single property websites

One Profession, Two Jobs

August 3, 2009
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The picture is of Annette Bening in the “glamorous” role of  a listing agent preparing for an open house in a vacant property in one of my favorite movies, American Beauty, where she starred with Kevin Spacey. Almost everywhere, whether it is explicit or simply the practice, real estate agents represent either a buyer or [...]

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The Chicken or the Egg in Real Estate Marketing

July 29, 2009
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In the ebook that I’m offering for free here in the sidebar, our heroine, Marty Maven confronts the chicken or egg question all newbie agents, no matter how well they are trained, must ask themselves, “Do I promote myself to get experience or get experience that I can promote?” I can remember vividly as a [...]

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Playing Your Marketing Cards

July 28, 2009
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To me the concept of the “marketing mix” has always conjured up an image of a mixing bowl where a bunch of different ingredients are combined synergistically to produce something tasty. The problem with that analogy is that it implies that when you follow the recipe things will turn out fine. Marketing homes may more [...]

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The Science of Pricing

July 22, 2009
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Four Key Questions for Pricing Pricing a listing can be complicated but the pricing of real estate services could get complicated too. In fact, it probably will.  This will be partly driven by sellers demanding more marketing services and partly driven by agents wanting sellers to share the risk. It will also be driven by [...]

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Staging in the Marketing Mix

July 18, 2009
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Before I was a real estate agent or even knew what staging was I had a hand in trying to get a company started that wanted to compete in the collectible figurine business somewhere between Precious Moments and Tom Clark’s Gnomes. The business never really got off the ground but all of us involved in [...]

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Promoting the Whole Experience

July 16, 2009
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This guy gets it. To really do a good job representing our listing clients we need to promote the entire experience of living in a community and not just a home. In this blog post on Real Central VA, Jim Duncan doesn’t even mention  a home.

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Photography in Real Estate

July 6, 2009
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Used to be one photograph of the front of a home was taken to put in the MLS book and possibly use in a one inch square space in a newspaper ad. In many cases next to a one inch square photo of the listing agent inspiring the phrase “little houses little heads.” Because space [...]

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Home Owners Association Dues

June 13, 2009
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I originally got my real estate license when my agent made more money on the first property I bought to renovate and flip than I did.  There were a lot of lessons learned but one was that if you had a good product you could sell it. The listing agent spent a few hours on [...]

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Experiment

June 8, 2009
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Here’s a little experiment you can try that may change the way you write copy for your listings. Go to Realtor.com and do a search in your market. I like to do this in the luxury range which in my market starts at about $700K, so I search between $700K to $5M, which doesn’t leave [...]

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Flexible Pricing

May 31, 2009
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The New York Times published a story about a trend beginning in Long Island where sellers and listing agents are starting to offer flexible pricing.  The scenario is that a range is given, for example, $250,000 to $300,000. If I hadn’t recently endured a series of videos from an enterprising agent in Florida who was taking [...]

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