Mouth 2 Mouth

Last week I wrote about Scams. It appears that over the last few days one particular scam is alive and well, and targeted specifically at real estate people.  Many of you may have recieved this message or something like it.  Please ignore it.

_______ 

Subject: Investment

Dear Friend,
Top of the day I wish you.
I am writing to inform you of my desire to acquire a real estate property in your country for my client who is still serving in the government.

Due to her political and strategic position, I am contacting you to know whether you can act as our investment agent to make this investment and our fund manager to the investment fund so that the fund can be invested into nice properties.

if this offer is acceptable to you, kindly get back to me through my email address with your full contact detail so that we can discuss further and start up the investment.

Regards,
Rev. Frank Jones

________

OK, so there you are minding your own business and an email comes in from a stranger.  They have a lot of money.  They need to move it but they can’t on their own.  They need it transferred, and they need your help.

In exchange for help, you will be rewarded with a significant sum of cash.  All you have to do is give them your personal information.

This is a multi stage scam.  Many potential scamee's play along knowing full well what's going on.  You can check out one such exchange posted here.  It demonstrates one way in which the scam is implemented.

I'd like to say that these are frivilous and that nobody falls for them, but apparently the scam has worked.  I don't have good statistics on this bu apparently every year in the US, millions of dollars are lots to these scams.

Now this is kind of funny coming from the FTC, but it works:

“If you're tempted to respond to an offer, the FTC suggests you stop and ask yourself two important questions: Why would a perfect stranger pick you — also a perfect stranger — to share a fortune with, and why would you share your personal or business information, including your bank account numbers or your company letterhead, with someone you don't know?”

There are a lot of ways to defraud someone online and off.  Please become aware that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.  Please check it out first.

Who do you work with everyday?

How can they be here with you on ActiveRain?

Part of the purpose of this network is to help you keep in contact with all those professionals in your local community that you work with on a daily basis.

As an agent you see Agent B's name everywhere, she's got a great marketing program, and agent X and you have interacted on a number of transactions, or at least offers.  Then there's those other folks at the office, why aren't they on board yet?  And what all those loan officers and closing people you've been doing deals with?  Would you benefit from having another way to contact them?  Wouldn't they like to come on-line?

Bringing your local community of professionals on-line will go a long way toward enhancing your relationships off-line.

So ActiveRain Community what do you think?  Who's going to be the first to bring their community, their city on-line?  I'm looking for examples of how you've done this, or what you're going to do to see this happen.

The ActiveRain Community is young, you're here at the beginning of the curve, is it time for you to take the lead in your office your community.

How can you bring your real estate community to The ActiveRain Community? 

Ages ago points were awarded for being added to someones associates list.  The idea behind this was, that if someone was willing to associate with you then they were giving you a vote of confidence.  In addition it was a way for ActiveRain members to interact and get to know each other.

In practice what happened is that many members decided that it would be best to add everyone they could find to their associates lists, which didn't exactly seem to facilitate a useful form of networking.

I would encourage you to take a look at the associates list feature and to have you utilize it in a manner that helps you to keep in touch with and see what's going on with professionals that you can create meaningful relationships with.

With your associates list you can check quickly through a list of every body's blogs to see what they've written about lately, and you can quickly, contact or send a message to someone you haven't spoken to in a while.

Have a list of the people you have meaningful relationships with and an easy way to stay in touch is a very powerful tool.  There are many ways to use it.  I encourage members to take a look again at their associates list.  Edit them for meaningful or potentially meaningful relationships, and use the list to your advantage.

How could you envision using the list?  Do you have more suggestions on how to implement it or how ActiveRain can make it better for you?

"How does The ActiveRain Real Estate Network help my business?"

I get so many questions like this. I feel that for every question there can be a different answer.  The Network has the ability to do so much for us, but ultimately it is dependent upon how you choose to utilize it.

California Real Estate Agent Rory Siems , currently number 19 in the Network with over 20,000 points, recently wrote in with a way to utilize the value of The Network in his marketing tools.  The pic above comes from one of Rory's marketing pieces.  Rory is positioning The Network as one of his resources for marketing a seller's property.

There are many benefits to The ActiveRain Network, I'm hoping as it continues to grow and evolve that more members like Rory will find ways to utilize it as another tool in their professional's toolkit.

How are you using The Network to enhance your business?

Apparently I've been called out.  So I've got to keep up a bit.

I was recently asked by a few members about blog tagging.  We've had some great posts on it, but I feel compelled to add my take to the conversation. I'm going to be very basic here. Jason Ungos and Bill French have already gone into a much more thorough descritption than I will.

A tag is a short description, usually one word, that describes one of the topics covered in a blog post.  In the search engine world we'd call it a key word.  If your blog post is covering more than one topic, you would want to have more than one tag to associated with it.  Also if more than one topic is being covered you'd want to add more tags.

A tag helps ActiveRain to sort and feed topical information.  That way when you're looking to read about blogging or tagging you can use key words to search for your topic of interest.

A tag should be general in nature and designed to help some one find the information in your blog post.

So this post is related to what exactly?

Well If someone is looking for information on tagging they might search for "tags,"  in a more general sense they' might be looking for information on "blogging."  Those really are the only two relevant tags i can think of for this post.

Now if you want to see how tags work.  Click on the tags below to be taken to other ActiveRain Real Estate Network blogs that include the tag you click on.  You will be shown a list of blogs that other writers thought appropriately fit the topic of tags or blogging.

You'll learn a lot more information too. 

The Real Estate Industry is one that is slow to change.  The real property being sold after all hasn't really changed exactly, so this is not entirely surprising.  Real Estate agents are often looked at as the ultimate laggards in an industry of slow change.

With the latest real estate boom coming after a major internet technology boom it’s not surprising how much real estate has changed in the last six years.

