Escrow Coordinator PLUS+

Simple Overview of Cloud Computing and How it Helps a Real Estate Business

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:28:00 -0700

Cloud computing is a hot topic lately as a newer type of technology that makes work, collaboration, and sharing information much easier. This is a quick and simple over view of what cloud computing is, how it works, and how it can specifically make your real estate business more profitable and easier to run.

The parts: Cloud computing is based on having a centralized server like a giant hard drive connected to the internet similar to the one in your computer but probably much larger. This stores information and allows information to be accessed off of it from anywhere that has internet. Any good cloud system is up 24/7 and is encrypted with great security features and also has an extra backup so the user’s information can never be lost or stolen. The other part is the portal and how you as a user accesses it. This is the platform that you will use to access your information and share the information. It will be formatted for some specific work like Real Estate, or pictures, or some other purpose. This is so all of your work doesn’t look like a big jumbled mess when you get to it. These are usually provided in the form of an App or website that will provide you with a great robust cockpit that is easy to understand.

How the Cloud works: When you access the cloud from the portal you can upload information into your files from anywhere that has internet, a lot of times from any device. From there the information is stored and backed up. Now your info and documents can be accessed from anywhere when you open your portal from any computer you want from any location which is why it is so easy and convenient. The reason it is accessible from multiple locations at the same time is because after information goes in only once. This is because the cloud will create mirrors of your file so when you access the portal, or share a link to the portal the cloud will mirror what is installed in multiple locations at the same time allowing you to download documents or edit the information. When anything is changed it automatically updates the mirror allowing any other viewers to see the changes within seconds. This now allows everything to be done at amazingly fast speeds and takes up little space. It’s like giving yourself and others a window to see into a central space where you can work together in real time like your all in the same room.

How does this help Real Estate: There are two main ways that cloud computing can help real estate agents. Real estate is a prime candidate for this type of technology because we all work from mobile locations a lot and the cloud will save you tons of time. We don’t spend all day in one location behind a desk so with cloud computing you now have a portal to your entire business from a cell phone if you want wherever you are at. This allows you to spend more time out showing houses while you can still access all of your files, contacts, and information without even needing to come back to the office, or have the work pile up on you. The alternative is to carry all of your files and big white board with you. It’s much more efficient to just carry a smart phone or ipad to share information or manage your escrows.

The cost: The best benefit in this economy is cost savings. The great part about cloud computing is that it will save you money because you only need one copy if you even print documents at all. Think about how much you spend on paper and printer ink. I recently read that the average employee spends $15,000 a year in paper alone. That will put a dent in the bottom line. Another one is storage costs which will be wiped out with cloud computing as it will be stored for you automatically. Lastly, with increased efficiency you can probably cut down on staffing with a lot of steps being done automatically for them with the cloud, which includes transaction coordinators. If you have help to manage your workload, they can access the portal for you to speed up work and spend more time gaining more business. An average real estate brokerage right now runs at a 5% profit margin. With cloud computing you can cut down overhead by about 40% and push those profits closer 10% doubling your revenue.

With cloud based technology you can easily manage all aspects of your business to save time and money. I think that with a couple years it will be almost mandatory as real estate brokerages won’t really need brick and mortar offices. The work will flow more easily cutting down on delays, human error and the time it takes you to get paid.

If you want to try downloading from the cloud just click on this link to download a FREE marketing e book I have shared with everyone HERE

Manage your business from the ECP cloud free for 45 days with promo code: Free trialEscrow Coordinator PLUS. Only $15.00 a month after that.

REO, and Short-Sale agents, Grow your business with Tech.

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:16:22 -0700

The benefits of Real Estate Software can help any business grow and become more efficient. The reason other
industries have turned to software to run daily operations is because of the amazing cost saving benefits, and increased productivity provided by having a business at your fingertips. Below are some examples of how the ECP software will benefit you daily tasks.

REO: Manages the multitude of tasks required in managing REO listings. Organize tasks and checklist during the pre listing period during work bids and cash for keys. Manage utility bills and inspection orders during the listing. Manage the offers and required escrow docs and timelines until close. All from any device.

Short-Sale: Manage Extensive lender required documents and paperwork needed for approval of a short sale. Manage the important updates and progress on the time and date stamped notes section. Schedule lien holder call time reminders and track important contact information. Organize all of the offers and back up offers received on the short sale. Easily process the transaction and required escrow documents to close. All of this from any device.

Buyers: Maintain contact information of your lead and schedule showing appointments. Store lender approval letters, and track houses shown with feedback notes. Give the buyer access to the file portal for increased transparency allowing them access to updates, documents, and appointment schedules any time 24/7. Process the escrow easily and thoroughly protecting all parties from litigation. All from any device.

Sellers: Create marketing plans and schedule seller updates. Manage offers and counter offers which can be accessed directly with notes through the client portal in real time. Schedule when there will be shown and organize showing reports and feedback. Manage the closing and documentation in compliance to protect your clients from litigation. All from any device!

Quick guide to Google Plus and an invite for you

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:51:44 -0700

You have maybe heard about Google’s new social network called Google+. It appears to be a mix between Facebook, and Twitter in Google’s quest to be in EVERYTHING. A link to the front page is here: http://plus.google.com

Here is a guide I put together and I have a bunch of invites to give out if you would like to join! Now that it has over 10,000,000 users it may be fun to join and maybe use it as another business tool. I will keep this short and simple and you can do most of the exploring yourself and chitty chat with the ECP team. I have also added the links to shorten your URL below.

The Google Plus system is broken down into a few different components listed below.

