http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/blog en david@cleanoffer.com Copyright 2008 2008-08-04T23:59:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/agents_stop_wasting_money_on_advertising/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/agents_stop_wasting_money_on_advertising/#When:22:59:00Z Like you, I am overwhelmed by all the advertising pitches thrown at me every day.  Whether by email, by snail mail, in print media or on the Internet, my attention span for these “notice me” attempts is about as short as somebody with ADD on steroids. I think this marketing recipe described in Inman News is spot on.  At best, advertising creates attention.  In contrast, good marketing compels someone to buy. For marketing to work it must feel like you are talking directly to me.  This is especially true in residential home sales.  Real Estate is a relationship game revolving around social networks. Unfortunately, most real estate agents do a pathetic job at marketing, wasting lots of time and money in the process. The key points in the marketing recipe are: 1. Practice “Potato Chip Marketing” 2. Target market 3. Research your target market’s wants and needs. 4. Develop a hook 5. Keep them reading 6. Layout to stand out 7. You must have a call to action 2008-08-04T22:59:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/cleanoffer_ceo_david_faudman_selected_as_inman_real_estate_connect_panelist/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/cleanoffer_ceo_david_faudman_selected_as_inman_real_estate_connect_panelist/#When:21:27:00Z David has been chosen to be a panelist on the topic of: Change or Die - Does the MLS Risk Becoming Irrelevant? When: Thursday, July 24, 4:00 pm - 4:45 pm Where: Palace Hotel, San Francisco Who are the Panelists: David Faudman, CEO, CleanOffer, Inc. Cameron Paine, CEO, Connecticut MLS, Inc. Mark Tepper, VP, Business Development & Sales, Homescape Saul Klein, President & CEO, InternetCrusade/CEO, Point2 Technologies 2008-07-14T21:27:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/dont_tell_your_clients_the_address_of_the_home/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/dont_tell_your_clients_the_address_of_the_home/#When:22:04:00Z When I started in real estate many years ago, a top producing agent warned me to never tell a buyer the address of a property until the buyer was in my car or I may lose him/her to another agent.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Often (although less so lately) a real estate agent will ask me, “If my clients go on the Internet and learn about all the homes for sale in their area why would they need me?” My answer to the agent is always, “Well, if you feel that way then you are right!” Saying that “123 Main Street is for sale at $500,000” or “It has a lovely kitchen” is not much value added.  Heck, my 9 year old boy can do that!  What they want from an agent is local market knowledge such as: • Is this a good price? • Is this a good location? • What inspections should I get? • What do you think about the other agent? • What do you think about the home? Whether an agent likes it or not, home buyers and sellers want and will get access to real estate data.  That’s a good thing.  Combining trusted data with the advice of a knowledgeable agent gets buyers and sellers to make easier decisions. Buyers and sellers Consider the Internet an Ally.  So do smart agents. 2008-06-23T22:04:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/real_estate/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/real_estate/#When:17:49:00Z “Social Networking” is today’s hot Internet space. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and LinkedIn are all evidence of excitement around the fostering of information exchange and relationships via online applications. In fact, Microsoft’s recent investment in Facebook valued the site at $15 billion! Yet (with the possible exception of Linkedin), the usage of these sites seems far more casual than business critical with sustainable revenue models being highly elusive. No business relies more on social networking for its success than real estate sales. Realtors, homebuyers, homesellers, title companies, lenders, movers, inspectors and a myriad of other service providers must be well connected with one another in order to successfully complete a real estate transaction. Still, in sharp contrast with the above mentioned social networking sites, real estate is intensely local.  As a real estate broker or homebuyer in San Francisco, I really don’t care about the Houston real estate market or who’s the best home inspector in Denver.  Several excellent sites such as Activerain, Zolve and Trulia Voices miss this tight local distinction, and while providing good information, have little involvement with actual real estate transactions. Agents, homebuyers, homesellers and real estate service providers all have a tremendous amount of money and emotion tied up in their local real estate social network. This interdependence continues long after the sale is closed. At the core of this network is the agent-to-agent and agent-to-client relationship.  Enhancing this core is what CleanOffer does best. Real estate is not a national social network but rather thousands of smaller local networks involving people who know each other and are doing actual business together.  Stay tuned for some exciting news from CleanOffer! 2008-06-11T17:49:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/current_market_conditions_now_available_for_every_listing/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/current_market_conditions_now_available_for_every_listing/#When:18:25:00Z The press sure loves writing about real estate doesn’t it? “Market Booming”, “Real Estate Collapsing”, “Prices Skyrocket”, blah, blah, blah.  But can the information in these news stories really help you make smart decisions if you’re in the market to actually buy or sell a home now? Unfortunately, the answer is NO, not really.  Even if the information portrayed is accurate (questionable), the problem is that closed sales only reflect activity on properties that went into escrow (under contract), 30 to 180 days ago.  If you find a property for sale now that you want to buy now, what you really want to know is “How hard can I negotiate the price?” If you are a seller with a home for sale now, you want to know “How hard can I hold out for my price?” Many years ago, I created a simple indicator of current market “Supply versus Demand” for a location. (in fact we have a Patent Pending approval by the US Patent Office) By knowing what percentage of the listings for sale now in an area are in escrow (under contract) you get a great idea of whether that area is currently a buyers’ or sellers’ market and to what degree. For example, if there are 100 homes for sale in Palo Alto, California and 15 are in escrow (under contract) than the percentage in escrow is 15%.  