Magnetic Real Estate Leads
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When you start the process of buying a home or any type of real estate, you’ll no doubt hear the term “earnest money deposit” (EMD). So what exactly is an EMD?
An EMD becomes relevant when you are ready to make an offer on a property. In most states, your Real Estate Agent prepares the offer on your behalf. The offer usually takes the form of a written contract that is submitted to the seller by way of their agent.
In addition to the offer document, sellers typically expect an EMD. An EMD is a monetary deposit submitted via check to demonstrate to the seller that you are a serious buyer. In some regions of the country, only a photocopy of the check is submitted with the offer, and the original check is delivered to the appropriate entity if the offer is accepted. Ask your Real Estate Agent to clarify how deposits are handled in your region of the country.
The check is usually made out to an independent third- party such as a Title Company, Escrow Company, Real Estate Attorney or your Real Estate Broker. Ask your Real Estate Agent to clarify who will hold the EMD.
The amount of the EMD sellers expect varies by region. The EMD amount is based on the customs and practices for a region, but is generally from 1% to 2% of the purchase price. In a competitive market place where demand exceeds the supply of homes, some buyers may offer a higher EMD than expected to impress the seller of their intent. In determining the amount of your EMD, consult your Real Estate Agent and balance the need to demonstrate your serious intent, against the good business practice of minimizing the deposit amount.
The amount of the EMD is usually applied to reduce the purchase price of the property or to cover closing costs, as you dictate. For example, if you are purchasing a $300,000 property and you give an EMD of $3000, then the remaining balance owned at closing is $297,000 (plus closing costs). Alternatively, you may direct that the EMD be applied toward the closing costs.
Once a valid contract for purchase is created, an independent third-party usually holds the EMD until the purchase is either completed or cancelled. At this point, the money belongs jointly to both the seller and the buyer.
In cases where you make an offer that is accepted but later decide to cancel the offer, the terms specified in the contract (or state law) will dictate if, and under what circumstances, the EMD is returned to you. Be aware that you could loose your deposit if you do not not comply with the terms of your contract. Your Real Estate Agent can provide you information about how EMDs are dealt with if a contract is cancelled.
Since state law varies by region and practices can differ even within the same state, be sure to consult your Real Estate agent about the rules that apply to EMDs in your region of the country. You should also be aware that the EMD is not related to any down payment that you make toward your home loan.
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Key Shifts In San Diego County Demographic Patterns – Real Estate Implications
Mar 10 2010
Posted by Greg Reed as Article Writing
On August 15, 2006, the US Census Bureau released its annual statistics for various communities. The data for San Diego County revealed some significant shifts from 2000 to 2005 in terms of the total population in San Diego, the percentage of males to females, percentage of people at various ages, and the racial composition of the County.
POPULATION SHIFTS
Total Population = 2,813,833 (CY 2000) vs. 2,824,259 (CY 2005) = 0.4% increase
Of the total population, there were shifts in the percentage of males to females.
Males = 1,415,097 (CY 2000) vs. 1,400,199 (CY 2005) = 1.1% decline.
Females = 1,398,736 (CY 2000) vs. 1,424,060 (CY 2005) = 1.8% increase.
AGE CHANGES
The percentage of people at various age also changed during this time period.
Median Age = 33.2 years (CY 2000) vs. 34.4 years (CY 2005) = 3.6% increase.
Population Under 5 Years of Age = 198,621 (CY 2000) vs. 221,575 (CY 2005) = 11.6% increase.
Population Under 18 Years of Age = 2,090,172 (CY 2000) vs. 2,067,282 (CY 2005) = 1.1% decline.
Population 65 or Older = 313,750 (CY 2000) vs. 310,836 (CY 2005) = 0.9% decline.
RACIAL COMPOSITION
Of individuals who defined themselves as belonging to one-race, the following statistics were provided:
Total Number of “One-Race” Individuals = 2,681,866 (CY 2000) vs. 2,730,721 (CY 2005) = 1.8% increase.
