Transaction Reporting and the New Discrepancy Report

I have been working with real estate brokers since 1984.  Prior to that I was one, so I came to the work knowing a little about their  challenges and struggles.    I usually have a pretty good idea how they think and feel and why that is the case.

With franchisors – and I have worked with many – a key issue is transaction reporting.  It is important to the franchisor that closed transactions be reported for obvious reasons:  the franchisor’s revenue stream is tied to closed transactions.  That’s why franchise agreements generally include strong language about reporting transactions (usually within 24 hours of closing) and the consequences of not doing so.

But franchisees are first and foremost, real estate brokers;  and brokers, especially in difficult economic times, can come to that point at the end of the month where they have $4,000 in bills to pay and $3,500 in the checking account.  We’ve all been there, even the biggest stars among us!   ‘ . . . Maybe I can hold off the electric bill for a couple of weeks until that two-story closes . . . ‘ the broker thinks.

Looking back over the previous weeks it occurs to the broker that, had he not reported his transactions to the franchisor and paid his Royalties as things closed, he might have made it to even at the end of the month.  This will ruminate for a period of time and sometimes . . . becomes reality.  ‘I know I’m supposed to report and pay,’ the broker thinks,’ but I just can’t spare the cash right now and besides, we’re family, they’ll understand and I’ll make it up when things improve.  It’s not like I’m not going report and pay my Royalties!’

Franchisors go through all kinds of machinations to get franchisees to report and pay.  In the old days (the ’90s), franchisors really had no idea what an office closed unless it was reported.  Reporting was essentially an honor system.  That’s why most Franchises employed staff auditors who went to each office on a regular basis to verify the books.  As a Century 21 franchisee, I was audited like clockwork every two years.  In that world, the big carrot that was used – rather effectively – to get people to report, was Awards.  The franchisor would recognize offices and agents based on gross closed income and on closed sides that had been reported.  Un-reported or un-paid transactions obviously didn’t count.  At Century 21 and all of the other franchises, the end of December and most of January was about squaring up the totals.  Offices would receive the franchisor’s count and Awards totals and then had an opportunity to get unreported transactions in before it was too late.  I can’t tell you how often, in that agent oriented world, brokers who sandbagged a few transactions would become desperate to get them in when doing so would make a difference in their top agent’s Award status!

It’s a little different today.  Information about transactions is readily available from a wide variety of sources.  A franchisor can simply monitor activity and compare it with what’s reported to know who’s reporting and who’s not.  Audits, while still necessary, don’t usually have to take place at the franchisee’s office and can often be handled at a distance, with on-site audits reserved for those suspected of serious breeches.

All of this history brings us to something new at Help-U-Sell, the Discrepancy Report.  We’ve created a set of three reminders for our members that they have unreported transactions.  They go out once a month with a request to take care of the discrepancy as soon as possible.  Consequences get serious after the third notice:  possible Notice of Default and Termination and/or on-site audit.  But  the Discrepancy Report program is a genuinely humane process that acknowledges that these things happen and provides ample time to set things right.

Help-U-Sell Royalties remain the lowest of any national brand.  We lowered them from the 7.5% we used to charge – which was in line and in some cases, below what others charged – to a flat 6% and then temporarily reduced them to 5% to help our members make it through the last few difficult years.  The 5% program is set to expire at the end of December and as yet I do not know if it will be extended into 2012.  At the same time we’ve created a top notch technology platform for our members that remains un-matched in features and effectiveness in the industry, provided uninterrupted training and networking opportunities every week,  and solid leadership in a wide variety of areas including electronic marketing, staffing and growth.  Plus (and this is big) the Help-U-Sell Brand actually means something to the American public:  savings.  Even people who have never seen a Help-U-Sell advertisement know, just from the name, that we are different and that difference often leads to a request for more information.  Add it all up and  Help-U-Sell is a bargain, not just for the consumer, but for the real estate broker who wants to grow his/her business, provide excellent service, and make a comfortable profit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QR Codes, The Internet and Your New Listing Step-By-Step

