Realty World Northern California & Nevada

How many times have you attended an event and found yourself without business cards? Or, you return to the office with a stack of new contacts’ business cards asking yourself when you will find the time to sort through them, scan, or enter the information in your contact manager? 

With DropCard you can set up an account that includes your social networking information such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. When you meet someone you would like to exchange contact information with, you simply text their email address to DropCard.  DropCard immediately sends the person your contact information including website address, social networking profiles, etc. This is a great way to increase exposure to your site with little to no effort. Account registration ranges from free memberships to more robust features at $4.99 and $9.99.

Here’s a video the DropCard team created about what to do with your extra business cards… since you won’t need them now.

Terri Adamo
Franchise Sales Director
Terri.Adamo@rwnc.net

First-time homebuyers need a strong, knowledgeable real estate professional now more than ever; preferably, a real estate professional who doesn’t visit the past in how they work their business model, especially when it comes to first time homebuyers.

A new era has emerged, and working with first-time homebuyers should be a long-term relationship built upon trust, loyalty, integrity, responsibility, and accountability.  To formulate this type of relationship the client needs to be placed on a true Action Plan that guides them through every step of homeownership. This type of plan might include ‘homework’ assignments where they can be held accountable and responsible for information that might be needed (i.e., documentation, credit letters, etc.). Along with this Action Plan, there should be regularly held informative meetings over the course of many weeks for the purpose of educating and providing direction pertaining to the very in-depth decisions which they are going to make. And with it, rid any intimidation during the process.

Allowing the time to have first-time homebuyers truly prepared gives the realtor an opportunity to truly understand the comfort zones and needs of the client, which also allows them to be readily prepared for any budget constraints that homeownership could bring. In addition, during the preparatory stages of the Action Plan, it allows for each party to become an explorer, gaining better clarity of what homeownership entails. The client learns about what they truly need in a home and a neighborhood. The realtor, through discovery of what will meet the clients’ needs, leads them on this journey to discover the perfect community, pricing and payments.

The door is open and the field is ready to be harvested when it comes to first-time home purchasers. Any quality realtor just needs to have patience and good communication when working with them, keeping them informed through a finely designed Action Plan. Above all, allow them to journey and enjoy the trip to homeownership.

Dennis Stewart
Vice President & Regional Director
Dennis.Stewart@rwnc.net

There are many areas of life where tradition has its place. For instance, this weekend I joined my nephew’s fiancé for the fitting of her traditional red dress to wear in honor of her Chinese heritage at their upcoming wedding reception. Another example… traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Where “traditional” does not seem fitting these days is in the area of marketing your real estate business. The days of relying on advertising your listings through newspaper or magazine ads, or running a costly ad in the local Yellow Pages just to make sure someone can find you are gone! Really, how often do you refer to the newspaper or the Yellow Pages to find anything these days? I actually groan when the Yellow Page book is dropped on my doorstep. Ugh… that’s actually two groans for the two books they drop at my door simply due to having two phone lines. So much for saving trees!

Today’s world is all about change, change, change. If you aren’t ready to adapt, watch out because those who are will roll right over you; particularly, those who are adapting to the changing ways of communicating with their clients! 

It’s a fact that 60% of today’s buyers were born after 1964 (Gen X & Gen Y); 54% first-time buyers are in the 25-34 age group. Do you know how these buyers prefer to communicate? Do your clients want to communicate with you via phone, email, text or Facebook?  Do you even ask? If not, then do so! And if you aren’t adept at their means of communication, learn and learn fast! If you didn’t seize the opportunity to attend the previous GEN X & Y seminar hosted by Realty World Corporate, watch for the online video course in the coming months as it provides great insight into how these generations think, communicate and respond. Attending the upcoming Phase II Technology Certification Meetings this month will shorten your learning curve by far, so don’t miss out!

If you are in the real estate business you have no choice but to jump on the “new communications” bandwagon. Do it today or step aside as the agent who knows how to communicate and market to the Gen X & Y populations will be happy to communicate with who may be your next client.

Terri Adamo
Franchise Sales Director
Terri.Adamo@rwnc.net

Now is not the time to play the victim. 

Realty World’s high caliber accountability-driven training began last week with the first of eight meetings and I must say it was very encouraging to see the positive, optimistic attitude of the attendees. No doom and gloom surfaced whatsoever; in fact, just the opposite. The room was filled with an air of success and a strong desire to build upon individual business models that just needed to be elevated to another exciting level.

As this new era of technology moves everyone to a quicker and more convenient way to communicate, shop, be social, and increase knowledge, the day has not disappeared where we should be personally in front of people in some form or another.