Individuals who defined themselves as belonging to one-race, were further categorized as follows:
White = 1,871,839 (CY 2000) vs. 1,927,166 (CY 2005) = 3% increase.
Black or African American = 161,480 (CY 2000) vs. 140,181 (CY 2005) = 13.2% decrease.
American Indian and Alaska Native = 24,337 (CY 2000) vs. 19,902 (CY 2005) = 18.2% decrease
Asian = 249,802 (CY 2000) vs. 295,926 (CY 2005) = 18.5% increase
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander = 13,561 (CY 2000) vs. 12,704 (CY 2005) = 6.3% decline.
Other Race = 360,847 (CY 2000) vs. 334,842 (CY 2005) = 7.2% decline.
Of those individuals who defined themselves as belonging to “two-races”, the following statistics were provided:
Total, Two -Race Individuals = 131,967 (CY 2000) vs. 93,538 (CY 2005) = 29.1% decline.
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) = 750,965 (CY 2000) vs. 843,901 (CY 2005) = 12.4% increase.
SHIFTS IN HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS
Total Household Population = 2,716,820 (CY 2000) vs. 2,824,259 (CY 2005) = 4% increase.
Average Household Size = 2.73 (CY 2000) vs. 2.71 (CY 2005) = 0.7% decrease.
Average family size = 3.29 (CY 2000) vs. 3.33 (CY 2005) = 1.2% increase.
IMPLICATIONS FOR SAN DIEGO REAL ESTATE
If you are interested in buying San Diego real estate, homes, condos or townhouses for sale, then the above information may be useful to you. The information above can help you understand demographic and population shifts that impact supply, demand, and price of real estate and homes for sale in San Diego.
San Diego is one of the most popular areas in the Country because of its moderate climate. In fact, the year-around average weather in San Diego is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
San Diego real estate is also popular because of its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, mountains and the US-Mexico border. Bordered by Orange County and Riverside County to the north, and the Mexico to the south, San Diego real estate has hundreds of beachfront properties for sale.
San Diego is the sixth most populated County in the Nation. With this many people, buying real estate in San Diego can be a competitive process depending on the supply and demand of real estate and homes for sale at a particular time.
While interest rates are still relatively low and supply relatively high, buyers at this time may find San Diego real estate a good value.
Those who purchase San Diego real estate enjoy year-around perfect weather, easy access to the Mexico border, a thriving job market, and the pleasures of living close to an ocean.
Whether you are interested in boating, fishing, golfing, tennis or other hobbies, residents and visitors who own San Diego real estate have access to all these activities and more.
Please visit the Census Bureau’s web site for detailed demographic information about San Diego County. The Census Bureau provides key statistics for various communities in its annual American Community Survey (ACS) report.
Real Estate Leads 101: Detective, Realtor, Same Thing!
Mar 10 2010
Posted by Greg Reed as Article Writing
Following up with real estate leads isn’t easy. Wait. Let me rephrase that. Following up with real estate leads IS easy, but it can be very time consuming. When you receive leads from online sources, such as a lead generation service or your own website, following up can be time consuming. There’s not much you can do about it. However, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of commissions each year can sure go a long way to making persistent follow up with your real estate leads WELL worth the time.
The first and most important thing to do with your real estate leads is what I like to call the detective stage. Let’s be honest: how often is the information submitted by a consumer online 100% correct – a real name, phone number, email and address. The answer? Pretty rarely. Consumers will often be misleading in at least one piece of information when filling out contact forms. Often, it is the phone number, because they have no idea who is getting the information on the other end and what it will be used for.
This can be a pain for agents when it’s time to follow up with your real estate leads. To avoid frustration with running into bad numbers, or fake names when doing weekly follow up calls, it’s important to do a bit of detective work with your real estate leads before jumping right in to the contact stage. I’ve seen so many agents just trash a lead and not bother to follow up because the name of the lead was something like ‘John Smith.’ So the name may be wrong, so what? You still need to work it!