Attending the Inman conference recently I sat in on a few seminars and product demos.  I spoke with a whole lot of vendors and attendee's.  Through all this I saw a lot of great technologies and tools to help the Real Estate Professional to maximize their reach into the marketplace.  Some older tools are to maintain business, and simple necessities.  Others are cutting edge and may provide great benefits to the user, or if things don't pan out they'll fade away.

Sitting in on a seminar on internet lead management, I came to remember how often people forget that tools alone won’t improve your business.   You’ve got to be a good salesperson first.

There are some fabulous sales people out there that use technology to its fullest.  Personally I believe in technology that’s why I’m doing what I’m working for a real estate technology company.  But technology does not make a mediocre or terrible salesperson better.  Technology can help us do our jobs, and for good sales people it can help them be better.  But if you are a mediocre sales person you would benefit much greater from a  good quality education, than from the next cool tool on the market.

To truly benefit from what technology offers us you’ve got to develop your sales skills first.

Hello ActiveRain Community Members.  I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to respond to many of your emails.  As you know Matt and I have both been busy off-line connecting with the industry at Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. 

<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute;margin-left:0;margin-top:56.6pt;width:60pt;height:18.9pt; z-index:1;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square;mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt;mso-position-horizontal:absolute; mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative:text' wrapcoords="0 0 0 20571 21384 20571 21384 0 0 0"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Caleb\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="tight"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->I have to say the conference was fabulous.  Companies from all over representing the latest and greatest in technology for the real estate professional.  Standout themes had to do with, blogging, listings, and lead management.

In the blogging world Matt and I met up with the folks at RealEstateblogsites.com.  John Helmering, Rodney Rumford, and Kristen Veraldi. The five of us walked around San Francisco looking for John’s favorite Chinese place.  I was glad for the walk and enjoyed checking out the city.  I’ve never been to San Francisco.  Talking with John, Kristen and Rodney was a great experience.  They are great people very excited about what they have to offer to the real estate industry.  Blogs are being looked at as this year’s “listing”  whereas in the last few years the focus has been on utilizing listings to bring in leads from the web, today blogging is looked at as the latest to tool in the internet marketing toolbox.  I’ll be writing more about this later.  Real Estate Blogsites has some great tools available to the real estate professional If you want to learn more about the benefits of business blogging, then they are great people to talk to.

<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_9" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute;margin-left:408.6pt;margin-top:19.55pt;width:54pt; height:28.2pt;z-index:1;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square; mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:0;mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt; mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0;mso-position-horizontal:absolute; mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative:text'> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Caleb\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="square"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->There were many showcasing their lead management systems, something which ActiveRain Itself is known for through it’s work with Most Home Technologies Corp. I had the fortune to meet the team at Most Home for the first time, Ken Galpin,  Jim Secord, Josh Heppner, and Todd Shyiak.  A great team and fun, we talked to them quite a bit about their eTeam lead follow up system that includes at its core a live call center to follow up with leads.  As a broker I helped to bring in and process over 35,000 leads.  Their total package solution is excellent.  I know I would have benefitted a lot if I had their tools in place.

<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" o:spt="75" o:preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"/> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"/> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"/> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"/> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"/> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"/> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"/> </v:formulas> <v:path o:extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect"/> <o:lock v:ext="edit" aspectratio="t"/> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_11" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute;margin-left:436.2pt;margin-top:16.35pt;width:39.6pt; height:17.4pt;z-index:1;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square; mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:0;mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt; mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0;mso-position-horizontal:absolute; mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative:text'> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Caleb\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="square"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->Matt and I both had the opportunity to meet with Brendan King, Jeff Tomlin, and Jason Collins of Point2 Technologies.  These guys have some great ideas and great solutions for the real estate agent, and many members of ActiveRain are already a part of the Point2 Agent program.  They provide a lot of tools for a real estate agent to get online and market their businesses.

There were many companies at the conference simply devoted to the dissemination of real estate listings. Trulia,  Propsmart,  LoopNet, HomePoint.com, Submit Your listings.com, Live Deal.com, Oodle, Edgio, Real Estate.com Craig's list and Google Base were some of the many participants positioning themselves for the listings segment.  There are more to name, This is a very croweded segment. It's clearly seen as a valuable resource for online real estate marketing, how best to take care of those listings though?  Ultimately what this means is that we have a lot of options and this segment is going to see some major consolidation in the next few years

There are plenty of tools to choose from out there.  Many of them can be very valuable tools to the real estate professional.  The technologies help us to connect, to pass on, to gather, and to manage information.  It looks today that the focus in these areas is the utilization of blogs and listings for marketing, with lead management systems to support the qualification of potential prospects.  The conference was great, there were a lot of wonderful people there to connect with.

Jessica Swesey of Inman News just wrote an article on South Carolina lifting its ban on real estate rebates to consumers.  

I found the article very interesting, and timely.  With major changes coming to the industry the rebate model is one of those models that are being tested well.  There are a number of companies that offer the rebates.  Seattle investors are banking on it; Redfin a Seattle based discount company has recently received  8 million in venture capital. Zip realty is one that's been utilizing and adjusting the model for some time.

My question is how well does the model work?  I used to run a company that as a part of its services offered rebates to consumers.  At the same time a part of our business was very similar but not rebate based.  We found that most consumers were not especially drawn to the rebates.  Many of them had to be reminded of the rebate.  I did better with the non rebate based company.

This amazed me, but I found that by far most buyers were more concerned about the house that they were going to buy and was it right for them and what they were going to do with it, investment potential, etc.  The idea of a rebate wasn't often part of the equation.

So really how successful is the model?

Reference: "State Lifts Ban On Real Estate Rebates" By Jessica Swesey, Inman News, Friday, July 14, 2006