If you are someone who is in the business of selling or renting property, and that business requires you to give prospective customers tours of that property (whether infrequently or multiple times per day), then you need to at least be considering video tours—if not relying fully upon them.  A video tour, sometimes called a talking brochure, is a perfect way to conserve your own precious resources while reaching a broad target audience.  Here is how it works.

Make a video of yourself (or whoever gives the tours for your business) giving a perfect tour through a listed property.  The video can simply be shot from the perspective of the tour-taker, following the presenter through the home.  This tour differs from a more conventional tour in that you will obviously have no interaction with your customer.  Think back on your previous tours—there have undoubtedly always been questions that interrupt your tour, and you are expected to provide that information to your customers.  In a video tour, your customer will still have all the same questions, but no way to stop the tour to ask you.  Therefore, this particular presentation needs to be very thorough; you need to sit down and come up with all of the relevant questions that a prospective buyer or renter would want to ask, and you need to be sure to answer them clearly and concisely in your tour.  I say concisely because—as in all matters which require acquiring and maintaining peoples’ attention—you can’t put out a 45 minute video and expect people to remain focused.  Keep it under five minutes, but pack it full of all the useful information you would want to know before moving forward with a major transaction.

Once you’ve made your five minute video, you’ll need to distribute it for viewing.  The easiest, cheapest, and most practical way to do this is using the internet.  Your business should already have a website, but if you don’t, that is the first step (we won’t deal with that here).  When you add the video to your website, don’t bury it behind links tabs and URLs and whatnot.  Present it up front, make your tours clearly visible and easy to click and play.  This is your product—advertise it!  Finally, be sure you make it very easy for your customer to contact you.  We all know the frustration of using the internet to search for an email address or phone number, only to click link after link finding no way to reach a human being.  Make your business email and phone readily available both on and around the video tour in your website.

Going through this one-day process will save you countless hours of meeting customers for tours, driving time and gas money, and where you could only do so many tours in one day before, with a video on the internet you can reach an unlimited number of people in any period of time.  It’s a marketer’s dream, and it’s a tool that must not be overlooked by real estate professionals.

What do you think?  Let us know below.

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Everybody makes mistakes.  Business or personal, minor or catastrophic—they happen all the time.  What separates successful investors from the hoards who never make it beyond a second, third, or fourth deal, is not how they get their good deals, but rather how they handle it when they make a mistake.  Successful investors are not exempt from the law that everyone makes mistakes; in fact, they make more mistakes than failed investors.  What makes a failed investor fail is that he never bounces back from his first mistake (if you can show me someone who has gotten through five deals without making any mistake, I will be very impressed).  Successful investors, on the other hand, make their first mistake, learn their lesson, and continue investing until they make their next mistake, whereupon they learn from that one, and they continue investing until they retire happy and rich on a beach at 50.

Learning from a mistake requires four simple-sounding steps (they are not so simple to enact consistently, which is why not everyone is a millionaire real estate investor): 1) identify the mistake, 2) take responsibility, 3) let it go, and 4) use what you learned.  If you can get in the habit of taking care of each of these steps when a mistake is made in your business, you will find that the mistakes are rarely ever repeated, and you will slowly eliminate all of the major hurdles that stand in the way of inexperienced investors, leaving a clear path toward smart decisions and successful deals.

The first step is to identify the mistake.  Sometimes this is easy, like when you get that “Ah, I’m such an idiot!” reaction to something you realize you’ve done.  Most of the time, however, things simply go sour and you can never pinpoint exactly what went wrong.  The key is to be systematic and detailed throughout the process, so that you can always refer to notes and records to learn exactly what happened, or be confident about what didn’t happen.  But the key to development is to know what went wrong.

Next, you must own up to your mistake.  This means not hiding from those who may have lost money because of your actions or decisions, but rather confronting them and making every effort not to burn any bridges (which in the real estate industry can be a death sentence).  When you’ve taken responsibility for something, you can move on from it guilt-free.  Part of that is the process of forgiving yourself for the error, and letting it go so that you can maintain the confidence that is required to make big investment decisions (which are often something akin to strategic decisions).

