tasks that include finding a ChatGPT-compatible platform, training it on your lead criteria, setting it up with lead capture, teaching it how to qualify a lead, then integrating the platform with your CRM, and finally assigning leads to a nurture campaign. It's a lot! Thankfully for you, there are already lots of tools available that can help you capture and route leads with incredible speed and accuracy. Why not save time and effort and look into the best real estate CRM that already exists on the market?
Some important warnings about ChatGPT for real estate
There has been a lot of hype and excitement about AI in general and ChatGPT in particular in recent months, and given how quickly things are advancing, this hype is not going to die down anytime soon. Even still, there are well-documented issues with large language models like ChatGPT that all real estate professionals should be aware of:
Hallucination: Hallucination is a phenomenon where the model generates responses that seem plausible (and confident) but are not based on factual information or have no grounding in reality and are in fact completely false. This could be about something as simple as a fact about the neighborhood a property is located in or something more complex, like disclosure requirements in a neighboring state. This is why your expertise as a professional is always important.
Lack of Common Sense and Context: ChatGPT is predictive, it's "guessing" what the next likeliest word in a phrase should be to answer the prompt you've given it. It's not actually thinking, and it isn't "smart." This means that answers are based on statistical patterns, not intelligence. So, oftentimes, answers are completely nonsensical.
Bias: Models are trained on data that was necessarily generated with some sort of bias, and therefore answers will always exhibit a certain level of bias, too. Looking at answers through this lens will help you identify and reduce bias in anything ChatGPT gives you.
Ethical Concerns: ChatGPT has been accused of plagiarism, privacy violations, copyright violations, and more. Anything that you input into ChatGPT becomes part of the public domain, and so using it with confidential information can pose a potential legal risk to you or your brokerage. Avoid typing in any personal identifying information (names, phone numbers, etc.) or anything confidential. You may also decide to include a disclaimer identifying any material that was generated using AI, so readers know when they're looking at content that an expert on your team wrote, versus a tool like ChatGPT.
Parting wisdom for real estate professionals who want to work well with ChatGPT
Here are a few common-sense rules to help you add ChatGPT to your work while minimizing the risk of any issues:
Take everything you read with a grain of salt. Don't assume anything is correct because ChatGPT said it is. The consequences could be serious.
Put your own spin on it. Reword, paraphrase, add your own flair, whatever you need to do to make ChatGPT output sound like your own writing, in your own voice. This will help you sound authentic and personable, even when it's a computer helping you write.
Perfect your prompts. Answers can vary widely depending on what you ask. If you don't get an answer that satisfies you, ask your question another way, or ask ChatGPT to refine its answer. You may be surprised what new nuggets you find.
In the end, ChatGPT says it best:
While ChatGPT can support real estate agents, it is important to note that it is not a substitute for the personalized expertise and guidance that agents provide. Agents should still maintain a hands-on approach in complex negotiations, building relationships with clients, and offering tailored advice throughout the home-buying or selling process.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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AI Primer: What Every Real Estate Professional Needs to Know About Computer Vision
Real estate's digital landscape is rapidly evolving with two interconnected technologies creating transformative waves within the real estate industry: Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
These game-changing technologies are shifting paradigms, enabling real estate professionals to interpret and utilize data in ways previously unimaginable – revolutionizing real estate both today and in the future.
Computer vision and AI are not just creating a ripple, but are enabling a tsunami of change. As a real estate professional, the ability to understand and utilize these technologies could well be the difference between riding on top of the wave or being swept away by it.
What is computer vision?
Computer vision, a subset of AI, fundamentally changes how we interact with and interpret visual data. It's an AI technology that "teaches" machines to understand the visual world, similar to a human, by translating images into structured data points that can be analyzed and used.
Real estate is a visually driven industry. Decisions throughout all verticals of real estate are made by looking at listing photos, virtual tours, 3D models and videos. However, while it may only take a human a minute to review all the images of a listing, it quickly becomes unscalable for a single person to analyze all the images of every property in an entire market. Thus, computer vision's ability to extract valuable, actionable insights from these digital assets, at scale, represents a pivotal breakthrough in our industry.
Understanding the role of AI
AI, the broader technology under which computer vision falls, adds another layer of value. Its capacity for learning and adaptation means that these systems become more intelligent and effective with more use.
In real estate, this means predictive analytics that can forecast market trends, machine learning models that automate property valuations, natural language processing tools that generate compelling property descriptions and image tagging that unlock new data from the photos agents upload for their listings.
Today, both computer vision and AI are already significantly impacting the real estate industry. They're streamlining processes, providing more precise data, enhancing customer service, and even opening new avenues for marketing and sales. From speeding up the listing process with auto-populated property details to providing a more friendly experience to potential buyers through immersive search, computer vision and AI are reshaping the entire process for listing creation and promotion.
Examples of computer vision in real estate today
Auto-tagging for Fast, Comprehensive Listing Uploads: Computer vision is being used for image tagging, or the ability to extract details about a property from its listing photos. Everything from the basics, like the room depicted in each image, to the more advanced, like a property's features, mechanicals and architectural style, can be instantly analyzed. Restb.ai provides this technology to MLSs, automating the listing process by auto-populating standardized fields, tagging each photo and feature, writing individual photo captions and creating powerful property descriptions for agents to edit, select, and publish instantly.
Benefit: This new technology significantly reduces the time it takes to upload and create a new listing. Instead of having to scan hundreds of fields and checkboxes, agents can simply review and edit a pre-filled listing form. Most importantly, like all Restb.ai solutions, the agents remain in control of the final posting of all content before uploading. Additionally, our analysis has shown that AI helps agents add 30-50% more features to each property, creating a more robust, data-rich set of information for the MLS that improves future searches.
Automated Photo Compliance: Another solution that Restb.ai provides MLSs is photo compliance. It leverages computer vision to automatically scan images for MLS/association rules and regulations violations. While it is infeasible for humans to quickly and efficiently review the multitude of photos uploaded every day, AI can instantly detect people, branding, watermarks, artificial text, duplicate photos, and more.
Benefit: A built-in compliance feature significantly reduces the risk of fines or suspensions and saves compliance staff the time and effort it takes to review each image manually. With each potential violation being flagged immediately, it allows staff to only spend effort reviewing the less than 1% of images that may be problematic. Furthermore, it ensures a more consistent and timely enforcement of rules, which results in a cleaner and more compliant MLS dataset.
Automated Property Descriptions: Thanks to advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI can now generate unique, captivating, and SEO-optimized property descriptions. When combined with the unique data and visual insights computer vision can extract from photos, these descriptions become even more powerful. Moreover, the AI can also be trained to understand U.S. Fair Housing Laws and MLS rules and guidelines, such as word counts, to ensure that every AI-generated description is compliant.
Benefits: While many companies are popping up with new AI-powered solutions, MLSs powered by Restb.ai have an ongoing market and competitive advantage versus newer solutions. With a more than five-year head start, it is theoretically impossible for another computer vision firm to "catch up" to Restb.ai's advantage of being first to market years before their competitors. In addition, by remaining the cutting-edge solution, agents and consumers receive responsible AI, dramatically reducing liability risks.
Instant Property Matching through Visual Search: Restb.ai empowers MLSs to use computer vision to power image-based property searches based on visual similarities. Users can upload a photo of a feature they like – such as a white kitchen or an industrial living room– or select a favorite photo from another MLS listing. Available to MLSs via Restb.ai's MLS Match, agents and home buyers can now search for properties in an immersive and personalized way.
Benefit: Agents can recommend this new tool when working with clients who struggle to articulate what they want but know it when they see it. By using visual examples, you can help clients more easily communicate their preferences and can help them find their dream home more quickly.
The (near) future of computer vision
Looking to the future, the implications for computer vision reshaping everything from how buyers search for a home to how homes are renovated and re-designed are even more profound.
Imagine a world where a potential buyer uploads an image of their dream kitchen, and a computer vision-powered search engine provides a list of available properties with identical or similar kitchens within seconds. It could inform buyers of how frequently those homes are on the market, or, in the event there are no matches, it could provide a renovation plan and budget for other homes on the market. As a result, agents and consumers will see in real time what a new or newly remodeled home could look like – and cost – as they offer "what if" changes.
Alternatively, envision a system that continually analyzes the images of the thousands of properties in your market. At a hyper-local level, it could provide insights on the trends of properties being sold. Are white cabinets becoming more or less common? What is the impact on DOM if the listing photos were taken when the sky was overcast? For a particular property in a particular neighborhood, is it worth the extra $25k to renovate the bathroom before listing? These are all imminent realities that will change the way that homes are bought and sold.
For today's real estate professionals, the challenges – and opportunities – created by computer vision and AI remain in understanding, adapting, and harnessing the potential of these technology tools. Those that take advantage and embrace this opportunity, will benefit from a massive leap in productivity and will ultimately thrive in this new frontier.
Nathan Brannen is one of real estate's most experienced artificial intelligence veterans. He is the Chief Product Officer for Restb.ai, the leader in computer vision and AI for real estate. With over a decade of proven experience in AI, Nathan specializes in partnering with industry innovators to implement AI technology.
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4 Ways to Stand Out from the Competition with a Presale Renovation
Successful real estate agents know that one of the keys to growing their businesses is to differentiate themselves from the competition. Research from the National Association of Realtors shows that real estate agents who pursued professional development and specialized certifications earn a higher median gross income than those who did not.
One of the most potent ways a real estate agent can stand out from their competition today is by mastering the art of presale renovations. This expertise differentiates you from the pack and catapults your clients' success.
Incorporating presale renovation services into your business model can set you apart from other agents. In fact, a study published by the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics discovered that agents who differentiate themselves by providing additional services and advice about home staging or home renovations sell homes at higher prices than those who do not.
By gaining expertise in this area, you can confidently promote this service within your personal website, marketing materials, communication channels, and social media platforms.
Here are four tactics that will equip you to leverage presale renovations, setting the stage for more listings and higher-priced closed transactions:
1. Build Presale Renovations into Your Listing Presentations
Make sure to have a conversation about presale renovations with every seller. Many homeowners may not have the funds or know-how to make necessary improvements, but a home renovation firm can help them without any upfront costs. These fees are taken from closing when the home sells.
Pro Tip: Share success stories and before-and-after photos from presale renovation projects (examples at Revive.com). This will show the potential value a presale renovation may bring to your clients, helping them make more informed decisions.
2. Reach Out to Past Clients
You know that keeping in close touch with past clients can keep you top of mind and reinforces your image as a resourceful, proactive real estate professional. It strengthens your relationship and opens doors for future opportunities, whether a direct transaction or a referral to a family member or someone they know.
Many agents struggle to find an unobtrusive way to reach out to clients and offer something of value. Sharing your knowledge of presale renovation information can be the perfect reason to reach out.
Many homeowners may be stuck with properties they can't maximize in value due to a lack of funds or repair skills. By reaching out to past clients and offering your presale renovation expertise, you can help them achieve a higher sales price. This can be a win-win situation for you and your homeowner clients.
Pro Tip: Create a targeted email – or local postcard – campaign highlighting the advantages of presale renovations and offering your services to help past clients get their homes ready for the market.
3. Host a Free Online Demo or Webinar
You can reach more people and educate your sphere – including potential clients –about the benefits of presale renovations by hosting an online demo or webinar. You can use platforms like Zoom or even conduct a live Facebook broadcast, which can be recorded for future on-demand views. Engage with your audience during the demo or webinar, answering questions and providing valuable insights. This interactive approach will help establish your expertise and credibility.
Pro Tip: Focus your promotional messaging on the wealth-building aspects of this hot new trend and how it can help unlock homeowners who are stuck and help them maximize their profits when they sell.
4. Launch a Social Media Campaign About Presale Renovations
Creating a social media campaign dedicated to presale renovations also can help you reach a broader audience and position yourself as an industry expert. The key is to create and share informative content, success stories, and relevant tips to engage with potential clients and showcase your expertise in presale renovations. Reach out to a presale renovation firm, like Revive, to access their before and after examples with all the financial specifics.
Pro Tip: Use a mix of content formats, such as images, videos, reels, and carousel posts, to keep your audience engaged. Leverage popular hashtags and engage with followers by responding to comments and messages. Consider collaborating with industry influencers or local vendors to expand your reach and drive engagement.
A trusted, knowledgeable advisor
As a real estate agent, guiding your clients toward the best path for their specific needs is crucial. Don't let them fall into the DIY trap; instead, emphasize the value of working with a presale renovation firm that provides a turnkey service. By doing so, you'll help your clients achieve the highest possible sales price for their homes and establish yourself as a forward-thinking agent who genuinely cares about their client's success.
If you're ready to stand out from the competition and elevate your real estate business, start incorporating presale renovations into your service offerings today.
Remember that differentiation through additional knowledge and skills can lead to better financial outcomes for you – and your clients
Michael Alladawi, CEO and Founder of Revive, is a Southern California real estate veteran with a proven track record as a builder, investor, and respected home flipper. Michael created Revive to share his spectrum of knowledge and help homeowners maximize their profits when selling their homes.
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Who Owns Your Content: You or OpenAI?
You hear a lot of things at real estate conferences. A notion Marilyn Wilson most recently heard while at NAR REALTOR Legislative Meetings was that OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, owns the content that you provide them. As someone extremely interested in most things AI, I immediately did some research. Where did I start? Naturally, OpenAI's Terms of Use – Section 3.