CleanOffer’s opinion is that 15% indicates a “Strong Buyers Market”.  These opinions take into consideration lots of factors including how long it generally takes a property to close escrow once it is under contract. To get the Market Condition for any listing you view on CleanOffer, simply click the “Market Condition” link under the property photo for that listing.  You’ll be smarter for it! 2008-05-22T18:25:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/what_have_we_been_up_to/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/what_have_we_been_up_to/#When:17:03:00Z Currently the main focus of the engineering team is to bring over our original North Bay users to the same platform that is enjoyed by our San Francisco, Peninsula, and Austin users.  As a result, a lot of the stuff that we’ve been working on is not visible to the larger CleanOffer community. That being said, over the last three weeks we have deployed several small enhancements to the CleanOffer site that do affect all of our users. Features for both Agents and Clients Users now have access to the Market Conditions Report. The report gives a simple to understand overview of the market. You can access the report by clicking on the “Market Condition” link on any Property Detail page. This report have been used by our North Bay users for years, we hope that users in other markets find it useful. The full-sized original listing photos are available. To see the original photo, click on the photo from the listing detail page. You can browse through all of the full-sized photos by using the left and right arrow keys once a full-sized photo is displayed. In the “My Favorites” portlet of the briefcase you can now see the current price and status of your saved listing.  The “Search History” portlet has been improved to show the type of search that was executed.  The time of the last MLS download is now displayed at the bottom of the search result and listing detail page. Features for Agents Only The “My Listings” portlet and quick peek have been improved to disable actions that are not applicable to the listing.  The “My Clients” quick peek now displays the number of saved searches and my favorites for each client. As always, we are always looking for feedback, so if you have any comments please email them to support@cleanoffer.com. 2008-05-15T17:03:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/mickey_mouse_wants_to_use_cleanoffer/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/mickey_mouse_wants_to_use_cleanoffer/#When:19:39:00Z But he can’t.  Last week “Mickey Mouse” (mmouse@disney.com) actually tried to sign up for CleanOffer.  As you know, CleanOffer is a private agent-client productivity tool, NOT one of those anonymous “Lead Generators”.  Per our licensing agreements with the Multiple Listing Services, all users of CleanOffer must either be a subscribing agent to the MLS or the client/consumer of a subscribing agent. I agree that curious consumers should be able to look at real estate online anonymously.  This curiosity has been solved by thousands of consumer-facing public websites such as Realtor.com and brokerage websites.  The main goal of these public websites is to generate “leads” for real estate agents. The problem is that those “leads” are rarely serious home buyers or sellers.  Generally less than 1% of them result in a closed home sale.  In contrast, 40% of the clients using CleanOffer actually buy or sell (or both) a home.  Real estate is a Relationship Game.  In reality, serious buyers and sellers are represented by a real estate agent in about 90% of residential real estate transactions.  This is the group that CleanOffer caters to. Still, occasionally we do get some unattached consumer “leads” at CleanOffer.  If any of you agents out there want us to send you the prospects let us know.  Right now we have Mickey Mouse available! 2008-04-28T19:39:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/cleanoffer_is_expanding/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/cleanoffer_is_expanding/#When:22:30:00Z We have just released the beta version of CleanOffer for the Austin, Texas market. Through an agreement with the Austin Board of Realtors, the CleanOffer product now covers Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Burnet, Caldwell, Blanco, Llano, Milam, Comal, Lee, Fayette, Gonzales and Gillespie counties. Over the past few years, Austin has been one of the best performing real estate markets in the country. We’re very confident that the CleanOffer product will be well received by Austin agents. We’ve found that the best marketing of CleanOffer has been through word of mouth. We’re looking for early adopters, so if you know any agents in the Austin market, we’d appreciate if you would contact them and let them know how valuable CleanOffer has been to you.  About CleanOffer 2008-04-16T22:30:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/scheduled_downtime_tonight/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/scheduled_downtime_tonight/#When:22:47:00Z The re.cleanoffer.com site will be down at 6 p.m. pacific time tonight for our newest release. The site will be unavailable from 6 p.m. PST, until 6 a.m PST. We apologize for the length of time, but we’re releasing a new version with many new features. We’ll post again here once we’re done. Thanks for your patience! Update 6 a.m. PST The upgrade is taking a little longer than expected. We are working hard to get the site back up and running as soon as possible. Please bear with us a little longer. Update 9:30 a.m. PST Upgrade complete. We are still fixing some small issues. Thanks again for bearing with us. 2008-04-07T22:47:00-08:00 http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/sothebys_carmel_first_one_to_the_monterey_party/ http://www.cleanoffer.com/home/index.php/site/sothebys_carmel_first_one_to_the_monterey_party/#When:20:04:00Z Sotheby’s International Realty (SIR)- Clock Tower , Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Carmel Valley became the first in the Monterey region to offer their clients a branded CleanOffer site: Sotheby’s Private Client MLS. Patrick Barber (SIR- Senior Vice President/Managing Broker, San Francisco) and Frank Symons (SIR- Executive Vice President/COO, Western Region) forward thinking brought CleanOffer to the San Francisco Sotheby’s office just over a year ago. Now it’s being introduced in the SIR- Carmel offices which will also reap the benefits of a special Sotheby’s branded CleanOffer site. More than 70% of SIR San Francisco agents use Private Client MLS powered by CleanOffer, and within the first two weeks of its release in Carmel over 15% of SIR Carmel agents have adopted the tool to use with their clients. Agents and clients alike love it. We are excited to witness the same success in Monterey as we have in San Francisco. A special thanks to Patrick, Frank, Kent Nelson, and all the SIR agents and management who supported us and gave us testimonials.  2008-03-28T20:04:00-08:00