Eric's Blog

So, you've decided to buy your first home or you've decided that it's time to buy a bigger home.  Congratulations!  But what do you do first?  Call a REALTOR?  Hit the Internet to look at your dream home?  Drive through town and find that perfect location with the perfect home?  Absolutely not.  The very first thing that you need to do when you have decided to make a purchase of a new or first home is to get pre-approved for a loan.

Getting pre-approved will give you the chance to know exactly what kind of home you can afford. 

With the latest announcements from the national news it might feel like there's reason to doubt that your home is worth what it was when you bought it.  Here's the good news, it probably is worth more.  Because Oklahoma home values grew at a modest 2-3% per year over the last 5 years we actually grew at a very slow and steady rate which bucks the national trend of values that were exploding on the east and west coast.

Now, what does all of that mean to you?  Given the fact that our modest growth was one of gradual increase, the value of your home is probably worth more than you paid for it 5-10 years ago.  Does it mean that you'll see ridiculous returns?  Well it depends.  Have you kept up with the upkeep and changing styles of the last ten years or does your home still have the kitchen from the dreaded 70's?  If you haven't updated your home in the last ten years it might be time to look at starting to make improvements.  You can see some of my suggested tips for improvements on my "Improvements that pay" page.

Oh it drives my wife absolutely crazy.  There we are driving along the open roads of the beautiful metro of Oklahoma City and then she'll hear it... "DING DING"  At that point she knows this ride has gone from an enjoyable ride with a safe and cautious driver into, "Crazy Drive while texting driver".  I'm guilty, I admit it.  Sorry.

For the life of her, my wife can not figure out why my friends and I don't simply pick up our phones and call each other.  Instead we choose to go back and forth for hours texting our thoughts and observations over our phones -- sounds ironic doesn't it?  Texting on our phones instead of calling on our phones.  Anyway, as soon as I see the message I begin to shift into my DWT (driving while texting) position:

Knees raised to the 5 and 7 position, rolling eye checks of the traffic ahead to ensure that I've properly backed off another 10 feet from the bumper of the other car (just in case of a lock up) and I begin...

It's like a science but lately I've seen the error of my ways (and lost partial hearing in my right ear from my wife yelling, "WATCH THE ROAD")

But now, that's all gone...

Enter JOTTER www.jott.com

This little free beauty has freed me forever.  It's quite simple, log on, create a profile, enter your cell number and e-mail address.  At this point, you'll be prompted to call a toll-free number to confirm your phone number and there you have it. 

From here, I saved the toll-free number in my favorites on my phone, I call the number and an automated voice asks, "Who do you want to Jott?" I'll say the name, it confirms and then I start recording.  Once I am done the voice will tell me, "Got it".  I hang up and magically my voicemail is transcribed into text and sent as a text and an e-mail to my recipient. The cool thing is that you can also set reminders for yourself, set tasks and confirmations as well.

My car is set up with bluetooth so I recorded the Jott number into my car and all I have to do is tell it to call Jott, record my message and it's delivered immediately.  The best thing about it, my hands never leave the steering wheel.

Since I've signed up, the drives with my wife have gotten much more enjoyable, for both of us.

Try Jott, you'll love it.

I'm writing from the floor of the NAR Convention in Las Vegas

Is your website doing everything it can to boost your business? Are your listings being seen by enough potential buyers? Do you have too many "hit and run" site visitors, who spend mere seconds on your site?

Your Agent XSite gives you all the tools you'll need to maximize your online ROI, but in the end it's up to you. (We just gave away secret number five!) Step back and take a look at the whole of your website/online marketing plan. Here are five secrets to its success.

1. Eyeballs. If a total of five people see your website, its chances of reeling in one of those five to apply online is remote indeed. If 5,000 see it, your chances of reeling in a listing or client are exponentially better. Are you doing all you can to boost your site stats?