The important details are summarized below:
(a) Your Content. You may provide input to the Services ("Input"), and receive output generated and returned by the Services based on the Input ("Output"). Input and Output are collectively "Content." As between the parties and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you own all Input. Subject to your compliance with these Terms, OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output. This means you can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or publication, if you comply with these Terms. OpenAI may use Content to provide and maintain the Services, comply with applicable law, and enforce our policies. You are responsible for Content, including for ensuring that it does not violate any applicable law or these Terms.
The blue portion very clearly states that the user owns both the input and the output. But it also says, "OpenAI may use Content to provide and maintain the Services, comply with applicable law, and enforce our policies." So what does that mean? Great question – it depends on where you live. OpenAI's ChatGPT has become an international sensation, so it really depends on your location and what the laws are in your area.
Interestingly noted in this article on JDSupra, OpenAI may not have the right to assign all these rights to you.
It should be noted that OpenAI only assigns all "its" right, title, and interest in and to the output to the user. However, if OpenAI does not initially own the rights, it cannot assign them. Another related issue is that other ChatGPT users can narrow the assignment scope. OpenAI's Terms of Use state that due to the nature of machine learning, many users may receive identical or similar outputs from ChatGPT.³ This leads to another set of issues, including determining original ownership rights (if available), the potential destruction of ownership rights over time, and murky usage rights in the future.
Unsurprisingly, who owns the rights to the content is as clear as mud. But what we do know is that the content is probably not considered intellectual property (IP) if it was exclusively generated by AI. A certain amount of the content must be created by a human. Of course, this begs another question: what's the difference? For example, I took this article and had ChatGPT proofread it (oh, the irony). So most of this article was written by a human, but all of it is considered output.
The key takeaway is simple: OpenAI probably has no rights to any content, be it input or output, when you use their platform. They may, however, use your content to make their services better.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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AI and Real Estate Business Management, Part 2
We continue talking about AI in the real estate industry (see part one here). In this part, we will focus on different types of AI and ethical issues associated with artificial intelligence.
What Are the Different Types of AI?
Generally speaking, there are four types of AI:
Reactive – Reactive AI has no memory and only reacts on specific stimuli. In a nutshell, reactive machines don't have a concept of the past and aren't aware of the things that happened in the past. Reactive machines are perceiving the world directly.
Limited Memory – This AI uses memory and data analysis to learn and improve. Self-driving cars are one example of limited memory AI.
Theory of Mind – This will be an AI that understands different needs of other intelligent species. Theory of mind AI will be a first step in creating a self-aware AI. Artificial intelligence of this type understands that humans and different entities have a mind of their own, emotions and thoughts that influence their behavior. Understanding each other was the first step in creating societies for humans.
Self-Aware – This will be an AI with human-like awareness. It's the type of AI that many are so scared of. As the name suggests, this AI is not only aware of other entities' needs and emotions, but it is self-aware, placing it on the same level as humans.
Right now, we've reached only the limited memory AI type. But the landscape of artificial intelligence is practically boundless.
What Are the Ethical Issues of AI in Real Estate?
So, what are real estate professionals' main concerns when it comes to AI?
Unemployment - One of the obvious concerns is the ethical issue of unemployment. Real estate agents are concerned that AI will replace them and completely transform the real estate industry. What we see right now is that we are using reactive machines and limited memory AI. We are far from advanced AI types that might threaten our employment prospects. AI right now helps to improve and make more efficient the business management aspect of real estate.
Data Protection - Since limited memory AI heavily relies on data analysis for development, there are valid concerns about data protection. Real estate professionals are concerned about the legal and ethical framework of AI using data from buyers and sellers. Some have called for important regulations that will control what data can be used by third parties such as AI. Others have said that customers should also be aware of the inner workings of AI, so they could make informed decisions. All in all, transparency will likely be important when it comes to AI.
Discrimination - Recently, we've seen that discrimination is one of the top concerns in the real estate industry. Since AI can be used for matching people with properties based on the price point and location preferences, there are legitimate concerns about clients being discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexuality, or religious preferences. Considering that AI is still a human creation, human prejudices can be built intentionally or unintentionally into AI algorithms. Another important aspect to consider is that AI uses data to learn. This data is often unfiltered. Microsoft's AI chatbot Tay showcased what can happen when data is assimilated the worst possible way.
Lack of Regulations - AI is a new frontier with new possibilities and threats we yet have to discover. The lack of regulations is something that is a concern not only for real estate agents. We are pioneers that have yet to establish ethical regulations for AI that will help us to avoid discrimination issues. But one thing is clear—technology is becoming an essential part of the real estate industry. Opposing it is like going against a tidal wave. Instead of resisting technological advancement, we should harness the power of it, assimilate it and understand it, thereby removing the negative stigma and creating a positive experience for every real estate professional.
How Does AI Change Real Estate?
One thing we should mention is that AI and real estate agents are not enemies. Real estate professionals already are using some variations of AI in their work. One example is chatbots. Chatbots give us an opportunity to have constant communication with clients. AI is a supportive tool that helps real estate agents to improve their job performance, but performance itself is solely dependent on real estate agents.
We all know that buying or selling a house is not just data analysis and prediction. It's also a property showing and discussing many little details that can't be emulated by an AI, at least not an AI that we have right now.
Will AI Take Real Estate Over?
The current situation demonstrates that we're far from self-aware, human-like machines that are autonomous in decision making and don't require human assistance. So, to answer the question, no. Right now AI is merely a tool. It's great and very sufficient, and oftentimes it is helpful in decision making, but it's just a tool. Real estate professionals are still the core of the real estate world. AI is not replacing real estate professionals; it is augmenting them.
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
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The Hidden Costs of DIY Presale Renovations: A Guide for Real Estate Agents
As a real estate agent representing sellers today, you may find homeowners are eager to maximize their return on investments and be tempted to take on DIY improvement projects. To help your sellers make the right choice, it is crucial to understand the risks and potential pitfalls of pre-sale renovations.
Every DIY project comes with pitfalls. But few projects take on the magnitude or the impact of a DIY home renovation undertaking. The challenges associated with DIY presale renovations can lead to significant setbacks with hidden costs that are only uncovered after it is too late.
Let's look at some of the most common hidden costs that are typical to sellers wanting to do their own upgrades and repairs compared to the advantages of partnering with a professional firm with a proven track record that specializes in presale renovations.
1. Time and effort
Sellers often underestimate the time and effort required to complete DIY presale renovations. What may seem like a simple project that might take a few days can quickly turn into weeks or even months of work. As a result, the property won't be on the market when planned, causing the seller to lose potential buyers, and possibly compromise the listing as the homeowner may become overwhelmed by what their undertaking and decide to wait to sell.
2. Inexperience and mistakes
Homeowners who lack experience in home improvement may make costly mistakes during the renovation process. Incorrect installations, poor quality materials, and lack of attention to detail can lead to further expenses down the line. Hiring a professional firm with in-house designers, project leaders, and a network of professional, high-quality contractors ensures the job is done right the first time, saving your clients from these costly errors.
3. Permits and building codes
Many homeowners are unaware of the need to apply for building permits and the impact of local building codes that regulate renovation projects. Navigating this complex process can be time-consuming and often frustrating – especially for someone who is inexperienced in dealing with local government regulations. Failure to obtain the necessary permits may lead to fines, delays, and even the need to redo the project. A professional presale renovation firm knows the permitting process, understands local building code requirements, and can handle all the necessary paperwork, saving your clients time and potential headaches.
4. Safety risks
DIY presale renovations can present safety hazards for inexperienced homeowners. Electrical, plumbing, and structural work can be dangerous if not performed correctly. Many of these projects require licensed and certified professionals, all of whom have liability insurance coverage. The risk of injury or property damage increases when homeowners try to tackle these projects on their own. A professional firm that specializes in renovations will have the necessary safety equipment, training, expertise, and insurance coverage in place to complete the job safely and reduce homeowner risks.
5. Reduced resale value
In a worst-case scenario, when a DIY presale renovation is executed poorly, it can actually decrease the value of the home. Potential buyers are turned off by subpar work and may factor in the cost of correcting mistakes when making their offers. Hiring a professional firm specializing in presale renovations ensures high-quality work that adds value to the property.
Bottom line
While a DIY presale renovation may seem like a cost-effective solution for sellers, the hidden expenses and potential risks make it a highly unattractive option. As a real estate agent representing sellers, it's essential to educate your clients about these overlooked aspects. You can help your sellers by guiding them to partner with a professional presale renovation firm. By doing so, you'll help your clients avoid costly mistakes, ensure they experience a smoother selling process, and most importantly, help them obtain the best possible sale price for their home.
Dalip Jaggi is at once an active entrepreneur, a highly skilled technologist, and a profoundly passionate business leader. Today, Dalip is co-founder of Revive Real Estate, a PropTech with a goal to democratize house flipping.
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Creating a Great First Impression: The Role of Pre-Sale Renovations in Real Estate
Here are some reasons why pre-sale renovations are essential for today's market:
Increase Property Value: Renovating a property before putting it on the market can significantly increase its value. By making updates and repairs, you'll be able to list the property at a higher price point, potentially earning your client a greater profit. On average, agents that partner with Revive help their clients make an additional $186,000 in added profit. As a bonus, well-maintained properties are more attractive to potential buyers, who may be willing to pay a premium for a home that's turnkey. In fact, 7 out of 10 of today's buyers would sacrifice square footage for a move-in-ready home!
Faster Sale: Did you know renovated homes sell faster by 72%? When a property is in turnkey condition, buyers are more likely to make an offer quickly, knowing that they won't need to invest time and money into repairs or upgrades. In contrast, a property that needs a lot of work may sit on the market for months, with little to no offers or interest.
More Interest: Every listing agent wants a property marketed as a "hot home." A renovated property is more likely to attract a larger pool of potential buyers. Buyers want move-in-ready homes and are often willing to pay a premium for them. A renovated property can also help your listing stand out from the others, generating more interest and potentially leading to multiple offers.
Better Photos: Again, first impressions matter! Especially, in today's digital age, the first impression of a property often comes from online photos. A pre-sale renovation can help make the property look more appealing in photos, leading to more clicks and views online. Professional photos of a renovated property will show off the updates and repairs, creating a better first impression for potential buyers.
Good Reputation: As a real estate professional, your reputation is everything. By recommending pre-sale renovations to your clients, you'll be seen as a proactive and knowledgeable agent who is committed to helping your clients get the most out of their property sale. This can lead to more referrals and repeat business in the future.
Agents that partner with a listing concierge are the ones maximizing the value of their listings. By investing in updates and repairs before putting a property on the market, you'll increase its value, speed up the sales process, generate more interest, create better photos, and build a good reputation as an agent who goes above and beyond for their clients. Pre-sale renovation partners, like Revive, offer agents an all-in-one solution for their clients by fronting the cost of needed repairs and renovations with $0 money out-of-pocket. It's a real estate game changer that'll increase your commission and increase your client's profit. Talk about a win-win.
Learn how you can sell for more.
To view the original article, visit the Revive blog.
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Guide to AI and Real Estate in 2023
AI is short for Artificial Intelligence, a computer system that makes decisions and makes problem solving a lot easier.
There are two types of AI: general AI and narrow AI. General AI is an artificial intelligence capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can do. On the other hand, narrow AI is an artificial intelligence that specializes in a higher level of intelligence that can be difficult for humans to attain.
AI systems have three parts: data, algorithms, and processing power. Data refers to the information used by the system to make decisions or solve problems, and processing power refers to how fast the computer can execute these instructions.
The Possibilities of AI In Real Estate
In the past, the real estate industry depended solely on more traditional methods of completing transactions. However, with the introduction of technology, even real estate professionals without coding skills can now set up their websites, get access to listing data on a simplified platform such as the MLS feed, as well as generate leads without much cold-calling or door-knocking.
Real estate agencies are using AI to automate various parts of their business processes. For example, they use AI to generate new leads, gain listing data through the MLS, and more. They also use it to find properties that match buyers' preferences.
Also, financial real estate services use AI in several ways, such as to monitor investing portfolios for performance and making predictions for the value of investments based on historical patterns. They also use machine learning techniques to extract insights from data sets that would be impossible to do by hand.
What Are the Main Benefits of Using AI In Real Estate?
Just like in other economic sectors, AI is making its mark in the real estate industry. Let's look at some of the benefits of AI for real estate professionals.
It helps agents better understand clients' needs
Agents can now provide better customer service
With AI, real estate agents can make more informed decisions
Agents can locate new customers using AI
AI helps reduce costs for real estate agents, especially in cases where doing it manually would be more expensive
AI also helps agents create effective marketing campaigns
There's improved agent productivity and efficiency with AI
Conclusion: Why the Future of Real Estate and AI Looks Exciting
Shortly, we expect to see many more AI applications in the workplace. From marketing to customer service, AI can do much more for real estate professionals. Therefore, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the industry and will be able to help agents easily reach their goals.
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
Related Reading
Fact vs. Fiction: 3 Myths of A.I. in Real Estate
How Real Estate Agents Can Use ChatGPT
How ChatGPT Can Help You Generate Real Estate Marketing Ideas
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How Real Estate Agents Can Use ChatGPT
Real estate agents are always looking for ways to improve their business and stay ahead of the competition. One tool that can help them do this is ChatGPT, which is a large language model developed by OpenAI.
Let's first discuss what ChatGPT is and how it functions. ChatGPT is a machine learning model that uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like text. It can be used for many different things, including responding to questions, writing essays, and even coming up with poetry. It can comprehend and respond to a wide range of questions and prompts because it was trained on a vast amount of text data.
ChatGPT has become quite a powerful tool — as of January 2023, the model was said to have over 1 million users and counting, which is incredible considering it was launched on November 30, 2022. The future of AI is bright, and it will be a tool that is useful for people from all industries.