Circles: This is your different groups of friends. You can categorize people you’re “following” in these different circles so when you post something you can decide who sees it. The great part about this is you can share that picture of you doing a keg stand with everyone except your co workers. Like twitter if people follow you, you do not have to follow back but they can see your posts if you make them public. By clicking on the different circles you follow you can categorize what you see, which is great if you follow a bunch of people.

Sparks: I don’t think anyone knows what this is supposed to do? It’s basically like a quick search or RSS feed of your favorite topics but it’s not really specific to what the spark is. I have Real Estate as a spark and any site that says real estate is on the list with mountains of information I don’t really care about. My guess would be that this will be like the “interests” section on Facebook, so ads can be targeted towards what your sparks are when they are released.

Hangouts: Now this is a cool feature. It’s like a group video chat that uses Google talk. The camera will zoom to whoever is talking and lets you to invite as many people as you want. Most places would charge you for this kind of feature but it’s all free with Google plus. You could have an office meeting on here, webinar, and talk to clients face to face. This is probably the best feature of Google Plus.

It’s a new network that has started off strong and if you want an invite just send us your email address to admin@escrowcoordinatorplus.com and we will get that invite out to you ASAP.

If you want to shorten your link and have a vanity URL just visit one of these sites: Gplus.to, Glpl.us, Plusya.com, Gplus.name, gPlusNick and they will provide a short link you can advertise.

12 Real Estate Tech tools any agent can use

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:50:19 -0700

Here is a list of some things we think are helpful in the world of real estate. You may have already heard of them or are already using them but feel free to share this list with your fellow agents or add additional websites/ tech tools you think are helpful!

www.photosynth.net- This is a cool new virtual tour program that allows consumers to tour a house in 3D just like they are in the house. Users feel like they are actually walking through the house and can really get a feel for the layout. Works great with QR codes, wordpress, v flyer, and hootsuite.

www.bullzip.com- This software turns any document into a PDF. You can turn request for repair lists, pre qual letters, and anything else into the PDF format. This program also has a downloadable printer drive so users can easily print into PDF.

www.pdftoword.com- This is a counterpart to bullzip. This program turns PDF documents into word docs. This is great for making small changes without having to retype the entire doc. The conversion is usually accurate and doesn’t usually turn letters into random symbols.

www.postlets.com- Postlets is a program that lets you easily make property flyers and sends them to a syndicated bundle of sites automatically. Flyers are clean and professional looking and is a great way to advertise properties for sale. This program works great with QR codes, craigslist, and hootsuite. Also Postlets has recently been purchased by Zillow and has made pro accounts free! I can’t tell the difference, but hey free is good.

www.escrowcoordinatorplus.com -Business management and document storage platform for real estate professionals. Share documents and keep track of appointments and items needed with this robust system from any device any time. Works great with e signature programs and dropbox. Get a free trial HERE.

www.qrcode.kaywa.com- The QR code is a cool new little tech tool that a lot of people are talking about. This site will quickly generate a barcode that can be scanned with a smart phone and can be put on anything including signs, flyers, water bottles, or anything else. This is great for lead generation as you can send users to a wordpress sign up form for (more houses, free CMA), a facebook page, a property flyer or a virtual tour.

www.docusign.com,www.echosign.com- These are electronic signature programs that allow anyone in the transaction to easily sign documents from anywhere in minutes. It’s a huge time saver and clients appreciate the convenience of the process. Some lenders will not allow e sigs but echosign has a signature that looks real because the user actually signs with a mouse online. Works great with escrowcoordinatorplus.com.

www.hootsuite.com- Hootsuite is a social media tool that allows you to post across all of your platforms like facebook, twitter, wordpress, and linkedin with the click of a button. You can also schedule when posts will be sent if you have a lot of stuff to share but don’t want to be the annoying person who floods pages all at once. Works great for sharing your property listings with a lot of people really fast.

www.dropbox.com- Dropbox is a program that lets you store stuff online and is accessible on all of the user’s devices that have it installed. You can also access the documents and pictures online. This works great with escrowcoordinatorplus.com to put your items into folders for labeling.

www.wordpress.com- Wordpress is an easy to use blogging site. Users can post market updates, important news, or just talk about anything. A great feature of this site is the forms creator. Offer a free list of homes, or a CMA to anyone who fills out the form for instant lead capture. Works great with hootsuite and Postlets.

www.pagemodo.com- This website helps users create custom landing pages for facebook. It’s simple enough for anyone to use and looks great. The program even uploads the page up on facebook for you. Make a cool welcome page for your facebook telling people about yourself, or offer them something cool.

www.icontact.com, mailchimp.com- I contact is an e mail campaign platform that is great for sending out newsletters to the users’ sphere of influence. The messages can even start sending automatically when new consumers sign up. The reason this program is suggested over other programs is the fact that it’s free for up to 500 contacts, compared to other programs that charge $30-40 a month for the same thing. E mail templates look great and easily customized. Works great with v flyer, wordpress, and QR codes.

These tools should cover just about all of the digital portion of any real estate business, and put you on the road to success! Dont forget to check out our new site for more tips at

http://blog.escrowcoordinatorplus.com

My Thoughts on Opportunity in Real Estate

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:26:55 -0700

This article is about spotting opportunity and being able to execute. I thought of this after talking to the creator of the “Nehemiah program” which made a huge push to make homes affordable for everyone. Most people in real estate have probably used it to get a client into house if you were in business before 2009.

In the current economic climate, it sometimes feels like you don’t have much control which can cause you to freeze up and unable to make a decision. I think there is still and will always be plenty of opportunity to succeed in this real estate market, regardless of what the news outlets say .The hard part is identifying, and knowing how to react to opportunities in a way that will benefit everyone involved.

