Real Estate Map Search Technology

Is your approach to real estate stuck in the dark ages of 2001?

by Robert Caston on January 27, 2012 · 0 comments

I just love those commercials where the two mobile phone users seem to know everything that is going on at a football game or in their office before anybody else does.

Their saying is: “Oh, that was so 17 seconds ago.”

The commercials are amusing. And prophetic.

If you are in the real estate business, or any business for that matter, there is a more universal message being offered here.

Many of today’s consumers, not just 40 and under, have incredible, lighting-fast access to unlimited resources.

And it’s not just the younger crowd. If you are older, how many of your friends, formerly non-techies, are now pointing out new websites or apps to you?

This is today’s consumer.

So, as a real estate professional, are you what some buyers refer to as a “walking key?”

Is all you do is walk into a property and say, “And this is the master bedroom”?

Are you handing out the same one-page flyers you were handing out 20 years ago?

Are you telling buyers where the schools are located when they have probably not only have already found the schools, but know the test scores, enrollment numbers, student-teacher ratios, busing districts, etc., etc., etc.

But you might say, I have a blog! I have a Facebook page!

Man, that is not enough.

If you are going to impress today’s tech-oriented home buyers and sellers, you had better be tech-oriented right down to your toes.

You are not going to impress these people with a one-page flyer.

You will impress them with an iPad (or other tablet), you will impress them with video on your site and one on your smartphone, you will impress them podcasts on the latest marketing trends.

Another tool that will impress them is a SpatialMatch IDX and lifestyle search engine embedded on your site.

This enormous database of home listings combined with local lifestyle marketing data such as schools, restaurants, gyms, golf courses, is going to let them see that you are on top of the technology wave.

Searches for homes combined with neighborhood amenities can be displayed from your web site. Results can be saved. Links to saved results can be emailed. And it all comes in the form of a colorful, easy to use app.

This lets consumer know you speak their language.

You are not speaking the language of a real estate broker or agent from say 10, or even 5 years ago - now a dinosaur in terms of how fast the market is changing.

You are not “23 seconds ago.” You are current.

And the beauty of being current with the times it will increase the opportunity to still do something you did 10, 20 years ago. Put that check in the bank.

If you want a free consultation on how you can upgrade your real estate web site, contact the folks at Home Junction Inc. here.

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You can enhance the traits of what it takes to be a successful Realtor

by Robert Caston on January 20, 2012 · 0 comments

Business philosopher Jim Rohn once said, “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”

Everyone knows the old sports adage, when things go wrong, it’s time to get back to the fundamentals.

Steve Gutstein, a certified real estate coach, wrote an interesting and nicely succinct article about the fundamentals involved in creating a successful real estate office.

He called it “Five Traits Buyers Demand of Their Realtor.”

We’ll go through four of them quickly because they are common sense: “Honesty and Credibility,” “Great Follow Through,” “Organization and Responsiveness,” “Be a Great Listener First and then a Great Communicator.”

You know this stuff.

The fifth one he mentioned is “Area Familiarity.”

You certainly can’t create a tool to improve Honesty and Credibility. You’re going to have to do that on your own.

But how up-to-speed are you with the tools and technology available to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise when it comes to local neighborhoods?

Are you still carrying around a bunch of paper maps in your trunk? Do you limit your hyper-local expertise to telling people where the elementary, middle and high schools are located?

SpatialMatch can’t make you more honest, but we certainly can help you demonstrate how you have the fifth trait nailed down with the latest advances in IDX and Lifestyle search tools on your web site.

Imagine sitting in your office with a young couple interested in buying a home. After getting to know what type of home they are looking for, imagine asking them to give you their ideal location based on what they like to do for fun. Say for example, he’s a golfer. She’s into yoga.

Then imagine pulling up a colorful, user-friendly screen with brightly arranged icons showing all the local listings for sale and pointing out all the area golf courses and yoga studios as well. Then imagine narrowing down all the properties that meet the couple’s initial criteria for home size, price, etc. and showing how close these fun amenities are located in miles.

Then imagine saving that information and offering to email it to the couple so they can review it later. Or being able to post the link on their Facebook page so their friends can give them instant feedback on the properties they are considering.

This is a hi-tech, Internet-driven, in-depth service that taps into an enormous database of local knowledge. This is not someone saying, “Oh, I think there may be a yoga studio somewhere down there around the corner.”

This is what will separate you from the others when it comes to the trait “Area Familiarity.”

Sure, you’ll see coaches out there haranguing their players about getting back to fundamentals. But you also know the successful coaches are those that use the most modern techniques and technology to train, evaluate and assist their players.

Call it Fundamentals 2.0.

To reach Gutstein’s article, click here.

For info on how SpatialMatch can make you a leader for hyper-local knowledge click here.

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This year, use the right technology to farm a neighborhood

by Robert Caston on January 13, 2012 · 0 comments

When it comes to farming a community, there’s one guy in Daytona Beach, Fla., who is a real pro.

According to RealtorMag, of the 649 residences in the Fairway Estates community, Ed Savard has either listed or sold one out of three of them.

One out of three! That’s not a farm, that’s a gold mine!

The article says his strategies are simple: Pick a Target (hopefully a place not too oversaturated with agents) Become an Expert (more on that in a minute), Make Yourself Visible (he sends out a newsletter almost every week and wears his real estate shirt while taking walks) and Give it Time(we have a way to speed things up).

Okay, sounds easy enough. But as we all know, this guy didn’t gain this stature in this community overnight. He worked it. Hard.

But we’re going to give you a simple tip to accelerate becoming the dominant farmer in any community. Just like an expert gold miner would: go get better tools.