Once you’ve forgiven yourself, you need to jump right back on the horse.  While the sting is still fresh, get back in the game and use what you’ve learned from examining your bad experience to ensure it never happens again.  Obviously, new problems will inevitably arise, and you need to be prepared to go through this examining and rebuilding process quite a few times to clear away the common investing errors.  The definition of insanity is repeating the same action again and again, expecting a different result.  In real estate, you’d really have to be insane to repeat your mistakes over and over, losing more and more money, but you would be shocked at how many investors fail simply because they continue to fall into the same traps again and again.  Learn, and rise to the top.

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Practically anyone can buy a home.  It doesn’t take a whole lot more than a little bit of saving, getting a loan, and moving in (very simply put).  But staying in a home is a completely different story, and with the levels of defaulted mortgages and foreclosures at their highest levels ever, it is essential for you, the home buyer, to understand the ingredients of successful, sustainable home ownership to avoid the pitfalls suffered by those already facing dire straits.

In its most fundamental form, sustainable home ownership is about preparation, whether you are buying your first home for residence or you are an experienced investor.  This means knowing what you have, predicting what you will have, knowing what you spend, knowing what you will spend (this should not just be a prediction), and planning for contingency.  That last one—planning for contingency—is where the vast majority of the home buying population goes wrong.

Contingency planning means having enough of a cushion in your cash reserves to get you through the toughest times.  Even if you lose your income, come into unforeseen bills or expenses, etc., you should not be so strapped for cash that you are forced to the curb.  You should always be able to live on your reserves for a year.  When you are budgeting, this cushion will account for a pretty hefty proportion of the required overall value for purchasing the home.  But don’t skimp on the contingency fund—failing to have enough reserves is the number one reason people fail to sustain home ownership.  Like I said, it’s relatively easy to buy a home; and it is especially easy to do when everything is going well.  But when you fall on the toughest times (and we all do at one point or another), it is essential that you have provided enough of a cushion of cash reserves to break that fall.

The moral of the story is to save before you buy.  Save up, develop good credit, and get pre-approved for a loan before you even begin the process of searching for a new home or investment.  This will make both the process of finding what you want and closing on it much easier, and you will be effectively prepared for the inevitable unexpected hardships inherent to home ownership.

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It is not altogether difficult to be a mediocre part-time investor.  All it takes is doing a deal or two every couple of years, and not quitting your day job.  And some people are happy at that level of investment.  But for many of us who are more ambitious, there is a terrible frustration associated with the struggle to rise out of the enormous crop of average, and into the upper echelon of successful stand-out investors.  The question then becomes, “How do I change what I’m doing now to become one of those outstanding investors?”  The answer is not what you want to hear: you already know what to do, you just have to do it better.

This may sound like discouraging news, but this article is a reminder that doing a better job of the job you are already doing is a simple matter of execution and maximizing your efficiency and precious resources.  In other words, it is a matter of being conscientious.  This means considering every decision and option carefully at every turn, no matter how minor.  Intensity and efficiency is a function of systematic preparation and execution, which means you need to make a plan, establish goals, and stick to it for everything you do.

When you sit down in the morning to make your daily calls to leads, instead of just plopping down at your desk and starting to work your way through your leads willy-nilly, do the job with intensity and efficiency.  Organize your leads in a database, give yourself a window of time during which you will do nothing but call leads, and do nothing but call leads.  When you hang up the phone, pick it back up and make another call.  Don’t get up in between to grab a drink, or check Sportscenter, or anything else.  Stick to your plan, accomplish your goals.

If you do this with all of your business’ activities (it’s easy to do for a day, but can you do it for a year?) you will be amazed at the noticeable change in your productivity, income, and free time.  And who would turn down any of those?  Enjoying the fruits of labor first requires labor, and it stands to reason that the harder you work during the time you designate for work, the more you will be able to enjoy it during the rest of the time.

So, like I said, there are no new lessons in this article.  You already know what you need to do to be a successful investor (and if you don’t, then open your eyes and take a look around, because the lessons are everywhere).  The key to actually being that successful investor is diligently sticking to those tasks, and working with a system that allows you to establish and work towards goals, as well as to evaluate your performance against those various goals you set.

