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

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

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Disconnect between Real Estate data and Real Life

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.

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My thoughts on successful business for Real Estate

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

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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Creating your own digital card

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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How to use Google Sites to capture Real Estate leads

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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The 12 sites any Real Estate agent needs for success

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