Effective Methods to Generate Real Estate Leads

Generating quality leads is the most important aspect of running a real estate business. If there are no leads, you won't make any sales. And if there are no sales, there is no revenue. Needless to say, all realtors spend a lot of time collecting the contact information of potential clients.

You can employ different techniques to generate leads and each one of these techniques has its merits and demerits. Here we will give a quick overview of the most common lead generation methods. We can divide these methods into two broad categories - traditional methods and modern methods.

Traditional methods

Traditional methods involve leveraging your influence among your friends and peers.

Ask your friends for testimonials and referrals. Your friends will have other friends and if they really trust you, they will readily recommend you to their circle of friends.

There is one disadvantage though. Many people are not interested in mixing their personal life with business and as such they will probably not want to do business with a family member or a friend.

You should also consider going round your locality and knocking on the doors. You should know the people in your neighborhood and they should know you as well. However, don't be an aggressive salesman. Introduce yourself and ask if they would like to subscribe to your monthly newsletter with lots of useful information about selling and buying. Collect their address, phone numbers, and email address and send them the promised newsletter. The biggest disadvantage is that this can be time consuming.

Networking

Family gatherings, presentations, seminars, and conventions present a great opportunity to network with potential clients. Try to attend the events attended by your potential clients. For example, if you go to an open house, you are more likely to find potential clients interested in buying or selling homes.

Cold calling

This method involves calling people hoping that those who bother to attend the call might be interested in hearing what you have to say. This is not very effective. However, if you choose your target audience carefully, you might see some results. Try to have an engaging conversation with the person and ask if you could get an appointment.

Direct mail

This involves sending mails to a targeted list of people. Make sure that the letter addresses the specific concerns of the people you are writing to. Also, your letter should look as professional as possible. If people find the content useful, they might contact you. After all, that is your goal.

You may also consider sending postcards. They may leave a greater impact because the reader doesn't have to open the envelope to see the content. Make sure that the design on the post card is attractive. Also, your copy should be compelling enough. Include a call-to-action. Ask them to call you or visit your website.

Email newsletters

The email newsletter is perhaps the most effective of these lead generation methods. In order to receive your newsletters people have to subscribe first and this is a clear indication that they are interested in your service.

While it is okay to use your newsletter to promote your services, you should also include useful content. If you feel that you don't have the expertise to write an article, you could perhaps use one of those free-for-reprint articles.

As you can see, each method discussed above has its merits and demerits. In order to get the best results, you have to use more than one method.

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Maintaining a Good Broker-Lender Relationship

As a broker, one of the most important things to establish is a good relationship with mortgage lenders. The relationship between broker and lender can mean the difference between a smooth, speedy loan process and one that drags on with obstacles to overcome.

Most brokers establish relationships with many wholesale mortgage lenders because one simply cannot provide all of the necessary lending needs. Buyers look for brokers who can show that they have positive relationships with lenders. Any adjustments to the terms of the loan require a strong bond between the broker, lender, and borrower.

So what can a broker do to maintain a positive broker-lender relationship? Here are some tips:

Be prepared. You need to be familiar with all lender guidelines in order to determine the best lending program for the borrower. You also need to be able to make sure that the loan fits the lender’s conditions.

Have control of the loan process. Your goal should be to submit an acceptable loan package and ultimately close the loan. Constant communication is necessary so that you know what is going on during the entire loan process.

Take advantage of technology. Being technology-savvy allows you to submit loan applications online. Brokers can also check the status of loans on the web as well as check loan conditions.

Be aware of your work. Accuracy and completion of loan submissions will help to ensure a smooth approval.

The loan process requires effort from all parties involved. The reality is that everyone is paid on loans that are closed. It’s the mortgage broker’s job to represent a loan package that shows that a lot of effort and expertise was put into the process.

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Bigger and Better Data in the Real Estate Market

Has your real estate company made use of big data yet? Before you start using big data, you need to understand the basics of the term. Big data is not just a lot of data, but the complete technological environment where all the data is kept, executed, accessed, recovered, and shared. And all these operations are performed in a completely secure environment. 

