Join a local chapter of Letip or BNI.
They are both once a week breakfast/lunch meetings of professionals, the great thing is that they only allow one member per business category…..i.e. one Realtor per group, with groups often having members numbering 50-100.
You are required to pass two tips per session normally, but that should be easy since you can stack the group with every trade skill you need to refer anyway. Plumber, electrician, handyman etc
Ok so you just looked at the local chapter websites: Yes, I know the local chapters in your area are all full already in the real estate category. If you contact either Letip or BNI they should have a list of people looking to form a new chapter. If they can help, GREAT! If not, you typically only need 5 members to start a new chapter.
Some easy ways to find members for your new chapter:
A) Look on Craigslist and email anyone who is advertising there because they are looking to expand their business.
B) Look at members from other chapters of Letip or BNI. Contact them and ask if there is someone else in their office interested in joining a chapter.
C) Call businesses from the yellow pages.
D) Knock on doors of local businesses. A quick example, if I were in Dallas Texas I’d contact the local chapter of LeTip and I’m 100% sure I’d be told that they already had a Realtor. I’d ask the contact for the chapter if he had an email list of everyone in the chapter, I’d email them and ask if they had anyone in their office looking to join a LeTip chapter.
I’d suggest either meeting for coffee or at my office for a quick lunch(especially if I provided it for free in my conference room, again I’m a professional and I deserve your business and your clients business)
Most likely I’d have 5+ members from doing that-if not check out Craigslist, some job categories to target: Hairdresser, Dentist (will be advertising teeth whitening) licenses massage therapists, personal trainers, computer techs, website development, event planners, mortgage, financial planner etc etc.
Really, finding 5 interested people to start a chapter isn’t difficult. Yes it takes some work and getting a chapter started is going to cost you $500 or so, but the average Realtor member in San Diego gains 5 deals per year directly from referrals so it is an investment that is worth making.
One thing that constantly amazes me:
I see Realtors using their Broker’s name and website on all of their products. I know that agents who start with companies such as ReMax and Prudential are proud (for good reason) that they were hired by a reputable company, but why are you working to build your bosses brand and not your own?
When we speak at events across the country we notice that 90%, or more of agents who attend, have their broker’s name as part of their email address. Why? Your email address needs to be permanent. These days with the advance of technology a previous client is more likely to send you a quick email then to pick up the phone and call you when they are considering selling again for the first time in many years.
Many of the brokerages our there are simply using the leverage that they have to keep the agents they have with their same company. If your broker controls your email, website and contact management system how can you possibly leave? What if a smaller local company offers you a 90% commission split and free desk rent with an assistant, are you going to have to turn that down and keep your 50% commission split and $450 a month in desk rent because your broker owns your lead generation techniques?
To me, this is a very important discussion to have and it is something I haven’t heard agents talking about for a long time. I hope agents realize that it’s more important to build their personal brand and show themselves as a neighborhood expert, instead of talking about the broker that you work for.
NationWide MLS?
This past week at a Broker Caravan here in San Diego I heard an interesting discussion on the possibility of a California statewide MLS. The general feeling was that we’re at least 5 years away from any meaningful progress as there are many different technology platforms and deciding which one is the easiest to use will be difficult at best and probably impossible because of politics.
To be honest, I’d never thought how strange it was that the state of California has multiple MLS systems in place. Agents aren’t given a real estate license specific to San Diego, Los Angeles or the Bay Area…..they get a license for the state of California but do not have access to MLS date in the entire state, effectively making their license invalid in those parts of the state that their broker is not licensed. Agents that live on deviding lines for MLS groups are paying double or triple in fees simply to earn a living.
Isn’t that a huge problem?
Does it make sense to anyone that California alone has 70 MLS groups?
Look, I understand there are going to be substancial problems getting a working statewide MLS and then at some point a nationwide one, but isn’t sharing more information generally a better idea then sharing less?
If I were on a Realtor board, which I am not, I would be very concerned that the technology to scrape the web being used by Google could give them a huge advantage in creating their own nationwide MLS. A statewide of nationwide MLS not sponsored or approved by the California Association or Realtors or the National Association of Realtors has to be the worst case scenario right?
What is a No-Follow Website? Does it Matter?
So one of our first suggestions for any agent is to blog about their daily life as a Realtor because it helps with search engine rank and it allows potential customers to get to know you and decide if they’d like to use you as an agent, without any outreach on your part.
In order to improve your search engine rank it is also extremely helpful to provide back links to your website or blog. Back links are simply when you post something on the web with your blog or website’s url on it.(Such as my leaving AgentPrint.com on this blog, or AgentPrintCom.WordPress.com on a real estate message board)
Backlinks on sites of similar industries are counted more in Google’s rankings. That simply means that if you are advertising a real estate site, posting on real estate message boards or blogs is going to be much more helpful then posting on ESPN.com. In fact Google may now penalize you for posting on websites not associated to your content.
So what is a No-Follow website? Simply put a no follow website is telling Google to not follow the links that people are leaving on their site. Specifically Zillow allows Google to follow your links while Trulia is a No-Follow site.
Lastly there have been rampant rumors within the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community that Google is starting to follow all links, even if the site is a No-Follow website. If true that would be helpful for Realtors that are able to effectively syndicate their listings across multiple sites, while severely hurting anyone trying to build backlinks using non real estate sources.
The bottom line is that SEO is constantly changing and I’d advise any agent to focuse on websites that allow you to follow links for their SEO backlinks…..however there is no way around the need to constantly blog with keywords in mind about your local area.
USC Marshall School of Business Real Estate Report
So I know some of you will roll your eyes at another story about Southern California, but as the center of the sub prime crisis as well as the first major metropolitan area into the home value deflationary cycle, it’s important to keep track of when it starts to pull out so we can make some educated guesses about what is about to happen in the rest of the country.
There were several speakers, including J. Bradley Forrester of The ConAm Group, Gregory R. Hillgren, President, CALVEST Realty Advisors, Inc., Gary H. London, President, The London Group Realty Advisors, and John P. Wickenhiser, Senior VP, Wells Fargo Real Estate Group.
Some heavy hitters there, no?
Some interesting points from a number of the presentations:
1) Vacancy rate in San Diego is very low and should be a barometer for vacancy rates in coastal cities across the USA, especially the rest of Southern California.
2) Of the 3 investors who spoke, they sold about 80% of their properties from 2005-2007. Pretty smart huh? They are currently looking to get back into the market, but they are being VERY cautious and are in no hurry.
3) Those investors are looking at apartment complexes for the most part. Reason being that the last time real estate crashed in SoCal(1994) builders were forced to complete projects underwater and it took a long time to fix. Not surprisingly the builders learned their lesson and put options into every single contract they sign. The result was that when the market started to turn south in 2006, they were able to stop building almost immediately. They haven’t started building yet and don’t plan to before 2011, meaning 2013 completion dates at the earliest. They are talking a huge landlord’s market from 2010-2013
4) Lastly they are all worried about the politics of the recession in Sacramento. With state government seemingly unwilling or unable to cut spending their only choice is to dramatically raise taxes. Could a prop 13 revision be in the works? If so, it could end real estate investing forever in California.
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