Posts Tagged ‘Real estate’
3 Reasons Why The Realtor.com iPhone App Will Work
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Real Estate Trends, Sales on January 22nd, 2010
It’s finally here. We all knew it was inevitable, but it’s finally here. Realtor.com released their iPhone application this month and it looks pretty promising.
It has a ton of different features that will help homebuyers collect information, locate properties, and contact realtors. Watch the video below to get a full demo of the application.
The idea of using a smart phone for home buying might seem like a fad, but if you really think about it, you will see its utility. Here are 3 reasons why this application will work……
It’s Convenient
The success of any application depends on how convenient and helpful it is. The Realtor.com team seems to understand this well. Everything is streamlined and designed for easy use. You can easily find properties based on your current location or desired location within seconds. You can also make quick notes about the property on your phone.
It’s Designed For The Current Market
This application can actually help homebuyers in their search. More than half of all iPhone users are between the ages of 26 and 40. The median age of new homebuyers is 30 and a lot of them are taking advantage of an extended homebuyer tax credit. This is the current market. These Generation Y buyers will be looking for a new home on their lunch break and the little free time they have. Developing an iPhone app for this demographic makes perfectly good sense. You must cater to your market.
It Adheres to Marketing’s Emerging Trends
This is the big one. The most interesting feature of the application is that it allows its users to share home listing information and feedback in multiple ways including social media services and e-mail. This fits right into the “Real-Time Review” trend. Realtor.com is wise to incorporate this into their iPhone App. I believe that homebuyers will be using these social media outlets regardless of the Realtor.com iPhone app. I think its great that they encourage social sharing because they understand the value of it. As property owners, marketers, and developers, we need to understand the benefits as well.
The release of this iPhone application should be a wake up call to those non-believers of social media and real-time review. If a company like Realtor.com is developing software to accommodate users in this manner, you might want to pay attention.
Your House Becomes Your Home Again
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Real Estate Economics, Real Estate Trends on January 12th, 2010
My friend and seasoned real estate journalist Pat Curry has written a great blog over at Cyberhomes.com.
She asks the question, “Are homes good investments”? As stated by Curry, homes have no doubt been a solid investment in the past, but due to economic turmoil and a slumping housing market, everyone is questioning the strength of its return power.
As a whole, I do not think homes will be seen as investments in the future. Our parents bought houses as a “home” where they would raise a family and live for a long time. The result was they bought a house, stayed a long time and therefore made a profit when they sold it.
In the past 10 years people have been buying homes as an investment thinking they were going to make 400% profit. It was not so much about the “home” but the profit. I think real estate will come back as a way to make money, but I don’t’ know if the Gen x and y buyer will jump on that bandwagon. They are skeptical of the establishment and they seem to be buying more for what they love and not just what they will make on it.
There is a great article by Market Watch that talks about added home value with walk able communities. This proves my point in a way. People are beginning to value homes that are conducive to their lifestyles. In this case, being able to walk to school, shopping, and amenities.
When the housing market does return, I think we will better see this attitude change. The foreclosure rates paint a great picture of how many people lost their investments. I truly believe that average homebuyer will shift their mindset away from investing and more towards finding a true home. America has learned a hard lesson in real estate investing these past few years. The future will reflect that.
Generation Y’s Hard Lesson and What We can Learn From It
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Real Estate Economics on December 9th, 2009
Generation Y has long been regarded as the “I want it all, and I want it now” generation by its elders. For the most part they have done nothing short of proving these stereotypes predominately true. Maybe it’s because they watched their parents continue to trade up for the next best. Maybe it’s because they became accustomed to granite counter tops and hardwood floors. Whatever the reason for the labels, Generation Y is now snapping out of it and learning that waiting can be your best friend.
While the stereotypes ring true for the most part, there are Gen Y home buyers out there that are learning the hard lessons about mortgages and lending. It’s causing them to pull back on their “the sky is the limit” attitude. How can they not? They got burned just like everyone else did when the market crashed.
A cyberhomes.com article paints the perfect picture:
“When Kealoha Yoshioka was 27 and buying his first home – a fully renovated condo in Campbell, Calif. – he was dazzled by the extras: the dual bathroom sinks, the crown molding, the granite counter tops.”
“Now, three years after his first home buying experience, the shine is off the extras, and he’s upside down in his mortgage. The allowance his wife and his accountant mother-in-law put him on for his Xbox games is all but gone, and the big expense is the couple’s 10-month-old puppy, Shiba. Yoshioka still wants all the bells and whistles in his next home – and he wants that new home to come soon, as the couple considers starting a family. But for the first time in his life, Yoshioka is doing something new: waiting.”
The article does however shine a little light on the maturation of Generation Y, which is good for everyone involved in the home buying and building process.