This big data environment also includes the data that was abandoned because it was too unstructured. In usual cases, data that does not fit in the logical structures of the corporation is discarded. However, in a true big data environment, such data is broken down into smaller chunks so that it becomes easier to index. Data driven organizations of today are adding more and more to this domain, and every data bit like location information and consumer behavior becomes a part of this huge volume of data.

Using data analytics, real estate professionals can look beyond the obvious. These analytics are used to uncover hidden trends of property sale and purchase. Also, with these trends, behavior economics can be predicted more easily. Big data supporters have always supported analytics for their ability to uncover hidden patterns. These patters allow real estate professionals to create a more impressive marketing campaign. Big data has the ability to find consumer behaviors, whereas typical transactional data lacks this feature.

The Better Big Data Approach: Delegating Different Teams

Ideation is best left to folks who thrive on creative challenges. Usually, the ingenious thinkers, the convention-challenging risk takers are easily identifiable in a team. Along with your data manager, create a small team where such folks are assigned to carry on with experimentation. However, ensure proper reporting protocols are in place. Think of this as your innovation pipeline. Don’t expect this team to deliver from day one. You need to be patient and let innovation evolve. Soon, your innovation pipeline will feed your sales funnel and the ROI on your big data investments will put a smile on your face!

As a real estate business, you need a competitive advantage to flourish in an extremely fickle marketplace. With this objective in mind, get ready to embrace big data in its entire form—the defined and the explorative side. More than this being a big data strategy, it is about your mindset. Are you ready to allocate time and resources to outdo contenders or do you find safety in staying grounded even when the competition is closing-in?

Contemporary Big Data Trends

Ideally, data analysis should be done without bias. It is often seen that analytical teams are more predisposed towards analyzing consumer and marketing-related data. Data analysis should be handled by dedicated professionals who can handle systematically-indexed and random sets of data to derive meaningful information. Big data will take time to become omnipresent. More standards will slowly rise in this niche. However, as a real estate business, you cannot wait for standardization of big data. It is better to understand the current trends, start your big data journey, and be resourceful enough to help to shun visible pitfalls and build upon greater analytic insight.

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Time for Lenders to Adopt a Reasonableness Standard

Some regulatory actions and decisions taken by the federal government last year indicate that lenders will have to adopt industry standards if they want to comply with the guidelines and avoid hefty fines.

Recently an appeals court found that the origination process followed by countrywide was flawed. The jury went to the extent of saying that it amounted to fraud. The verdict landed Bank of America in trouble. The lender bought Countrywide in July 2008 just as the country was falling into a financial recession. Now Bank of America is being held liable for fraud over the deceptive mortgages sold by its countrywide unit during the housing boom. In fact, the US Department of Justice has already started pursuing claims against Bank of America and some of its top executives for the rapid mortgage approval process followed by the bank.

Bank of America has already resolved a large number of outstanding litigations with investors and the now the lender is focusing on settling the issues it has with enforcement agencies like the US Department of Justice.

What this means for lenders?

In recent times, mortgage regulators have taken action against lenders experiencing fast growth with the objective of ensuring that they have adequate infrastructure to support the growth. In particular, the regulators are interested in finding out whether the existing infrastructure is good enough to handle the volume of business the lender does. This is usually done by comparing one lender to another lender of similar business volume and size.

These actions seem to suggest that the regulators are trying to develop a generalized standard as against specific standards that need to be met.

Until now, lenders only had to fulfill specific requirements. This allowed them to compare their specific actions to certain specific standards and determine whether they were fair or not.

But now we are seeing the creation of a generalized 'reasonableness' standard that requires lenders to evaluate their performance on the basis of the procedures and processes adopted by their competition. This creates extra pressure on lenders to build adequate compliance infrastructures because just meeting the minimum statutory requirements will probably not be enough in the future.