In this blog post, we will discuss how real estate agents can use ChatGPT and the benefits it has for their business. Read on to find out more!
The ability to save time
The ability to save a ton of time is one of ChatGPT's biggest advantages for real estate agents. Agents can concentrate on more crucial tasks that call for their individualized attention and expertise by using the model for tasks such as responding to inquiries and creating property descriptions.
The machine learning model can assist agents in boosting their productivity by automating routine tasks like responding to frequently asked questions, creating property descriptions, and creating social media posts. This can free up the agent's time so they can concentrate on more crucial tasks like showing homes and closing deals. In turn, it can also help to build trust and loyalty with clients, which can lead to more referrals and repeat business.
The ability to create (in many, many different forms)
Property Descriptions
ChatGPT can also be used by real estate agents to generate property descriptions. Writing property descriptions can be time-consuming and challenging, particularly if you don't have much writing experience. ChatGPT can assist by generating accurate and interesting property descriptions, which may help draw in more prospective buyers.
Social Media
Agents can use ChatGPT to assist them in producing interesting content for social media as well! The model can produce posts that are both interesting and educational about the local real estate market, recent sales, and suggestions for home buyers and sellers. This can aid agents in gaining a social media following and drawing in more customers. With ChatGPT, agents can quickly generate high-quality, engaging content that will help them stand out in a crowded market.
Improved Quality
In connection with the previous two paragraphs, ChatGPT can help agents to improve the quality of their work. By using the model to generate property descriptions and social media posts, agents can ensure that their content is accurate and engaging, which can help attract more potential buyers to a property.
Personalized Emails and Messages
Additionally, ChatGPT can be used by real estate agents to generate personalized email and message responses to leads and clients. This can help agents to save time and increase their effectiveness in communication.
This can be done by inputting information into the chat box within ChatGPT, then the model can make use of the said information to generate a personalized response that is tailored to the individual's needs and interests. The model can also generate emails that contain relevant statistics and information about the local real estate market, which can possibly help to establish the agent as an expert in their field. Additionally, ChatGPT can also be used to generate follow-up emails that are designed to keep the lead engaged and interested in the properties and services that are offered by the agent. This, in turn, can help increase the chances of the lead becoming a client and making a purchase.
Talk about a powerful tool! That could be incredibly helpful to any agent who deals with a numerous amount of clients on a daily basis.
Marketing Campaigns
Agents can create individualized and successful marketing campaigns with the aid of ChatGPT. Agents can develop targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to turn leads into sales by using the model to analyze data on customer behavior and preferences. This can aid agents in generating more income and expanding their clientele.
Using ChatGPT to create personalized marketing campaigns can help real estate agents increase their revenue and grow their business. By targeting the right audience with the right message, agents can ensure that their marketing campaigns are effective and deliver the right results.
The possibilities for ChatGPT are endless!
We tried playing around with it ourselves, and asked it to explain to real estate agents in the voice of former president Barack Obama.
Here's what it created:
As the President of the United States, I have seen firsthand the potential of technology to improve our lives in countless ways. One of the most exciting developments I've seen is the rise of ChatGPT, a powerful language model developed by OpenAI.
In the world of real estate, ChatGPT can be a game changer. It can help agents automate repetitive tasks and improve their overall efficiency, allowing them to focus on what really matters: closing deals and serving their clients.
One way ChatGPT can be used by real estate agents is through natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. This allows agents to communicate with potential clients in a more human-like manner, whether it's through email, text, or on a website chatbot.
ChatGPT can be trained to understand and respond to common real estate-related questions, such as property listings, pricing, and availability. This can save agents a significant amount of time and allow them to focus on more important tasks.
Another way ChatGPT can be used by real estate agents is through its ability to generate written content. This can include property descriptions, listing descriptions, and even social media posts. With ChatGPT, agents can quickly generate high-quality, engaging content that will help them stand out in a crowded market.
ChatGPT can also be used to improve customer service by providing instant answers to common questions and concerns. This can include providing information on local schools, transportation, and other community amenities.
In the coming years, I believe we will see more and more industries adopt technologies like ChatGPT. And, I have no doubt that this will lead to a more efficient, productive, and prosperous society for all Americans. This is what I believe, and I will continue to support this kind of innovation and growth in the technology industry.
Can you believe that?
ChatGPT can even take on the voice of other people and write words on their behalf. How cool is that?
In conclusion, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that real estate agents can use to improve their business. By incorporating the model into their customer service, property descriptions, social media content and personalized responses, agents can save time and improve the quality of their work. As the technology continues to advance, we can expect to see more real estate agents start to adopt ChatGPT and other AI-based tools to help them stay ahead of the competition.
To view the original article, visit the Transactly blog.
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Top 5 Reasons Why Homes Today Need to Be Move-In Ready
The real estate market is changing dramatically.
Home buyers are exerting a greater influence on today's housing market than they have in years. Home inspections, seller concessions, finance contingencies, and price adjustments are back.
Real estate agents are facing this latest shift by educating sellers about what today's market means to them and the sale of their house. The challenge one veteran agent observed is that "sellers are viewing the real estate market today as if it were six months ago, while buyers are looking at it as if it is six months from now."
Home buyers have more power in this market, and what they want more than anything else is a move-in-ready house. Where in the previous market, sellers didn't have to think about their home's condition, updates or upgrades, in this market, it's vital to at least have that conversation.
While there will always be circumstances where an "as-is" listing is the best option for a seller, innovative new ways for homeowners to offer a move-in ready home solves the most common seller obstacles.
Today, presale renovation services, like Revive's complete turnkey solution, are available for real estate agents to share with their homeowner clients. Revive offers home renovations — from minor prep work to full remodels that cost up to $300,000 or more — with $0 due from the homeowner until closing.
Why is it vital that sellers avoid an "as-is" listing and bring their home to market move-in ready? Here are the top five reasons sellers will want their agents to list a move-in ready home:
1. Market shift: "As is" homes are now tougher to sell. Buyers are gaining more negotiation power and no longer must settle for a purchase without contingencies. In addition, an as-is home sale can break apart when that home requires traditional financing, as lender requirements have standards that all homes must meet.
With the return of inspections, buyers can see all the features — and flaws — a home has before the purchase is complete. Many buyers will not want to make needed repairs after the sale. These changes in the real estate landscape cry for move-in ready homes.
2. Millennials want move-in ready homes: Today, Millennials comprise 43% of homebuyers, the highest share of any generation, according to a study by the National Association of Realtors.
What's more: A recent TD Bank study found that nearly 80% of Millennials want move-in ready homes. They want to avoid fixer-uppers. The NAR study also found that 70% of Millennial home buyers would choose a smaller home, giving up the need for more space, to secure a move-in-ready home.
3. Move-in ready homes sell faster, helping real estate agents sell more homes: Real estate agents nationwide report that as-is homes are staying on the market longer. Revive's research shows that renovated homes sell 72% faster than other homes listed for sale. The quicker a home sale can be closed, the more time agents will have to help other sellers. Move-in ready homes speed up an agent's pipeline, allowing them to sell more homes.
4. Move-in ready homes sell for more: When a home is renovated to maximize its appeal to the greatest number of sellers — Revive's tactic — these move-in ready homes become an immediate equity builder. Homes renovated by Revive, for example, generate an average $186,000 gain in profits because move-in ready homes sell for more money. In addition, when agents recommend their homeowners use a renovation solution like Revive, they boost their average return on their investment, or ROI, by a stunning 257%.
5. Competitive differentiator for agents: Most real estate agents are unaware of new presale renovation solutions that innovative companies like Revive provide. Also known as Concierge firms, the programs and services provide renovations without advance funds from the seller.
At Revive, a team of designers and advisors connect agents and their sellers to a vetted network of contractors to swiftly complete high-quality work without the risks of going it alone. Once the home is renovated, the agent lists the move-in-ready home, which sells for more money than it would have if marketed as-is.
Agents who work with a renovation solution, like Revive, differentiate themselves in their local market. Take real estate agent Chalon Williams, a Keller Williams real estate agent in the Seattle area. She and her seller worked with Revive to turn what would have been an as-is listing estimated at $875,000 into a $1,300,000 sale.
The Revive-led renovation provided flooring, interior painting, kitchen remodel, lighting enhancement, staging and more. The total renovation cost was $157,756 netting $267,244 in additional profits for William's seller.
Revive reports it has already helped its sellers like the one on Bainbridge Island create more than $60 million in greater profits. Dozens of examples are online at www.revive.realestate/customer-stories.
For agents, a presale renovation means higher sales prices, which translates into a triple win: it often creates life-changing wealth for sellers, a higher net commission for agents, and greater profits for their brokerage.
To learn more about how presale renovations work, visit www.revive.realestate.com.
Michael Alladawi, CEO and Founder of Revive, is a Southern California real estate veteran with a proven track record as a builder, investor, and respected home flipper. Michael created Revive to share his spectrum of knowledge and help homeowners maximize their profits when selling their homes.
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Running Out of Space? A Dropbox Primer: What Every Agent Needs to Know
Is your hard drive running out of storage space? Are you tired of dealing with file size limits when sending emails or losing them in long email threads? Fear not, because the internet has a solution designed specifically to make full drives a thing of the past while maximizing your ability to share your files.
Today, hosting most of your files online (using an online service to store your files on remote servers) has become ubiquitous with the digitalization of the real estate sales process. As a result, file hosting as a business has become massive. For example, Google Drive boasts more than 1 billion users and 2 trillion files, while the early champ in the space, Dropbox, reports 700 million registered users and 550 billion pieces of content.
The top three file-sharing services, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive, dominate the offerings available with 77% total market share, according to Enlyft research.
Because Dropbox was established four years before Google Drive, many real estate agents are avid Dropbox users. In addition, Dropbox is a dynamic choice, especially for agents to keep their files and team in sync with one another.
What makes Dropbox so helpful is that it gives you easy access to your files, no matter your digital device. The service also stores your files on multiple servers and uses encryption technology to keep your files incredibly safe from viruses and scammers.
But there's much more to Dropbox than using it as your digital hard drive.
Here is a brief primer on what every agent needs to know about Dropbox.
Intro to Dropbox
Access to Dropbox requires an account, and it's easy as creating a new email. Simply enter your name and email address, create a strong password, and agree to the terms of service: your account is all set to go!
It's also simple to add new files to your Dropbox. You can drag and drop files from your device into the Dropbox folder. On your PC, your Desktop will show your saved folders and file, the same as if it is on a local drive.
If you want to save files manually instead of dragging and dropping files, that's simple too.
First, go to your Dropbox account and click on the "All files" tab in the left sidebar. Then, navigate your mouse to the folder where you want to save your selected files or folders. From there, click on the "Upload" button. Select the "Upload files" or "Upload folder" tab, depending on your needs. Your file and/or folder should show up. Click on "Open" to confirm everything is there.
The power of sharing
Dropbox offers a mobile app that allows you to manually upload files, photos, and videos on the go. And since you are storing your files in the cloud, you'll have an easier time sharing your files and folders – no matter where you are.
With Dropbox, agents can quickly share files and folders they want to show to their coworkers, administrative assistants, team members, or clients.
To start, scroll to the item you would like to share and select the "share" icon that appears. From there, type in the email or name of the person, people, or group you'd like to share the selected file or folder with, then select the "Can Edit" or "Can View" option from the dropdown menu. Under settings, you can customize who will access your downloads and even require a password or set an expiration date for safeguarding. From there, just click on the "Share file" or "Share folder" option, and your recipients will receive an email invitation to instantly access what you have shared.
That email invitation gives them a hyperlink to access on Dropbox the files you shared. (The recipients don't need a Dropbox account.) And since you are not sending copies of the physical files, your email never exceeds its sending limits.
Advantages to Dropbox
One of the key advantages of using Dropbox is its versatility. With features such as shared folders, multi-file organization, the ability to convert documents to other file formats, and more, Dropbox has become an agent's "hard drive in the sky."
When you first sign up for Dropbox, several storage plans are offered, ranging from a basic free plan that contains up to 2 GB of storage space to an enterprise-level business plan that holds at least 2 TB of available space for files and folders. These options will help you decide what level will meet your needs. For individual use, pricing ranges from Dropbox Plus at $9.99 per month to Dropbox Professional + digital signatures for $24.99 per month, which also comes with 3GB of encrypted cloud storage.
Dropbox also allows you to neatly organize all your content, including client information, contracts, and related promotional material, into different folders to share securely with your others.
Dropbox is an excellent safeguard for your documents against hackers and malware. Even if your digital device goes kaput, Dropbox will still store your files that you can easily synch with your new device. Also, if you accidentally delete or save over an important file that you need, Dropbox has the option to let you view previous and deleted versions of your files.
Dropbox is a time and space saver
Moreover, Dropbox can be a vital space saver for storing home video tours, especially if you want to share them directly with future clients and buyers, versus sending them a link to YouTube, avoiding all the ads.
Dropbox storing all your items on the cloud automatically and backing up your files is a huge time saver. You also won't be taking up important space on your computer or other digital devices better suited for other things.
Remember, if you have free access to Tech Helpline as a member benefit of your MLS or association, you can get all your Dropbox questions answered. Or if you have questions about another online data storage service, Tech Helpline analysts are ready to assist and are only a click, call, or text away.
Tricia Stamper is Director of Technology at Florida Realtors®, which owns and operates Tech Helpline and Form Simplicity.
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Revive Is Changing the Way Homes Are Sold. Realtors, Be Ready for Incredible Opportunities!