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There is considerable debate as to the most effective and appropriate way to present a home during the sale process.  Some maintain that the home should be sterile, pristine, as if it had never been set foot in; others disagree, feeling instead that the buyer should walk in and feel as though they could sit down on the couch and start living there.  Obviously, there is no right answer, and the manner in which you decide to sell your home will ultimately be a function of your style, budget, and needs.  I am not here to answer that question, but rather to provide a few basic guidelines which should be fundamental to the process, regardless of the style.

The easiest place to start is the exterior.  The rule of thumb here is that the property does not have to be the most stunning on the block, but it should at least fit in.  That means if every house has some landscaping but no garage, then your home should at the very least have some landscaping.  This is not an attempt to out-do, but merely to fit in.  If you choose to exceed (build a garage and plant a garden), great!  But it is not one of the basic requirements.  Be sure to check the roof, the exterior walls, window shutters, etc.

With most things, I find moderation to be the key.  With the interior of a home, it is often best to include some furnishings (don’t strip the place bare).  That is, leave some furniture in place, but remove all photos, mementos, souvenirs, or anything else that might hint at the fact that this is your home.  Generally speaking, people are more uncomfortable when they are constantly reminded that they are traipsing around through someone’s living space—it is better to let them focus on the property itself.

How much you furnish and decorate is up to you, but it is essential to clean thoroughly.  This means the standards (washing, vacuuming, having carpets cleaned and wood waxed, etc.), but also minor repairs like chipped paint or electrical outlets.  Anything that makes your home look shoddy needs to be amended.  Keep the smell of the home in mind (especially in kitchens, laundry rooms, basements, and bathrooms, where smells tends to build up over time and leave a nasty impression).  When presenting, consider something to enhance the fragrance (anything from flowers to a spray can), so that the buyers don’t walk away with a bad taste in their mouth—literally.

Again, so much of what you do when presenting your home is going to be determined by personal preference, how much time you have to spend, and what you can afford.  But be sure that your home is not a sore thumb in your neighborhood, keep it clean and impersonal, and be friendly and personable when presenting it.  This is all any buyer will ask, and it is not too difficult to provide.  Everything beyond these standards is just bonus—but be careful of overkill, you don’t want to “wow” any buyers right back to their cars!

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It is hard to make a strong argument against the value of the internet.  To begin a list of the improvements it has offered in the arenas of commerce, government, communication, and personal life would simply be a waste of time, because that list is so comprehensive.  However, the internet—like all good things—has some side-effects which may be great for some, but are a thorn in the side for the rest of us.

I know a physician who is an old-school surgeon, and have often heard him complain over the course of the last decade or so about the know-it-all patients who spend five minutes on Wikipedia and come to his office thinking they have all the answers.  Healthcare is an extreme scenario, because no matter how much the patient may think they know, in the end they have to use the Doctor’s services to get whatever treatment or care they need.

Real estate, on the other hand, is not as sure a thing as medicine.  In real estate, that same know-it-all customer might spend five minutes researching home sales or purchases, and conclude that they simply have the information they need to do it on their own.  Twenty years ago, realtors and investors could operate their businesses however they wanted, and treat their customer with as much or little care and consideration as they saw fit—like in healthcare, the customers had no other options.  But now, with listings and tutorials readily available to the average browser, real estate professionals must continuously demonstrate their value to customers in an ongoing effort to prevent being replaced by the internet.

In most cases, this can be achieved not by changing how hard you work or how you conduct your business and transactions, but rather by simply adjusting the manner in which you treat your customers.  There is no rule of thumb guiding the proper treatment of customers—every customer’s unique psychology and temperament will determine what mannerisms appeal most to them.  The key, in all cases, is to be attentive and considerate, and always polite.  Whether your tone is serious, comedic, chipper, etc., will be a function of what you think will mesh best with each individual customer.

Real estate purchase and sales is a people-oriented industry.  Real estate professionals, including investors, must be engaged and helpful at every step of the way, thinking less about the numbers and more about the needs of your customers and the long-term value of the services you can provide your customer whether that be a buyer, seller, renter or another investor.

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Everywhere you turn, I’m certain you keep hearing about this buyer’s market.  For many, this represents an opportunity; but for the sellers out there, it can be difficult news to bear.  Imagine a 65-year-old married couple who raised a family in a home for 25 years before shipping all the kids off to school and lives of their own.  Now, just the two of them alone in a big house in a down economy, they realize they need to simplify by selling the house.