In addition, when more and more lenders implement such practices to protect their customers and avoid defaults, it will put extra pressure on companies that lag behind their competition.

What this means is that lenders can no longer afford to be content with meeting the minimum regulatory requirements. Instead, they have to measure their performance against their competition and ensure that their compliance performance is satisfactory. They also need to review their conduct and business practices from a generalized 'reasonableness' perspective.

In other words, a lender's compliance will always be viewed in retrospective. This means that the lender should be able to predict and review possible outcomes and conclude that their practices are reasonable and that they are not engaging in fraudulent activities. This will not be possible if lenders do not keep themselves abreast of the happenings in their industry. They need to watch the developments in the marketplace and ensure that their actions are justifiable and mainstream.

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Severe Weather Conditions Don’t Batter Reinsurers as 2014 Q1 Trends Emerge

Reinsurers must be smiling a lot as Q1 reports for this year show up. Most insurers seem set to gain from uncompromised capital and manageable claim volumes. Underwriting teams have performed rather well with 2014 being a remarkably silent year in terms of catastrophes. With no major natural disasters so far and no discouraging weather forecasts, the immediate future looks secure for carriers.

Staying Positive with a Guarded Approach

After 2012, ever since the likes of Sandy battered the coastal regions, river/ocean dwellings and businesses have been spared from permanent damage. However, it would be wrong to state that the entire industry hasn’t seen any challenges in the first quarter of 2014.

As market optimism gained momentum after the Holidays, winter storms started rolling in. With the onset of 2014, a polar vortex gripped the nation, bringing freezing temperatures to most states. This was interpreted as a part of a global weather pattern since European nations too suffered from winter storms and flooding (very severe in the UK). However, the reinsurance industry isn't complaining much about these events.

Most businesses that seek comprehensive coverage against various types of natural disasters usually pay more-than-average premiums. Further, the smaller insurers have typically stayed away from taking upon too much of reinsurance risks. The bigger, more established insurers exposed to claims surfacing due to snowstorms have been able to absorb the shock.

Yes, insurers have received storm related claims but the overall situations remains manageable for most insurers. Most claims haven’t sought compensation for total overhauls or large scale construction. Most properties suffered partial damages. Common damages include collapsed roofs, burst sewage lines, power failures, and auto accidents but with little loss of life or excessive damage to property. Many needed exhaustive repairs but little rebuilding. This ensured that carriers’ bottom line wasn’t dented. Further, reinsurers are exposed for a part of the total compensation only.

Making Sense of All This

The significance of this upbeat trend assumes greater importance if the severity of cold and snowfall-caused losses are taken into consideration. The losses are at their highest since 1980. The entire nation has been suffering an unexpectedly long and brutal winter. This has given rise to more commercial and personal claims. Still, the industry at large remains positive, finding security in its capital reserves. The insurers’ buffer has been further boosted by better consumer activity in the first quarter.

Agents are being increasingly questioned by consumers who have had a recent, good run on their credit histories. Reinsured mortgages are being sanctioned with lesser apprehensions. This is creating a cycle of positivity—a better capital position is allowing insurers to take upon more risk which is further influencing better consumer interest. Even the catastrophe bonds that provide some level of reinsurance protection against losses caused by winter storms are expected to deliver, not causing any principal loss.

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Homes with Sustainable Features are More Popular than Ever

What are the features that buyers look for when they shop around for their new home? Do they really think that sustainability makes a home more attractive?

Yes. A recent report published by the National Association of Realtors claims that sustainability improves the saleability of a home. In fact, both young and old buyers are looking for homes that score high in the sustainability department.

But which features top the buyer's list of preferences?

The sustainable features that are particularly important to buyers are energy efficiency, eco-friendliness, and commuting costs. Almost 32% buyers consider commuting costs while buying a home and 9% buyers insist that the home should have solar panels installed on it. Heating and cooling costs bother 36% buyers. Over 40% buyers look for energy efficient appliances and lighting. At least 9% buyers insist that the home should have eco-friendly community features.

