Technology For Agents

If you run your real estate business in a big city, then you’ll eventually come to a prospective client that agrees to meet with you, but doesn’t want to drive all the way to your office. This happens to me all the time in Houston; the 4th largest city in the United States isn’t exactly easy on the gas tank.

Most agents that encounter this problem have to take the time and search for a good meeting place between both of your locations.  Should you meet at a Starbucks or a restaurant?  Where exactly is “meet somewhere in between”?

I stumbled on this great free website online that solves this problem.  Not only is it super easy to use, but it also will help you choose a suitable meeting location between you and your client.  MeetInBetween.us is a contest entry for Rails Rumble (a programmer/developer contest), and I fell in love with the moment I ran across it.

Try it for your market and see if it helps you save some time.  If you enjoy the site, please take the time to register and vote for them over at the Rails Rumble 2008 site.  While you’re there, check out the other top applications; they’re all great ideas and fun to play around with.

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Today Top Producer sent out a notice that some upgrades were being made to their contact management system known as Top Producer 8i.  I love it when companies regularly update their products.  As promised, Top Producer is doing a great job with their 8i series with regular, consistent updates.

In this round of updates, TP8i is being expanded to include five major features:  Inbound Spam Filter, Multiple Email Signatures, HTML Email Stationary, New Postcard Templates, and (finally!) support for Firefox 3.

The updates are detailed after the break.

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Browsing listings on your mobile devices is pretty neat.  Find the site that’s optimized for a mobile device (such as a cell phone), and your experience is optimized so that it’s easy to use given the implications (small screen, no mouse, etc.).  

It good to hear that Apartments.com is taking steps to improve their site by optimizing Apartments.com to be mobile-friendly.

“In the mobile search environment, access to information is key,” said Chris Brown, vice president of product management, Apartments.com. “After taking into consideration multiple operating systems, mobile devices and carriers, Apartments.com has created a user-friendly experience for renters on the mobile web, delivering apartment listings, photos and detailed information through a rich data format conveniently accessible from any web-enabled mobile phone and carrier.”

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Verizon is jumping on the touch screen bandwagon with what looks to be the biggest update to the Blackberry in quite some time.

Verizon’s new Blackberry Storm by Vodaphone features many of the touch screen features that Apples iPhone, Sprint’s Instinct, and TMobile’s G1 look to have, but some could say that the storm has a leg up on the competition even though they’re last to enter to race.

The Storm will feature a new type of tactile feedback with the on-screen keyboard. Unlike the iPhone, the Blackberry Storm will allow you to physically depress the screen in a clicking manner. It’s really hard to explain, but the team over at Engadget has a hands-on article that describes this feature in detail.

Also featured on the Blackberry Storm is 480×360 screen, built-in GPS, an accelerometer (for screen orientation - landscape or portrait mode), a 3.2 megapixel camera, video recording, and a headset jack. There are other common features I could list but these are the ones that are usually the most important.

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As a real estate agent, search engine marketing should be on the forefront of your mind.  With each year that passes, more and more consumers are using the internet to begin their search for a home.   Most of these consumers are well informed buyers; looking to initially begin by viewing homes for sale.

If you’re looking to put yourself in front of these web surfers, you will eventually begin to consider search engine marketing within your lead generation strategy.

In this series of posts, I will share my knowledge of search engine marketing with you over the course of a few weeks; each post will get more and more detailed and precise.
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