Read through your real estate leads carefully. Some may have given the address of a property they’re interested in buying, not their current residence. The first step is determining whether the lead is a potential buyer or seller, and most contact forms the homeowner would fill out will have some kind of option to show if they are a buyer or seller.
The next step is running your real estate leads through a public directory site such as Whitepages.com or 411.com. These sites are basically a giant white pages online and will allow you to do reverse name, address and phone lookups. Search for the address first, and see if the name and phone listed in white pages for that address matches the lead name and number submitted. If they all match, great, you have an easy time of contacting them. If the number doesn’t match, then you definitely want to note the phone number listed in the white pages, it may be an alternate contact number. If neither the name or number match what is listed in the white pages, then document the contact information found in the white pages along with the information from the lead’s form. Then, when you start actually contacting your real estate leads, try BOTH names and number to determine who actually submitted their information as a lead.
Once you’ve looked up the address, go ahead and do the same with the name and the phone number and document all information you can get from white pages and include it with the original lead information. If you do this for say, 50 real estate leads, you will most likely wind up with quite a bit of alternate contact information.
Your next step should be checking the old tax records of each address in your real estate leads, another method of double checking that the person who submitted the lead is the same as the person who actually lives at the property. If they are not the same, start looking up information of the person listed on the old tax records! You should also check the MLS for each address, to make sure the home isn’t already listed. You may even want to go and get directions to each property, just to have them in case you get the opportunity to drop by the home with information.
Once you have exhausted all avenues of double checking your real estate leads contact information, you are ready to move on to the most important stage of follow up: getting in contact with the lead. Thanks to your look ups, you should have tons of contact information to connect with your real estate leads – use it all. Phone numbers, emails, stopping by the property – persistent and consistent follow up is the main component to having success with your real estate leads.
Get more information on real estate leads by
visiting GetMyHomesValue.com.
Ashley Lichty is a webmaster and the resident SEO
of Web Xtreme, Inc. She has a background in real
estate and marketing with emphasis in writing.
Whether you’re newly licensed, or an old real estate pro you need leads. They’re not easy to come by, but are easier to get than most agents make it out to be.
For example, you can create an online newsletter, or ezine as it’s called in the online community, and give it away via a FREE Subscription in exchange for a site visitor’s email address. Many people are eager to do this, especially if your newsletter is perceived to be of high value and contains useful information.
2)Another real estate lead, online generating idea is to attract people to your web site by way of offering great web site content. People and search engines love quality content, and both reward you by becoming frequent visitors, and the more they visit, the more likely you are to convert at least the human visitors to paying customers.
You can educate them about consumer loans, the ins and outs of buying and selling homes, how to stage homes to sell for maximum profit, etc.
With the right marketing strategy, you can brand yourself as the expert in your community by providing buyers, sellers and others with community resources and powerful community property searches. You can easily provide your web site visitors with mortgage calculators, mortgage rates, school information and local weather.
3)Give your visitors a free ebook. People love ebooks, and easily give their email addresses and other contact information in exchange for them. If you don’t have a free ebook there are lots of places on the Internet offering freebies that you can start collecting to give away.
One way to get a lot of freebies is to search the Internet and find a few websites offering a ton of giveaways in exchange for signing up for their newsletter. Many allow you to then turn around and give away the same products they give you.
4)Have a contest and give visitors a free entry into it, with the prizes being something of interest, or of value to them. Many of them will regularly revisit your web site to get the results, so be ready to capitalize on it.
5)Offer free, interactive services on your website, calculators, amortization schedules, and the like. The more engaging the services, the more popular your web site will be.
6)Start an online club, or a special membership area, and give your visitors a free membership. Everybody loves to feel special.
7)Finally be sure to have a place on your web site to capture the names and email addresses of people visiting your website. This is known as an “opt in” form and is key to your overall online lead generating success
Real Estate Search Engine optimization
Optimized Web Site information can help you get your real estate web site indexed by search engines faster.
