First, let’s understand what syndication is.  When a real estate broker submits a listing to the MLS, he/she is given the choice whether to share the listing with various Internet property portals:  Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com and many more.  At Help-U-Sell, with the broker’s agreement, we pull all property listings from the MLS via an IDX feed – that’s how we get the Help-U-Sell broker’s listings (along with all the others in the MLS) into helpusell.com.  We also share information with dozens of Internet portals and our brokers can opt in or out of that sharing for their individual listings.  That’s syndication.

These portals – let’s call them what they are:  aggregators – present the listing data on their own sites and use the traffic they generate to sell advertisements.  The advertisers are usually REALTORS who want to be seen as the knowledgable expert in their areas.

I remember Dale Strack railing on about this seven years ago.  ’First they get you to share your data with them – For Free! – then they turn around and sell the leads your data generates back to you!’ he’d say.  And he was right:  we real estate pros often take the easiest path . . .  I mean:  we could have done the work the aggregators did to get our listings seen and preserve the leads not for advertisers but for the source of the data, but we didn’t.  We had a long and rich history of hoarding information from consumers and the thought of opening up our own treasure trove of data was repugnant to us!  We opted to let someone else do that.

Thank goodness we did.  Now the consumer has almost all the information we used to hoard from them!

But now there is this tempest brewing.  It started a few months ago in Minnesota, where the gigantic Independent firm, Edina, opted out of syndication on their listings.  A few firms followed over the following months and then, last week, Jim Abbott from San Diego pulled his firm out.  Abbott is not near the heavy weight that Edina is, but he understands media and created a very compelling video about his decision.  The video has gone viral in the real estate community and I’m sure will bring this issue to the forefront for many.  Here – give it a look:

Abbott’s frustration is that his listings are generating leads for other brokers.  And he is correct, it is almost impossible to find listing agent information on most of the portals.  The only agents easy to find are those who ponied up the cash for premium accounts – and there is no screening process for agents wanting to advertise in this way.  The consumer is as likely to find a Dud this way as a Star.

Imagine the frustration of a great agent who takes dozens of good property listings and sends them out to the syndicators.  Meanwhile a new agent or a failing one inks an agreement with a syndicator to become a ‘Preferred Agent’  and snares a quality lead on one of those listings.  Because they know nothing about the property (and little about the business), they lean heavily on the listing agent through the showing, offer and acceptance process.  The listing agent feels as if he/she carried the selling agent through the sale and is bothered by the low level of service the buyer client received from their agent.

I think pulling the plug on syndication is a noble thing.  I’m not sure it’s practical.  Truth is, I hear from my brokers every week that the preferred agent programs on Trulia and especially on Zillow work:  they produce leads. And today, it’s a rare broker who pulls the plug on anything producing leads.

Funny:  there’s been an alternative – actually a better program than that of any of the aggregators – out there for years:  ListingBook.  It’s free to agents and brokers, gives consumers real time access to the local MLS and the same listings the aggregators have, and preserves the lead for the agent who brings the prospect into ListingBook.  It’s the consumer centric alternative to the problems Abbott is talking about in his video.  I’ve been pushing ListingBook for years: it’s a wonderful way to give the very best infomation to your clients without giving up control.  If brokers understood its power there would be no need to syndicate to anybody.

I am very curious about where you weigh in on this and would welcome your comments.  We’re also going to spend a little time on the issue on our Wednesday Help-U-Sell Power Hour.  So please plan to attend.

Syndication Storm is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Quoting Inman News this morning:

NEW YORK — Realtor.com is about to roll out a free tool that will allow real estate professionals to build single-property websites optimized for mobile devices.

We’ve had that for what?  A year?  18 months?

Oh, and with our version, the agent doesn’t have to ‘do’ anything . . . it all happens automatically on every listing.  Period.

YAWN . . . is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

We had quite a Roundtable Call today.  Lots of good information flew around, but one item really struck me.

Richard Cricchio from Honolulu started talking about ‘Office Exclusive Listings.’  I asked him to clarify and he responded:

‘When we take a call on a listing, we always ask if the caller is working with an agent.  If they’re not, we send them directly to the seller to arrange a showing.  The seller shows the house and we followup afterward.  That way, if the buyer moves forward on the house, all the seller pays is the Set Fee.  They save the largest amount of money.  We’ve always done that on all of our listings and it’s helped drive the message that we are about savings.’

It sounded like such a radical idea.

But it’s not.

