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Homesnap 101: Getting Started with Homesnap Pro
Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 10:00 AM PST Join us for a live webinar on Homesnap Pro, the most comprehensive real estate platform on the market. In this course, you will learn how to use the basic Homesnap Pro features below to quickly find MLS listings. This LIVE interactive presentation will be hosted by one of Homesnap's Industry Education Partners. This session includes: Searching for properties Getting listing details by taking a pic of the house Adding search filters and saving a search Agent vs client features MLS listing details Listing agent profile Sharing properties with your clients Register

How to Get Real Estate Leads with No Upfront Costs
It sounds too good to be true, we know: But you can actually generate real estate leads with no upfront costs. It will take some effort and focus, but the leads you receive will be warmer and more likely to convert than those you'd buy from any number of companies offering supposed "quick, easy leads." The main activity you'll need to focus on to fill the top of your funnel is building a strong online presence and improving your online reputation. That, in combination with outreach and lead nurturing, is the recipe for generating and ultimately converting real estate leads with no upfront costs. Let's dive into the details. What Is a "Strong Online Presence"? A strong online presence means that it's easy for buyers and sellers to find information about you and your business on as many corners of the internet as possible. Being visible and easily findable online is table stakes for most transactions nowadays. Consumers look up every business they're considering working with, from dentists to real estate agents to restaurants. Inevitably, the first place they'll go to start that search is Google. If you don't have a Google business profile and well-maintained website, it'll be hard to find you online — leaving buyers and sellers wondering if you're a reputable agent or whether you're still practicing real estate at all. And that's just for the people who actively search for your name. Imagine all the buyers and sellers who Google terms like "real estate agents near me" and miss out on learning about you simply because you aren't there. Make Your Business Easy to Find on Google Being present on the world's most popular search engine is step one. The best thing you can do to start building your presence is to create a Google business profile, which is the large info box that appears to the right of Google Search results or at the top of Google Maps results. Like we mentioned earlier, doing this requires no upfront cost. You can go to Google and start the process of claiming and verifying your business right now. The key, though, is maintaining your profile by updating it with new content and new reviews on a weekly basis. Yes, weekly. This helps with SEO and building trust with Google so that the search giant will be more inclined to show your profile over competitors when a local buyer or seller searches for "real estate agents near me" or the like. After all, Google doesn't want to show its users defunct profiles or poorly reviewed businesses over active, well-reviewed businesses. Here are our top tips for optimizing your Google Business Profile for better ranking: Fill in all information fields, including contact details, business hours, and your bio. Publish photos, including a professional headshot and images of your recent listings and sales. Add new content weekly to show Google that you are keeping your profile active and up-to-date. Publish content posts with helpful tips, market insights, and information about your services. Show off your real estate knowledge to position yourself as an expert. Add new content weekly so Google knows you're keeping your profile active and up to date. Request reviews, and then request more reviews—often! Consumers need to read at least 10 positive reviews to begin to trust your business, and nearly three quarters of people only pay attention to reviews written in the last month. As with photos and content posts, adding new reviews to your profile on a regular basis is a positive signal to Google, too. Respond to all reviews, including negative ones. If you don't publicly acknowledge negative reviews, consumers are left with more questions than answers, and it also sends a negative signal to Google. Respond Quickly to Leads as They Come In We're living in a world where you can track your food delivery order from the oven to your door. Consumers' expectations are very high, and it's no different when they submit their contact details to receive more information about your listing or services. If you wait too long to respond, you're more likely to lose that lead to another agent or even just cold feet. We recommend responding in less than an hour — ideally in minutes — to catch them while their interest is still high. Nurture Leads Who Aren't Ready to Transact Although a potential buyer might reach out to you through your Google business profile, they may not be quite ready to jump into the real estate market. It's important to nurture every lead you receive. Nurturing leads means engaging with them regularly so you're top of mind when they are ready to buy or sell. You can do this by supporting leads in whatever ways they need, such as being available to answer questions or referring them to trusted lenders or other professionals in your network. You should also reinforce your market expertise whenever possible. This is easily achieved by including leads in your email workflows for e-newsletters, neighborhood spotlights, trend reports, and market updates. The more that potential buyers and sellers interact with you and your content — even digitally — the easier it is to build trust and ultimately be the agent they turn to when they're ready to buy or sell. Reinforce Your Expertise Through Marketing You can generate real estate leads with no upfront costs, but marketing isn't free. The cost of ads, direct mail, etc., shouldn't stop you from having and executing a marketing strategy. This is critical for any business, including real estate agents, in order to extend your reach, increase brand awareness, build trust, reinforce your expertise, and move leads down your funnel faster. Digital marketing is the perfect tool to use in conjunction with your lead generation tactics. That's because advertising platforms, such as Facebook and Google, allow you to add specific people to your custom audience. As long as these ad platforms are able to identify your leads on their network, they'll serve your digital ads to them. The more often these leads see you pop up in their newsfeed or around the internet, the more likely you are to make an impression of being a successful real estate agent. Although you don't need to pay a dime to generate leads in the way we described, it does take continuous work to maintain an online presence that builds trust with consumers and ranks high on Google. Learn how Homesnap Pro+ can do the hard work for you. To view the original article, visit the Homesnap