Unlike a finely aged wine, homes that show signs of aging are not going to pique the interest of potential buyers, let alone capture the attention of image-driven millennial home buyers (the highest market share at 43%) when they are online shopping.
In the U.S., the median age of a home currently stands at 39 years old. In California, the state with the most housing stock, that number increases to 43 years old. And while some could argue that being in your 40s is simply the new 30s, think about how much style has changed since the 70s – even the 80s! (Do any of you remember the glass brick phase? Yikes...)
The fact of the matter is, while some design styles return hotter than ever, most do not, at least not all at once. And so, the need for renovations and improvements grows. But hey, maybe your client is a homeowner who's on the fence about whether or not it makes much of a difference to renovate their home before you, their Realtor, puts it on the market – it makes a huge difference!
Here's why.
Again, it's all about what the buyers want. Millennials prefer move-in-ready homes. Research shows that 70% of Millennial home buyers would choose a smaller home, giving up the need for more space, to secure a move-in-ready home. That's huge.
One of the biggest annual home buyer studies also found most recent buyers who purchased new homes were looking to avoid renovations. While most homeowners getting ready to sell their homes would benefit largely from pre-sale renovations, most lack the funds, time, or industry insight needed to make them happen.
And, so, a change began.
The move-in ready movement
An innovative new solution for homeowners emerged, becoming one of the hottest real estate movements today. It's known as the concierge category, which includes companies like Revive Real Estate—a presale renovation firm that specializes in $0 down, pay-when-you-sell, major and minor remodeling. It gives homeowners the option to turn their as-is property into the move-in-ready home today's buyers want.
Still, sellers have two options. First, there's the DIY (do it yourself) approach. But for most home sellers, undertaking even minor improvements is too daunting.
Why? Well, there's the hunt for reliable, available, and proven contractors – which is especially tough in today's market, not to mention having the available cash to front the cost of needed repairs and renovations. Add in the time to meet with the designers, contractors, and hunting down the right materials to get the job done, it's a nightmare. A DIY project quickly becomes a hurry-up-and-sell project which causes homeowners to lose out on thousands of dollars!
When sellers go at it alone, they also assume all risks and liabilities, and that's often something most homeowners would rather avoid.
Despite the best-laid plans, ask anyone who has undertaken a kitchen or bathroom remodel, and they are likely to tell you that when you involve multiple contractors, you are at the mercy of their schedules.
But this is nothing new! Many people already understand these are common concerns. Thankfully, there's another option.
You bring in the experts.
The BIG $$$$ benefit
Working with an experienced and proven firm like Revive gives homeowners more than just a move-in-ready home to put on the market. It gives them, as home sellers, the opportunity to maximize the sales price of their home.
What does that mean in actual dollars? Most sellers who sell their homes as-is leave 15-20% in potential profits on the table. Imagine leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in built-up equity behind. That is life-changing money!
Revive homes sell for more – a lot more. In fact, the average Revive home seller nets over $186,000 more by undergoing pre-sale renovations. The return on their investment – using Revive's funds, not their own – is a stunning 257%. The average net return to Revive home sellers is even higher in higher-priced markets where homes are often worth more than $1 million.
The smart way to renovate
When Revive works with a homeowner and agent to get a home ready to sell, they are partnering with a team that includes a property advisor (the point person for improvements), in-house designers, and other real estate specialists. Because knowing what to improve is the secret to unlocking the greatest value the home has to offer. Revive's design team has that knowledge.
The biggest mistake in home improvement is fixing and replacing the wrong things. Every home is different, and having current market knowledge of what homes are selling and why is vital to the renovation's success.
Smarter renovation means more than just knowing the trends – it also is knowing what materials are available and properly priced. Home sellers want to stay on time and budget and still maximize the value of their improvements. That's where Revive's expertise excels.
Quality is also paramount – you can't settle on a contractor simply because they are the only ones available. Revive maintains a network of fully vetted, experienced contractors who are loyal to Revive because of the unmatched support they get and the steady stream of work they get from Revive. Revive keeps its contractors busy and focused on what they do best, the work, with Revive handling their back office support, material sourcing, ordering, scheduling, and more.
Curb appeal attracts more prospects.
Pre-sale renovations make homes market-ready, and that also means improving the curb appeal. After all, you don't get a second chance at making a first impression, and that's why homes with excellent curb appeal sell faster – and for more.
Curb appeal sets the tone of what home buyers can expect to see when they step inside. Securing a positive first impression through exceptional curb appeal sets the stage for a sale. And the nicer your curb appeal, the larger number of prospects you will attract.
In fact, homes featuring well-kept lawns and professional landscaping sell for 7% more than similar homes without!
The Washington Post reported that 87% of home buyers rely on photos when house hunting. Those professionally photographed homes showcasing their features, including their curb appeal, sell 32% faster than other listings and net a 47% higher asking price per square foot.
Different types of renovations – what makes sense?
Getting a home in move-in-ready condition is a huge undertaking and varies from property to property. Real estate professionals and home sellers can benefit by having a team of Revive experts who do this daily.
Revive takes on projects from big to small. There are no project minimums or maximums, and every project is designed uniquely to that home's unique design and neighborhood style.
Minor fixes with Revive
Interior painting
Exterior painting
Appliance replacement
Roof repairs
Carpet and flooring
Window repair
Door replacements
Deep cleaning and professional staging
and more
Major improvements with Revive
Kitchen remodels
Bathroom replacement and additions
Roof replacements
HVAC replacement
Window new installations
Mold removal and prevention
Basement finishing
Deck and patio installations
Outdoor living spaces
and more
Many markets also have unique locally related improvements that can maximize the property's value. Revive can help uncover those as well. From repairing a dock for a waterfront home to building a complete entertainer's space in the backyard, Revive's goal is to maximize the return on the sale of the home.
Bottom line: Revive homes sell for more and sell faster.
When completed – often within 90 days or less – Revive homes are move-in ready.
Homes renovated with Revive often massively increase a seller's asking price, creating significantly more wealth for the seller. Just look at all of the case studies that provide the before and after photos of dozens of Revive renovation projects here to see how much more sellers made using Revive.
And the best part? In addition to Revive fronting the money for the cost of renovations, there is no interest, fees, or financing charges due from the seller or agent.
Revive is a win-win-win-win for homeowners, contractors, agents, and brokers too, because everyone benefits when a home is renovated to sell for its highest price.
Jessica Morrow, a seasoned real estate veteran, is Revive Real Estate Head of Operations. Revive's mission is to guide home sellers through presale renovations without upfront costs. Working with Revive, home sellers gain an average of $186,000 in additional profit when selling their homes.
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7 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do in Google Sheets
There's a powerful tool available to real estate agents that's free to use. That's right, we're talking about Google Sheets. Sheets can do everything from making managing your database easier to creating eye-catching charts.
This Microsoft Excel alternative is extra powerful when synced to your CRM. Not sure how to do that? Check out the video above from API Nation, a service that connects technology solutions together in order to share data and automate tasks.
This video shares seven tips that will make Google Sheets easy to use, including:
Sync your CRM to a Google Sheet
Quickly fix capitalizations and split full names to first and last names
Make every Sheet easier to read, and simpler to navigate
Create charts just by typing a question
Import data between different Sheets
Want to learn more about using Google Sheets? Check out these articles:
7 Google Sheet Templates for Real Estate Businesses
How to Automate a Google Sheets Lead Capture Form
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[WATCH] Blockchain and Its Impact on Real Estate 2.0: Knowledge Is Power
Elm Street Academy recently gathered a few incredibly bright minds to share their diverse set of perspectives on the current impact that blockchain technology is making on the real estate industry, as well as how to be prepared for what's to come next.
Become part of the conversation by tuning into this 1-hour, FREE on-demand webinar where Matt Fagiolio, moderator (Operating Partner, BKG™), spoke with Teresa Grobecker (CEO, Real Estate Consortia ), Chris Tamm (CEO, Ownership Financial and Managing Partner, Cast Services), Sam DeBord (CEO, Real Estate Standards Organization), and Mark Thomas (Co-Founder and CEO, Zen Sports).
These digital transaction experts addressed questions such as:
What is Web3 and how will it impact the world?
Do NFTs play a role in the future of real estate?
How does blockchain technology impact security and data storage?
What are the potential hurdles of incorporating blockchain technology?
And much, much more!
[VIEW THE ON-DEMAND WEBINAR]
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Blockchain and Real Estate: What's All the Buzz About?
Have you heard the term blockchain and immediately thought of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin? Perhaps you think, why should I care about blockchain? Blockchain technology and real estate are currently being considered for a variety of real-world transactions. Though the technology itself is not new, according to a recent NAR report, it will likely be years before you will see the effects in mainstream real estate transactions. But regardless of when blockchain becomes instrumental in your daily life, it is something to take notice of and form a basic understanding of.
What are blockchain and cryptocurrency?
Are blockchain and cryptocurrency the same thing? The simple answer is no. When you realize all these terms are not synonymous, you can ponder what the future benefits of real estate and blockchain are. Blockchain is a digitalized system of storing important coded data in specific "blocks." In real estate, that data might include information about property titles, specifics regarding accurate measurements, 3D tours, floor plans, financing and taxes. Once information is entered into a block, it is immutable, meaning it cannot be altered. Updating the particulars requires entering in additional information, but without removing the original data, thus forming a chain of information for every transaction. This essentially forms a digital trail of everything entered into the block or ledger in chronological order.
Cryptocurrency is digital money that has no physical form, existing only on computer systems. It uses blockchain technology as a way to record, encrypt and transfer transactions controlled solely by its users and the algorithms of the computer. Though cryptocurrency may play a role in blockchain technology and real estate at some point, the industry will likely use blockchain initially for smart contracts, improving the liquidity of real estate assets and speeding up transactions.
Accounting and blockchain
How many times have you made a mistake on a contract or have noticed some discrepancy in a property's accurate measurements? To consider what the future benefits of real estate and blockchain are is to consider limiting errors for all future transactions. The technology exists to enable the entire real estate transaction, both past and current, to be held on a blockchain. Because blockchains are themselves immutable, every piece of information about a property is accounted for and can be verified by all users with access to the chain. This provides transparency, accountability, and the ability to audit the information quickly and easily. Access to titles and deeds can happen in an instant from anywhere in the world. You won't have to wait for a centralized government database to provide information or proof of ownership.
Tokenization and liquidity
Real estate investing is becoming more difficult due to the rising prices of both residential and commercial property. But tokenization may open the doors for investors to stay in the real estate market and possibly diversify their investments throughout a variety of sectors. This can be done through blockchain technology and real estate tokenization. Tokenization allows fractional ownership by the creation of tokens as a means of attracting investors like what this Aspen ski resort recently accomplished through "Aspencoin," thus making the entire property more liquid. An owner can sell all or part of the equity and allow a buyer immediate ownership all through the blockchain platform.
Smart contracts
What are the future benefits of real estate and blockchain when it comes to day-to-day transactions? The smart contract may be the answer to speeding up everything from due diligence to closing of a sale or lease. With all the property's information stored in a digital ledger within the block, verification of things like profit and loss, income statements, buyer and seller identity, and credit checks can all happen in real-time. This can lead to a reduction of time necessary to complete the deal, eliminate the likelihood of fraudulent transactions, and provide authentication every step of the way. The smart contract can, as a recent NAR article explains, have triggers to release the payment of funds when everything in the transaction is complete.
Blockchain: What could go wrong?
Though at its core, blockchain technology and real estate appear to go hand-in-hand as the next best technology to make transactions easier, faster and without issue. But although blockchain technology can provide the means for cryptocurrency investors to make or lose millions in an instant, it is not without some pause when it comes to implementation for real estate. You are comfortable using proptech like 3D tours in your daily schedule; however, blockchain technology is a whole different thing. For starters, the computers that run the blockchains require a substantial amount of electricity to operate smoothly, thus negatively impacting the environment as recently uncovered in an MSNBC article. Also, the use of blockchain in real estate would involve changing systems, rewriting laws, providing protection of privacy and, of course, jurisdictional rights. At some point in the blockchain, the information has to come in contact with human users and that can open up the data to security risks and hackers.
Keeping an open mind helps to determine what the future benefits of real estate and blockchain are for you. The industry is evolving, technology is advancing, and the way you do business is changing. It is important to maintain a healthy interest in proptech and blockchain so you don't become the weakest link in your own profession.
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5 Places to Find Tech Support
It's late in the evening and you have come across a problem with your software. Who do you call? Normally the answer would be the Ghostbusters, but I don't think they can help you with software problems. If you are like me, I always seem to have issues at the oddest moments and can never find tech support when I need it. Look no further! Below is a list of five places that you can look to when you need technical help.
The Tech Company's Website
Check the company's website for a phone number, email, or chat. This is the most simple solution, but it is not always available. This might seem a bit crazy in 2021, but not all companies make support easily accessible.
When looking at a company's website, there are a few things to look for. First, a phone number should always be on their website. They should also have a link called support or a chat bubble for you to click on. As an example, check out Delta Media Group's website below.
Your MLS's Tech Support
The second place you should always look for tech support is your MLS. You should note that any MLS that you are a part of should provide you with access to help with tech support. If not, then you should begin shopping MLSs. MLSs are similar to technology companies; it being 2021, they are supposed to provide you with a great service. If you believe you cannot change from one MLS to another, that is 100% not true. In 2018, NAR implemented a new rule called MLS of Choice. You have every right to be part of ANY MLS that you choose. If you have questions about this, I recommend you reach out to your state association, or you can shoot me an email at [email protected] and we can discuss this further.
