The Real Estate Tech Report You Need To Read

You know Stefan Swanepoel?  He is a real estate visionary and tech guru who for years has written extensively about real estate, trends and the impact of technology on the industry.   He was also a fan of Help-U-Sell during our last growth spurt and though he’s been rather silent about us since, I have no reason to believe his opinion has changed.

Among his various ventures is T3 Experts, which delivers powerful information about real estate tech via webinars and consulting.  T3 had just published a great guide to tech for real estate agents and brokers.  It goes into everything from what kind of phone you should buy, whcih laptop and tablet, contact management and lead follow-up  programs as well as strategies for maximizing your web presence.  It’s great information!

And here’s (non) catch:  it’s FREE.

Just trot on over to THIS LINK, provide your email address and download your copy.  I’m not kidding:  this is great stuff, and knowing Swanepoel, I am sure the other offerings from T3 Experts are also just as good.

Contract Free At Last!

I took off the handcuffs this year.  You know:  the ones Verizon, ATT and others supply to us consumers. Most of us have had them on so long we hardly know they are there at all.  In fact, these handcuffs seem more like cuff links to most of us.  Here’s how they work:

First, the wireless carrier markets the heck out of the latest feature rich smart phone, offering it to consumers at a bargain price.  To get the bargain price, however, the consumer must sign a two year agreement for service, otherwise the phone bears a retail price 3 to 4 times as much as the contract price.  We all figure, what the heck, we need service anyway, so let’s do it!

Four to six months before your two year contract is up, your carrier surprises you with update eligibility!  You can trade your now stale smart phone for a shiny new one that is even more feature rich!  And you can get a bargain priced deal on it too . . . if you re-up your agreement for another two years.  Because we love NEW and because our own self-esteem is somehow intrinsically tied to the firepower of the phone in our pocket, we gladly take the deal . . . and willingly keep the handcuffs on.

Let’s be logical:  let’s look at the numbers.  Right now, Verizon is offering the IPhone 5s for $199 with a two year agreement OR you can buy the phone without the agreement for $649.  So, in theory, they are subsidizing your phone purchase to the tune of $450.  However, you can bet Verizon doesn’t pay $649 for an IPhone.  My guess is their cost is somewhere near $400.  So in reality, your subsidy is probably closer to $200, spread out over a two year contract – less than $9 a month.  An unlimited talk-text plan with an ample data allotment with Verizon will come in at about $120 a month.  So for a $200 subsidy, Verizon gets a contract worth almost $3,000!  A pretty good deal (for Verizon).

My wrists were starting to chafe on the handcuffs I’d had on for, oh, a dozen years, when my upgrade date came up last year.  I had a really good smartphone (the HTC Rezound), and didn’t feel I was missing anything by not upgrading, so I didn’t.

Instead, I let my Verizon contract run its course and expire. Then I went to the Google Play Store and bought a Google Nexus 4 phone – which was on sale at the time – for about $250.  This is not a subsidized phone:  I own it outright.  And it is a great phone – far superior to the one I was using.

I then looked around for a carrier with an affordable plan for my new phone.  I settled on T-Mobile who has a $50 a month unlimited plan for people who own their phones.  I have seen no difference in the service, coverage, speed, etc and I’m saving $70 a month – almost $1,700 over the next two years.  And, because I am not under contract with T-Mobile, I am free to jump to any other carrier who may have a better plan at any time.

Most US phones are CDMA phones.  We don’t have to go into the technology here, What’s important is that CDMA phones pretty much only function in the US.  The rest of the world has embraced a different cellular technology:  GSM.  My Google Nexus 4 is a GSM phone.  So when I went to Mexico a few months ago, I simply walked into a Mexican TelCel store and bought a GSM card for my Google phone.  The cost was about $10.  Then I charged the card up with $25 worth of talk and data time and, bingo:  I had an affordable, functioning phone in Mexico.  When I crossed back into the states at San Ysidro, I simply took out the TelCel card and put my T-Mobile card back in – and only lost a minute or so of connectivity.  You can’t do that with your CDMA phone.

