Groups and Channels and Categories Oh My

Unless you are already making too much money, the name of the game with this blogging thing is to get found. If you want readers to find you, you need to maximize your exposure. Often, I find blog postings that are fantastic but under read, not because they aren’t good (some of them are great) but because they are unintentionally “hidden.” And if your best stuff is hiding, people can’t find you. Here are some mistakes I see that are easy to avoid and will make a difference if corrected:

1. Making a post “Member’s Only” when it is really geared toward the public. Unless a posting is only meant for other professionals, it should be public. That way, if you are advising buyers, for instance, they’ll actually get to see your words. This increases your exposure from Active Rain members to the other 300+ million people out there. 
2. Not posting to groups. Let’s suppose your blog post would be appreciated, commented on, and SHARED (reblogged/emailed/spread around) by like-minded agents. You should post it to the applicable groups. Click on the GROUPS link in the Active Rain header. There, you can find a group or groups that address the theme, no matter if it is short sales, blogging, complaining, dealing with an autistic child, or sharing pets or photography. Join the ones that float your boat; post your words to up to 5 groups with the same theme. That puts your post in front of more readers who share your interest. 
3. Ignoring Channels and Categories. Consumers have access to channels and categories in many cases, so in a way it is like posting to groups that include consumers. For instance, if you are posting about interest rates, you can post it in the Mortgage/Finance Channel. This puts it in front of the eyeballs for whom it will be the most value. 
4. Missing Localism. If you are writing about your local market or town, then you are missing out if you don’t post it to Localism for your area. This is far more consumer-centric, and positions you as a person of knowledge in that area. And that’s the point. Link that Sheboygin post to Sheboygin, and Sheboygin will thank you. 

How not to price your home:

1. Take your mortgage balance.
2. Add your credit cards.
3. Throw in your cars.
4. Add a generous portion of all the money you borrowed from relatives. 
5. Pile on your down payment for that other house you have your eye on.
6. Last but not least, give yourself an extra 50 grand just for being you. 
7. Get a blank look on your face when you are told that the buying public doesn’t care what you owe. 
8. Wait.
9. Wait some more. 
10. Decide you’ll stay after all. 

1. Find out what homes like your have sold for in the past 90 days
2. Price the house at that number or 5% less. 
3. As my son’s teacher says “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
4. Pack your bags.

The buying public is utterly ambivalent about what you owe to whom as it relates to pricing your property. They only care about their own needs. What you need isn’t on their radar, and if you aren’t priced in line with the current perception of value, your listing will get stale and sit unsold for months as you chase the market. 

Chasing the market is always being one price point behind what the public is willing to pay. You enter the market at $599,000 when you really ought to be at $549,900. You lower to $575 when the market for the house is $525,000. By the time you hit $499,000, it could be a year later and the public isn’t willing to pay more than $450,000. Each price drop seems harsh, but your real enemy was starting out too high. 

Sellers are in a war of attrition with buyers who lurk before they call, call before they look, and look at everything before they buy. You won’t get a call, look or offer until your price conforms to what the public deems fair. The only offers overpriced homes get is low ball offers from bold types who wouldn’t pay as much as fair minded people would on a fairly priced home. The only way to win the battle is to price as aggressively as possible and not allow your ego or personal preferences to cloud your objectivity. 

Easier said than done!

Can someone second the motion? Isn’t it high time we can access Active Rain from our mobile phone? I can get the NY Post for goodness sake.

It shouldn’t be that hard- it is a mostly text site anyway. Well, powers that be? what say you?

sent from my mobile phone

The following was posted on the Mid Hudson MLS recently:

I hosted an open House this past March when 2 women robbed my clients of jewelry. One distracted me for about 2 minutes while the other lifted the valuables. 

What is unfortunate aside from the obvious is the crummy job the local boards have done in getting the information out about these two women (and I’ll bet they are the very same women who stole from my clients). The associations exists to get the word out about things germane to our profession. Yet these people continue to openly and notoriously steal. Why? Because no one is mobilized. Nobody is warned. The thieves stole from offices in Westchester, several open houses in Rockland, and now they’ve hit Dutchess. 3 separate counties, 3 MLS systems, no communication. 

If you are a Licensee anywhere in the New York area, North Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, or the Hudson Valley, be on the lookout. These are two women in their 50’s or 60’s. They are loud. They wear overcoats. They drive a rented car. Their sign in sheet will say they are from Yonkers. They’ll separate and one will casually block you while the other steals. They work FAST (2-3 minutes). You’ll have the feeling that they don’t belong in the house. They gush just a bit too much as if they never spent any time in a nice place. 

Don’t be a hero. Just get a license plate number. 