As an example of providing great tech support, check out the screenshot below for Greater Southern MLS out of Louisiana. Notice that support is available not just during the day, but late into the night when agents and brokers may still be working.
Tech Helpline
Tech Helpline provides tech support to approximately 650,000 individuals across the US and Canada. Chances are, this service is already available to you as part of your association or MLS fees. Not only can they help you with technology tools provided by your association, MLS, or brokerage, but they can also help you with other forms of technical support, including spyware removal, virus protection, and software repair.
To get a better understanding of how you can benefit, take three minutes to watch the video below.
Your Brokerage
Ask your broker! Unless you work for yourself, turn to your broker. They should be happy to help. Remember, your broker was once an agent; they have needed help with listing presentations, websites, etc. If they cannot solve your problem, they can at least point you in the direction of someone that could help.
You can also check out your brokerage's website. Companies such as Keller Williams provide a place on their site dedicated to support: https://answers.kw.com/hc/en-us. Chances are another agent has asked the same questions as you.
Google
Last, but not least: Ask Google.
Google doesn't know everything about real estate technology, but Google does know a lot. If you ask the right questions, Google can help you find the answer.
Your Turn
You might be thinking, "I don't need tech support right now." This might be true, but it is best to know where to find help, even when you don't need it at the moment.
For the next 15 minutes, I'm asking you to do the following to help:
Bookmark this article.
Visit the website for your most commonly used software and try to find their support information. Bookmark those pages and note the hours they are available.
Visit your association, MLS, and brokerage's website and do the same thing. If your MLS doesn't provide tech support when you normally need it, reach out to them and ask if they can expand their hours. If they say no, it might be time to consider finding a new MLS.
Come back next week to learn how to find a technology solution that works for you.
If you have any questions about how to find tech support or have suggestions for other articles, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
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Are iBuyers Good for Consumers?
The real estate industry has faced disruption before, but remains extraordinarily relevant.
Why? Because the work of agents and brokers help individual sellers maximize the value of their homes at points of life transitions, and help individual buyers achieve the valuable goal of home ownership.
An open, publicly accessible, and transparent market for residential real estate remains a cornerstone of financial self reliance and familial stability in America, now more than ever.
But what should we do when we encounter an existential threat to home ownership? A threat that could also destroy the fabric of the real estate industry and its ability to help consumers?
We read it in the news every day: For-Sale inventories are declining and prices are exploding.
Cash-rich corporations are out-gunning desperate individual consumers with all cash offers to snap up more and more of the fewer and fewer homes available for sale. Voracious and insatiably hungry, these corporations are now increasingly soliciting sellers directly and buying homes before they ever reach the MLS.
And increasingly these corporations are selling these homes to corporate landlords, off-MLS, and without ever making them available to families seeking homes to buy. Once these homes are converted to single family rentals, they rarely come back to the home ownership market.
The end result: Home sellers are often denied the fair market value for their homes, and would-be home buyers are denied the opportunity to achieve home ownership.
In the process, these corporations are undermining the listing agent, their broker, and the MLS. The resilient system of cooperation and compensation that has delivered unparalleled consumer access to homeownership for generations of Americans is at risk of being eliminated.
Before we look at the numbers, let me address the most common responses.
Corporate buyers offer home sellers fair value for their homes
Perhaps, but when sophisticated corporations buy homes directly from individual sellers who are not represented by experienced listing agents and brokers, the power imbalance makes it very difficult for such sellers to negotiate a fair deal for their home.
While the initial offer price may be fair, negotiating with a sophisticated corporation demanding large concessions after the offer is accepted can be very hard for most consumers.
Think of an anxious consumer in need of fast cash and a certainty of sale, accepting a cash offer...which is then quickly followed by a demand for large concessions. Without representation by an experienced real estate professional, how likely are they to push back on the concession demands and negotiate a fair value for their home?
The "bird in hand" psychology of loss aversion makes it very hard for an unrepresented consumer to walk away from a cash offer they have already accepted, and push back on a predatory demand to negotiate a fair deal with a sophisticated corporation.
Traditional home buyers can successfully compete with corporate buyers and achieve home ownership
When corporations buy homes directly from unrepresented sellers and sell them to corporate landlords, inventory levels of homes available to the public through the MLS shrink.
How can would-be home buyers compete with all cash offers made by sophisticated corporate buyers, who reach sellers before they even talk to a listing agent or list the home on the MLS?
While brokers and MLSs struggle to create and enforce pro-consumer policies, such as the Clear Cooperation policy, to eliminate pocket listings and improve social fairness in housing, the rapidly growing numbers of single family homes "pocketed" by corporate buyers can readily dwarf the number of listings "pocketed" by agents and brokers.
The cost of so many homes never getting listed on the MLS is not "merely" the inequitable exposure to the select groups of home buyers, but the "locking out" of numerous consumers from the opportunity to achieve the American dream of homeownership.
Now for some numbers.
Almost one in four of all sales in Houston and San Antonio are iBuyers and other corporate buyers, according to a new Investor Mania 2.0 report. In Los Angeles, one in five homes were bought by institutional investors, and in Seattle and Nashville, it is nearly one in six. iBuyers may control as much as half of all home sales in markets like these within their buy box.
iBuyers are driving the explosive volume of pre-MLS and off-MLS sales. Bloomberg reports that one investment firm managing 24,000 rentals bought 200 homes in the first quarter: 138 were from OpenDoor, 52 were from Zillow, and 28 from Offerpad. "The pipeline to Wall Street from Silicon Valley often means the homes never hit the open market," Bloomberg notes.
iBuyer business methods are not just cutting out listing agents and denying consumers representation by a professional fiduciary; they are putting first-time home buyers on the endangered species list.
During the Great Recession, institutional buyers bought the least desirable homes, often foreclosures in poor condition. Today they are buying the most marketable homes, those most sought by would be home buyers. Thousands of these homes are being turned into rentals, removing first-time home buyer inventory at a record pace.
That's kicking first-time home buyers in the head as they are already lying on the ground, and all of this is happening in the name of serving consumers by arguing that fast cash is better than fair value for your home.
Like off-MLS consumer purchasing, institutional purchasing also fuels systemic inequity in homeownership, but on a far more massive scale as large numbers of homes are not exposed in the MLS to everyone. (Read this column by Redfin's Glenn Kelman about what happens when listings skip the MLS.)
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in this vicious cycle: taxpayers, through the Federal Reserve's low interest policies, are subsidizing the low-cost of capital that Wall Street is using to beat tax-paying consumers in the competition for homes. Social policies designed to help every day Americans get through the pandemic, are also supporting Wall Street firms as they out-compete home buyers and turn homes into single-family rentals and erode homeownership.
The industry is in a fight for its life as these companies try to eliminate exposure in the MLS. As Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, told Bloomberg, "In that sense, the investors are an obstacle to the everyday buyer."
This battle is just beginning. Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s asset-management arm, Nuveen Real Estate and Brookfield Asset Management Inc., have committed "billions in new capital to single-family rentals since the pandemic began."
The impact is widening. As Redfin's Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather observed, "Flush with cash, investors are able to snap up the homes that are available, and then turn around and rent them out to folks who can't find a home or are priced out of homeownership. This is likely making the housing shortage even worse, and also means that individual homeowners sometimes end up competing with investors in bidding wars."
As more corporations buy pre-MLS and sell off-MLS, the value of the MLS itself – which is often woefully underestimated – is further eroded.
There are many different views on the MLS, but it is hard to refute the consumer value the MLS industry creates by facilitating Broker Reciprocity – a massive "peer-to-peer" marketing platform for agents to market homes for sellers at very low cost. Sellers in most other countries must pay large fees to market their homes because they have no MLS.
When corporate buyers cut out the listing agent, they create an unfair negotiating disadvantage for home sellers, but they also tear the fabric of Cooperation and Compensation – the low cost foundation of equitable access to homeownership.
The BPP's mission is to help brokers and agents provide an exceptional consumer experience, and to do so, we must support the listing agents and brokers' ability to represent sellers and help them get fair value for their homes. We must also support the MLSs so they can continue to facilitate Broker Reciprocity and deliver fair and low cost access to homeownership.
Brian Boero at 1000watt once told a story about how people may lose their business but can retire with dignity because they owned a home. In America, we believe in homeownership because it offers every person a path to self-reliance. That's why we put the tax breaks for real estate in place – not for Wall Street to exploit.
Please share your comments and thoughts on this topic by sending us an email at [email protected].
Alon Chaver, Chair of the BPP Board, is a serial entrepreneur, long-time industry tech executive and thought leader. Alon most recently served as the Chief Information Officer at HomeServices of America, following highly successful exits as Trulia's Vice President of Industry Services and iHomefinder's Chief Executive Officer.
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PropTech: What Does It Mean for the Real Estate Agent?
Technology is advancing the way real estate agents communicate value to prospective clients. It plays a huge role in assisting in transactions and is changing the way you do business. From artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) to virtual reality (VR) and new 3D tour technology, proptech trends are slowly but surely making their way into your daily routine. But the question remains for a lot of agents: is proptech spawning a new era or is it disrupting a legacy system?
The Resistance
Real estate has not always embraced property technology advancements quickly. The industry as a whole is resistant to change. It operates on a legacy method. As an agent, you do what you have always done. Why? Because it works. But what if you could work better? What if you could give more value to your client and continue to fill the shoes of your predecessors? Proptech can open virtual doors, build your brand, and provide valuable information to home buyers and sellers.
3D Tours: Use Them or Lose Them
The past year has certainly seen a jump in terms of how virtual tours have played a huge role in your real estate marketing plan. This proptech has changed home buyers' behaviours dramatically. When you want to market a property and get it sold quickly, surveys indicate you need to incorporate a virtual tour for your buyer to view from the comfort and safety of their current residence. You could risk losing a deal before you even make a connection if your buyer can't connect with you online.
Proptech and Communication
Consumers are seeking information before they contact a real estate agent. Advancements in technology give the consumer multiple ways to contact you – email, social media, direct message, Zoom meetings and more. How can you get more leads and referrals? Offer potential clients as much useful information as possible. Use property technology to showcase floor plans, 3D tours, and interactive ways to cater to the clients' changes in behaviour. Buyers are searching online and according to NAR, several buyers are placing offers before visiting the property in person.
Keeping Up with Drones in Real Estate
A popular proptech addition to 360° tours is drone footage. What better way to have a great view of a listing than to get a bird's eye view? Using drones adds another level to your listing presentation. For your seller, you are offering added value to your marketing plans, and for your buyer, these additional virtual tours help build an emotional connection to a property. Though drones are readily available, they come with a few regulations, so it's best to have your professional real estate photography provider get your aerial photos. Stick to what you do best so you don't end up flying your newly purchased drone into the neighbour's open window.
According to NAR, one of the biggest challenges real estate agents face is keeping up with technology. Big players in the real estate industry, like Zillow and Redfin, are using data to offer their services and give insight into current market trends. Don't miss out on some great opportunities by skipping out on information that can help you and your clients.
Property Data and Analytics
Use proptech to analyze data. Information offered by your MLS' property data/tax tool is a window into the future as well as a way to analyze past trends. Accuracy is key. Presenting the whole picture with data from the markets helps you provide the best service to the consumer. How do you know what is happening in the current market? By monitoring economic, geographic, and demographic data, real estate agents can use this information to predict sales and provide a more accurate valuation of a property. What if you could use data to target specifics by narrowing down precisely what a buyer wants?
Advanced analytics will soon be able to get you up close and personal with all your buyer's desires. By inputting things from desired floor plans and room dimensions to distance to schools and Walk Scores, you will be able to narrow down the ideal property. Not only does this provide value to the consumer, it saves time.
The Future is VR
Virtual reality gives the consumer the ability to see before they buy and, in fact, can now let them see before the brick and mortar has time to set. Proptech advancements in VR can let the consumer walk through a property before it is even built. At the pre-construction stage, you can visualize various upgrade options, get a realistic view from every floor of a multi-level property and experience how an adjustment to the proposed floor plans would flow.
The world is changing and every industry is adapting to technology. With the Internet of Things (IoT) giving you ways to access your home security camera while on vacation or to get a ride in a self-driving car, the future definitely looks tech-friendly. As one of the largest industries in the world, real estate and proptech go hand in hand.
You don't have to give way to AI chatbots as the only form of communication with the consumer. Instead, embrace technology as a new partner in business. Keep your human connection, your coffee meetings, and your personal approach to your clients because as humans we all crave that bond. Use technology as a complement to your real estate marketing approach.
The bottom line is, if the experience leaves you with a feeling of satisfaction, proptech is good.
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zavvie Launches zavvie Pro to Help Agents Create Inventory, Turning Homeowners into Sellers
A decade ago, homeowners thinking about selling their home had limited options. Today, those same homeowners have the opposite problem--between iBuyers, buy-before-you-sell bridge solutions, and listing on the open market, they have more choices to sell a home than ever before. Yet homeowners often lack the information necessary to determine what choice will be the best one for them right now. The modern real estate agent now brings all selling options to the table, helping their clients choose their best option.
zavvie, the first end-to-end real estate brokerage platform encompassing all selling solutions, is launching zavvie Pro to help modern real estate agents turn homeowners into sellers. A new nationwide service, zavvie Pro empowers the modern agent to show homeowners apples-to-apples comparisons of all the different selling options available in their market.
zavvie currently powers a custom, centralized selling solutions platform for leading real estate brands coast-to-coast that connects agents, home sellers, and solution providers. Participating brokerages give local homeowners the ability to see instant offers from iBuyers, buy-before-you-sell options from bridge solution providers, and compare them to how much their home could sell for with an open market listing.