I have noticed a common trend when presenting deals to investors, myself included, most apparent is that the level of objections rise dramatically if I bring them what I said I would. I find the house, do the analysis, and the return will be 15% which is what suppose to be delivered. The investor looks at the deal and because the numbers match up they feel the deal is too tight. I thought it was a perfect fit? It could be fear, could be uncertainty, it could be a lot of things that make us unable to react.

I am attributing this to maybe a feeling that opportunity is supposed to have so much room it could never fail. In a perfect world that would be great but if it were real we would all be crazy rich. Not every deal or idea will be a home run like Facebook, and a lot of times you need to just hit a lot of singles and doubles that will add up. In doing this the risk is much lower and the opportunities become more abundant then trying to swing for the fence every time.
So how do we spot opportunity? Most of it comes down to what you want, what your reason for doing ____ is, and what is actually possible.

The greater the competition, the smaller the possible return will be. This means you will need to be very specific in what you are trying to find. Write down the rules and limitations you want for yourself as in what is the least you will take. This plan will be dictated by the market at any given time to get a realistic number and it will increase your odds of finding what you’re looking for.
When looking for the angle you will work at, look for any piece that is missing, what is changing, or a problem you can solve in your market. If you look through and see a gap you like, look at how many people fall into that gap to see if you have a market.

If you have taken these steps your chances of spotting opportunity and properly executing those opportunities will be much easier. Preparation is everything and if you’re prepared you will succeed (the saying goes something like that).

After seizing an opportunity I like to think of it like a pair of pants. I haven’t worn pants 10 times too big for since like 6th grade when everyone did. They have to fit just right, and will conform to what you need and want. It basically comes down to being a 1+1=2, you don’t need a massive buffer or try and fabricate wishful numbers to make it work.

You can probably count Murphy’s Law now and again to jam everything up but in the long run it will wash and you will have gotten what you wanted. All we can really do is hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

I hope this article will help when creating your game plan. Good luck and happy hunting.

Manage your business with Escrow Coordinator PLUS

WE HAVE MOVED!

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:36:34 -0700

We have just moved our blog over to http://blog.escrowcoordinatorplus.com Much more organized and much easier to read and connect. Let me know what you think!

Work with Investors? Here is a cool Setup to stand out.

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 09:46:00 -0700

This is a system that I put together for investor clients as a way to cut through the delays of asking a specific investor about a specific house and getting signatures and everything else that slows the acquisition of a great deal. The system is basically an incubator that is very flexible and investors really like it because of the speed and ease involved.

First thing you obviously need is clients or money. Regular investors, self directed IRAs or lines of credit should all work. As you talk to the investors you can figure out what the criteria is like what the capital cap is, what the desired return is and what they will do with the property.

The second step is to get yourself an entity such as an LLC or any other type you see fit. This is done for personal protection and to avoid tax withholding upon sale (in CA at least) and avoidance of some USURY laws like limits on loan rates. You will be the signer for the company, and they take about 15 minutes to make. The TIN number can be made on the IRS site in about 5 minutes.

Now you can create official corporate documents and agreements for you investors as an acquisition and holding company for the investors almost like an asset management company. Depending on your level of service you can take a percentage of profits, maybe partner on projects, or charge a flat fee for the service if you want more than just commission.

Step three is now to purchase property for your investors. having a system to find the best deals in your area would be ideal, and you can really focus on just picking these units up and can do all the signatures and all the vesting paperwork yourself without having to run around tracking down signatures or hand hold.

If you are able to find the deals, the money will be the easy part to get, especially showing a deal that offers a good return with a bunch of due diligence time (unless you’re at trustee sales). This will really streamline the process and allow you to scale up to any size you need.

Once you have a property in escrow you can close by just having the investor wire in the funds and use a third party deposit form if required, but most places don’t care. As for security and vesting with self directed IRAs the IRA owner will be required to be added to title near close, with all others you can file a 1st deed of trust for the investor after close, add them to title after close, or just transfer the entire property over after close depending on what the situation is.

The greatest benefit of this program is the service it provides, making it easy for the investors to get in and out with little time. The process can also be branded and advertised, and can be scaled to any size.

An example of what I have set up is a program where the investor puts up the cash. We then purchase a property, manage repairs, insurance, utilities, and disposition for half of the profits generated from the deal. You can easily create one and charge a flat fee for the use that will help you clients avoid tax withholding if they only want to do one or 2 a year. Another great example I have seen is to set up a big IRA fund to syndicate larger deals like apartments with a multitude of investors.

There you go. Before attempting this type business make sure to check with an attorney and make sure you understand the SEC regulations and state laws. If you can put this fund together and avoid making any mistakes, you will be able to collect the easiest real estate checks of your career.

Manage you Real Estate business online with www.EscrowCoordinatorPLUS.com

Editing Escrow Information from the Profile Page and Sales Sheet

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:20:02 -0700

As most agents know escrow information can change daily. We want to ensure that your escrow will be up to date and current with any changes that have been made so we have made it easy to change any escrow information from either the escrows profile page or sales sheet. (This is a long post but it is very detailed with all information needed to edit your escrow information through the sales sheet!)

The information that is edited on either page will automatically update in its correlating fields throughout the program.

On the profile page you can edit the following escrow information:

-Price

-Seller Credit

-Contingency Removal (CR) Date

-Close of Escrow (COE) Date

To edit the field just simply select the edit button, update the fields, and select the save all changes button at the bottom of the page and the information will be updated throughout the entire program with your newly added updates.