There is a great need for self-discipline. We must be responsible for the outcomes we experience. We need to instill a belief in ourselves that we have the power to create the circumstances which will fortify our business model. Positive expectations will create focused and positive results.

With the well-designed office and agent websites that we are providing to our brokers and agents comes the understanding that we still need basic principles set in place amidst this advanced age we are doing business in. We still need to be out meeting and greeting customers in order to establish rapport, educate them and give direction. We need to seek and find a need that has to be addressed. Isolate indifference in order to allow a very clear picture of what needs to be handled. Once we have met our clients’ expectations, only then can we reassure them that we will provide the care and quality service they deserve with a well thought out Action Plan.
 
Brokers and agents today need to be regimented in their finances. Something that I learned long ago was a business derived from doing daily initiatives in the form of referrals to make sure a certain percentage of the commission goes into a retirement fund.

Upward and Onward…

Dennis Stewart
Vice President & Regional Director
Dennis.Stewart@rwnc.net

I’ve seen most of you over the past several months at different functions that I’ve held. As all of you know, I’m a very candid speaker and I come from a belief structure that anything can be done no matter what obstacles are in front of you. That doesn’t mean it won’t be harder or take twice as much work to do it, but if you truly want to achieve something, you and you alone will end up being the reason for success or failure. For six months now, I have been hammering into everyone’s heads that our online presence is one of the largest provided by any real estate company in the U.S. I have been stating that you should go out in the field and use our new National Listings Distribution Program sheets we provide all of you, and get it in front of every consumer you can. We all know that just about every consumer in the U.S. who owns a house wants their home listed on as many real estate websites they can find. Consumers do a ton more research about real estate then they did even five years ago. If you just show potential sellers how we market properties on the Internet, YOU WILL GET BUSINESS! The question, once again, comes down to: “Are you showing them?”

Let me prove my point. One of our brokers sent me an email a few days ago stating that he farms specific neighborhoods with postcards that he created specifically about National Listings Distribution Program and how, if they list with him, he will give them online exposure that no other real estate company can compete with, thereby providing a greater chance of bringing in more buyers and potentially selling their home much faster. Here is a quote from his email: “I have listed and sold approximately 7 listings in this neighborhood in the last 10 months since I started farming it.” That is a pretty amazing number considering none of them are foreclosures! You see, all he is doing is taking business away from his competition. Instead of seeing more competitor signs in the neighborhood, you just see more Realty World ones! In addition to his success, he forces his agents to actually walk neighborhoods with the same postcards and this is another quote from his email: “So far since we started this a week ago, four of my agents are already working on clients generated from these postcard handouts.”

The moral to the story… the real estate market is only as dead as you make it. If you want to do more business, go figure out a way to take the business away from your competition, or simply use the one we just gave you. If you take on this philosophy, you will have more transactions this year than you know what to do with.

James Dwiggins
Chief Strategy Officer
James.Dwiggins@rwnc.net

With all the news and activity swirling around the foreclosure basin, it is important to consult sellers who are contemplating a short sale appropriately. First, there may be legal and tax consequences which may affect them and you should always refer a seller to their lawyer or accountant before going any further in the process to discover potential problems.

Second (this is for buyers or sellers), short sales generally are not… well, short. They can take substantially longer than one might have the patience or time for — sometimes as much as three to four times longer to close than a traditional transaction. This will certainly have a material weight on your decision process too.

Candidates for a short sale will be scrutinized by the bank thoroughly. There has to be substantial proof of hardship to get a principal reduction off the original note, which really means one simply can’t make the payments at all and, thus, can’t perform to pay the loan.

The bank will require tax returns, pay stubs, W-2’s, bank and investment statements (both current and a history); they want to make sure money has not been moved recently that could have paid the debt.

Typically, if there is a forgiveness of principal versus a foreclosure the credit report won’t be damaged as bad; however, it will suffer from remarks that would show a future lender that there was a history of repayment problems. This obviously becomes problematic in seeking financing in the future.

The last important piece of the short sale puzzle is the Tax Man. In 2007, there was a revision to the tax code that basically said there would be no tax on any debt forgiveness.  This is generally for the seller of a primary residence though. In cases involving an investment or vacation home, there are more hoops to jump through. The IRS demands that you prove complete insolvency before they will consider letting the tax go.

These are critical points we think you should be aware of before advising anyone contemplating a short sale.

Scott LeForce
President
Scott.LeForce@rwnc.net

Google launched Street View in May of 2007 whereby allowing Internet users the ability to see street level photos in a 360 degree view of the street. Street View allows you to move the “Pegman” icon on the left-hand side of the map onto streets. Additionally, you can further navigate using the arrows in the upper left corner and rotate the view and zoom. Google’s release of Street View further raised concerns with privacy.