It’s about 35 years old.  It’s a thing called ‘Help-U-Sell’.  That’s how this company was designed by Don Taylor.  That’s why it’s called ‘Help-U-Sell‘.  As we turned the corner on the new millennium, we started adjusting the model here and there.

First, the seller’s phone number came off the for sale sign.  Remember, for 25 years, our listings were ‘For Sale WITH Owner’ and we put the sellers number on the sign so buyers could contact them directly.  We did that for two reasons:  first, it gave the seller the greatest opportunity to save, which is what we wanted so they’d tell everyone they know about us and second because it’s a way of multiplying our efforts, enabling us to more that we’d otherwise be able to do.

Then we started capturing buyers and showing our listings ourselves.  Sellers still could find their own buyers by holding open houses and talking the house up with the neighbors and at work.  But we wanted a relationship with that buyer, so we started handling the showings ourselves.

I’m not saying either of these adjustments was wrong.  But I do think it’s interesting that the guy who is way out ahead of the pack in our currently running Winter Warm Up Contest is still sending buyers directly to his sellers.  How much time are you spending each week running over to show a listing to a new buyer?  If your sellers handled that task for you, what else could you be doing with that time?  Are your followup skills strong enough that you could still build a relationship with that buyer after they’ve seen the listing with the seller?  After all, most of the time they’re not going to buy that house anyway.

In today’s market, where so many sellers have so little equity, I’d think giving them the greatest change of finding their own buyer and saving the largest amount of money would be very appealing.  Think about it.

Richard Cricchio, Help-U-Sell and the Office Exclusive Listing is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Help-U-Sell is certainly NOT a For Sale By Owner company.  Yes, it’s true:  in the late 70′s Don Taylor pioneered the use of the phrase ‘For Sale By Owner’ on the Help-U-Sell For Sale sign.  In time, that phrase morphed to ‘For Sale With Owner,’ but the intent was never for Help-U-Sell to be a stripped down FSBO package vendor.  Our vision has never wavered from the notion that Help-U-Sell is a full service real estate company.

Having said that (and fully embraced it without reservation), I think it might make sense to examine our Consumer offer – the one to Sellers, specifically – and how we present it.

Pictured below is the graphic that is often used with sellers as we talk with them about putting their home on the market.  It acknowledges that there are really three ways a home might sell and prepares the seller for the good news that we charge them, not on some arbitrary percentage basis (no matter how the house sells), but on a logical pricing model that varies depending on how it sells.  This chart forms the real heart and soul of most Help-U-Sell listing consultations.

*Note:  the savings in this example are versus an ordinary broker charging, say, 6% commision on a $300,000 home.

We use the first option, the ‘You Show’ option to talk about seller involvement in the sale process through holding open houses, showing prospective buyers through and talking the listing up at work and in the neighborhood.  If they procure their own buyer in this way, then the Low Set Fee is all they pay; which means  maximum savings.

The second option, ‘We Show,’ is the place where we introduce the idea that one of the Buyer Agents in our own office may be working with a buyer for whom the home might be perfect.  If the seller opts we can include this option as well. (Notice, in this example, the broker charges a set fee on the showing side too and it’s equal to the listing set fee.  There are variations out there, but let’s remember: we are a set fee real estate company.  Shouldn’t the showing fee also be a set fee?)

Finally, option three has us putting the listing in MLS and having the seller be prepared to compensate an outside company and agent should they have a buyer and affect a sale.

Regardless of which options are selected at the time of listing, the seller will always pay based on how the house actually sells.  Even if we put it in MLS, if the seller ultimately finds his or her buyer, all they pay is the option one price: the Low Set Fee of $3,950 in the example.

There was a time when many sellers opted for  option one or one and two, choosing to stay out of MLS all together, thereby ensuring a large savings.  With the downturn in the market, however, this has become a rarity.  Most sellers, with the advice of their Help-U-Sell brokers, want to pull out all the stops when it comes to initial marketing and so go into MLS from day one.