This is, no doubt, a difficult decision (it is in practically any scenario).  The couple has two and a half decades worth of memories there, and to them that translates to value.  They hire an agent and put together an asking price which they are comfortable with, and finally give the go-ahead to put the house on the market.

Well, it’s a buyer’s market, right?  So hopefully they don’t have to wait too long before their first offer, and they’re very excited about the prospect of being free to move forward and simplify their lives.  But the offer is low—very low.  They immediately refuse, perhaps feeling a bit offended by the ridiculous offer.  A few days later, they get another offensively low proposal, and they decide that this is not the right time to sell their home.

For those of you trying to sell, don’t make the mistake made by this hypothetical couple.  They did two things wrong: 1) becoming emotionally attached to what is essentially a piece of material property; and 2) not fully understanding the negotiation and transaction process, and walking away too soon.

There is nothing wrong with developing an emotional connection with a house—after all, the saying goes, “Home is where the heart is”.  But what you can’t do as a seller, is factor that emotional element (the value added from personal experience there) to your asking price.  In other words, be reasonable about your expectations, and remember that your experiences in the house don’t add a penny of value for the stranger moving in after you.  That doesn’t mean you need to get taken to the bank by low offers, but don’t expect to be compensated for parting with a piece of your life.

Second, understand that—especially in a buyer’s market, where the seller holds very few chips—buyers like to make a ridiculously low initial offer, often just to test the waters and see what they might be able to get away with.  In any case, the home buyer who makes an offer and is not willing to negotiate up to a higher sale price will be extremely rare; use your negotiation skills to turn a low offer into an acceptable settling price.  Chances are, you’re not going to run away to the bank grinning about how you fleeced the poor sucker who bought your house, so don’t expect to avoid compromises all together.  Meet in the middle, and remember: a good negotiation ends with both parties feeling that an acceptable win-win has been created!

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Real estate investment used to be a relatively simple and reliable process of: 1) find a property, 2) buy the property, 3) find a buyer, 4) sell the property, and 5) stop at the bank on your way home from work to drop off the thousands of dollars you made that day.  Now, although for many investment strategies the general principle is very similar, the difference is that each step of the process has been complicated by structures, systems, and processes that have served to expedite the process and target it toward a much broader audience, but they have also dehumanized the industry to some extent as a byproduct.

The structures, systems, and process to which I am referring are all of the things that are now in place to regulate and standardize the real estate sale process and the real estate industry in general.  This means extensive educational opportunities/requirements, rapidly-improving technological systems for maximal organization, reach, and access to information, as well as a different process for buying and selling a home altogether—one which is markedly less personal than it used to be.

True, all of these changes may be considered improvements—each in its own way contributes meaningfully to the efficiency and efficacy of the real estate transaction process, and is therefore helping our industry grow.  However, while ease, speed, reach, and access all increase, the level of direct involvement shared between real estate professionals and the customers they serve is steadily decreasing.  This is not an isolated phenomenon, but is rather a trend which plagues many industries (and is directly responsible for many big business’ ability to dramatically increase profit margins while laying off enormous portions of their work force).  Knowledge and technology are both powerful tools.

But what about the people remaining in the process?  That is to say, although the average home buyer/seller is probably at the very least perusing the internet as an initial stage of their process, for the most part these are simply individuals wandering a relatively unfamiliar world and industry, looking for the guidance of someone both knowledgeable and relatable.  The computer may be knowledgeable, but it’s certainly not relatable.  Their best friend might be relatable, but they know nothing about real estate.  So, despite the technology and other improvements in the quality and fluidity of our industry, the average customer still needs someone to hold their hand and help them through what is undoubtedly an emotional time in their life—whether that emotion is excitement, fear, anxiety, or utter confusion.  It is your job to balance between being the computer and being the friend: you must possess the information, and be prepared to regurgitate it like a computer would do; but your job is just as much to be the best friend of your customer, helping to guide them through a time of many unknowns.  Find that balance, and you are sure to maintain good, healthy (repetitive!) relationships with your customers, which is the key to staying not only afloat, but on top of the wave, in this industry.