If you would like to update the following information you can do so through the sales sheet. To get back to your sales sheet, select the Edit/View Sales Sheet button under the contact information on the Profile Page.

On the Sales Sheet you can edit:

-Property Information

+Address (changing the street address will also change your file name)

+City

+State

+Zip

-Seller Information

+Sellers First and Last Name

+Email, Phone, Address (including the street address, city, state and zip)

-Listing Broker

-Listing Agent(s) Information (updating the Name, Office Phone, Email and/or Fax will change the agents contact information on the Profile Page)

+Agent(s) First and Last Name

+Office Phone (This field is what is used for the agents contact phone number on the Profile Page, enter in what phone number the agent is best contacted at for a better user experience in this field)

+Cell Phone, Fax, Address, City, State, Zip, Email

+Percent (This is used for agents co-listing a property to define the % split)

-Buyer Information

+Sellers First and Last Name

+Email, Phone, Address (including the street address, city, state and zip)

-Buyers Broker

-Buyers Agent(s)

+Agent(s) First and Last Name

+Cell Phone, Fax, Address, City, State, Zip, Email

+Percent (This is used for co-buyers agents to define the % split)

-Escrow Information (updating the sale price, seller credit, CR date and/or COE date will change those fields on the Profile Page.)

+Sale Price, Listing Price, Deposit Amount, Date Sold, CR Date, Estimated COE Date, MLS#, Year Built, Type of Financing, and the Credits

+Escrow Number (This is the ONLY place the Escrow Number can be changed from in the program. It can be changed multiple times if necessary but only from the sales sheet)

+Title Company

-Escrow Officer (updating the Name, Office Phone, Email and/or Fax will change the escrow officers contact information on the Profile Page)

+Escrow Officers First and Last Name

+Office Phone (This field is what is used for the escrow offices contact phone number on the Profile Page, enter in what phone number the escrow officer is best contacted at for a better user experience in this field)

+Cell Phone, Fax, Address, City, State, Zip, Email

-Loan Information

+Original Loan Amount, Deposit Increase

-Loan Officers Information (updating the Name, Office Phone, Email and/or Fax will change the Loan Officers contact information on the Profile Page)

+Loan Officers Name (First, Last)

+Lender Name

+Cell Phone, Fax, Address, City, State, Zip, Email

-Additional Contacts

-Commission Information

-Items Needed for Escrow (If selected these items will show on your items needed list on the Profile Page along with your Primary Documents. These have been added because they are the most commonly used items.)

-Pest Information

Once you have completed all your changes select the Submit button and all changes will be saved!

There are additional fields that the information on the sales sheet is pulled from so ANY changes made on either the Profile Page or the Sales Sheet will be updated in all additional areas throughout the program for your convenience.

Hopefully you will find this information useful and make your experience with Escrow Coordinator PLUS as easy and enjoyable as possible!

Remember if you have any questions feel free to contact us!

Thank You from Escrow Coordinator PLUS!

How to upload your escrow documents, add folders and label documents

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:17:02 -0700

When you receive a document for your escrow it is easy to upload them to the ECP program.

First you will save the document to your desktop to easily find and upload it to the system. Once you have saved it to your desktop log into your ECP account.

After you have logged into your account you will select the escrow from the main page to open the profile page. On the profile page you will see a button under the contacts section that says “Upload/View Document Library” and select it.

In the Document Library you will see the 3 preloaded folders; Disclosures, Contracts and Files. You can at any point add an additional folder by selecting “Create New Folder” at the top of the page. If you would like to add a new folder just select “Create New Folder” enter the folder name then select “Create Folder.” (For example: BPO Pictures, Short Sale Documents) You will then be able to upload documents to your new folder.

You will upload all your documents to their specific folder like you would with a filing cabinet. You will decide what folder your document needs to be stored then select the appropriate “Choose File” button to browse your desktop for the doc. Once you select it hit the “Open” button as you would with any upload form then select the upload button and your document will be added to the folder. You can open the document by simply selecting the file name.

You can upload any type of document whether it’s a PDF, JPEG, DOC it doesn’t matter it can all be stored in any folder.

Once you have uploaded the document you will have the ability to label what exactly is in the document. Say you receive on PDF but it includes 3 different things, well, this is where your primary documents list comes in. Next to doc you will see the words “Add Label” when you select it you will see the list of all your primary documents. All you will need to do is select the names and select save then your labels will be attached. As an added benefit, once you select the label name the item will be removed off your “items needed” list on the escrows profile page. That way you will easily know that the item has been received!

The document library has been created like a virtual filing cabinet giving you the ability to file your escrow documents without the need to print and store a paper copy. All uploaded documents will be stored on our secure servers for 3 years. Even after an escrow has been closed, you will have the ability to view the documents.

By using this feature you could virtually become a paperless office and drastically reduce your overhead cost!

Remember if you have any questions feel free to contact us!

Thank You from Escrow Coordinator PLUS!

New Trulia recommendation program just released.

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:57:49 -0700

If you are a real estate agent or broker you can now get clients to recommend you on Trulia.com. This is great because other consumers will actually see it. You can invite recommendations via email or facebook. Here is the link http://www.trulia.com/recommendation/request/email/

Send us a link to your page so we can recommend you also!

Manage your real estate business on www.EscrowCoordinatorPLUS.com

Disconnect between Real Estate data and Real Life

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:05:28 -0700

Where do you get your real estate market data from and who do you listen to on a national level? I have noticed that the two largest most well respected analytics companies out are about 50% different. One company says 7,000,000 defaults coming through, the other says 3,500,000-4,000,000, and it makes no sense how it can be so different. What does this mean and what does it have to do with yours and the consumers’ daily life? It shouldn’t mean anything.