SpatialMatch is a hyper-local neighborhood database combined with a user-friendly IDX that provides a ton of information about any community. And the beauty of it is, you install this search engine on YOUR website, so buyers and sellers go to YOUR website, not Google or Zillow or someone else’s, to use it.

And then add one more strategy to the list – Know your Neighborhood Amenities (could be a subcategory of Become an Expert, but make it a separate strategy).

Buyers today want more than a house. They want a local support system for their lifestyle.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could show potential sellers when you market their property, you also have a web based mapping platform illustrating these important amenities with the distances from their location:

- local grocery stores

- local schools

- local library

- local gym and fitness centers

- local hospital and medical facilities

- best local restaurants

- local Starbucks

- local places of interest

Send them an example of how cool it looks (it does, someone once compared our look to an iPhone app. See screen shot below).

And wouldn’t it be great to let the community know when something new is going up in town…and the distance from their community?

Most people see a bulldozer clearing some land – but as the Local Expert with the SpatialMatch tool, you can load that location into the system, tell them what it is and send them a map (or link to a map) showing them the exact location AND the distance from their community.

And you can continue to let them know you will be using this SpatialMatch resource to market their particular property when they decide to sell.

Before you go off to target a community, be sure you have all the latest technology on hand. It will make things easier and make things happen faster.

To read the RealtorMag article about Ed, click here.

To add SpatialMatch tool to your site, click here.

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Vague resolutions are worthless, specific action is priceless

by Robert Caston on January 6, 2012 · 0 comments

Here we go again. A new year. A time to reassess where we are and where we want to be.

It’s funny how we as humans all seem to come up with the same resolutions every year.

I’m sure you’ve seen the list.

1) Quit smoking

2) Get fit

3) Lose weight

4) Quit drinking

5) Organize

6) Learn something

7) Enjoy life more

8) Get out of debt

9) Spend more time with family and friends

10) Help people

These resolutions are all well and good, but as you know, most of them drop by the wayside after the first month.

But what about your resolutions as a real estate professional?

Hopefully, two of your goals this year are to get more customers and earn more money.

But just like the list above, those statements are way too vague.

Simon A. Rego, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine stressed that goals are more likely to be reached if they are “SMART,” meaning specific, measurable, attainable, rewarding, and time-limited.

He cautioned against, for example, simply making losing weight a goal, but instead suggested being more specific, such as “I’d like to lose five pounds over the first two months of the year and then set a new goal from there,” he said.

So what are you specifically going to do about reaching more clients?

Since Home Junction Inc. is a real estate technology company, obviously the first thing we are going to recommend is to make some specific technological changes.

a) Look at IDX technology – Is your current service bland and boring? Consider adding the SpatialMatch IDX and lifestyle search engine to your web site. This state-of-the art platform goes beyond the standard IDX and incorporates vital lifestyle and neighborhood search information as well, all critical to attracting buyers and impressing sellers.

b) Look at tablet technology – iPads, Kindles, how can these popular new tools help you in your sales efforts?

c) Look at mobile technology – there are so many hundreds of thousands of new apps out there to make you more efficient, be sure to check them out. One time saver can make a big difference over a year.

d) Look at email technology – with the rise of Groupon and LivingSocial and easy-to-use email services like Constant Contact and Mail Chimp, email marketing is popular again.

Sure, this seems like more work. But keep this in mind, making an improvement TODAY, this first week of January, will mean payoffs for an ENTIRE year. That could mean a significant difference in whether you acquire new customers and earn more money.

Waiting until June for example, will cut the potential rewards for the year in half.

So go ahead, plan to help people or enjoy life more in 2012. We intend to do the same (and drop that holiday cookie weight as well).

That’s fine. But when it comes to your business, you need to execute S.M.A.R.T. goals, and it’s smart to execute them now.

To read the full article on resolutions, click here.

To learn more about the SpatialMatch advanced IDX platform and how it can help make a difference in your business this year, click here.

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How the newest tech trends in 2012 will affect your real estate business

December 29, 2011

The tech gurus at Mashable came out with their 10 trends to watch in 2012 and savvy Realtors will pay close attention to the list. It’s rather obvious that most new trends coming up make it is easier for web users to reach out to each other. As a result, you are going to see [...]

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Tis’ the season for real estate agents to take pride in the service they provide

December 22, 2011

As families gather in their homes for the holidays, if you are a real estate professional, you’ve got to have some feeling of pride knowing you found the right home for many of these families. Many times in our professional lives we get caught up in the numbers – how many sales, how many listings, [...]

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Old-fashion mortgage rates combined with the latest technology can make home sales happen

December 15, 2011

When my father sold the home I grew up in, he told me an amazing fact. “You know, when I bought this house back in the 60s,” he said with a grin, “The interest rate on my mortgage was only 4%.” Ah, the good old days. If only life was that simple again. Better times. [...]

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Real estate broker calls SpatialMatch his ‘Magic Map’

December 9, 2011

Everyone in business knows, you don’t always get feedback from a satisfied customer. Many times they are just too busy. But when one of your clients refers to your product as “magic,” well, you just gotta listen. That’s what happened at Team X Real Estate in Los Angeles. Broker Emmanuel Xuereb wrote in his blog [...]

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How to truly motivate agents in your office in 2012

December 1, 2011

Have you ever dragged your employees to listen to a motivational speaker? Or tried to pump them up with lunch or some other promotion? And then got frustrated because after a few days it didn’t seem to work? There’s a new year coming and everybody naturally wants to do better in 2012. But consider what [...]

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Taking IDX search to the next level in push technology

November 23, 2011

When it comes to search technology today, it reminds me of the Rolling Stones’ lyrics, “You can’t always get what you want.” Now, I appreciate the wonders of search engines such as Google and Bing as much as anybody. But, it’s been a few years now and frankly, it could be better. For example, say [...]

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