Facebook
I’d like to start my Friday real estate update by talking about facebook ads. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but several people I know have been getting sponsored links appearing in her feed, on their wall, whatever the parlance of our time is. The ads are very annoying apparently and I doubt they work. People do not want to be interrupted by Realtors and dog groomers when they are relaxing on facebook. In fact, I’ll go a step further, people don’t want to be sold to at all on the internet. It was free when it started so it should always be free (written by a guy who refused for fifteen years to pay for cable TV). Pop ups, big boxes, even banner ads have proven not to work online. They are annoying. It’s post industrial mass market old style advertising and it does not work on the internet. People are too smart for that old dog and pony show. I just want to yell, “You’re doing it wrong!”
Advertising
This has been bothering me for a while. Real estate is a marketing business. Realtors market themselves and they market their listings. Unfortunately, most Realtors have no training, experience or education in advertising or marketing and as a result we tend to do a pretty poor job of it. Besides the “pick me, I’m number one” crowd, we’ve got the “only we have the info you need” group, “I guarantee it or I’ll buy it myself” few and we’ve got the interrupters that are on every bus, bench, billboard, magazine, postcard, newspaper and facebook page. (They tweet too about their listings – yawn.) And that’s OK, as far as I’m concerned, they are spending their money unwisely. They are going to bankrupt themselves as they get in everyone’s face all the time. What bother’s me though is that we disparage each other verbally and now by publishing information like this (see picture). This is so wrong. 1) There are no cancellation fees for real estate contracts. 2) I’d like to see the study that says 72% of KW home sellers were dissatisfied with their Realtor and 3) I take offence to the language, especially terms like “risky business” and “less than competent Realtor”.
I know what you’re thinking – this post is disparaging another Realtor. It is. I know. I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before and I won’t do it again. It just bothers me and I have to rant. I once went on a tear like this about the misleading marketing of a well known home selling marketing franchise.
Quote
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” ~ William Gibson
2013 predictions from experts and fortunetellers
The experts are saying that the first half of the year is going to be slow going in real estate. They are saying what happened in December (a sudden drop) will continue until June. The fortunetellers (these experts aren’t even journalists) are still yelping about a 15%-25% drop in prices. Their arguments start with, “What just happened in Vancouver is gong to spread across Canada”, “If interest rates or unemployment goes up, we are in a lot of trouble”. The only reason I pay attention to this is so I’ll know how misinformed the general public is. Local real estate was pretty solid last year. There is no cause for concern. The people that are waiting to buy or sell are really just either procrastinating or are deluded or afraid of making a mistake.
365 Rules about Real Estate
I spoke with a friend out in Vancouver. She runs a small press/publishing business. Although we’ve never met, I’ve known her for nearly a decade. We are only connected through facebook now but we became friends before facebook when we used to read each other’s blogs. Her press specializes in horror, not really like real estate. Sometimes there is drama though. The editing process is almost done. It could have been done by now, but there is no rush. I’m taking my time, doing it right. Here are the first 17 rules.
The Blog
Here on my real estate blog last week, besides continuing with my daily rule about real estate, I found the time to post about “rent to own”, something new and a little dodgy. As far as I’m concerned rent to own schemes shift the power from the buyer to the seller.
I also wrote a short post for parents considering buying a house for their son or daughter while attending one of our universities. Every year about this time and through to the late spring, we get the same inquiries from potential real estate investors. I’ll likely be adding more Q&A’s to that post in the coming months.
Open Houses
Last week we did two open houses. Personally I think if you get four qualified buyers through an open house, then it was successful, so last week they were.
This week we are only doing this one.
1045 Queen’s Bush Road, Wellesley, Sunday 2:00-4:00pm