Consumer behavior generally comes from what they hear in the news and respected companies, they then tell friends and then friends take it for fact without doing research and pass it on to more friends.

I get my data for my area from the local MLS and over the last few months supply have been dropping, specifically REO inventory which ties strongly to pricing, and demand has been steadily rising throughout the early summer months giving us about third of a month’s supply. Now a high school economics class would tell me that price should hold steady or possibly uptick slightly based on a supply and demand metric, but prices are plummeting. Everyone I talk says the market is terrible, even brokers. They say that some news place reported that this is the worst situation ever! We are in a massive black hole with no way out, not even a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a terrible time for real estate and that they are leaving the area.

There is opportunity. You can buy almost any house out there and have huge possibility of coming out ahead with cost. If you can’t flip it I can easily rent it out to someone who can’t buy or doesn’t want to buy and they will pay the mortgage utilities, tax, insurance, and give you a few hundred dollars extra to keep. If you want a place to live it is now cheaper to own then rent in a lot of areas! It makes perfect mathematical sense, and will gain equity and tax benefits over the years.

Now look at 5 years ago. The market was great! Everyone loved it. Best time for real estate. Everyone and their mother was a real estate investor with a few homes. “You can’t lose in real estate.”

Housing made no sense. The loans made no sense (even to the treasury secretary). Prices outpaced inflation at a ridiculous level. Most real estate was a money pit and needed to constantly be fed more and more money whether or not you have to pay then or just tack it to the back of the loan.

How was that a good market? Because everyone said it was. And everyone was doing it creating a fake unsustainable supply demand metric.

If you are in the real estate business, you are now set up to market to clients in a way that will be almost too easy. Everything is there for you and all you need to do is subdue the fear. Just like prices rose with a false sense of confidence, prices are now falling due to a false sense of fear.

Find buyers and just tell them the truth. Show the basic numbers in black and white and explain how you really can’t lose today compared with the bubble.

I think if more people looked at what is really going on instead of what they heard we will get out of this negative mindset and spur more growth and be put back into a stable market and speed through this cycle of bad assets.

Spread the good word!

Manage your real estate business on www.EscrowCoordinatorPLUS.com

How to get search engine map placement

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:14:00 -0700

This is a really short tip you can use to get yourself in front of a couple more consumers which may get you a couple extra leads for 5 minutes of work. You will create a business listing on google and yahoo to get yourself found.

Step one: Google search business listings. Google business listing sign up will be the first result. Click on the button letting you create a profile. Just fill out the items as needed but give yourself a catchy title like short-sale specialist to get some extra clicks. You will be able to enter contact info and a link to your website, or facebook or blogsite, even a google form. You can also enter your coverage area which will show up on the map in a big shaded polygon. Once you complete the listing you can make coupons or special deals if you want.

Step two: Verify your listing. Google will snail mail you a card to your business address and once you enter the code into your listing that is on the card, your listing will be considered verified! Now when you or anyone searches your listing “ABC real estate in happy town” your listing will pop up and you can pick up the floor calls looking for directions to the office before anyone else can grab them. Just rinse and repeat these steps with the other search engines to get all of your listings done. Google.com, Yahoo.com, bing.com

Ryan Schattner

Escrow Coordinator PLUS

My thoughts on successful business for Real Estate

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:32:52 -0700

I have put together this post as a basic run through for creating a business plan and a growth plan for a real estate business. I got the ideas for this by talking to some of the smartest people I know in and out of real estate from huge computer companies, college president, software developer, to commercial property owner and more. In business the basic rules and steps apply and being a real estate agent or broker needs to be run the same way in order to be successful and save a lot of headache and wasted time.

First step whether you are new or a real estate veteran looking to build a better business creating a timeline is mandatory. Create a goal and make it lofty to build a model with a larger capacity. With that goal make a timeline to reach it. Example, I want to close X volume with Y input of new leads and clients weekly by Z date. A lot of agency focus on closed deals, real estate being about the only industry teaching this when the focus should be incoming pipeline load because it focuses on the future of the business and forces you to create dependable lead generation techniques that will keep you in business.

The second step is to create what I will call an open source model. One that is easy to install additional sources of income and build on. In real estate this would be buyers’ agents for example. You have a pipe of leads, you are getting big and you obviously don’t want to put 500 miles on the car everyday while working 20 hours a day. Have agents do this for you and pay you for it. You have to create personal brand that is likeable and attractive to get good agents on board though. Good sources, education, leads and guidance. Intel builds a chip you can put in almost any computer and people still demand to have it, so computer manufacturers use it. It’s about building an attractive versatile platform. Donald trump puts his name on everything. Same way agents will know being part of your brand will make them successful also.

Part three is something you will always need in business, which is a business partner, a mentor, or any group of people smarter then you to bounce ideas off of. This will give you a new perspective and allow people to challenge your way of thinking while pushing you to always be better. You should always feel like you didn’t know something 6 months ago because you are constantly evolving and learning, pushing yourself to perform at a top level. Having a partner also lets you maybe take a few days off now and then so you don’t get burnt out.