“Today, DeBord sees a shift in the thought process of the Millennials he works with that’s affecting home buying trends. Like everyone else since the economic slowdown, Millennials assume they’ll own their first home longer and don’t assume it will function as an ATM. Most importantly, they have to be careful about how much they borrow.”
“They’ve learned caution,” says Susan Seal, associate broker at Houlihan Lawrence in New York City. “They no longer let themselves fall in love with a home, but agonize about the potential rise and fall of the future market.”
Perhaps the Millennials will do it right and teach us Baby Boomers a good lesson. Making the biggest buying decision of your life using your brain instead of your ego will work out better for the buyer. Does this change the way we sell homes? Absolutely. This buyer will be armed with volumes of information (both accurate and not) from the web and will be less likely to make an impulse buy. Are you ready?
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Real-Time Reviews of Real Estate Are Coming
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Real Estate Trends on December 7th, 2009
A Hypothetical Situation:
A prospective buyer visits your real estate property looking for a home to purchase. A leasing agent or even property manager greets him or her with a less than chipper or helpful attitude. As the prospect is shown the property and informed of its hopefully many benefits, your leasing agent continues their lackluster sales performance. At the end of the showing, your once potential prospect might be turned off from your property simply because of a horrible interaction with your leaser.
What does this mean? Did you lose a potential renter or buyer? Probably, but it also means so much more.
This is where real-time reviews can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.
Using their cell phone, the unsatisfied prospect could be posting a negative review of your property on multiple platforms in only the time it takes for them to walk to their car. (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc….)
Scary right? Now all of their friends know of the terrible sales experience. It gets worse. With the recent addition of social search to Google, people searching for your property on the Internet could possibly stumble upon their Twitter or Facebook update. Now the bad review goes beyond just their friend group.
So what can we do about this?
The answer seems simple. You outperform any consumer expectations. Is this possible? Maybe not, but it is an admirable goal.
What else?
A Trendwatching.com article suggests that companies should be extremely involved with the review process. This would mean monitoring reviews and responding to them, or actually providing a platform for reviews in order to gain insight and participation ease.
The reality is that people are going to say things about your property/brand. Why not take advantage of the good and bad? If you responded to someone’s positive Twitter comment about your property with a thank you, do you think that would help the chances of them buying or renting from you? You better believe it would. What if you apologized for the bad experience and invited them back for a special visit? It would definitely help.
This is something we need to be thinking about for next year. Real-time reviews will become more common as time passes. Are you ready to handle the good and bad? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
The Emergence of Urban Living and Why It Matters
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Demographics, Marketing on December 2nd, 2009
As the end of the year approaches, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about next year. To be more specific, I would like to point out some predictions that have stuck out to me.
A major trend for next year, and probably many years beyond, is a major push for urbanization and urban living.
According to a Trendwatching.com article, less than 5% of the world’s population lived in cities a century ago. For the first time ever, that figure exceeds 50% starting back in 2008.
The points here are that urbanites process and consume at a higher rate than suburbanites and because of that, they demand more innovative products. This in turn requires marketers and advertisers to come up with more innovative ways of communicating with these consumers.
The most interesting thing about this article is the relevancy it has with our current emerging market trends. Marketing to these urbanites will be based on innovation and transparency, which is something we are already seeing with social media.
The article mentioned above details a rapid increase of urban living within city limits, which makes me think that we will continue to use social media in order to achieve innovation and transparency.
Marketers question the ability of the older generations to adapt and respond to social media. This article makes a great observation, in that with the way marketing is heading, suburbanites will be tempted to act in the same manner due to near-total transparency of online marketing strategies.
So what is the take away from this?
The number of urbanities is increasing daily, so we should begin tailoring our strategies to accommodate their lifestyles and their means of information processing. What if you don’t develop or sell real estate inside the city? You should still be paying attention because these trends won’t be far behind for suburban settings.
Bernanke On the Outlook of the Economy
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Real Estate Economics on November 25th, 2009
I want to share with you a quick excerpt about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. He spoke at the Economic Club of New York last week about the policy on commercial loans. Perhaps this will keep commercial real estate from dipping s far as residential did.
While I am on the topic of bank lending, I would like to add a few words about commercial real estate (CRE). Demand for commercial property has dropped as the economy has weakened, leading to significant declines in property values, increased vacancy rates, and falling rents. These poor fundamentals have caused a sharp deterioration in the credit quality of CRE loans on banks’ books and of the loans that back commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). Pressures may be particularly acute at smaller regional and community banks that entered the crisis with high concentrations of CRE loans.
In response, banks have been reducing their exposure to these loans quite rapidly in recent months. Meanwhile, the market for securitizations backed by these loans remains all but closed. With nearly $500 billion of CRE loans scheduled to mature annually over the next few years, the performance of this sector depends critically on the ability of borrowers to refinance many of those loans. Especially if CMBS financing remains unavailable, banks will face the tough decision of whether to roll over maturing debt or to foreclose.