All of this brings me back to option one.  I think it might be helpful to remember that a whole lot of marketing  happens in that option:

1. A proper price is recommended.  Any truthful agent will admit that 75% of marketing is done the night the home is placed on the market, when the seller chooses a price.  Properly priced homes, marketed well, sell. Period.  Improperly priced homes don’t sell, regardless of how much marketing is done.   That simple Low Set Fee option comes with the credible advice of a knowledgable expert (you) on matters of pricing, terms,  fixing up, showing procedures and a multitude of others things.
2. The brilliantly beautiful RED Help-U-Sell for sale sign is installed in the yard.
3. Flyers on the property are created and made available inside the house and out.
4. Directional Signs, Open House Signs, Sign-in Registers and other tools for holding an effective Open House are given to the seller along with expert coaching on how to hold a effective Open House event.
5. The Buyer Agents in the office are briefed on the home so that they can talk intelligently about it when inquiries come into the office and do so in such a way that caller interest is maintained, even heightened.  And what do we do with these inquiries?  If the only option the seller has chosen is option one, we send them directly to the seller for showing.
6. Dozens of photos and a virtual tour are created for the listing so that potential buyers can see it in its best light when deciding whether to proceed with a showing.
7. The listing is input into www.helpusell.com and is available there for prospective buyers all over the world.  In addition, once on helpusell.com, the listing is syndicated out to dozens of other consumer oriented real estate websites for maximum web exposure.
8. A QR Code for the listing is generated and made available for use on flyers and on the For Sale sign so SmartPhone enabled buyers can get the information they want, when they want it.
9. A knowledgeable expert (again, you) is available to help with questions and concerns, to write any purchase agreement and to handle all the details of transactions processing and coordination all the way to and through a successful closing.
10. And more . . . meaning that every office has other things they may do on an option one only listing.

Look at that list!  That’s a lot of stuff! And you know what?  That may be enough to affect a sale even in today’s tough market, a sale that could yield a very happy seller who saved thousands!

I’m not suggesting you abandon the MLS (although I am looking forward to the next generation MLS – the one that is not connected to your Board of Realtors and whose policies don’t restrict your business).  However, I’ll go back to what I said earlier:

A properly priced listing, marketed well, will sell.  Period.  And that applies no matter what the market realities.

Maybe it’s time to start offering this option more vigorously to our equity sellers who are willing to price right and are interested in saving maximum dollars.  It’s hardly ‘For Sale By Owner.’  It’s full of good marketing and advice.  And remember:  there is a direct coorelation between seller savings and seller delight; between seller delight and word-of-mouth advertising; between word-of-mouth advertising and the growth of your business.

How Do You Frame Your Pricing Model? is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Having finally gotten back from vacation, my thoughts are a little scattered . . . but I still have a few morsels to share.

The NAHB (Home Builder’s Association) is out with a list of marketplaces that have shown sustained improvement over the previous six months.  These are places where three indicators (Housing Permits, Housing Prices and Employment)  have improved steadily over the period:

• • Alexandria, LA
  • Anchorage, AK
  • Bangor, ME
  • Bismarck, ND
  • Casper, WY
  • Fairbanks, AK
  • Fayetteville, NC
  • Houma, LA
  • Midland, TX
  • New Orleans, LA
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Waco, TX

Meanwhile, Zillow is out with a list of the ten metro areas experiencing the greatest drop in home values over the past five years, based on their own Z-Estimate guess at value.  All of these markets have experienced at least a 50% drop in value, according to Zillow:

• • Merced, CA
  • Modesto, CA
  • Stockton, CA
  • Las Vegas, NV
  • Vallejo, CA
  • Salinas, CA
  • Daytona Beach, Fl
  • Bakersfield, CA
  • Ft. Meyers, FL
  • Phoenix, AZ

Of course, I see a 50+% drop in values and immediately imagine a 50% drop in percentage based real estate commissions.  The whole traditional approach to the business has taken a 50% pay cut and that’s before factoring in any decrease in the number of sales occurring.  Clearly, we are in the midst of a huge change.  I don’t believe we will ever do business again the way we did it in the past.  In the future, consumers will demand a leaner, more efficient, less expensive, no-nonsense approach to buying and selling real estate.  Oh!  What was that I just heard?? Did someone whisper ‘Help-U-Sell?’

In the past, when we had a downturn, there was a purgative effect on the business.  Bad agents – I hate to mince words, but anyone doing less than a deal a month is, well, a bad agent - usually left the business when the pickings got slim.  While REALTOR ranks have shrunk during this long season, they’ve not dwindled they way I expected.

Concurrent with this downturn, we have the widespread advent of the ‘Virtual’ real estate company, an innovation I believe will be part of the future of real estate.  Unfortunately, the current aberration of the ‘Virtual’ company presents a problem.  Most have simply become a place were unproductive agents can hang their licenses cheaply.  Some charge an agent only a few hundred dollars a year, while others charge a small per-transaction fee.   So the three or four deal a year agent – the one who used to get out when things got tough – can now afford to stay in and scrape a few deals together each year while earning a regular paycheck somewhere else.  Of course, that’s fewer transactions available to the real professionals in the business, but in the end, it is the consumer who suffers.  They’re saddled with agents who do so little business they can’t possibly be as current or effective as others who live and die real estate every day.

