Technology For Agents

About a month ago I was reading through the National Association of Realtor monthly magazine, and I noticed an excerpt that gave insight into RELAY. RELAY is NAR’s transaction management system that has been secretly in the works for seven years now. They’ve just recently released their software to the real estate community, offering a platform for real estate agents to work together to keep track of all documents via an fully online system.

There is no software to install. Once you purchase the license to use the software in yearly increments which is $150 a year, you gain access to a special link given to you by the RELAY staff. This link isn’t the easiest to remember, and currently one of the issues I had with the software right away. If I am going to give out this link, we must remember that there are many clients who aren’t tech savvy or fully integrated into technology as you probably are. Therefore, we must make all services implemented into our business be simplistic in nature.

To work around this caveat, I created sub-domain at my site to redirect to my custom link. Now my clients must only remember:

http://tm.myhomehouston.com

This is much easier to commit to memory than:

https://relay.rebt.com/tms/?siteId=11423

Don’t you agree?

Moving forward, we are left at the login screen where I quickly notice that the site has links to translate all information displayed into English, Spanish, Chinese, or Vietnamese. I currently would not have a use for this feature, but I can easily see how it can come in handy. If your client is Chinese and prefers to read and browse in Chinese characters, than you will easily see this feature adding to the value that RELAY provides to real estate professionals.

Features

RELAY offers a variety of features to real estate agents. I haven’t actually began to experiment with each feature, but a general overview of would is provided is below.

• Secure 24/7 access and client interaction
• One-click connection to ZipFormOnline® and WINFormsOnline®
• REALTOR®-controlled access
• REALTOR® Secure certified and Cybertrust audited
• Custom branding for the broker and the agent
• Complete document and activity management
• Easy internet access with no software to download
• Create transaction CDs for you or your client

The most important feature by far is the document management that RELAY provides. You simply browse to the file location on your local computer, enter a description, and your document is instantly available online to you, your client, and any guest accounts you’ve given access to. An email is dispatched immediately to notify all members of the transaction that the document is available which is very useful. You can even specify which accounts, be it seller or buyer agent, are allowed to view this document. This security is great for a file such as a listing agreement in which you would want your seller to have access to, but not the buyer’s agent. The notification is simply a eye. If it has an open eye next to the document in the buyer column, the buyer will see the document. If the eye has a red “x” through it, then he/she may not.

RELAY offers plenty of features to examine. The key is to test and apply each feature and see if it’s use is practical in today’s real estate business. The problem we face when implementing new technologies on the fly is that you run the risk of over-complicating a relatively simple task; keeping your files together.

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Top Producer offers a handy feature for real estate agents in it’s 7i version under a tab labeled “financial”. Inside, you will see that you can track your working expenses and buyer or seller net sheets. I haven’t experimented too much with the business finance tracker, but I have been using the seller net sheets and have been pleased.

When opening this feature, you’ll first notice the blank space with headers labeled “contact” and “address”. Top Producer 7i will save each of the net sheets you calculate and keep them stored on their servers. I didn’t really realize the usefulness of this feature until one of my listings received a counter and I had to quickly adjust the seller’s net on the fly. It was very easily perform due to the saved records that Top Producer quietly stored for me.

After created a mock net sheet, you’ll notice that many key features are asked for such as price, address, and selling expenses. Selling expenses could be closing costs, prorated property taxes, commissions, or the owner’s title policy. Regardless, it gives you the option for each expense to enter a percentage value or a static numerical value.

It’s actually quite simple from here; you must enter each expense the seller plans to incur during the sale of their home or real estate investment. At the bottom of this net sheet you will see the total estimated selling expenses, along with a total estimated equity to seller. This of course provides you with the numbers your seller really wants to hear. How much money will I have at the end of the day?

The last feature I’d like to go into is the reports option. I wouldn’t think that Top Producer 7i would force you to do a print screen to show this information to your clients; and they didn’t let me down. You also have the option to print the information contained in your finance records for your seller in a nice, professional report. This is what I bring to the seller’s home when presenting offers. Doing so allows the seller to easily see the selling expenses calculated precisely. A tool such as this does nothing but add to your value proposition as a real estate professional and establish that you really know what your doing.