Recognizing the importance of this sector for the economic recovery, the Federal Reserve has extended the TALF programs for existing CMBS through March 2010 and newly structured CMBS through June. Moreover, the banking agencies recently encouraged banks to work with their credit worthy borrowers to restructure troubled CRE loans in a prudent manner, and reminded examiners that–absent other adverse factors–a loan should not be classified as impaired based solely on a decline in collateral value.
You can read the entire write up of Bernanke’s address here.
Resort Amenities Are Going All Natural
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Green, Real Estate Trends on November 23rd, 2009
I posted a blog last week talking about the benefits of adding natural surface trails to residential developments. It makes a lot of sense to me when you break down the dollar signs and you study the emerging trends.
I was interested to read an article entitled “New Models for Resort Development” which talks about natural amenities. It makes me wonder if these demands can be seen in various development types across the board.
ULI 2009 Fall Meeting in San Francisco
The article details the ULI 2009 Fall Meeting in San Francisco. The brightest and most innovative minds spoke at the conference on the emerging trends of resort development.
The article emphasizes a focus on social and environmental responsibility integrated with simple amenities. This trend also speaks to the health and wellness focus that every aspect of our society is now addressing. Amenities that can help build relationships and make you feel healthier at the same time seem to be what we all are craving.
Based on emerging trends and buyer demographics; I think Brian De Lowe of Viceroy Hotel Group put it best.
“The resort development model of the past is dead”
A very blunt and straightforward comment, but it was what we need to hear right now.
Rebecca Zimmerman, president of Design Workshop, had this to say:
“Social connection is truly important” and “Now, people need people, and people find social nourishment by engaging with others”
It is an interesting take on resort development. Does this sound familiar to anyone? How about the emergences of social media?
Zimmerman pointed out a great statistic. 82% of the US populations enjoy walking outdoors for fun or exercise. Numbers indicate a growing trend for the future. This completely reinforces my blog from last week. Consumers are looking for something simple and natural. The good news for developers is that the startups cost for these amenities are low and require low maintenance expenses. Because of the concern over the economic future of real estate, these amenities also protect your bottom line while giving the consumer something they crave.
This article along with everything else I am reading, points back to a central theme or idea. The key to successful future building is simplicity. From housing to amenities, we are seeing a demand for simple design in everything.
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The North Carolina Healthy Built Homes Program
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Real Estate Economics, Sales on November 11th, 2009
NC HealthyBuilt Homes Program
It’s always good to see someone looking out for the little guys. In this case, the little guys I am referring to are the small to medium sized home builders.
Many times these smaller home-builders lack the funds or resources to compete with the big boys of development. It is nice to see someone lend a helping hand to the little guy during this tough economy.
The North Carolina Healthy Built Homes Program does just that.
What Is The North Carolina Healthy Built Homes Program?
The program is a collaborative effort between several local building professionals, the North Carolina Solar Center, the State Energy Office, and the North Carolina Department of Administration.
The program caters to smaller home-builders by providing support and advising in various fields. It offers technical assistance, marketing assistance, design reviews, workshops and presentations. They also offer field consultation services to help enhance a small firm’s knowledge of energy efficient home building.
How Do You Qualify For The Program?
So how do qualify for the program? You first need to meet a few requirements in order to be considered a developer of “HealthyBuilt” homes.
This is how their website describes it:
A HealthyBuilt Home is a comfortable, healthy and affordable home that reduces energy and water usage and protects the environment. Building materials and processes are selected to reduce pollution and the waste of natural resources both during the manufacturing and construction phases and throughout the life of the home. Because the quality, amenities, and energy savings are evident, these homes have a higher value and are easier to sell.
Is This A Good Idea?
I think this is a great program that could be initiated in other cities. What do you think? Leave a comment below. I am looking forward to some thoughts about this.
Generation Y and The Face of Real Estate
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Demographics, Real Estate Trends, Sales on November 6th, 2009
I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal detailing the tendencies of teens to generation Y. They describe them as the “network generation”. It raises this question, “If more affordable housing is the market for 2010 – 2012, how will we communicate this to the younger generations?” You can read the article here.
It’s one thing to understand the product, but we also need to understand whom we are selling it to. A big part of that is understanding how they communicate and perceive information.
Below are some of the questions that the article evokes and the answers I have for them.
Will the next generation buyer want to visit a sales center?
Most home buyers are able to gather all the information they need about a property from the comfort of their own home. This includes information about the area, amenities and pricing. They can also gather this information through their friends via social networks. So what should we do? Should we establish realistic virtual tours of a property and hope they buy from that? Should we cut down or eliminate sales agents on property?