HOW TO TAKE A GIANT LEAP INTO THE 21st CENTURY ON YOUR NEW LISTING
  1. Take the listing. Make sure it is properly priced!  Let’s assume it’s at 123 Elm St.
  2. Take dozens of photos of your new listing.  Pick 12 – 20 really good ones, enhance them in your favorite photo editing program and save them as .JPEGs.  Note:  it’s not essential, but it will be best if all of your photos are ‘Landscape.’  This project will accommodate ‘Portrait’ photos, but will look best if all pictures are ‘Landscape.’
  3. Go to www.godaddy.com (or any other Domain vendor) and buy the domain, www.123elm.com.  It will cost about $10.
  4. Download and install a free copy of Windows Live Movie Maker from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-movie-maker.  Note: you probably don’t want to download the additional software they will ask you about, but you be the judge.
  5. Open Movie Maker, click on the ‘Browse for Pictures or Videos’ link and select all of the photos you prepared in step 2.
  6. On the HOME menu, select ‘Title’ and create an opening title, ‘123 Elm Street, Anytown, USA, 92564’
  7. While still in the Movie Maker HOME menu, put your cursor over each of the photos.  Click ‘Caption’ and create a caption wherever one will help.  For example, for a kitchen shot, you might use the caption, ‘All stainless steel appliances.’ Note that, looking near the top of the screen, you can adjust the duration of each caption and can drag and drop them to begin or end shortly after the photo appears and shortly before it switches to the next photo.
  8. Create a closing title for your tour, something like:  ‘Presented by Anne Smith, Help-U-Sell Acme Realty, (555) 555-5454’
  9. Now, returning to the HOME menu, select ‘Pan and Zoom’ from the themes displayed.  It will be the fifth option from the left.  Apply that to all slides.
  10. Looking  just below the preview window in Movie Maker you will see the length of your tour in minutes and seconds.  Note this and start looking for appropriate music of about the same length to use as background.  You should not use copyrighted music but rather duty-free music.  I make my own using another program, but that’s very complicated and not appropriate for this discussion.  I’d suggest you use Google to find appropriate duty-free music for your show.  Ideally your music will be the same length as your show but note that if it’s a little long, you can always choose the ‘Fade Out option on the Video Tools menu.  Ok; so what happens if you choose a nice piece of light jazz from your ITunes folder?  Well, you’re in violation of music industry rules and law.  You could be prosecuted and fined.  Most likely nobody will ever notice and if they do they will simply insist you take down the offending piece.  However, I would never recommend you use someone else’s property in this way.  At the end of this step-by-step list I will give you an alternative to using music.
  11. Preview your tour and if you like it, use the ‘Save Movie’ drop down on the HOME menu (over to the right) to make the movie.  I’d save it ‘for High Definition Display’ – which will take longer to process – or ‘For Computer’ which will take less time.  Choose a place on your hard drive in which to save the video file.  Note, there is a link in Movie Maker to post your tour directly to YouTube, but I couldn’t get it to work.  Following this instruction you will have a free standing copy on your computer as well as on YouTube.
  12. When the video is finished processing, go to www.youtube.com and, if you don’t already have a free account, set one up.  Select ‘Upload’ near the top of the screen and browse for your new movie.  While the file is uploading, edit the information about it in YouTube.  Give it a new name:  ‘123 Elm Street’  and load the description up with lots of references to local geography (as well has bedrooms and baths).  Be sure to click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the page.  When the file is finished processing, view your new tour on YouTube and click on the ‘Share’ button.  A URL for the video will be displayed, already highlighted.  Right click and ‘Copy’ that URL.
  13. Now, go back to www.godaddy.com, log in and go to the place where you can ‘Manage Your Domains.’  Select the one you bought earlier, ‘www.123elm.com’  and click on ‘Forward.’   Right click inside the box for the URL you want to forward to and ‘Paste’ the URL you copied at the end of step 12.  What you’ve done is associate www.123elm.com with  your YouTube virtual tour.  Anyone going to  www.123elm.com will immediately see your tour.
  14. Generate a QR Code for www.123elm.com.  If you are a Help-U-Sell broker, your OMS system already generates a QR code on all of your listings.  It points NOT to www.123elm.com but at the actual listing on www.helpusell.com.  For this project I’d suggest generating an entirely  new QR code that points at the URL you just bought and associated with your YouTube virtual tour.  There are dozens of free QR Code generators and the best way to find one (free) is to go to your Android or IPhone App Store and search for ‘QR Code Generator’.  If you don’t have a SmartPhone – and you should have one – you could Google the same search string.  Once you have the QR Code Generator, make a code for www.123elm.com.  Download and save the code on your computer’s hard drive.
  15. Print a larger (4″x4″ or 5″x5″) version of the QR Code.  Make several copies and have them laminated at Fed/Ex (Kinkos).  Tack these (or otherwise affix them) to your yard sign so that people driving by with SmartPhones can click and immediately see your Virtual Tour.  Include a smaller version (1.5″ square) on all promotional materials for the listing:  flyers, open house invitations, websites etc.
  16. Open your Word Processor (MSWord?)  and type out ‘www.123elm.com’.  Enlarge and en-bolden the Font until it fills the full landscape page.  Make 2 copies.  Cut them out and ‘laminate’ them yourself using wide, clear packing tape.  You’ll tape or tack one of these on either side of your yard sign post.  If  you don’t use posts, find a way to attach these signs to your yard sign.
  17. Now you’re ready to go.  Your new listing has it’s own URL and website (www.123Elm.com) and it’s own virtual tour.  You have a QR Code that will take SmartPhone enabled consumers to the tour as well, and you’ve told anyone driving by that they can get more information about 123 Elm St. by simply going to the URL!  Your seller and all the neighbors are doing all the above and are completely impressed!