   Tips:

   • Exchange links with local real estate professionals. Inbound links from related industries like mortgage services, title companies, inspectors, etc. are a good way to drive more traffic to your site. The XSites Network is a motherlode of links to other XSites users -- agents, mortgage brokers, appraisers, inspectors. But don’t get too carried away. Hundreds of inbound links from poorly maintained sites won’t help your visibility as much as a couple of links from really good sites.
   • Consider a pay per click campaign. It's the best -- and only -- way to guarantee a first-page search result placement. See our article on Pay Per Click 101 here.
   • Publish your listings on national partner sites like Vast.com, Citycribs.com, House.com, and all the partner sites available through your XSite's Listing Publisher. Listing Publisher makes it incredibly easy to circulate your listings to millions of potential buyers and potentially that many site visitors. Using Listing Publisher to the max gets you lots of inbound links, too, giving you better search engine results.
   • Add your URL to any traditional marketing that you have.  Sign riders, sports schedules, business cards, property flyers, etc. should all be driving traffic back to your website to get more information.
     
     
     
2. Time. The longer visitors spend on your site, the more powerful your branding and marketing message. The more likely they are to see you as the real estate professional they can trust. Ever wonder why bookstores now give you cafes and comfy chairs where you can read the books in the store without buying them? It's because they know there's a direct relationship between how long you spend in the store and how much you spend. The same principle applies to keeping visitors on your XSite.

   Tips:

   • Include lots of engaging, relevant content on your site, like the pre-written material available to XSite owners. Visitors may not contact you immediately, but if they depend on your site for valuable information, chances are they'll contact you when they are ready to buy or sell.
   • Give visitors tools like calculators, rate sheets and local information. Make it stuff they're interested in -- just because you can put a countdown timer to the release of the seventh Harry Potter book on your site doesn't mean you should.
   • While including as much relevant, interesting content and tools as possible, don't clutter your site or make it difficult to navigate and find good stuff. Balance having a rich store of material with making your site clean and intuitively organized.
     
     
     
3. Flash. It's human nature: The more attractive and engaging information is, the more persuasive it is. The more people pay attention to your site, its tools and your content, the more likely they are to request more information, or contact you offline.

   Tips:

   • Your Agent XSite lets you showcase your business with rich tools, sound and graphics. You have better chance of selling with a feature-rich, attractive site than a simple online brochure. (Just be sure to complement your substance with style, not drown it out.)
   • Experiment with different layouts and themes. Your XSite makes it incredibly easy to switch to a completely new, attractive, feature-rich layout with a few mouse clicks. And the new XSites Snapshot feature lets you restore your site to the way it was if your changes get out of control, so you can play around without risk. Measure your site visits and results with each theme you try, so you know what's working.
   • Use new "local content" templates recently made available to your XSite. There's a new tab under "My Content" called "Local Content." This material for 20 of the biggest markets in the country helps you lure in more targeted web searches and gives you a leg up the next time a search engine indexes your XSite.
     
     
4. Lead capture. Lots of visitors is good. Getting qualified visitors' contact information for follow up is ten times better. Agent XSites come with pre-built, customizable lead capture forms you can drop on any page. When visitors submit their responses, the lead is sent to your e-mail and your mobile device. It's also automatically added to your contact manager.

   Tip:

   • Use contact forms judiciously. For best results, you may let the casual user browse around anonymously, and prompt them for contact information only once they want to drill down into your listings, tours, podcasts, etc. These are the most qualified leads -- they haven't just stumbled across your XSite, they're shopping for a home. (Or looking to see how effectively you market your listings because they want to sell.) Remember how we want visitors to stay on your site longer.
     
     
     
5. You. Your XSite will inform and empower visitors, and provide incentives to return. Once they leave though, you take over, by following up quickly and aggressively with web leads, marketing to contacts, and providing the kind of attention and quality service your clients expect. Never expect your XSite to do your job for you! You're the one who sells or helps buyers buy.