The answer is no. Sales agents will still be needed somewhere along the way, but in new ways in order to accommodate this generation. Maybe it will be through Facebook or Twitter. Regardless of the channel, young home buyers will always need legal and financial guidance when purchasing a new home.
Generation Y sees blogs, Facebook and Twitter as valid and trustworthy information. If a friend tells a potential buyer that your property has terrible amenities, will they take this as the gospel?
The described scenario will be difficult to combat. The reality is that you have no control over what people are saying about your product. This is especially important in marketing. You have to make sure that what you’re advertising is truthful. There can’t be any vagueness to what you’re selling. Disclaimers can’t protect you from social conversations. Any developer will tell you that what is planned at the beginning can be very different from the final product. We need to be very careful about what is promised.
The article argues that this generation breaks through the “fluff” and gets right to the point. My teenage daughter doesn’t want to be “sold”. She sees straight through the “fluff”. Real estate has historically sold the “dream”. Will we have to sell this generation differently?
I think this generation still has a dream; they just don’t approach it from the same direction as previous generations. It’s human nature to desire, plan and to have expectations. In the future, we are going to have to sell more on the practicality of the product, and how it fits into the “dream”.
With social networking, the marketing of your brand has become more important than ever. I understand this, but how dependent should we become on social networking?
I don’t think social networking is going away anytime soon, but I do feel cautious about how dependant real estate is trying to become on it. It’s become this “next big thing” very quickly, which makes it vulnerable to the next “next big thing”. Marketing is going to become a much more active field than it has been in the past. As opposed to setting up ad campaigns, collateral materials and websites and letting them remain static for months at a time, we will have to provide a steady stream of information/marketing to the world on a regular basis. The more content and the faster it’s released, the better. The danger lies in the untruthfulness of our messages. The reaction time from the consumer is going to be much faster and less forgiving.
What are some of your thoughts?
What questions did the article raise in your mind? Share it with us by leaving a comment below.
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How To Generate Sales Through Innovation
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Sales on October 30th, 2009
One good thing about a recession is that it inspires innovation. Did you know rebates were developed during a recession? That’s right, rebates. I don’t think you can buy an electronic device today without a rebate offer to go with it.
The point is that in order to generate sales in hard times, we need to be innovative with our strategies. Real estate consumers are changing not only by choice, but also by force. This recession is forcing people to be more conservative with their spending and they need to be sure of their purchases. Traditional marketing techniques can’t really give them the assurance they are seeking.
A Good Example of Innovation
Below is a great sales idea from Rodney Hall with The Talon Group. They were able to come up with an innovative way to put a positive spin on slow sales. Not only were they ‘thinking outside of the box”, they were smart enough to realize that a face-to-face selling situation was critical in our current economic climate. You can read the original post here .
Several years ago I interviewed a Director of Sales candidate for one of our builder clients. I asked if he could point to a specific action or idea that resulted in sales which might otherwise have never been achieved by virtue of market momentum. His answer, “a Private Sale Program,” was a good one at the time and even better in our current market. Here’s how it works:
- Pick two week nights… Tuesday and Thursday for example… to close the model park an hour or two early. Reserve that time for invitation-only customers.
- Have your sales team make follow-up calls to everyone who registered within the last year to determine if they might still consider a purchase. If so, explain that you have instituted a private sale program two nights a week, at which time the model park will be closed early for the exclusive perusal of one or two buyers.
- A salesperson will be available to work one-on-one with the buyer, who will be presented significant incentives not otherwise advertised. The buyer will then have 24 hours to make a buy decision before the incentives expire.
The message delivered to this select group of buyers needs to be clear, authentic and believable. Rather than skirting the obvious (how bad the economy is), use it instead as a sales tool:
- Yes… the economy is making it tough for everyone, especially home builders. The fact remains that you (the builder) need to sell homes and are willing to offer significant incentives to a few buyers in order to make that happen.
- The incentives package is far greater than you could extend to each buyer. However, one or two each month is worth it to maintain sales activity, keep trades busy, etc.
Point: Both of those statements are logical and will make sense to buyers. The more directly you address the obvious issues, the more likely the buyer is to trust you and subsequently, buy from you. Keep in mind, the incentives need to be attractive enough to make the program legitimate… meaning you truly wouldn’t want to repeat it on every sale. However, this type of program avoids the need to advertise it on a wider scale and done right, could add incremental sales where none existed before.
How Innovative Are Your Ideas?
Again, this is a great example of “thinking outside of the box”. We must realize that we are facing a new sales day. Being innovative is the only way to make sales happen, that and creating a face-to-face selling situation. How have you been innovative in your sales strategies? Share your ideas by leaving a comment below. Having trouble coming up with ideas? Shoot me an e-mail. I am always willing to help.
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