Now, here’s the alternative to music.  And, if you’re already using music, it’s a good add-on anyway.  Carefully create a voice over script to run while the tour is on the screen.  Yes, you’ll need to talk about bedrooms, baths and square footage, but what will be most powerful is references to the local area.  ‘This fine ranch home is located in the Elm Heights neighborhood in Sydney, just  blocks from Centenniel Park.  The trendy shops of Tuxedo Drive are a short walk away as is Greenwood Town’s restaurant row.’    Local references are important because, when Google indexes your YouTube video and detects a voice track, it will transcribe it and turn all of your words into search fodder.  Anyone using Google to search for a home in the area will probably see your listing.  Use a microphone to add the voice track to the tour in Movie Maker.

You might be asking, ‘Why is it important to put my tour up on YouTube?  Isn’t it a whole lot easier to just use one of the services out there, pay the bucks and let them worry about it.’  Sure, that’s fine, if all you want is a pretty tour that only a handful of people will see.  Hosting your tour on YouTube gets HUGE exposure.  Plus, Google LOVES video, particularly YouTube video.  If you do your tour right, it will likely show up on the first page of any search result relating to real estate in your local market.  The difference between this method and taking the easy route of using a service is that this method will actually create LEADS for you.  The service?  Not so much.

You’re also probably wondering how long all of this will take.  Truly, you’ll invest the largest chunk of time in shooting, selecting and fixing photos.  The rest, though sounding complicated, is pretty easy.  And once you’ve done a couple you should be able to blow through this entire process in 30 minutes or less — and look at the wonderful, up-to-date, tech-savvy marketing you’re doing for your Seller, yourself and your company!  If all this seems great but more than you want to take on, I’d be happy to help . . . but it’s gonna cost ya.

 

 

National Market Update (Sept. 2011)

August 2011 annualized existing home sales :  5.03 million, 18.6% better than August 2010

Investors accounted for about 22% of all sales, a rate that has not fluctuated much in recent months.

First time buyers accounted for 32%o of sales.

29% of sales were all cash, most of them to investor buyers.

Foreclosures and short sales were 31% of the total.

Freddie Mac reports the average interest rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage was 4.27% in August and more recently reported a record low of 4.09%

If you’d like to see a monthly history of interest rates, check out this chart.  It’s fascinating to imagine (or to remember as in my case) what it was like to sell real estate in the early 80s!

18% of NAR members reported at least one cancellation in August, compared with 16% in July and 9% in August 2010.

National median home sale price was $168,300, down 5.1% from August 2010.

There is an 8.5 month supply of homes in inventory, down from 9.5 months in July.

Annualized rate of savings was $600 billion compared with $250 billion a year in the ten years prior to the financial crisis.  There are a lot of people saving up a down payment!

Consumer confidence:  44.5, the lowest in 50 years except for Fall of 2008 – Spring of 2009, when we had massive hemorrhaging in the financial markets.