Yes, I am very pleased with my new handcuff free cellular existence!  And, one of the coolest things about this new world, is its purity.  When you take a subsidized phone from almost any carrier, it comes loaded up with the carriers own proprietary junk. These are apps and tweaks to the phone’s operating system that you cannot remove or disable without wiping it out and starting from scratch.

My phone is a pure Android phone.  It has the operating system on it, un-altered, as Mother Google intended.  It has no junk from Verizon or ATT or HTC or Samsung installed over the operating system.  And you know what?  It S C R E A M S:  it is lightning fast and responsive.  The difference is noticeable and remarkable.

As you near the end of your current cellular contract, I urge you look around.  Check out unlocked smartphones direct from the manufacturer.  Check out no-contract, pay-as-you-go plans, and make a smart choice.  I know you hardly notice those handcuffs anymore, but trust me:  they’re really not attractive on you.

You’re Welcome, Realtor.com

NAR has a big ad campaign running right now touting REALTOR.com as the most accurate consumer website for housing information. They make the valid point that the big national listing aggregators (i.e. Zillow and Trulia) are, by comparison, less up-to-date and less accurate than their site. They are spending millions to get that message out. Here:

It’s a message we got, oh, more than a year ago.

Remember the big flap about listing syndication that flared up in January, 2012? There was a very vocal broker ripping his listings out of syndication to Zillow and Trulia because they did not aggressively steer consumers to the source of listing information (the listing agent). A few others followed.

We talked about it long and hard here in the SFB and decided that such a posture was self-destructive. Zillow and Trulia are where the buyers ARE. That’s just reality and it isn’t going to change any time soon. A smarter strategy is to find ways to exploit the power of these portals (by opting into their premium agent program and becoming active in garnering reviews and interacting with their network) and regard them for what they are: lead generating machines.

We also talked about how to take leads generated by the big listing aggregators and get them to drop those websites in favor of our own. In those posts we suggested the following verbiage (or something similar) when talking with consumers about this:

Agent: How long have you been looking?

Buyer: Oh, a few weeks, I guess.

Agent: You found me on Zillow, is that how you’ve doing your searches?

Buyer: Yes.

Agent: It is very easy to use, I know. . . but have you noticed how many homes on there are not really for sale?

Buyer: Well, now that you mention it . . .

Agent: They have a real challenge there; it’s because they’re trying to do a local job on a world-wide platform. They get housing information from so many sources it even confuses them! Listen, how about letting me give you access to the local MLS – without all the data from Boston and St. Louis and Puerto Rico gumming up the works! You’ll have the most accurate and best information on houses for sale today in this market.

Buyer: You can do that?

Agent: Sure. I just need an email address and phone number and I can set you up with a buyer’s account on my website. You can search to your heart’s content, save listings, even set up email alerts when new properties that meet your needs come on the market. Plus, any time you have a question or want to see something, I’m just a click away.

Buyer: Sounds pretty good.

REALTOR.com’s new multi-million dollar ad campaign makes the same point: that the aggregators’ data is flawed and that theirs is better.

I am not so arrogant that I believe our discussion here on the Set Fee Blog over a year ago had anything to do with REALTOR.com’s marketing company coming up with that strategy. Anybody who really looks at the aggregators, how they get their data, how they weigh each data source, and what the end result is, would see the flaw in their platforms, and recognize the superiority of a local broker’s IDX feed. But, just as in December, 2011, when we predicted a housing shortage a year before it arrived, we were also way ahead of the curve when it came to syndication strategies.

So what do we do with the REALTOR.com marketing campaign? Yawn. Nothing. It’s pretty irrelevant. My guess is it won’t impact consumers one iota. It ignores the one great underlying truth about consumers searching for houses online: they really don’t want to connect with a real estate salesperson. That’s why they go to Zillow: they perceive it to be one step removed from REALTOR self-promotion.

If there is something to DO, it is this: continue to remind the consumers who contact you, with whom you develop a personal rapport, that your data is THE MOST accurate and THE MOST local. Home search is, above all, a LOCAL activity. Everyone looking for a home is looking for a home somewhere. Your local MLS feed will always be better than any national aggregator, even REALTOR.com.

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