Part four is to create your systems and infostructure for handling your business with steps for handling a new lead and who does it, to clearing the file at close and storing it for the legally required time. Systems are important because it increases efficiency and cuts down on human error. Imagine if Amazon, the military, or a doctor had no protocol or systems. You would probably never get your antique looking picture frame, Normandy would have been a disaster, and you may walk out the hospital missing a spleen after going in for a broken arm. I think real estate business should handle this aspect with a lot of care when dealing with other people’s money and sensitive information. Make sure these systems are easily scalable and can be easily outsourced to avoid growing pains. The last thing you want is to stop growth due to yourself. Anyone use Friendster?

Part five is your target market and what solution you will provide to get going. This could be buyers, sellers, investors, or a geographical location, but the smaller your focus the more success you are likely to have as you will be more specialized and be known for something but make sure it is a large need and solve a real problem. Don’t pick one lake front area, but all lakefront communities in your area so you have a real market to focus on. Once you have this, you can decide what kind of market saturation you need. How many units are bought and sold each month? How many units are available? What’s your demand? Decide what percentage of that market you will need to reach your goals. If you need 100 percent to make it your market is too small. Can you succeed with 10%? Then you have a market and you will succeed. You will then know exactly how much you need to market and as you begin to get returns you will be able to gauge how many angles are needed to reach your 10%, and it will be sustainable.

Part five is to keep adding. What you will have is version 1.00 of “you real estate” platform. Make some upgrades, add some referral partners, or great new marketing angle and you have version 1.01. Add some buyer agents that bring some respective returns in your market you have version 1.1. Add an entire second market with staff to support you will be in version 2.0. You may have noticed these on software updates you install as the programs are upgraded and made better. This is a useful tracking system to see your progress and decide what business version you want to be at. It will also show what you need to get there. When you see a hole that is holding you back, or an opportunity to grow, it’s time to upgrade.

That’s it! It works for businesses all over the world and made the people I spoke with very successful. I believe these same systems transfer into real estate because it needs to be treated like a business not some fly by night operation because that’s how you end up just another face in a sea of agents running around.

Ryan Schattner Escrow Coordinator PLUS www.escrowcoordinatorplus.com

Work Smarter Not Harder in Real Estate

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:11:50 -0700

In this market we are in there is a necessity to work faster, run leaner, and get more bang for our buck to stay profitable all while trying to have somewhat of a life besides real estate. Efficiency is something I am always trying to improve because sometimes you hit a ceiling in real estate at that point will require you to find ways of working leaner in order to boost your profit margins. This has happened to me in the past and I would have been fine being happy with a certain income number but with my compulsive personality the only thing I wanted was more torrential business and income growth. But the only way to achieve that was by increasing my capabilities and being able to magnify myself to handle a much larger work load.

The obvious answer to this problem is technology. I notice a lot of agents are a little reluctant to adopt new technologies and would rather outsource to more humans and do business the same way it’s been done for the last 15 years. I have always liked technology in business, maybe because I started when I was 20 years old 4 years ago so I’m kind of in the tech generation. What I want to get across is the power of using technology to automate your real estate business for leads and for increasing productivity which will magnify a user’s capability to be everywhere at once.

I created the system I used and refined over the last few years which allowed my partner and I to close around 100 deals annually and generate around a half million in revenue annually with an extremely low overhead without any assistants. At the same time giving us all the free time we needed to do whatever we wanted. The key points required to effectively implement tech into your business (to be like EVERY other successful industry in the world). Certain points need to be addressed:

1. Accessibility: By being accessible and being able to easily and quickly access your business from anywhere at any time it will make you much faster while giving you the ability to do everything from anywhere. By putting a system in place that will help manage the daily operations and schedule of your clients the active aspect of your business will become more passive. The activities will become automatic and you can streamline your business so every transaction will run smoothly.

2. Transparency: By being able to provide transparency to clients and being able to keep customers in the loop does a huge thing for building trust. Being able to do this automatically is even better and clients appreciate being able to know what’s going on when they have a question without playing phone tag with you and you having to call back once your able to look through the file and find the answer.

3. Compliance: Like every business real estate has certain procedures, rules and required documents to complete a transaction. This is by far the biggest pain in any agent’s butt when you have checks at the front desk but it won’t be released because you missing a paper. It’s a waste of time and nothing makes me angrier then having to wait for my paycheck. Being able to automate and accurately clear files quickly and easily is crucial to burn through transactions quickly without any snags and move on to the next one.

That’s about it. With the above items taken care of you will drastically improve your business and be THE Amazon.com real estate sales. It took me four years to perfect the systems, but now work has never been easier. Below is the link to my system sign up and let me know what you think.

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Ten ways to generate Real Estate Leads

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:45:00 -0700

Generate leads – Here is a list I put together of lead generation avenues that are proven and easy. If you ever find yourself at a loss of things to do to get more business refer back to this post and try out a few. I have done most of these myself and have had some good success with them. I hope they work as well for you.

One: Open houses. One of old tried and true techniques out there. I sold my first house because of an open house when I was new. The important thing to remember at the open house is data collection. Pull out all the stops to get visitor information via a signup sheet. Also try to schedule appointments with the visitors on the spot for future showings. I make it a requirement that people sign in even if they are just looks because if visitors see everyone sign up they are more inclined to also sign up. Open houses can be done anytime too. Try a couple around late rush hour so can catch people on the way home from work.

Two: Craigslist. I just did a post on craigslist not too long ago and gave a lot of specific tips on how to get good results. Free and easy and will make the phone ring. You will have to filter through a lot of spam but it’s some of the best free advertising you can do.

Three: Trulia and Zillow. Both of these companies will allow agents to buy zip codes for $79 a month. It’s a little pricey but the results are amazing. Most of the leads are very serious and you will have a good chance of closing them. You can also post listings to these sites through programs like Postlets.com and vflyer.com for more free lead generation.