For those of you who do not know me, I am a huge Google advocate and fan. Google Maps has been my preferred mapping utility for years and with Street View I can now see the area of where I’m headed in advance. I use Street View for variety of thing ranging from, exploring neighborhoods, looking at vacation destinations, to looking for available parking for new restaurants and neighborhoods.

One family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, didn’t view Street View with the same advantages that I do. They sued alleging Street View disregarded their private interests when Street View cameras captured images beyond signs marked as “private road.” However, the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania dismissed the suit.

I suggest if you haven’t checked out Street Views you do so. If you would like to report a concern, Google offers a quick and easy way to do so. More information can be found here.

Tei Baishiki
Chief Technology Officer
tei.baishiki@rwnc.net

It seems like title insurance companies have forever been “buying the business” in one form or another from realtors. It’s just the way business “was” done. You know what I mean … FREE farm packages, marketing materials, use of meeting rooms, educational seminars, lunches, dinners, trips, concert/sports tickets, and the list goes on. The “quid pro quo” was always in play and, let’s face it… many partook. The State’s Departments of Insurance have been shaking their heads at title insurance companies for these types of offenses for decades. In reality, they did little to nothing to enforce regulations which were designed to protect consumers. This mentality opened the doors for title insurance interlopers to set up local shops that systematically bought title/escrow business from their realtor clients. However, when the market conditions got tough and the party ended last year, most of those title companies left town or went bankrupt, leaving many realtors and their clients holding the bag. It wasn’t pretty and was costly for many.

Those days are gone in California now that the State Legislature passed Senate Bill 133 http://www.clta.org/e-news/sep2008/sacramentoReport_sb133.html and title insurers are taking this bill very seriously. We have heard that the California Department of Insurance (CA-DOI) in collaboration with the California Department of Real Estate and the IRS are ready, willing and able to make examples and levy BIG FINES against those companies and individuals who violate the rules. Due to California’s fiscal budget crisis, we need to take their threats seriously. In addition, starting this year all Title Marketing Reps are required to be licensed by the CA-DOI and they have been told by the State and their title employers under no uncertain terms that their licenses, jobs, and careers are at risk if they get caught violating the guidelines in this Bill. Compliments of Fidelity National Title, this summary of BS 133 will give you a simple and clear outline of what title insurance companies and their Marketing Reps can and cannot do to secure your business.

Going forward, if you get an offer for freebies from minor or new title insurance companies in your area or from some Title Marketing Rep you don’t know or is new to the business, BEWARE because that “freebie” may cost you and your client more grief than it was worth! In the long run, this industry wide change will be good for the consumer and, ultimately, for the real estate and title insurance industries as well.

Scott Gill
Senior Vice President
Scott.Gill@rwnc.net

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day with the “chiefs” of several large real estate companies in a well appointed and quiet conference room. Before the day began, we had the pleasure of having dinner together the evening before, enjoying some of California’s finest Cabernet, loosening up for an open exchange of ideas, need, wants, threats… you get the idea.

Since the topic of the meeting was centered on new services for real estate brokerage operations, a litany of needs soon began to flow quickly as the session progressed.  Technology seemed to be the dominate centerpiece. During the meeting, I found myself having to bite my tongue as I listened to what so many wanted in their tech tool box.

I was so excited to learn that we have, and continue to enhance, our technology based tools that accomplish the goals our competition is seeking, and some are not sure what is over the horizon at all. By lunch (with little reading between the lines), I became more confident about our franchisees’ positioning for success in this new market and information, and consumer driven age.  Our technology investment directly supports the real estate business enterprise model of this time.

Don’t read this the wrong way either; these companies are very well established and run by broker/owners that have years of experience and several of them have invested millions into their operations and they work smart. Seemed like all had heavy brick and mortar expenses and technology that resembled patchwork at best, or off-the-shelf basic online tools that run as separate applications, and a few that might integrate with high levels of technical know-how.

The bottom line here is that our integrated systems for brokers and associates provide outstanding efficiencies in terms of operational, marketing and advertising procedures at less cost while simultaneously creating an increased amount of new listings and sales through a growing amount of online channels and consumer oriented propositions.

Lunch was served in the conference room and we continued to talk and enjoy a good spread. I sat and thought to myself about the true value of our programs and our franchisees’ success. Now more than any other, I knew that if they use our systems to compete they wouldn’t be eaten for lunch.  I’m not sure the others felt that way.

Scott LeForce
President
Scott.LeForce@rwnc.net