The survey studied the behavior of buyers and sellers and broke down the trends by the respective generation of each respondent.

The questions were aimed at discovering which generation the majority of buyers belonged to and what size homes were being bought by them. It also tried to assess the popularity of multi-generational homes in today's housing market.

Methodology

The survey consisted of 122 questions. The questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 148,011 people who recently bought homes - that is between July 2012 and June 2013. A total of 8,767 people participated in the survey.

Here are the findings.

Over 60% home buyers belong to Gen X and Gen Y. Younger people account for 16% of the buyers whereas the older generation accounts for 14%. Only around 9% people belonging to the Silent Generation bought homes during this period.

Almost 76% of the first time home buyers belong to Gen Y. As you can imagine, there aren't many first-time buyers among the older generation. Only 2% buyers belonging to the Silent generation (born before 1946) are first time buyers.

Interestingly, buyers of all age groups start their home buying process online. They look up properties for sale. Buyers belonging to Gen Y also search online to find out more about the process of buying a home.

People born during World War II (Silent Generation) hire an agent or a broker to help them find their dream home.

Over 50% of Gen X and Gen Y buyers used their mobile phone or tablet to help them find that perfect home. In fact, 26% Gen Y and 22% Gen X buyers purchased a home they found via their mobile devices.

Younger buyers mostly hired agents recommended by their friends, family or neighbors. Older buyers were far more interested in hiring an agent they had worked with in the past.

Almost 88% buyers got a mortgage to buy their home. While almost all buyers belonging to Gen Y got financing to purchase their home, only around half of Silent Generation buyers got financing.

Seller profile

Almost 29% of recent sellers belong to Gen X. And younger sellers tend to hire the same broker or agent for their home purchase.

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Tips to Help Agents Design an Effective Marketing Strategy

As a real estate agent, you spend a lot of time marketing your clients' listings. But do you also spend time marketing yourself? If you do not market yourself properly, people will not want to work with you. They will not even realize that you are a real estate agent.

How to market yourself?

Marketing has several facets and you need to take care of every one of them. Here are some tips and ideas to help you design a sound marketing strategy for your real estate business.

Marketing yourself isn't much different from marketing your clients' listings. In both cases, you will be employing the same techniques.

Effective marketing has three component:

Finding the right audience

 You should know who your target audience is. If you are trying to sell a listing, you should know where the buyers are. Your marketing efforts should be targeted at them. For example, there is no point in trying to sell the listing to a family that has just moved into its brand new home. They will have absolutely no interest in buying. You can figure out who your target audience is by following these simple tips. The target audience depends upon the kind of home you are trying to sell. If you are trying to sell a starter home, you should target newly married couples who live in the neighborhood. If you are marketing a high end luxury home, you should target the affluent sections of the society. Selling a big ticket home to people who can't afford to buy it is a waste of time.

If you are trying to market yourself, you should focus on people living in the towns where you provide your service. As you can see, it is relatively simpler.

Choose the right medium

Choosing the right medium to market your listings and service is crucial. Think about marketing and perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is the internet. While online marketing is highly effective, it is equally competitive.

In order to get the desired results, you need to design an effective online marketing strategy. When it comes to online marketing, establishing a presence on social media is imperative. You should also consider direct email. If you run a website, encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter. The beauty of this method is that it is highly targeted. The people who subscribe to your email are those who actually want to hear from you.

You should also consider advertising your listing in magazines. If the magazine reaches your target audience, it makes sense to promote your listing / service there.

If you do not choose the right medium, your marketing efforts won’t produce the desired results.

Get your message across

So, you have identified your target audience. You have also decided how to reach them. Now you have to get your message across. If your message is not spot on, all of your efforts will fail.

Your message should directly speak to the target. Don't use general language in your messages. Be specific. You should also ensure that your message encourages people to take the desired action. This is crucial for effective marketing.

Use these tips and ideas every time you launch a marketing campaign to get the best return on your investments.

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