How to Develop A Total Marketing Plan for a Real Estate Agency

Real agencies can achieve their greatest potential for new business when their website is established as the primary lead capture model for the real estate business. Every external print and internet-based marketing initiative should lead to the site, and the site should be developed with strong keyword-rich content, titles, descriptions, tags, and inbound links so it can be found on search engines. These actions are critical to launching a new website (or revamping an existing one), and should be measured frequently (use Google Analytics - its free and highly relevant) and content should be revised on an ongoing basis. It is also important that your webmaster create a sitemap and submits it to Google.
Other ongoing initiatives include social media such as Facebook, Twitter, ActiveRain, RealTown, Trulia, Zillow, craigsList, YouTube, Flickr, and Linked In. Also important in social media are a blog with feed to the site, content-rich articles, and local directories (such as Google Places, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc.) and global directories (such as dmoz, yellowpages.com, wcities, hotfrog, joeant, yahoo, Google, etc.)
The social media component adds value to the real estate business only if it takes on the persona of "neighborhood expert." Instead of sending the message that "here's my listing", the agency becomes an advocate for the area about things to do, events, and local happenings. Then throw in a listing here and there, especially price reductions because then people see you for your "value added" features. The primary social media outlet is Facebook. However you can easily set up some automatic feeds so that Facebook sends feeds to Twitter, YouTube sends feeds to Facebook and the website, and the blogs and articles are fed to the website and Facebook. Once the initial set up is realized, the feeds do the "viral work" for you. Blogs and articles will add to the organic search component.
Complementing the real estate business in an ongoing manner for social media requires a key communication checkpoint person within the agency - someone who can lead the effort by posting local events, neighborhood news, price reductions, new listings, new agents, top sellers, e-mail addresses captured at the agency, local chamber website, local Realtor board website, and other local interest news.

Investment Real Estate at Mid-Year

The first half of 2011 has seen significant capital allocated to real estate, but the market remains a "tale of two cities." The absolute right product continues to attract a great deal of interest, but if an asset is "slightly off," there is no action for it. That trend spans all four primary property types - retail, office, industrial, and multi-family.
Indeed, there continues to be a lack of that "absolute right product" coming to the market in almost every category. In retail, for example, few grocery-anchored shopping centers are coming to the market in our region. Those properties that do are, in some instances, commanding capitalization rates below six. One trend we are seeing are owners cleaning their portfolios of non-grocery anchored secondary product.
In the office market, class A buildings with long-term credit leases in solid locations are fetching big numbers, with cap rates generally between seven and eight, and in some cases even sub-seven. For value-add opportunities, the lack of activity of a year or two ago has given way to a trend where improving fundamentals are leading some people to look out on the risk curve. We have a major assignment in Stamford for an empty, 560,000-square-foot, class A building, a substantial value-add play that is attracting a lot of interest.
To date, in New Jersey, our group has done approximately $500 million of office sales so far this year, and the overall marketplace has seen more than $1 billion in total office sales in the state.
The industrial sector, meanwhile, has been very active. Much of that activity is in anticipation of the expansion of the Panama Canal, the raising of the Bayonne Bridge, and the fact that New Jersey is very much a port-oriented industrial state. On the fundamental side, the market is finally seeing the excess space in the New Jersey Turnpike Exit 7A and 8A submarkets, at heavily discounted rental rates, being absorbed. By the end of the year, the industrial sector is projected to be stabilized to the extent that the market may be seeing new speculative development in the second half of 2012.
There is a substantial amount of capital chasing industrial in New Jersey. One surprise has been deal execution that is 10-15% higher in value than we anticipated, driven both by the surplus of money and the anticipation of market correction. Our group has done more than $250 million in this product to date this year, with cap rate execution overall in the six- to 7.5-range and one transaction in particular with a sub-six cap rate.

Commercial Real Estate - Sales Success on Step at a Time

In commercial real estate agency, we tend to look at the end result of the sale or the lease with perhaps too much focus. There is a lot of work to be done as real estate agents before we get to the end result. The more effective we are with the stages leading through the sale, the easier the end result is to achieve.

To create more opportunity for yourself as a real estate agent, it is best to consider and refine at your actions one step at a time. Thinking and planning each step is a good way to go.

The real estate business is really quite simple. It does however require total dedication to the separate stages of the process in order to become the market leader. Consider these stages:

1. A prospecting model that you use every day to generate new business opportunity with qualified prospects.
2. Meeting lots of local people who could potentially have an interest in commercial real estate in selling, renting, occupying or owning.
3. A presentation process that hits the mark every time with the people that you have qualified in and around the local area. Include facts about the local market and its prices, results, competition, time on market, and property solutions available.
4. A listing model that identifies the right target market that the marketing campaign can be built around with great effect. If you do not know your target market you cannot sell or lease the property in a timely way.

The Benefits of Buying New Tract Homes Vs Pre-Owned Homes

Unfortunately, one of the inherent problems of buying pre-owned homes is not knowing exactly what you're buying. No matter how good the inspector was that you hired to inspect the home before you bought it as an investment, the chances of a costly defect is always an ominous occurrence waiting to happen. However, when completing the purchase of a new tract home, even though the home may have a defect or two, the defect is correctable most of the time, if not all the time. This is accomplished through the built-in home warranty that comes with a home upon its purchase. More often than not, national, regional, and local builders have some type of warranty that covers even the smallest of defects, such as cracked tile, masonry work, squeaky floor boards, and caulking issues, or major issues, such as pipe leaks, roof problems, foundation cracks, and other structural issues. Structural issues may include a ten-year warranty to cover costs related to the defect. Generally, warranties are defined as standard and structural, as most major homebuilders provide these warranties, such as KB Homes, Centex, and Pulte Homes.

And yet, despite the coverage that most warranties will provide for a pre-owned or resell home, such as the warranty you can buy for $350 to $450 from Fidelity or Old Republic, nothing beats the comfort of acquiring a new home that has that bumper-to-bumper warranty coverage and still has that new car smell to it. Other negatives of pre-owned homes include the following: mold issues, termite infestation, hard to detect structural damage, and cracked foundation or slabs. It would be very rare for the latter issues to arise in a brand new tract home. These are only a few of the problems that may occur with pre-owned homes since there may be many more.