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Everyone knows marketing is expensive but necessary.  It is how we acquire new customers, and it is how we keep our businesses afloat.  But the smartest investors know that if they do their job right, they may have to spend less and less time and money on their marketing efforts, simply by taking strides to retain customers as their careers develop.  Statistical studies modeling American businesses (not specific to real estate) show that it can cost up to five times as much to acquire new customers as it does to work with old ones.  Further, increasing customer retention by 2% has the equivalent effect of decreasing costs by 10%.  And that’s all business—in real estate, statistics and figures must be scaled in accordance with the fact that one additional sale produced by a repeat customer can be an enormous portion of your yearly quota (rather than a mere 10% decrease in costs).

Studies more specific to the real estate industry have revealed an even more striking relationship between retention of customers and realtor success.  The National Association of Realtors compiled  a Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers in 2008, in which they discovered, among other trends, that 18% of repeat real estate buyers choose to use an agent they’ve worked with before.  Perhaps it’s convenience, perhaps it’s trust, perhaps it’s a lack of any other options—whatever the reason, realtors would be wise to keep the lines of communication open with repeat customers like these.  Even more impressive, 26% of home sellers also used an agent they had worked with in the past, and about 70% of those customers overall would both use their agent(s) again and would recommend them to friends.

The point is this:  Are you one of the countless realtors or real estate wholesalers that finally gets a deal done and then never hears from the customer again?  If so, you are missing out on a huge proportion of your total business—according to statistical models.  The key to maintaining contact and an open relationship is organization and diligence (as with most things).  This means setting up or improving your database of leads and customers.  This should be a comprehensive list of everyone you or your business has come into contact with—successfully or otherwise.  Each entry should contain contact information, details about your interactions with the customer (what did you learn from phone calls and interviews?) and a contact log that shows exactly when you last spoke.  With a database like this, you can organize your contacts by priority, type, date of contact, etc.  You can then create a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) of when you will call each of these organized categories.  Breaking it down systematically like this ensures that you are in fact following up with every single lead, and keeping those bridges between you and your customers up and running.  Just because you have completed a sale, does not mean your relationship has to be over. It really should only be the beginning.

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For a period of a couple of decades, 800 numbers were the way to go when it came to connecting real estate professionals with leads and hopeful new customers.  It has always done its job, and in many cases exceeded that, but with the explosion of internet marketing in the last ten years, many people have given up on the 800 number altogether (relying instead on email and cell phones).  Smart phones are great for real estate investment—don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.  But here is why it is a good reason for every investment business to hang on to that old 800 line—or even to get one now for the first time.

The first thing the 800 line will give you is convenience.  If attached to all of your marketing campaigns, the line should provide a steady stream of new customers eager to get started.  Of course, you could accomplish the same thing on your smart phone, but who wants to deal with receiving 200 calls a day (even if you screen them or have a business-only cell phone, it is an enormous burden).  The 800 line will accept calls 24/7, and the numbers who called your line will be stored and sent to you for database entry and callback at your leisure and need.  You get the simplicity of your standard cell phone back, and your stream of incoming leads remains intact.

Another benefit of the 800 line is simply the credibility associated with it.  Another byproduct of the internet age is consumer cynicism.  Between the threats of craigslist scams, identity theft, and all the other crippling issues that can arise from online transactions, finding investors and other real estate professionals these days is often a harrowing process filled with skepticism and reserve on the part of the consumer.  When they see an ad online for a realtor, and a cell phone is listed as the contact number, the consumer is more likely to be put off (or at least on guard) than if that same ad listed a toll-free 800 number to contact.  Although it costs next to nothing to maintain, the 800 line is commonly associated with professionalism, and it will certainly lend an air of credibility to any advertisement, making your customers more likely to call.

Studies show that 800 numbers produce over 80% more sales than regular toll-free numbers for a given product (and one has to assume those figures would be higher for the sale of homes, as all business trends tend to be a bit exaggerated in real estate by  the size of the transactions).  Your customers are sure to appreciate the fact that it’s free, and they can call anytime of day or night to get the information or leave the message they need.

Far from being an outdated tool of an age of real estate long gone, maintaining and operating an 800 line for your business can be a crucial tool for generating, maintaining, and organizing leads, and it will lend your business an immediate air of prestige, credibility, and professionalism in the eyes of your customers.

Tell us what your thoughts are? Do you agree or not? We would like your input on this topic.

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