The new zavvie Pro program is an advanced system for the modern agent and teams. zavvie Pro agents gain access to enhanced seller lead generation tools, personalized branding within the selling solutions platform, and a groundbreaking new service called OfferFax.
OfferFax is a proprietary selling options report that provides agents an objective, apples-to-apples comparison of all available selling options to help agents guide their clients, including data-backed graphics that rate each offer based on current, relevant criteria.
"zavvie Pro keeps the modern agent at the center of every sales transaction, no matter what the homeowner decides," said Lane Hornung, zavvie co-founder, and CEO. "We built zavvie Pro to help the modern agent generate more seller leads, win more listings, and always earn a commission," he added.
Agents upgrading to zavvie Pro receive personal branding that puts them "front and center" as their name, photo, and contact information are all prominently displayed on all web pages and printouts. Enhanced seller lead generation tools to include a customizable main landing page, and the iOffer Estimator widget that an agent can add to any website page they have access to, as well as an exclusive customizable iOffer Estimator Landing page.
With the customizable iOffer Estimator Landing page, once a homeowner enters a property address, zavvie's proprietary data platform returns an offer estimate instantly. Agents can then immediately follow up with this new seller to share additional information about all their sales options.
"Consumers want to see all of their choices," said Hornung. "We know it's hard to find, submit, analyze and advise a homeowner about the multiple seller options in today's marketplace. Many agents don't work with different solution providers, so they lose out on converting homeowners into sellers.
"Zavvie provides today's modern agent with the tools and dedicated support so homeowners can see all their selling options, giving them confidence when they decide to sell their home," Hornung explained.
Hornung noted that zavvie's new OfferFax would give many homeowners the kind of insight and information at a glance that they currently lack. "OfferFax will encourage more homeowners to become home sellers," he said.
In a single report enhanced by easy-to-understand graphics, OfferFax shows all solution provider property valuations and offer prices; all solution provider fees in dollars and cents; the average repair concessions typically requested by solution providers; estimated net proceeds for each seller option, including listing on the open market. OfferFax also numerically rates every seller option's strength relative to current, local market data and conditions. And it provides each option's actual time to sell according to current, local market data and conditions.
A video overview of zavvie Pro is available below. More details on zavvie Pro are available on its website at zavvie.com/zavviepro.
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Profiting from the iBuyer Trend
It's no secret that iBuyers are expanding their reach in the real estate market, often causing agents to worry about their place in the industry. In the most recent Secrets of Top Selling Agents webinar, Anthony Lamacchia shares his secrets for working with iBuyers in "Worried about iBuyers? Well they aren't going away!"
Lamacchia is the Broker/Owner and CEO of Lamacchia Companies in Boston, Mass. He also owns Lamacchia Property Management, Lamacchia Development, and REAL Training Systems Inc. As an advocate for real estate-related topics, he is an expert in the industry. In 2018, Lamacchia was nominated for Inman's Most Innovative Broker/Owner for his REAL Training program and expanding platform of "how-to" videos for agents.
In his Secrets webinar, Lamacchia shows what agents and brokers can do to thrive during the growing iBuyer phenomenon and get a cut of the marketing trend.
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Are iBuyers Competition?
It's like selling a car. You have choices. You can FSBO it or you can take it to a dealer. It's common knowledge that you'll get more for the car if you sell it yourself, though.
It's also a hassle to DIY a car sale. Those who want to avoid having to clean and repair the car, be available for showings and test drives, haggling over price and dealing with all the paperwork choose the dealer option.
Basically, that is what iBuyers are – the dealerships of the real estate world. Just dump your current home and turn your attention to the new one.
That's a bit simplistic, but you get the general idea.
As with trading in a car, the big disadvantage to selling a home to an iBuyer is that the seller loses money on the deal. For many, that equity represents years, maybe decades of paying a mortgage payment faithfully, even in tough times.
To trade that money for "convenience" just doesn't make sense. Which is likely why iBuyers aren't catching on with real estate consumers.
Sure, home sellers are contacting them in droves. Out of those contacts, only about 1 percent of all requests end up in successful Zillow Offer.
If you're feeling a bit intimidated by these "algorithm-powered home flippers," as Curbed.com's Jeff Andrews refers to them, get the facts. Arm yourselves with knowledge of how they really work, not what they promise in their marketing.
"Zillow Offers buys and re-sells homes at full, fair market value"
That is but one of the lofty and (so far) untrue marketing messages on Zillow.com. Yes, the homeowner won't need to make renovations or repairs or clean the home. That, however, doesn't mean that those tasks won't need to be done before resale.
And, the cost of that will be deducted from the original offer. Depending on the home's condition, and the iBuyer's markup of costs, it could (and has) run thousands of dollars.
"They offered around $298,000, with about $20,000 in repairs and fees, so I would have only walked away with about $276,000," one would-be Zillow Offers client reports to Jaclyn Allen of TheDenverChannel.com.
Then, they'll deduct their fee, which is "around 7 percent," according to Zillow's website. But that's just Zillow. Others operating in the iBuying space may charge up to 10 percent.
Are iBuyers the enemy or the inspiration?
Hassan Riggs at Forbes.com claims that iBuyers are the inspiration, not the enemy.
"Rather than trying to beat them at their own game," he suggests that "agents must instead focus their efforts internally, on evolving their approach, strengthening their relationships and leveraging technology to better serve today's changing buyers."
It's not so much the buyers buying the iBuyer homes that seems to intimidate some agents we've spoken with, but the sellers who sell to iBuyers.
Other listing agents aren't feeling at all threatened. After all, the iBuying process appeals to a very narrow segment of the seller pool.
I have a friend who was tasked with selling her deceased mother's home. Her parents had lived in the home for more than 50 years and, sadly, Dad was a bit of a hoarder.
When my friend flew home to clean out the house she was appalled. Even worse were the results of a home inspection. The home was basically a tear-down.
It was also about three seconds away from foreclosure. After working with the bank to give her more time to sell the home, she hired an agent to sell it as-is, at a rock bottom price.
It did sell, in less than a week, to another local agent who was buying it and planned to completely gut it for her daughter.
That friend would be the ideal iBuyer client. She didn't want to clean the home, had no intention of staging it or making even one repair. She just wanted it sold, as soon as possible.
So, relax. Not many homeowners are willing to part with huge hunks of equity in exchange for a chunk of time, regardless of what these iBuyers think.
If you feel you must compete
As a listing agent, you should be working overtime populating your website, newsletters and other real estate marketing vehicles with the truth about the iBuying process. Because, right now, all potential homeowners know is the hype they read on the iBuyer websites.
Be honest but unflinching in your reviews. Give the pros as well as the cons.
Create a static page on your site about common mistakes home sellers make when agreeing to sell to an iBuyer. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Not knowing their home's fair market value.
Not being clear on who will pay for the mandated repairs/renovations.
Taking the first offer. Counsel your iBuying clients to get offers from more than one company. Then, compare all aspects of each offer.
Signing a contract they don't fully understand.
Not understanding that the iBuyer will add a fee, and it will be higher than an agent's commission.
Failing to take the time to add up all the expenses and the fees charged by the iBuyer to determine how much they will net at closing.
It's time to change your approach
Presenting your services in a more positive light will go a long way in combatting the lure of convenience and the "hassle-free" process that iBuyers promote.
Sure, selling a home is somewhat of a hassle. Remind potential listing clients that with the right agent, it can be a smooth process and bring in top dollar, quickly, for the home.
In researching iBuyers for this piece, the one thing that stands out overall is the positive sales spiel they present. They contrast, succinctly, what they offer with what you offer: "convenience, certainty and a hassle-free process," according to Zillow.
Offerpad invites home sellers to "Skip the usual stress of home-selling," and Knock promises "a painless process," without "the hassle of repairs, listing, showings, and months of uncertainty."
Notice how easy, breezy it sounds, especially when compared to what confronts a home seller on many agents' websites.
"Selling your house can be one of the most stressful events of your life," one agent says. Reminding sellers of the nightmare that lies ahead, he warns them that they're "facing the daunting task of moving in the (hopefully near) future, and you're worried about the finances of selling your home."
Then, there's the very well-known East coast agent who wrote an entire blog post about the challenges sellers face. "When selling a home, there are many different challenges that can arise throughout the transaction and even before you've listed your home for sale," he cautions.
He then adds that some of these include "handling unrealistic home buyers [isn't that the agent's job?] and handling the emotions of selling a home."
After reading the iBuyer sites and several agent sites, I think I'd seriously consider selling to an iBuyer. Either that or age in place.
Fear is a common sales tactic, but it won't fly if you're competing against the unicorn and rainbows marketing of iBuyers.
Vow to change your tune when writing content for your website, newsletters and social media posts. Become more positive about the process.
After all, if you're truly offering amazing customer service, working with you to sell a home isn't quite as daunting as those other agents make it out to be.
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Leveraging Google Calendar for Real Estate
One of the most important skills any real estate professional can master is time management. And that is a lot easier when you have the right tools to keep you on track and record what you need to do and when you need to do it. That's where Google Calendar comes into play.
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Doomsday Preppers: How to Get Ready for Future Tech Changes
Technology is advancing at a rate that can be overwhelming, confusing, and downright scary. As an agent, you need to be able to keep up with the technology changes happening around you in order to be competitive and grow your business. There are massive shifts happening in real estate, some of which seem to be looming, ready to take over any moment.
For those of you who are worried about what the future holds, here are a few things you should be aware of and what you can do to prepare.
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11 of the Best Real Estate Agent Tools
Being a real estate agent is challenging, and it's especially hard when you aren't aware of the tools that can help you. Trust us – there's a ton out there that can help if you know where to look.
We've compiled a list of the best real estate tools from mobile apps to CRM services to help you do your job even better. Read ahead to start adding to your real estate tech toolbox and become the best equipped agent you can be.
Organizational tools:
Being a real estate agent is hard work and there are a lot of moving parts. As a result, it's important to stay organized so that you don't miss important phone calls or double book appointments. Here are a few organizational tools to keep your life in check:
1. Deductr:
Deductr, available both online and as a mobile app, was created to help track tax deductions so you're not leaving money on the table. You can track your income, miles driven, and your hours to make the most of your tax returns. Deductr also provides notifications and reminders to track your expenses so you have all your important information in one place.
2. OmniFocus:
An organizational app available on all devices from your laptop to Apple watch, OmniFocus provides you with the tools to ensure that you're getting the most out of your day. It allows you to see your schedule, responsibilities, projects, and even your inbox from various "contexts" – personal, professional, etc. You'll never miss another work appointment or forget about a meeting at your kid's school – especially since it provides push notifications to remind you!
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Top 4 Personal Digital Assistants to Try Today
The typical real estate professional juggles many details. On a day-to-day basis, responsibilities vary and can range anywhere from administrative tasks and responding to leads, to venturing out into the field with clients. A major roadblock to success for most real estate professionals is keeping everything organized AND keeping in touch with clients at the same time.
In the end you find yourself busy, but not very productive.
While it may not be feasible to hire a personal assistant, there are many digital assistants available to help you boost your productivity. Here are four to try today:
1. Siri
If you're an iOS user, you've more than likely used Siri for one thing or another. This voice-controlled virtual assistant can do much more than crack a joke. According to CNN tech, "Siri is the best at understanding natural language. It can pick up on multiple ways of asking the same questions, so you don't need to worry about remembering the exact phrasing for commands."
You can use Siri in a number of ways, like asking for directions, setting reminders, posting to social media, and searching the web. Did you know you can also set location based reminders? Here is an example: say you want Siri to remind you to follow up with a new lead when you arrive at the office. Simply enable the feature with the steps below and tell Siri.
Enable location services for reminders under Settings > Privacy > Location Services
Add your work or home address to your contact card in Contacts.
Then go to Settings > General > Siri > and tap My Info. Tap your contact card to add it to My Info.
Tell Siri, "[Contact] is my home"
Repeat for work, school or any other frequent location
Now Siri can do reminders for when you leave or arrive somewhere
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How to Use Google Keep for Real Estate
Google processes 40,000 searches per second and over 3.5 billion searches per day. That's incredibly impressive, but Google provides much more than just a search engine. Google offers internet users a large range of products free of charge. In this new article series, we'll share how you can use Google's free products to grow, manage, and organize your business. Here, you'll learn how Google Keep can help your business, where to find it, how to use it, and more.
What is Google Keep?
Google Keep lets you "Save your thoughts as notes, lists, and voice memos from anywhere." Basically, anything you want to remember, take note of, scribble down, photograph, or have available for quick and easy reference can be stored in Keep. Keep also syncs across all your devices (phone, desktop, laptop, and tablet), making it easy to access your data anywhere.
Why use it?
Keep allows you to share and collaborate with your contacts on your notes. Keep's advanced sticky note functionality also lets you add labels to your notes for easy sorting. Creating labels for things like buyer resources, seller resources, and individual properties or clients will create tabs in Keep that contain all items with that label, making it easy to keep track of notes relevant to a particular person or property.
Where can I get it?
Android
iOS
Computer
Browser
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Four Time-saving Tools that You Need For YOUR Real Estate Practice
Recently, I wrote an article about specific ways you can ensure consistency in your real estate marketing plans. One part of the article talks about using technology, and I am remiss in that I promised to share with you some of my favorite tools and have not. So today, to right that wrong, I am going to share some of my favorite time-saving technology tools that you can institute today to help you become more consistent in all your real estate marketing practices.
