The Real Estate Broker of the Future?
I was at a conference this week and one of the issues we discussed was the “Real Estate Brokerage of the Future,” a topic that has come up a lot in discussions at industry conferences in the past year. Unfortunately, much of the discussion drifted, as it tends to do, to a simple application of…
Read MoreThe Real Estate Convention of the Future: What do Real Estate Agents Want in a Convention?
March is usually convention season, so at this time of year I’m generally planning trips to Las Vegas or San Diego or any of the other traditional convention venues, and coordinating itineraries for the agents who will coming from our company. Our company has always been big into conventions — we encourage agents to go,…
Read MoreFive Things to Stop Doing in 2010
This past week, I gave a presentation at the Inman Connect Conference in New York with the great Steve Harney on “10 Things” real estate agents should do in 2010. My feeling was that agents are already doing too much, so I decided to talk about five things that agents should STOP doing. Given that…
Read MoreClient-Oriented Real Estate in Action: HomeBuyerTaxCredit.com
The purpose of this blog is to promote the concept of Client-Oriented Real Estate, or C.O.R.E., the idea that real estate agents should be focused primarily on identifying and servicing the needs of their clients. Not only do we think this is a better way to run your business, we think it’s a more productive…
Read MoreBuying a home is easier than buying a car.
When you talk to clients about how our real estate market works, remember this. Buying a home should be harder than buying a car. It should be, but it’s not. I mean, yes, it’s harder in the sense that you generally need a lot more money, and you have to sign a LOT more documents.…
Read MoreWhat if we charged by the hour?
I was talking to some agents recently about all the things that an agent does for her client, and how she does them “on spec.” No matter how many times she shows that listing, or does open houses, or advertises the property, she makes nothing if it doesn’t sell. And no matter how many time…
Read MoreNovember 30th is a HARD Deadline — Be Prepared
It has occurred to us that we should send out a general alert to all of you to start preparing for November 30th. What’s November 30th? It’s the last day that first-time home buyers can close to take advantage of the federal tax credit. It’s going to be a massive closing day. It’s also, unfortunately,…
Read MoreGiving our clients good pricing advice
A year ago, I was in car accident. I was on Kinderkamack road in Emerson, and stopped because a line of geese were crossing the road (new rule: drive over the geese), and a woman who apparently wasn’t paying such careful attention smashed into the back of my car. She pretty much destroyed the rear…
Read MoreStaying on top of things
If you’re going to be the “World’s Best Real Estate Agent,” you have to stay on top of things. For those of you working with first-time home-buyers, be advised that the New York State government just shut down the state’s first-time home-buyer tax credit. As we predicted in the Market Intelligence blog a few weeks…
Read MoreUsing New Technologies
Brian Boero of the 1000WattConsulting Blog had a great post this week about the “Bizarro World” of social media, making many of the same points I’ve talked about with regard to adoption of new technologies. I’ve talked to lots of agents about utilizing facebook and blogs to help build and develop their social networks. Blogging…
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