I think it is very relevant and totally appropriate for any person thinking of selling today to ask their prospective agent, ‘How many transactions have you done this year?  How many last year?  How many were successful short sales?’  Today, you want an agent who is capable of turning numbers, who knows how to navigate a short sale and to solve the big problems that torpedo so many transactions.  One of the biggest mistakes a potential seller could make would be to select an agent who is doing so little, they don’t have the depth of experience to do much at all.

By the way:  Jackson Hole, The Tetons, and Yellowstone were all wonderful, but Utah . . . now that’s a State in which to spend some recreational time.  Zion National Park and, especially, Capitol Reef were amazing.  I learned many important lessons on the trip, especially that dogs and toads don’t mix.  Homer bit one when I wasn’t looking and immediately turned to foaming at the mouth and shaking.  Turned out this was not a lethal toad, just a typical one, and he got through it.  But All toads can produce the same reaction in a dog, even from just licking the little rascals.  There are a few that are lethal, but they are rare.  Although frogs don’t seem to be a problem, my advice is:  if it croaks and hops, give it a wide berth.

It’s Up! It’s Down! And the Problem with ‘Virtual’ Companies is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Did you feel that? It was a Paradigm Shift! is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Well, they certainly are pretty, aren’t they? And they’ve become very easy to do, too.  You just take a bunch of pictures, load them into whatever tool you’re using, set them to pan and zoom and add a little light music and wha-lah!  You have an impressive goo-gah for your website.  Your seller will be proud!

And I think we’re all missing the boat.

First, if your pan and zoom virtual tour is on your website and you also uploaded all of the individual photos used to make the tour (and you should), why would anyone watch the tour?  A visitor has far more control just clicking through the photos.  Second, the kind of tour I’m describing here adds little in the way of search engine optimization.  Yes you can load up the description with keywords, but that’s only going to take you so far.

There is another way to do a virtual tour that is not only more interesting to website visitors but also far more interesting to search engines.  Begin by shooting video.  Yes, video – moving pictures, not pictures that move.  If you video tape yourself walking through the house describing easily overlooked features as you go, you’ll be creating something new and of value for your website visitor, not just a re-packaging of what ‘s already there.  Plus (and this is the most important part), when indexing your site, Google will actually transcribe your audio track, turning it into searchable text.  If your walk-talk is loaded with neighborhood references and key words, you will up your chances of potential buyers finding your listing online.

Shoot your video, pull it into your computer and do a little editing, add titles and even a soft music track if you want and then upload it to YouTube.  YouTube will give you a little code to embed the video into your listing so that it can be played right there.

Here’s another idea for using video on your listing:  why not let the Sellers lead you through talking about what they like most about the house?  I know that’s pretty radical.  But we Help-U-Sell folk have always championed the idea that things usually go well if buyer and seller are allowed to talk to one another. Why not start that process early by humanizing your seller on video?  Once again, Google is going to transcribe whatever you upload  which will be very beneficial from a search engine standpoint.

So far we’ve talked about using video to market your listings and make you more visible on the web.  But why not broaden the focus?  Why not take the half dozen or so key neighborhoods in your area and do a video profile of each.  Create a script, describe the demographics and amenities, shoot video of typical housing and area infrastructure.  When Google transcribes that kind of video, it’s going to find reference after reference to the local market and your ability to have people find you on the web will go up significantly.

Is there a learning curve?  Yes, of course.  The first such tour you do will be the hardest.  It will get much easier after that.  Here are your steps:

• Get a video recording device.  You probably need something more than your cell phone.  Most decent still cameras today shoot video as well and mine (a Panasonic Lumix) shoots better video than my actual video camera!
• Learn how to record, how to take video off your camera and onto your computer
• Choose and learn some editing software.  Windows has Movie Maker and if you search you’ll find many more, some free.  I like Pinnacle Studio.  At $80 +/- it is feature rich and easy to use.
• Go to YouTube.com and open an account.  Its free.
• Shoot and edit your first video, save it to your hard drive (probably as an .AVI file) and then upload it to YouTube.