1. Boomerang
If you are anything like me, you are getting hundreds and hundreds of emails per day. Some of them are simple interactions that you can handle right at that second and move on. Some, though, are things that maybe you want to temporarily ignore and come back to later. Or, even something you give an immediate response to, but also need a reply from whomever you sent that reply email to. The more emails you deal with, the more likely emails like those are going to end up buried in your inbox, or forgotten all together.
Boomerang keeps this from happening. It works with both Gmail and Outlook. Using their "in browser" tool, you can take any email message and set it to reappear in your inbox, at a later date. For instance, if you just don't want to deal with a message at the moment, schedule it for a later date, and it will appear at the top of your inbox at that date/time.
If you reply to someone, you can set the Boomerang reminder to appear at the top of your inbox at a specific date and time, as well. BUT, more specifically, you can specify that you only want it to do so if no reply has been received. That is a pretty handy way to instantly be reminded that you did not hear back from someone.
How many times have you gotten leads, only to eventually have them fall through the cracks when communication suddenly broke down? Boomerang will eliminate that possibility.
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Forget Inbox Zero. Be an Inbox Hero with Boomerang for Gmail
For most agents, Inbox Zero is unattainable. Between automated listing emails, lead alerts and messages sent from clients, title and mortgage partners and more, you likely receive more emails than you can possibly pay attention to each day. That's where Boomerang comes in.
Boomerang's main functionality is to help you put messages in a queue so you can read and respond to them at the right time. But Boomerang doesn't just help you cut through the clutter of email, it also helps you get focused on proper follow-up and makes you more likely to receive replies back. Here are three ways you can leverage Boomerang to get ahead in your real estate business.
"Snooze" the emails that you don't need to answer right away
There are probably a few times a day — or even a dozen times a day — when you react to the "ding" of your inbox, only to find that it's a general newsletter from your MLS or an invitation to a Chamber of Commerce meeting.
What if those "time-insensitive" emails could be programmed to come back to your email at a time when you're more likely to respond? With Boomerang, you can do just that. By simply clicking one button, you can tell the utility to bring a message back to the top of your inbox at a specific time in the future.
Get ahead with better inbox management
Consider setting up one or two hours a week that are dedicated to managing these less important emails. If your weekly sales meeting is at 9am on a Tuesday, schedule these emails to Boomerang back on Tuesday at 7:45am. Get in a bit early, fire up the coffeemaker and hit reply or delete until you've achieved Inbox Zero on your long-term response messages.
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2 Must-Have Tech Tools for Real Estate Agents
As a real estate agent, you should be spending time calling prospects, meeting with clients, and showing properties. You shouldn't be spending a ton of time scouring the internet for cool tools, apps and gadgets to help you be more productive. That's my job!
Every so often, we'll be checking back in with the latest tools and tech tips for successful and struggling real estate agents alike. Here are a pair of fantastic innovations that can help you focus, stay on track, and make you look like an expert.
For Working on the Go, Try the Dell Venue Tablet
Looking for a tablet designed to meet the needs of busy road-warrior real estate agents? The Dell Venue tablet provides a great alternative to an iPad, with an attractive price tag. It comes in two sizes, an 11-inch or 8-inch screen.
Consulting firm Prowess Consulting looked at how real estate agents spend time and use (or misuse) technology. They wrote a white paper on the subject, commissioned by Intel, which makes processors for the Dell tablets. Here's what they found:
Agents need intuitive file management that is optimized to work seamlessly with a cloud software program.
Photo editing needs to be easy and streamlined.
The tablet needs to support virtual tours. Images should be fully visible and not obstructed by other elements on the screen.
Easy support for digital signatures.
Speed when using mapping applications.
Local storage – so you can store and show property information without an Internet connection.
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Best of 2015: Hate Writing Listing Descriptions? This App Does It For You
We're continuing an annual tradition of counting down our top 10 articles of the year. The following article was originally published back in October and is #6 in our countdown. See #7 here.
For many real estate agents, writing is a dreaded, but necessary, chore. There are listing descriptions to write, market reports to draft, and even blog posts to create. If you're not a person to whom writing comes naturally, these tasks can be a massive time and energy drain.
Fortunately, there's a new app that takes that pain out of writing--by doing it for you! Wordsmith from Automated Insights can take data from a spreadsheet, like market analytics or property information, and automatically generate a reader-friendly article, report, or listing description, among other options.
Here's how it works. Let's say you need to write several listing descriptions. Rather than slaving away at each one individually, put the property details for each listing in a spreadsheet, like in the image below. Once the data is structured--with individual columns for address, square feet, number of bedrooms, etc.--the user then uploads the spreadsheet into Wordsmith.
The next step is to create a template for your content. This gets at the heart of what makes Wordsmith successful--it knows that much of what we write is fairly formulaic already. Listing descriptions always mention the number of beds/baths, square footage, the local neighborhood, etc. Market reports typically talk about the latest sales data and compare it to the previous period. By creating a master template for each type type of content, generating future content becomes as easy as uploading a spreadsheet.
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Hate Writing Listing Descriptions? This App Does It For You
For many real estate agents, writing is a dreaded, but necessary, chore. There are listing descriptions to write, market reports to draft, and even blog posts to create. If you're not a person to whom writing comes naturally, these tasks can be a massive time and energy drain.
Fortunately, there's a new app that takes that pain out of writing--by doing it for you! Wordsmith from Automated Insights can take data from a spreadsheet, like market analytics or property information, and automatically generate a reader-friendly article, report, or listing description, among other options.
Here's how it works. Let's say you need to write several listing descriptions. Rather than slaving away at each one individually, put the property details for each listing in a spreadsheet, like in the image below. Once the data is structured--with individual columns for address, square feet, number of bedrooms, etc.--the user then uploads the spreadsheet into Wordsmith.
The next step is to create a template for your content. This gets at the heart of what makes Wordsmith successful--it knows that much of what we write is fairly formulaic already. Listing descriptions always mention the number of beds/baths, square footage, the local neighborhood, etc. Market reports typically talk about the latest sales data and compare it to the previous period. By creating a master template for each type type of content, generating future content becomes as easy as uploading a spreadsheet.
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How to Use Trello to Stay on Top of Your To-Do List
This article is about the popular task-scheduling app, Trello, and how to use Trello to increase your productivity and organization.
How do you manage your to-do list?
How do you manage your to-do list? Pen and paper is a classic method and a great one, although this method runs the risk of disorganization or data-loss when your workload gets heavy.
Many agents successfully use Outlook or the calendar app of their choice to keep track of meetings and daily responsibilities, however your calendar should include high-priority, prescheduled chunks of your time, often devoted to time-sensitive engagements with other people. Your to-do list is typically more personal, more cluttered and more fluid than your calendar.
Why you should use Trello
It's ideal to find a happy medium between your pen-and-paper notes and your calendar items, for those personal tasks that need to remain on your radar but don't justify turning your calendar into a jungle of information. This is why I personally incorporate Trello into my daily organization routine. Trello is a lightweight and easy-to-use time management app that can be accessed online and on your mobile device.
How to use Trello
Trello is very simple to use. First, you must create an account for free. You will start with the default Welcome Board, which is worth investigating as it contains very useful starter information about how to use Trello. Take a look below:
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How to Create the Perfect Real Estate Marketing and Lead Cultivation Platform (a Tutorial) - Part 1
I've been fielding lots of questions from Realtors® wanting to know how to pick the right tools to put their own end-to-end solution together, how to make "tool A" work seamlessly with "tool B" and even "Where do I start on this and how to I figure out what I need?"
Truth be told, there can be tons of things you can add to a system, but if you are setting out to build an effective, easy to manage and work platform, part of the art of constructing it is knowing "when to say when" and only putting those things into the platform that are uniform and in keeping with your original vision.
Today, I thought I would run through a list of key elements you should consider putting into such an end-to-end marketing system, along with warnings about potential pitfalls that may jam you up along the way. I am going to share a total of seven things I believe comprise the key elements to the success of a project such as this. In order to keep things from getting too long, I am going to split this article into two parts. One published today, and one next week.
1) If it doesn't make you comfortable, skip it
This is one of the most important, yet most overlooked considerations. As you put together your end-to-end system, you are going to be subscribing to many different products to make your platform. It is understandable that there is going to be a little bit of a learning curve as you sample and decide upon these different products.
The thing to never lose sight of is that if you sample a solution and still aren't 100% comfortable with it and have reservations, do not choose that product as a piece of your platform. Go on to the next option and explore it instead. If you stick with something you aren't comfortable with, eventually the platform is going to get too frustrating, you will stop using it, and then you are right back to square one.
Additionally, remember that since you are going to be selecting many different products from many different developers, only look at those products that are flexible and can be integrated with each other. You never want to get in a situation where you are manually having to move data across from one product or service to another. Disjointed products do not make an end-to-end platform.
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Top 10 Tech Tools to Help You Sell Your Listing
It's important to keep up with the latest trends and developments if you want to be successful in any field, but especially in the world of real estate. Here are some excellent tech tools you should consider to help sell your listing.
Maps - Google Earth is perhaps the most popular version of this tool, which allows buyers to check out the street view of the home, as well as the surrounding area to see if any nearby services or stores are major eyesores.
Intuitive search tools - A large percentage of buyers use sites like Zillow, Trulia, NewHomeSource or other real estate portals to find a home that suites their taste and budget. Some sites like CLRSearch even allow you to further customize your search by using parameters such as foreclosures only, new homes only or even by school district.
Professional photographs - With an increasing number of people using professionally taken photographs for their home listings, it's important to get high-resolution images that are up to the current standard.
Floor plans, preferably 3-D - Potential buyers want to know how a home is connected and what the layout feels like to walk through. One of the best ways to provide for this need are interactive floor plans that allow users to virtually tour a home with just a few clicks.
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Real Estate Technology is Not an Expense. It is an Investment
More and more these days, when doing product demos and trainings, I am hearing from real estate agents how expensive it is to be in business and how whatever piece of technology they happen to be looking at is just going to be an additional expense.
I agree and disagree with this statement. First off, I am keenly aware of how expensive it is to be in business. I am, at the end of the day, responsible for all my employees, the company overhead, and ultimately, making sure our company is going down the correct path. This is incredibly stressful at times, as I am sure running a real estate practice can be.
What I completely disagree with, though, is technology being looked at as an extra expense. Technology should never be looked at as an expense. It should always be looked at as an investment. There are multiple reasons I think this, but the most important one is that if you look at any piece of technology as an investment, you are instantly going to begin thinking about what your return on investment will be (e.g. how much more business is that piece of technology going to allow you to do?), and at that point, thinking of things in those terms, you can never lose.
First, For The Doubters
So if you are wondering why technology is nothing more than just another expense, like your car or a laptop, let me explain it to you like this:
You most likely have some sort of assistant working for you. It could simply be a transaction coordinator, or maybe a full fledged assistant. Those people do things for you when you aren't there, out out of the office, focusing on other things. These things they do for you make you more productive and therefore give you an opportunity to do more business. Clearly you wouldn't consider these people an expense. They are people. They are people that are contributing to the growth of your team. You are investing in them and they in turn are investing in the growth of your real estate practice.
Technology works the same way. If you are looking at a piece of technology and it can't do the same types of things above, then it's not really a technology platform worth considering. If it does do those types of described things, even though it's not a human, it is something that you are investing in, that will be working towards the common goal of making you more successful.
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Your Guide to Real Estate Technology in 2015
Over the past several months, we've been publishing weekly guides that focus on a single type of real estate technology. Each article offers an overview of that category, helpful articles, and questions to ask before considering a new purchase.
With a new year on the horizon, now is the time to start setting goals for 2015. For many agents, achieving these goals may require new the help of new tech tools or services. If you are looking to add or upgrade technology products, the first step is to thoroughly research your options. Kick off your research by choosing the type of product you're interested in learning more about from the list below:
Competitive Market Analysis (CMA)
Online Marketing
Market Analytics
Electronic Signatures
Real Estate Websites
Document and Transaction Management
Lead Generation
Lockboxes
Mobile Apps
Website Analytics
IDX Websites
Online Reputation Management
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Automate Your Business with zipForm® Plus and Zapier
Most people have heard the devil is in the details, and to achieve success, the goal is to eliminate that devil. For real estate professionals, these smaller details--like keeping address books synchronized--can become a large nuisance. To help with this, zipForm® Plus has integrated with Zapier.
Zapier specializes in connecting web applications using 'If This, Then That' automation. This enables anyone with basic knowledge of multiple applications to easily connect them by defining a trigger. Currently, 360+ of the most common applications are available to connect immediately in ways that can make you a champion of multi-tasking.
zipForm® Plus has joined the large group of web applications that is ready to connect within a few steps. Some of the applications that are sure to be the staples of real estate professionals are LinkedIn, Twitter, Office 360, Gmail and Exchange. Just imagine the ability to add a contact to your Gmail account, then have that information delivered to your zipForm® Plus address book only saving it once.
Each connection created is called a 'Zap' and creating these connections is simple. See some of the following 'Zaps' are waiting for you in Zapier today:
If a new contact is added to zipForm® Plus, Then an invite is sent to connect on LinkedIn
If a new contact is added to zipForm® Plus, Then add that contact to Contactually
If a new contact is added to Gmail contacts, Then add the contact to the zipForm® Plus address book
If a new contact is added to zipForm® Plus, Then create a Evernote note for that contact
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How to Score the Latest Tech Tools Without Breaking the Bank
It's easy to be distracted by the "wow" factor of the latest gadgets and overlook their frequently hefty price tag. But before you break out the plastic (or break your budget), know that there are ways to make your dollar stretch further.