Four: Facebook ads. I have talked more specifically about this another post recently. You can buy extremely cheap targeted add space (under $2 a click or 40 cents for a 1000 impressions). The important thing to remember is to capture the buyers’ information on some kind of landing page with a sign up form. If you have a facebook page use themlsapp.com which is free if you have under 100 fans people can search homes which really earns you those likes. If the app is unavailable in your area Zillow has a search app you can install. Try offering a house of the day posting or basic FHA financing info targeted at newlyweds. Show ads to the military offering houses with zero down and move in ready condition. The possibilities are endless and just depend on your niche you want to target.

Five: Clubs. Works great for agents focused on Investment properties. Most areas have some kind of investment club and if not go to a Rotary or BNI club in your area. The key to any successful business is networking, and in Real Estate sales local networking is key. You will be able to meet a lot of people and collect contact information to keep in touch.

Six: List builders. If you haven’t noticed by now the common thread in this post is network creation and collecting information. When you collect info off of Facebook, craigslist, clubs, open houses or anywhere else SAVE IT. You can use any CRM software for this like Plaxo, google contacts, your cell phone, or www.EscrowCoordinatorPlus.com. The key is saving the information and keeping in touch. Send calendars to them or something maybe monthly market reports. House of the day.

Seven: Absentee owners. This is a good way to get listings or generate a new buyer. You can find lists of absentee owners in your area off of programs provided by title companies such as data tree and others. These programs will allow you to pull a list of houses with absentee owners, with equity, and sometimes you get phone numbers. You can call or send these owners something to solicit business, to see if they want to sell, or buy more rentals. If you get the listing you may be able to even sell it to the current tenant and make a quick buck!

Eight: Past clients. This is always good when business is slow, although you should always stay in touch with past clients. Give them a call. See how they have been and passively advertise yourself. They may have a friend who wants to buy, or they may be looking to upgrade. They already trust you and will give you contact info for people they know who want to buy. Keep track on www.escrowcoordinatorplus.com

Nine: HUD ads. HUD homes are a hot item right now for some reason. Plus the rules have changed to make them easy to show as you don’t need a special key anymore. Just go on the hudhomestore.com site and pull all the homes in your area to advertise. The great thing about HUD is you don’t need a contract until you have an accepted offer. Something about HUD makes buyers go crazy which is probably because they have done an amazing job marketing themselves with the classes and bus tours. This is a great project to co partner with a lender to provide finance info and start bringing in the leads.

Ten: House tour. If HUD does a bus tour why can’t you? This will cost more money to rent a van and advertise but if you go all out with a partner you can really create some buzz and appear to be THE expert. You will get serious buyers and depending on your target, show these buyers the best fitting houses available. Think of this as a broker caravan that actually sells houses. Make it once a month and create a screening process for the available slots to get only the best buyers. This is a little trick Military recruiters use to get kids to sign up in bulk. (Worked on me, and I’m glad it did).

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Creating your own digital card

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:33:00 -0700

I made a digital card last week and decide to write up how I made it so you can have one too. I like the digital card because people lose business cards easily before they are used or they just wind up in a pile with all the other cards. With this card you can increase the chances of people saving your info while giving them a chance to provide their info to you also making it easy to keep in contact. I made my card as simple as possible using a QR code, google sites, and a google form.

Step one: Make a google site. You can title it anything you want preferably something that doesn’t look like spam so people will follow the link and pick a cool background to go with it.

Here is my site: http://sites.google.com/site/vcardecp/

Step two: Adding content. I am making this walkthrough as simple as possible so anyone can do it, and I’m not techy enough to do any really crazy cool setups. All I added was my name, title, email, and website. You can put whatever you would like. Then I googled images of social media buttons like facebook and twitter saving the images to my computer. Then on google sites just click insert, image to stick the buttons on your page. When the button is loaded you will have the option of changing where the button takes people when clicked. Just copy and paste your social media url’s into that space and boom you have cool buttons people can click to follow you!

Step three: Adding a form. You will see on my card that I added an easy form people can fill out to pass their info to you. Just go to google docs and create a new form. Just like in my other blogs it real easy to create the little spaces to fill out for peoples name, number and whatever else you want from them. When this is done you insert it into the google site just like an image. You can put it anywhere on the page and its mobile friendly. Now people can offer up their info to you and leave little notes if you let them!

Step four: Get a QR code for you site. Making a QR is really easy you can just google QR code and a bunch of sites come up allowing you to make them free. I suggest using a program that will shrink your URL so the code can be scanned faster like tinyurl.com. You can also put the little url on your paper card for people without scanners because it’s easier to type. Once you generate the code BOOM! You can paste it on anything! You are ready to go.

In my picture I just taped it to one of my cards. I would not suggest you do it but I wanted a quick example. Works everywhere the code can be pasted. This program is not for anyone afraid of being stalked because it lets people easily access all of your profiles so be careful out there. If any of you out there make some cool card pages send me a link so I can check them out!

Just go to my card and send it to one of my social handles! https://sites.google.com/site/vcardecp/

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Have you posted homes to craigslist yet?

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:36:32 -0700

Everyone knows about craigslist as the place where you can buy literally anything. Its easy free, and gets tons of consumer traffic. I have been using this platform to sell real estate for years now and have had some good success with sales through it. In this article I will teach you how I have used it and how I really got my start in real estate through using craigslist to make up to $10,000 a month.