Can We Be Honest About Virtual Tours? is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

We Help-U-Sell folk often get mis-tagged as ‘Discounters.’  We take umbrage at that notion because we don’t offer a stripped down version of ordinary real estate (which is what a discounter would do).  Instead, we offer a completely different model, a different approach, one that is more efficient and – surprise! – costs less.  Usually, the ‘discounter’ tag comes courtesy of our competitors who can be quite vocal in defending their turf.  But sometimes, on seeing how much they’ll save with Help-U-Sell, consumers also wonder how we do it.  They’ll say:

‘So, this looks like a great deal, but what am I giving up?  What am I not getting that I’d get with a ‘regular’ real estate company?’

The question is not what you’re not getting;  it’s why are they charging you so much for the same thing we do for a low set fee?

Of course there’s an explanation.  It makes no sense from a consumer or business point of view, but it is an explanation.  It starts with what you’re paying for when you engage a real estate professional.  You could make a list several dozen items long but it boils down to just four things:

• Marketing
• Securing the Buyer
• Representation
• Managing the transaction details

“What Am I Not Getting?” Commissions Demystified is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

Here’s a rough draft of a video we’re working on for part of the new Help-U-Sell University program.  The goal of the piece is to give new members an understanding of the power of Set Fee pricing.  I think it has broader appeal, though.  What do you think?

Why Percentage Based Real Estate Commissions Are Nuts is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog

I’ve been stewing over Help-U-Sell Marketing and how to present it powerfully to a potential Seller.

By nature it is already powerful compared to what goes on in ordinary offices, where marketing/advertising has largely become the responsibility of individual agents.   It didn’t use to be that way.  A long time ago, real estate companies created, orchestrated and paid for marketing to benefit their agents.  But back then, agents were usually paid 50% – 60% of the earned commission.  Today, most ordinary brokers start newbies out at more than that and 75%-80% splits are not uncommon.  When ordinary companies gave in to the pressure to pay more to their agents, they had to cut somewhere to make up the difference, and marketing budgets took the biggest hit.

So at brand X down the street, you have dozens of little agents whizzing around willy-nilly ‘advertising’ on Craig’s List here and a homes magazine there, and dropping an open house ad in the local rag when the seller gets antsy.  There’s no coordination, no maximization of the power of INVENTORY, no grand design to marketing, and the results are negligible.

At Help-U-Sell, marketing is the purview  of the Broker.  It is an office responsibility.  Our brokers do deep research into the local marketplace so that they can make informed decisions about where, when and how to market.  They design, implement, monitor and constantly refine a coordinated marketing plan that generates a strong flow of buyer leads into the office.  New listings are simply plugged in to the marketing program and marketing featuring any of the office listings will benefit all of the office listings.   It is the strong flow of leads that causes our listings to sell.

We used to talk with potential sellers about the components of the marketing plan:  ETMs, Brags, Weekly Lists, Bootlegs et.al.  and while I’m sure those things are important today, I think sellers want to hear more and more about the Internet.  Since everyone knows that buyers are all over the Internet looking for houses, sellers want to know what you’re doing to get their property noticed in that arena.

I think saying you syndicate to 28 websites and sharing a graphic of what those websites are is helpful.  But it’s not a differentiator.  Most main line real estate companies are syndicating in similar fashion.  (By the way:  this does not mean you shouldn’t talk about it and show the graphic.  You should.  It’s still impressive.)  I think what’s more important is to show how you’ve maximized your web presence to be most attractive to the Internet buyer.

Here:  have some fun with this:  Open Google and type in ‘ Sell Real Estate’.  The top few responses are paid ads.  But after that, Help-U-Sell is often the first main-line real estate company that shows up.  Every time I’ve ever done it we are in the middle or near the top of the first page.  Of course there’s a reason:  our name is Help-U-Sell real estate!

But if you’ve done your homework, if you localized and optimized your website, if you’ve bought good domain names to point to your website, if you’ve created new pages of localized content for your website and so on, there should be search strings that have your office appearing near the top of the first page.  Why not spend a little time trying to discover what they are?  Then start sharing those search string results with sellers when you sit down for a listing consultation.

Want to see someone doing a very good job of this?  Go to Google and search for ‘Santa Rosa Homes.’  See who the first several results are.  Now try ‘Santa Rosa Real Estate.’  Maurine Grisso has created several websites, each targeted at a different kind of consumer in her marketplace, each optimized and localized;  and she’s further boosted their effectiveness with a little pay-per-click.  She goes onto to the Internet and casts a net made up of all the places a home buyer might find her, and comes back with leads.  This is great stuff.  And it’s the kind of thing sellers want to see today.

Help-U-Sell Marketing is a post from: The Set Fee Real Estate Blog