This quick look at the technology currently available to real estate agents is just a peek into what Top Producer really has to offer. I use it in my day to day business and it comes as a highly recommended contact manager or transaction manager. Now that I have been using the finance tools I can also say the finance technology is also a highly recommended tool.

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Real estate agents are constantly in search of tips and advice on how to get their website to earn the top ten rankings in major search engines, such as widely known google.com and yahoo.com. Agents sometimes spend hundreds, if not thousands, consulting with web developers and “SEO Specialists” in regards to their personal website and how to earn more traffic. I’ll admit; at one point I was one of those guys.I learned a few things a while back that really stuck with me from various informational sites that had experienced users who had success with SEO or “Search Engine Optimization”. In this article I will share a few of those key points with you.

There are a couple major factors when working on your site to develop it for the web, or optimize it as some will call it. There are also shortcomings that can indirectly effect the income of your business.

It Takes Time and Money

Time and money isn’t something that we all can say we have in the real estate business early in our career. I want to stress to you that good search engine rankings take time; sometimes lots of it. I’ve read and experienced that a search engine such as google.com will take the age and domain registration length into consideration when determining it’s rankings. Therefore, we can conclude that even if you had a nice domain name, such as [Insert City]MLS.com, that doesn’t mean you’ll get to the top right away.

The early stages of web design and development aren’t always dollar productive since spending time on your real estate website doesn’t produce direct results right away. Usually that time could be more effectively used on vital activities, such as training and development and lead generation. You’ll find that the domain registration, hosting, and time actually spent developing content all equate to lost money in some form, whether it be through lost time or the actual tender of cash for product and services. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that unless you have cash reserves (at least 3-6 months worth), your time could probably be better spent elsewhere for now. Work on some dollar productive activities such as lead generation that can directly effect the commission you plan to receive.

The reason I make this statement is simple. I invested the first eight months of my real estate career building my site and earning practically minimum wage. A year and a half later, I can now see that it is now getting a great traffic (or visitors) and I receive a steady flow of leads. Would I have approached it a different way? Absolutely. I would have focused on prospecting, THEN when I had enough to last a while, spend time on my site. Those first eight months were torture on my personal finances. Building sites can be consuming, especially if you’re a perfectionist such as myself.

Moving forward, let’s say you have the reserves or perhaps you don’t agree with the previous suggestion. I’m alright with that; it’s your business! That’s the beauty of our industry. You can decide what deserves your attention and what doesn’t at any given time.

Our next step should be considered during the planning phases of your real estate website.

What Makes For Good SEO

There are three key factors I consider when optimizing my site for the web. I consider keyword density, content, and most importantly, quality inbound links.

The key word density is also considered and usually goes hand in hand with your content. The content of your site must be filled with key words that are relevant to the theme of your site, such as “real estate” or “listings”. Why else would someone searching for your site pull up yours? You must have some form of indication that what you have on your web page is relevant to the user’s search query. I suggest a value from 6-10% of how many times your target keywords should appear in the article amongst other words. I will research this in more detail so that perhaps I share more insights with you.

The content on your site has to be of good quality, and continually updated. When I say quality I am referring to articles that really mean something to your readers and visitors. Talk about foreclosures, the market, anything real estate related. I suggest you just keep it current and informative so that your readers have a reason for coming back to you. If someone bookmarks your site, you’ve hit the nail on the head.

The last item of importance is quality inbound links. Other sites need to feel that yours is important as well. I do not mean to past your URL (or link to your site) everywhere you go online; the site referring traffic to you must have some form of relevance. A site about the maintenance of dogs referring to you will probably do little to affect your rankings in Google. However, your link on a site that already is held in high regard in the real estate industry such as inman.com would certainly help boost your rankings. The key is figuring out how to get your link there. Inman.com is a real estate news portal so perhaps you could write a fantastic article for buyers about buying homes and they would pick it up and link to you. Who knows?

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s quite a bit of information to be absorbed when thinking of building a site, and optimizing for the web. Be sure you are ready to take on this major project before embarking on the endeavor. Doing so without thinking of how time should be spent in advance could lead to you making irrational decisions on the use of your time, and your business could temporarily suffer. Learn from my mistake and make sure you do have the cash reserves before you decide to take on this animal yourself.

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