3 Ways REALTORS Are Using RPR to Gain Clients
Yes, winter is coming. But there are still plenty of opportunities to gain clients and get deals done. A recent thread started in our RPR Connect Facebook group made us realize that agents don't have to screech to a halt in the last two "-ember" months. Here's a collection of the some of the best responses when a new agent asked how RPR could help her find clients and help her business grow: Look up a lead's address Sharing reports so owners can gauge recent home value appreciations Generate and crosscheck CMAs Check on approximate property values Create mailing lists for farms Create customizable presentations for clients Identify property values in neighborhoods Share reports that can be used for annual reviews Look up past sales records and mortgages Show a potential listing client a price range to determine initial asking price To conduct buyer tours (using the RPR mobile app) Open house mapping Investor reviews These are great! We love to see how our users are putting RPR to work to build their businesses. Here's a look at three of our favorite ways you can use RPR to find buyers and sellers right now… Dial up your social shares: Use Canva and RPR together In today's real estate marketing and self promotion world, having a strong social media presence is mandatory. Four generations of home buyers and sellers are active in all types of social channels and you can reach them with just a simple post. However, what you post is of the utmost importance. Typing out long-winded paragraphs of text or scanning an open house flyer aren't going to grab those eyeballs. You need graphics! Beautiful, well-designed graphics that engage the viewer/reader. You need images that you can easily create and customize with local market facts and figures. You need Canva and RPR working together and working for you! Canva is an online design and publishing tool that you can use with the data you pull from RPR reports. Give your friends, followers and soon to be clients market activity updates, new listing and open house announcements, testimonials, or even fun facts and trivia that pertains to their market or neighborhood. We've gone ahead and created six ready to use graphic templates for you to download and customize. For all the details and a step-by-step on how to pull it off, check out: How to Create Instagram Posts for Your Real Estate Business with Canva. Dig, mine and search for prospects with RPR Referrals and repeats are like gold—no question there. However, most agents need to actively look for leads to get to that next level. And that's where prospecting comes in—which is also where RPR comes in. RPR gives REALTORS® access to a slew of prospecting tools, including powerful and dynamic ways to geographically farm neighborhoods and ZIP codes. And after you get your farming list nailed down, you can also create mailing labels in RPR, up to 2,000 per month, for free. You can also take advantage of RPR's reports and data as ways to send your prospects marketing materials. For example, Bruce Inman from Houston, Texas sends out five RPR Seller's Reports directly to addresses he's identified using RPR Maps. And folks, he does this every day! His story and approach is a great way to personalize RPR deliverables to homeowners who hit the sweet spot in terms of listing potential. Another inspiring story comes from Julie Toy, from Garner, North Carolina. Julie also uses RPR Seller's Reports, and she sends them to her past buyer clients on their "house-aversary" (a year after the date they bought their home). Along with the report, Julie sends a note congratulating them on how much their home is now worth. This tactic is noteworthy because the recipient gets a personal note, a report specific to their home, and stats about their home home value. Instead of being a pushy salesperson, Julie comes off as an information ally, and it's led to a handful of her past sellers becoming "now" sellers. As you can see, there are many ways to prospect for new leads and customers. So many ways in fact, we decided to write a book on it! Download How to Farm and Prospect for New Clients today. This exclusive REALTOR® download is yours for the taking and will show you, page by page and step by step, how to identify and market yourself to potential new clients. CMAs that amaze Gaining clients isn't strictly about marketing and prospecting. When you reach the next stage, which might include face to face meetings and listing/capabilities presentations, you need to stand out and show off your strengths. Clients base their decision on: experience and expertise, educated guidance and advice, local market knowledge, and help guiding them through the process. One other big reason is your ability to price a property. This skill sets you apart from the competition and can go a long way in helping you get a contract after a listing presentation. That's where knowing how to put together a solid CMA comes in… A CMA (comparative market analysis) is a process agents use to establish home values and set listing prices. You create CMAs by looking at comps (short for comparable properties). These comps are similar properties, mostly in the same neighborhood, and tend to have the same square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, features, upgrades, etc. You want to compare things that are equal, or at least as equal as possible, to help price your listing. Creating a spot-on CMA is crucial to your skills and success, and your ability to bring clients to the table. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to do it in RPR. The CMA 180°: helping buyers CMAs are an essential tool for working with sellers; that's pretty standard. But RPR's Training team has figured out a way to turn CMAs on their heads and use them to help buyers prepare an offer. RPR CMA tools can help educate your buyers about market conditions, show them how to use pricing strategies to help formulate competitive offers, help them consider other details that can affect an offer such as days on market, financing concerns, appraisals, inspections and deposits. For details and to see how to put a CMA into play for buyer clients, check out this video tutorial: How a CMA Can Guide Buyers in a Tight Market. Use these tools and tactics to find customers now… and in the future Although November and December are looked at as "down" months in relation to housing sales, the fact is hundreds of thousands of sales will still take place. Sure, the pace ticks down a bit in the fall and winter months, but there are still buyers and sellers out there who need your expert guidance. We hope you can use these ideas and RPR to your advantage to find clients now and/or to start planting seeds to kick start the New Year. To view the original article, visit the RPR