Source:  National Association of REALTORS

Five Timely Truths

  1. When consumers want information about residential real estate today, they go to Zillow.com.  I say that because my Brokers tell me Zillow consistently produces quality leads.  Trulia comes in a (usually) distant second.  Realtor.com is not even on the map.
  2. Data mining and manipulation of real estate information has progressed so far and so fast that 95% of the people in the industry have no idea how to use it.  Ok:  maybe that’s a little hyperbole.  But I am impressed that the data guys are to the point of predicting buy and sell behavior via algorithms and so much more.  They have taken their business way out there and the rank and file Realtor – who is still trying to figure out how to resize their prom picture so they can use it on their business card – has no clue.  The good news is that the 5% (or 15%) who do have the desire and the smarts to use this new information will survive to be the next generation Realtor.
  3. Virtual companies (at the moment) suck.  I encountered yet another that has one broker in one city, holding licenses and ‘managing’ hundreds of salespeople all over the State.   While I believe that systems and technology may make it possible to supervise transaction activity at a distance,  it hasn’t yet evolved to where a Broker might watch an agent with a buyer or seller or to allow a Manager to casually overhear a phone conversation.  The Broker’s duty to supervise becomes a ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge,’ item.  But the real downside – at least today – is that these companies have become an alternative for non-productive agents who otherwise would probably get out of the business.  For a small fee they can continue to be ‘active’ and do 3 or 4 deals a year.
  4. By devoting themselves to the preservation of the Status Quo, by fighting tooth and nail every step of the way to keep information out of the hands of consumers, by not insisting on production standards for members, Realtor Groups (NAR and it’s affiliated State and Local Boards and Associations) have made themselves largely irrelevant.  It’s probably too late to wake up and realize that things will NEVER be the way they used to be, that real estate reality has changed, and changed significantly.  The next generation real estate professional is not at a meeting at the Board of Realtors.  He/She is online, networking and discovering the tools that will enable them to do more transactions and provide better service.
  5. Help-U-Sell, with proprietary technology that we created, own and control,  is the only national brand positioned to lead the industry into the new tech-efficient real estate age while preserving a razor focus on the needs of the consumer.  We’ve always been a consumer-centric company and now we can bring that focus to bear in a leaner, more efficient, tech-driven industry.  Every time I go to a real estate trade show I get tickled when people tout the latest and greatest tech innovation (Mobil phone websites, QR codes, map searches, online lead management, syndication and on and on)  . . . and it’s all stuff we’ve had for a couple of years.

 

Scratching My Head . . . A Little

The CAR Expo in San Jose has been a success for Help-U-Sell.  Our booth was big and impressive – well located, too. We had substantial conversations with a number of people, and I believe everyone in attendance knows we are here and ready to roll. 

Having said that, I am also coming away with an unanticipated impression. 

We are here to grow the network.  We know the future of real estate is young, aggressive tech savvy agents and brokers with vision and a hunger for entrepreneurial growth.  My impression – and I know:  I am committing REALTOR Blasphemy – is that they are not here.  Most of the people I’ve seen and talked to in the exhibit hall are seriously older (not a bad thing; I’m 60), and far less in touch with technology than their much younger buyers. 

We’ve had one person click on the QR code at our booth and had numerous others point and ask, ‘What’s that?’

Trying to explain the benefits of having a SmartPhone optimized website has met with blank stares. 

It’s not so much that the people who are here don’t look and sound like our target. . . it’s that our target seems conspicuously absent.  If I were a Martian REALTOR, just come down to earth to observe this convention, I would conclude that the California Association of REALTORS is a club for the semi-retired. 

My guess is that the people we want to reach are somewhere else:  Inman, Agent Re-Boot . . . something like that. 

I have to say:  I am so proud of Help-U-Sell.  It is very clear to me that we are the class act at this show.  We have the tools and systems, we are sharp and we are full of energy.  So many others just seem . . .tired. 

While most of our reception has been very positive, we have had a few comical encounters with traditional agents and brokers who see us as the enemy.  Three behaviors I have observed:

1.  Walking the aisle until the Help-U-Sell logo is spotted out of the right corner of the eye . . . then the head turns immediately to the left and the pace quickens.

2.  Drifting along, all smiles and then, when the booth is recognized, appearing to have smelled something bad . . . and my favorite,

3.  Walking a straight line and, upon arriving at our booth cutting a quick arc as far away from it as possible, as if getting too close might result in catching some form of plague. 

Of course, most who have stopped by have wanted to know how we work and what our plans are.  Many mentioned quality Help-U-Sell brokers in their marketplaces.  The above are just the silliness that goes along with being different (and better). 

Amazing:  could we be becoming ‘elite?’

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