Well, on reaching 100,000 points I was invited here to the Silver Star HOF by Kathy Clulow and here I am. $100,880 points ago I began blogging here, not to earn points or money, and not even to make friends, but to vent. I already had a WordPress blog, and I didn’t have any time anyway. I just wanted to see if anyone else had been scammed by a certain thing going around, and I found Active Rain on a Google search. I registered, but I wouldn’t make a comment for 6 months and I wouldn’t make a blog entry for almost a year. I started blogging consistently after being a member over a year. What’s happened in the interim? If I knew what was in store, I would have started earlier. My blogging and Internet efforts have yielded the following results in the past year:

• Appeared on ABC World News on May 27, 2009. 
• Gotten 4 clients’ homes on CNBC’s On the Money program
• Appeared in 2 AP stories on the housing market
• Appeared twice in the Real Deal, a NY real estate publication
• Gotten 2 clients on the front page of the NY Journal News, paper of record for Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties (total population 1.4 million+)
• Numerous referrals from around the USA from fellow AR members
• Dozens of inquiries from consumers who found me on a Google search in one of my niches.
• Referred out one of Manhattan’s very first successful short sales to the great (and recently engaged) Eileen Hsu, whom I met right here on Active Rain (where else?), which will close in the coming week. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all who read this. I hope the holidays bring you peace and abundance, and may 2010 be filled with health, happiness and prosperity. 2009 has been a challenge, and my experiences with many of you have made the year easier. For that I am truly thankful. 

I should eclipse 100,000 points with this post, exactly a year after I began blogging in earnest. While I’ve certainly had my light periods, in the past 12 months I’ve made some good friends and made money as well. How has Active Rain helped me to get “found?” Let me count the ways:

• Appeared on ABC World News on May 27, 2009. 
• Gotten 4 clients’ homes on CNBC’s On the Money program
• Appeared in 2 AP stories on the housing market
• Appeared twice in the Real Deal, a NY real estate publication
• Gotten 2 clients on the front page of the NY Journal News, paper of record for Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties (total population 1.4 million+)
• Numerous referrals from around the USA from fellow AR members
• Dozens of inquiries from consumers who found me on a Google search in one of my niches.
• Referred out one of Manhattan’s very first successful short sales to the great (and recently engaged) Eileen Hsu, whom I met right here on Active Rain (where else?), which will close in the coming week. 

Just about all of these things have been either a direct or indirect result of my blogging. Blogging costs nothing but my time, and would be gratifying if none of the above happened, so this is all quite good.

Very, very good! 

As happy as most of us seem that the housing stimulus was extended, I have heard and read a number of individuals express an opinion to the contrary. There are two main objections to the stimulus, and both are, in my view, fallacious. Let me preface my words by stating I am a free market entrepreneur who doesn’t really like government involvement in commerce, but I am also a pragmatist. Here are the objections the “purists” offer:

• The Stimulus is artificial. Fine. Let me ask you a question: If you were about to go out to a formal affair with your better half, and she came downstairs in sweats with her hair in curlers, you wouldn’t like that, would you? You were kind of looking forward to that little black dress, weren’t you. But there she is, in sweats and curlers. Just her. No make up. None of that Eau De Whatever that drives you nuts. No artificial accouterments. No fake anything, that’s her with no external additions. Disappointed? Why? It’s the same with the economy. Don’t sit there and tell me you’ve ever said no to a legitimate sale because you didn’t like what motivated the people. You don’t object to cashing a check. The point of a stimulus is to stimulate. People buying homes now and not later because they want to take advantage is real commerce, with real revenue, and circulates real money. They are going to buy real washing machines, real lawnmowers and real rugs. And that’s the point. Money flowing sparks the recovery the same way the cocktail dress and fab perfume get your mojo going. 

• The stimulus is really Socialism. I’ll admit it is a provocative word, but as much as the USA is built on free enterprise and free markets, we are not an unfettered free market by design of the founding fathers. A few examples and the non-free market institutions we espouse and hold dear which are actually socialized are: The US Military, Public Schools, our System of Roads and Highways, and the Postal System. And in times of crisis, I see no issue with us as a collective society doing what can be done to adjust, improvise, and adapt to weather the storm, and ultimately overcome. Free Enterprise is not a suicide pact where we eschew solutions because they don’t conform with our philosophical preferences. We have to do what must be done to get through, solve and get better. If part of the solution is collective, so be it. I’m about getting there and not what car I drive.  

Originally posted 11/24/09 on Active Rain

According to today’s Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, US home prices remain unsteady with more declines expected in some areas. Of the 20 areas examined, almost half experienced falling prices, including New York. While this is not good news, it is news and should be interpreted by our profession (and trade organizations) without rose colored glasses. You can read the NY Times article on the report here. 

We shouldn’t be surprised. The economy remains very slow, unemployment has probably not peaked, and the flood of foreclosures clogging the inventory will suppress prices for years to come.

Have you ever solved a problem without acknowledging that it exists? I never have, so the NAR should humor us with some all-too-rare candor. 

article continued here. 

What is relevant for 40-somethings is the need to be real. Pretense is immature and unneeded. Being real, and telling it like it is, is appreciated by clients and customers alike. People don’t want an agent who looks at the market through rose colored glasses, there is too much at stake. What they want is the truth so they can act accordingly.