However, key to this is the uniqueness and quality of your content. The more original it is the better your search engine rankings will be. Well written, unique content will get you noticed by human visitors and search engine spiders alike, while poorly written content is virtually assured to get you ignored.
Human beings are curious creatures. They will keep their eyes glued to their computer monitors if you post fresh, useful news frequently. Search engines are just as curious, but are also needy in that they need to provide good information their searchers or risk losing them to another search engine. So they need you, like you need them.
Summarily, these are just a few ideas about how you can have effective real estate lead, online marketing campaign. Making them a part of your online marketing efforts now can pay dividends in the future.
Visit Real Estate Marketing Talk for more information about Real Estate Agent Web Sites.
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Collecting Real Estate Leads via Newsletters is one of the best real estate marketing strategies going. However, many agents either don’t recognize the ease in which they can create a newsletter, or just how effective they can be in generating leads.
Publishing a newsletter can be as complicated or easy as you want it to be. When I started publishing mine I was almost immobilized at the thought of doing it because I didn’t think I had enough valuable information to sustain a regular publication. But now I have the same problem because I have so much that I want to share I don’t have enough time to right it down as fast as it comes to me.
The task of writing and publishing is made a lot easier by the use of prewritten real estate marketing reports. I use prewritten articles and reports often and find that I can take one and make it uniquely mine in a matter of minutes.
Newsletters are Lead Generating Magnets
Millions of real estate consumers log onto the Internet seeking information about real estate and related products and services; mortgages, buying and selling homes, investing, lease options, time shares. Smart, forward moving agents are providing this information via newsletters, special reports and as web site content.
However, the same consumers are also interested in information about gardening, bird watching, retirement planning, budget and time management, etc. Agents who have separated themselves from their competitors are astutely providing this information via their newsletters, too.
Consumers go on line, fine their links to the information they’re interested in and end up visiting their web sites and/or signing up for their newsletters. Once they’re subscribers they’ll, and if you’re not pushy, they’ll grow to value and trust the information you’re making available to them and will consider you first when they’re ready make a real estate transaction.
The Value of a Sequential Autoresponder
Automating the process of gathering leads via a newsletter, then publishing the newsletter is ultra easy to do with a sequential autoresponders! An autoresponder is much like a VCR and On Demand Television. You can program your newsletters to be emailed whenever you like, out weekly, every two weeks, monthly, etc.; much like you would program your favorite television show to record.
Building customer interest and excitement is the first step to successfully marketing your newsletter and autoresponders play a vital role in building this interest and excitement. For instance, if you have know of a hot listing that you’re about to get you may want to start telling your newsletter subscribers about it before you actually have it. Start building interest; tell them why the listing is a great buying opportunity, and how soon it will be available.
You can even do more than build interest by telling them about it. You can use your autoresponder to let them review your product! Take pictures and send them via email, but leave out location identifiers. Have you ever seen previews for movies that will be playing in theaters soon? It is the same concept.
Newsletters and Autoresponders
Automation is a wonderful thing! The key to successful online realtor marketing is having useful information to convey to consumers (real estate marketing reports), a platform by which to provide it (newsletters) and a tool by which to deliver it (autoresponders).
If you’re still trying to market in a fast paced Internet driven society exclusively via snail mail you might just be in trouble. All you have to do is look at the state of hard copied newspapers and realize that if they’re dying slow deaths your real estate career will too, unless you change with the times.
And electronic newsletters and autoresponders are the changing time. They make it easy to collect real estate leads and deliver your marketing messages and help convert real estate leads to paying customers.
Visit Real Estate Marketing Talk for more Real Estate Lead Ideas.
12/4/07 10 p.m.: Real estate agent robbed while showing homes
Mar 09 2010
Posted by Greg Reed as Article Writing
12/4/07 10 pm: Real estate agent robbed while showing homes
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