As with many things in life, timing is crucial. For example, did you know that there are times when certain products are available at a substantial discount? We've done a little digging to find the best times to buy new tech tools:
Digital cameras - February. The latest models have just come out, and the older one are on sale.
Computers - Older models go on sale in July and August in order to make room for new models. You can usually get a good deal on new laptops in August and September, thanks to back-to-school sales.
Phones - It's usually best to wait until you're eligible for an upgrade to get the best price on smartphones. Can't wait? Consider switching to a different carrier to take advantage of new customer incentives.
Tablets - When the newest iPad (or Android or Windows) tablet is still only a few months old, it's a great time to buy the previous model at bargain. If you're only interested in the latest and greatest, consider holding off for Black Friday or Cyber Monday discounts during the holidays.
Other ways to preserve your bottom line are purely psychological. Think of that new phone or software program as more than just a toy, but as a tool that can help your business grow. In order to decide if a potential tool is a worthy investment, ask yourself if the benefit gained is greater than the money spent. Does it save you time? Will it streamline your workflow? Is it something that you will use frequently? If it's something that you will only use once or twice, consider holding off.
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2015 Technology Guide: Find Tools that Profit Your Business
RE Technology's fifth annual Technology Guide is fresh off the presses! Released in time for NAR Midyear, this free resource helps agents and brokers find the right technology solutions for their business.
Trying to navigate the crowded sea of available tech tools can be a daunting task for real estate professionals. With so many options to choose from, things can get confusing fast. By providing detailed information and points of contact for dozens of products in multiple categories, the 2015 Technology Guide is a valuable reference during your research process. Use it as your starting point whenever you're considering a new tech purchase.
How to Use the Guide
The guide is simple to use. You can download the entire guide as a PDF or thumb through it right from your browser. Below are a few tips for navigating the web-based version. Choose whatever method is most comfortable for you.
Turn pages like a book: Love the feel of turning pages in a book? You can do that with the guide, too! Just click and drag the top or bottom page corners to move forward or back.
Use the arrows: Click the arrows on either side of the guide to move forward or back.
Click to turn: Double click the top or bottom of any page to go to the next.
Jump to a specific page: Know exactly where you want to go? Just type the page number in the input field to view it instantly.
Use the Table of Contents: If you're looking for a specific product or category of products, use our table of contents to find it. From there, just click on the page you're looking for and you'll be sent there immediately.
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7 Tools For Working With Clients Remotely
Have you ever had to work with an out-of-town client? If you have, no doubt you've thanked your lucky stars for digital tools like digital signatures and transaction management software.
Sometimes, however, your buyer or seller may need a more personal touch. So what's a far-away agent to do? Consider looking into web meeting applications. Most solutions will let you share your computer screen with clients, or chat face-to-face using a webcam. You can use these programs to review documents in real-time with clients, or simply to add a human touch that remote digital transactions can sometimes lack.
There are a variety of different web meeting apps on the market, both free and paid. We've rounded up a few of our favorites below.
To Download or Not to Download?
That is the question and, next to price, it's probably the biggest consideration when choosing the right meeting app for you. Web meeting apps come in two flavors: those that require you to download and install software before joining or hosting a meeting, and those that work right in your browser, no installation required. Those that require installation typically offer more robust features, like the ability to record a session. However, if those features are not important to you, browser-based apps may be the way to go.
GoToMeeting - If you've ever attended one of RE Technology's webinars (or most of these), you're already familiar with this program. GoToMeeting is one of the most widely used online collaboration tools. It offers desktop sharing, high-def video conferencing, the ability to record sessions, and more. The program requires software installation and a monthly subscription fee. However, there is a new free version with fewer features and no installation required. This version only works in Google Chrome for up to three participants.
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How Paperless Are You?
Before there were iPads, smartphones, and laptops, agents listed and sold real estate every day without them. But today’s competitive market demands that all parties be "in the loop" for every transaction. We must utilize systems and devices that keep us connected in order to meet the real-time needs of demanding consumers.
New tools are typically a great asset to sales and business. Where would we be without some of these great tools? As an example, copiers make duplication easier. Digital phones that double as cameras allow agents to take pictures and videos that can be uploaded immediately to engage buyers and update sellers.
With all the new-fangled equipment, tools, devices and resources out there, how does a busy agent figure out what will help them make more money, more easily and efficiently?
Going paperless helps to streamline the many systems and communication channels needed to stay connected, organized and more importantly, efficient!
Whether you are interested in going green, or simply want to get control of the crazy paper challenge, you might want to make it simple by implementing one step at a time. Garry Wise started out in real estate and noticed a huge gap in keeping all the parties in a transaction up to date as the transaction progressed. What if he could come up with a better way to do just that? So he did! Garry created www.ThePaperlessAgent.com and has helped hundreds of agents harness the power of going digital!
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The Weather Outside is Frightful – Now What?
It's well-known that winter can be a very slow time for selling real estate. So what can agents do with this downtime?
Well, we've thought of a few ways you can leverage this cold weather slowdown to prepare and start the spring selling season off with a BANG—and position yourself for your best year ever!
First, it's important to take some quiet time and think about what goals you would like to set for yourself in 2014. What revenues would you like to generate? How much money can you invest in yourself and your business? There are great business planning tools out there that can help guide you through the process of creating your own strategic plan.
What are your key strengths and weaknesses? Have you asked your customers this important question? They can give you clues about the best ways to improve your service levels and create lifetime loyal fans. You can create a simple survey with just a few simple questions on an inexpensive tool like Surveymonkey.com if you want to get a quick read of your performance. Send it out to the customers you have worked with in the past twelve months and see what you get back. Ideally, you may want to think about going even further by signing up for a program like QSC that allows you to track client satisfaction for every transaction you're involved with.
Once you identify your key strengths and weaknesses, you can think about the type of training you would like to participate in. Winter is a great time to complete some education courses so can take on 2014 with new skills. What kind of training would you like to engage in to make you a stronger real estate professional? Check out the attached list of training solutions to find some ideas. It's also important to check your Association and MLS websites for training courses. Many of them offer a variety of great courses that are free or very inexpensive.
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Top Product Reviews from 2013
We encountered a lot of great tech products in 2013. Some were new to the real estate sphere, while other solutions received significant updates. In order to help you choose the best products for you in 2014, we've rounded up a list of our product reviews from the past year, arranged by category. These are all agent-centric products--stay tuned for a list of broker reviews in the coming days!
If you'd like more advice on how to evaluate products, see our series of articles on questions to ask before choosing a solution.
Market Analytics / Video
MarketVideos.com - A video content solution that delivers localized market videos to agents every month. The videos educate viewers on local market conditions, including popular statistics like active inventory and median listing price. Agents can share the videos with their database via a branded email newsletter or embed them onto websites and blogs.
See more Market Analytics / Video Services in our Product Directory.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Top Producer - It's not the destination that has changed at Top Producer, just the routes you can take to get there. The goal behind the CRM is, as it has always been, that an agent can log in and immediately know what they need to do that day. The difference is that this can now be accomplished from any Web-enabled device and done with even greater ease and efficiency.
IXACT Contact - A full-featured CRM with robust marketing capabilities. The program can help agents stay organized and in control, keep in touch with prospects and clients, strengthen client relationships, convert leads into clients, and manage their active business.
See more CRMs in our Product Directory.
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Will Google's New Helpouts Affect Realtors®?
If only we could predict the future....I would have known to buy more stock in Apple when it was down around 70. I would have paid more attention in my writing classes in high school and college. I wouldn't have....well, nevermind. There are so many things I would have done differently, I can't even begin to count.
Sometimes, a new technology or a way of thinking comes along, and it slowly fizzles out of existence while you waste your precious time trying to implement it or, maybe, it skyrockets to the moon while you sit on the sidelines. It's hard to predict when technology is involved.
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REach™ Accelerator Class of 2013 to conclude at REALTORS® Conference & Expo
This year the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®' investment arm, Second Century Ventures (SCV), launched the REach™ technology accelerator program to bring the latest cutting edge technologies to the real estate industry. The inaugural class is set to conclude at the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Francisco in November.
During a panel discussion just before the Expo opens, some of the industry's top executives including Rick Davidson, CEO of CENTURY 21, Pam O'Connor, CEO of Leading RE and Errol Samuelson, President of realtor.com®, will discuss how they are using technologies from the REach™ companies to streamline communications, deploy social media and enhance their brands. Following the panel discussion, the REach™ companies will demonstrate their products and the progress they have made throughout the program.
Meet the REach™ Class of 2013 at the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Francisco:
BombBomb: Get more listings and recruit more agents with the power of video email. BombBomb provides a complete e-mail and video marketing platform for developing, sending and tracking results of traditional and video e-mail campaigns from any device.
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How to Set Up Your Virtual Office on a Shoestring Budget
A real estate business requires a cadre of software to run the various aspects of the business. From financial software to tools that manage the intricacies of the transaction, it is hard to find tools that work well together, and sync with various mobile devices.
Because most real estate professionals spend a large percentage of their time outside the office and in the field, or working from home offices, it is important to be able to run your business no matter where you are or where your customers are.
This is where the benefits of cloud computing can be a life saver! They can help you run your business efficiently no matter where you are or what time it happens to be. They will help you maximize your time, enhance your productivity, connect with your clients, manage your transactions and save you money.
Steps to Set Up Your Virtual Office
The Benefits of Cloud Computing
With traditional software, sales associates saved data on their laptops, USB drives, or portable hard drives. Computers get stolen, programs are rarely backed up properly and many times updates are not done in a timely manner. Access to the most up-to-date information was limited.
The benefits to cloud computing are many. Because the majority of programs available to real estate professions today reside on the web, there is no longer a need to install new updates to your computer. If updates are made, they launch when you open the program online.
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7 New Technology Companies to Innovate the Real Estate Industry
Technology is everywhere – changing the way people communicate, work, play and do business. To bring the latest cutting edge technologies to the real estate industry, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® and its investment arm, Second Century Ventures (SCV), launched the REach™ Accelerator Program. This unique program was developed to help technology companies connect to the more than 1 million REALTORS® driving the U.S. real estate market.
After receiving more than 130 applications last year, REach™ selected these seven innovative technology companies for 2013 with products or services that can benefit both REALTORS® and the real estate industry:
BombBomb: Get more listings and recruit more agents with the power of video email. BombBomb provides a complete e-mail and video marketing platform for developing, sending and tracking results of traditional and video e-mail campaigns from any device.
Lumentus Social: Social media made easy and effective for real estate agents and brokers. Lumentus Social gives companies a measurable edge in identifying, understanding and engaging social media communities keeping social media communications on brand and on mission.
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Real Estate Software/ Technology: What to Invest In
A common question many REALTORS® grapple with is which real estate software / technology tools to invest in and which ones to, well, leave on the sidelines.
Technology perhaps hasn't been a focal component of your business and you may not be very tech savvy. But you know that social media and real estate software, such as real estate CRMs, have emerged and have proven themselves vital to running a business in a competitive marketplace.
Important tools for your business can include a social media management dashboard, such as Hootsuite, a digital document signature service, such a DocuSign, a blog, a powerful IDX, and/ or a tablet, such as an iPad.
However, one of the most important pieces of technology for an agent is a real estate CRM. There are ones that are easy to learn and use and offer many benefits to help you stay organized and "top of mind" with your contacts. For example, you can send a professionally designed and written monthly e-Newsletter, nurture your leads with customized drip marketing campaigns, and manage your listings and all the associated "to-dos," easily and simply.
But of everything that's out there, how do you know which tools to invest in?
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9 Holiday Deals to Start 2013 Off Right
With 2012 winding down, so is our series of Holiday Deals. We've searched high and low to bring you the best real estate tech giveaways and discounts over the last month. While some of the deals we've found have already ended, others are still available.
If you've made resolutions to improve your real estate business in the coming year, our roundup of Holiday Deals can help you put your best foot forward in 2013. But hurry! Some of these deals expire on December 31st.
Last Chance!
The special pricing on these real estate tech tools ends when 2012 does. If you've been considering adding any of these great solutions to your business arsenal, act now! By January 1, it'll be too late.
Showing Suite HD IDX Search - Get this turnkey IDX search solution free for 60 days with a waived setup fee.
WolfNet Property Search - Mobile optimized and complete with lifestyle features, this IDX property search comes with 3 free months and 50% off setup costs.
eMerge Total Market Dominator - Worry less about your online marketing in 2013. eMerge takes care of it for you. Try your first month for (appropriately!) $20.13.
Market Leader Professional - Buy now and save for life! Market Leader is offering a permanent rate of $99 per month when you sign up by December 31st.
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Follow the Leader: Top Agent Justin Havre on the Value of Technology
Justin Havre is a real estate agent from CIR Realty in Calgary, Alberta. CIR is the largest independent firm in Canada with about 650 agents. With his team, Justin Havre & Associates, he has been number one or two in his brokerage over the last three years. To put that in perspective: in 2011 they were number one, closing 171 sides with an average price in Calgary of about $430,000.
I sat down with Justin recently at a technology conference put on by his web technology provider, Real Estate Webmasters, to find out how technology fits into his success.
One thing that became clear immediately was Justin's intent to make technology an integral part of his business from day one. Before real estate, he worked in the cable industry on the technology side, but, after some time, decided that he wanted to make a change.
He set his sights on real estate. He chose CIR Realty (Canada's largest independent brokerage) because of the great virtual tools they offered and their overall commitment to technology. Everyone in their office, he pointed out, does their own documents online, manages their deals online--including deal processing--right down to payment of commissions. It was exactly what he was looking for.
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Video: Making the Most of RE Technology
Today, Maya talks about RE Technology! Check out her latest video here.
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