Step one: You need listings to post. What I did was search my local MLS service to find the homes I wanted to sell like investment property, first time home buyer property and so on. (Tip: pick lower end houses as nobody buys luxury homes off craigslist). When I found the homes I pulled everything from my brokerage to see who the listing agent was so I could ask permission. Most agents don’t care, especially agents with 80-90 listings at a time, but its always good to ask.

Step two: Post the houses. You can use flyer services like V flyer or postlets to create flyers to post with your info if you want, but I have had the best luck not using these. All I do is copy and paste the marketing remarks. Put the address and price in the respective areas with a catchy title. (Tip: use the same title format in all of your titles so you will start to be known by browsers for your angle like investment of first time buyer **MINE WAS ALWAYS LIKE THIS**). The reason I don’t use flyers is my posts are missing important info about the property and only has for pictures which gives the consumer a need to call if interested. At the bottom of the description I just have name phone number and DRE# with broker name. I also place a link to my site or a google form which will be discussed in another article.

Step three: ANSWER THE PHONE! You need to answer the phone and respond immediately to capture any buyers. Nowadays they will have been through 5 other postings if you wait 5 minutes, and they will have forgotten about your house. (Tip: post 3 times a week so your postings are staggered like Monday Wednesday Friday. And do about 20-30 postings at a time. I have heard to post later in the day but I have not noticed a difference. A lot of people just surf and call from their work).

That’s it! Simple and fast plus it works! Just repost every 7 days and keep adding new homes when other homes go pending. I hope these tips brought you as much success as it brought me.

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How to use Google Sites to capture Real Estate leads

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:52:02 -0700

Google has a lot of great business apps you can use free but the ones I use to generate leads is google sites, and google forms. When you want to generate real estate leads you can easily and quickly create custom pages to target any specific audience. In this article I will teach you how to quickly create some and how to target a group of consumers to capture information.

Step one: Decide who you want to target. You can look for investors, first time buyers, people needing to short-sale, or a buyer in certain geographical locations. I will pick first time buyers for this sample, and a great audience would be newlyweds. We will just create a form with a catchy title like move in ready homes with low down payment. Underneath we just need a paragraph describing what you will be offering which in my area would be move in ready homes under 250K that can be financed through FHA. Maybe make a note saying you are offering a free list of the best deals. Make sure you add your contact info and any other items required for ads in your state.

Step two: After you have the catchy title and body you create custom fill in fields. They will be right in front of you when you press edit and you can’t miss it. Just edit what it says. I make a box for name, then email and mark them as required. Then I make a paragraph box asking the consumer to describe what they are looking for. Now whenever a consumer fills out the form you will be notified of the sign up and have the info needed to give them listings and market to them. You can just make a google site also that has links to your social sites and contact info that people can get to from a QR code on your business card or water bottle.

Step three: Get the form in front of people for traffic. You can generate online and offline traffic to your form and you can create any amount of forms or sites that you need. For my example I could create a facebook ad that targets people in my area between 26-34 years old that are engaged or married. (About 50% of newlyweds buy a house). This should create me a list of good leads for very cheap as facebook will charge me about $1.75 per click on these. My last promo generated about 100 leads in 2 weeks. The rest is up to your sales skills to close.

These forms work great with QR codes also as people can scan a flyer or sign to get to your form offering school info, comps or more listings, which will always capture consumer info.

I hope this article helps with your lead generation and gets your creative juices going when targeting your audience. It’s easy, flexible and fast plus will grow your database quickly getting you more deals fast.

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Have you tried using a QR Code for real estate yet?

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:07:39 -0700

In recent real estate news everyone has been talking about the amazing bar code that can be scanned by cell phones. In this how to I will give you some ideas on how to use these codes to hopefully generate you some leads and get peoples contact info.

Step one: figure out what you want your leads to see when they scan a code. A common mistake is sending people to your website which is not optimized for mobile and does not have any value to the consumer when they scan it. What you can do though is send them to your business facebook page where they can “like” you and you all of the sudden have someone to market to automatically! You can also make a google site or form with school information, or buying tips, get pre qualified. for the specific house if that’s where they are scanning from, or a form they can can fill out to receive more listings from or set appointments to see a property which is great because you will have their contact info. If they scan if from a business card you can make a google page that will give the person links to facebook linkedin, blog and so on. (Google sites will be covered in another post).

Step two: create some bar codes. There are many free QR code generator sites and you just have to google QR code to find them. This part is simple. Just copy and paste the desired URL into a box and click generate to make the code. It takes about 3 seconds but make sure you test the barcode before saving it. (Tip: if its a long URL you get a huge code box which takes longer to scan and doesn’t work as well. You can go to tinyurl.com and shorten the web address which will make you a much better bar code).

Step three: put the codes on stuff. You can put the codes just about anything. Signs, paper flyers, water bottles, yard signs, business cards, even a baby! Its fast and easy so you can make a bunch of the to correspond with any of the pages talked about in step one that will give consumers a reason to “follow” “like” “friend” or fill out a form. Just make sure its useful.

I hope these tips are usefull for you and if anyone out there manages to actually generate substantial business from these, I want to know about it! This technology is still new but I think in the near future these will be huge for business as people will want to save everything on a smart phone that they can pull from the real world.

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The 12 sites any Real Estate agent needs for success

Tue, 24 May 2011 11:20:42 -0700

After years of being a real estate broker I have found a few sites that have been a great help to my business and hopefully will be a great help to yours! Some of these you have probably heard of but a couple are upgrades of old systems that are pretty cool. I also added in a couple tips about each site and noted which sites work well together for a great full spectrum real estate business leveraged by technology. If you have any questions about the systems feel free to respond to the emails with any questions you may have and hopefully I can help you out!

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/5vmn5xg