A Real Estate Discussion Blog

You know how in third game when they would pick teams for dogeball and you hoped you weren't the last one chosen....  For the last year I have watched people get "memed" and I kept thinking, 'will someone ever pick me'?  Well, I finally got picked!  Sara Bonert, come on over to our team!  And to get picked by Bob Stewart no less.  Isn't that sort of like getting picked by White Goodman (played by Ben Stiller) in Dodgeball?  

Ok, five things, here it goes....

1.  I love being a Mid-westerner, but I didn't always.  I was born and raised in Clear Lake, IA.  Our great claim to was that Buddy Holly's plane went down there (La Bamba anyone?).  At the time, I hated growing up in such a small town where it seemed like there was nothing to do.  I finished college at Iowa State University and immediately wanted out.  I packed up what little I had in my car and moved to Raleigh, NC because I had heard the Research Triangle Park was the next technology hotbed (not that I knew what that meant back then).  I didn't know anyone, didn't have a job, and had about $1000 to my name.  Long story short... Got a job selling Internet advertising and got moved around the South for six years.  I ended up meeting my husband who was also in the industry while living in Atlanta, which coincidently, he grew up three hours from where I did!  We moved to Chicago about three years ago and absolutely love it.  Because I left, I can now fully appreciate what it means to be a Mid-westerner and am glad I was brought up as one.  And now the corn jokes don't sting as bad.... 

2.  I wish I had the guts to be a full time real estate agent.  I absolutely love the real estate industry.  I know there are downside to being a Realtor (as I read about them all the time on AR), but to be a real estate agent sounds like a fantastic job for so many reasons.  While I have always been fortunate to have jobs that I love, I can't imagine leaving a place where I get a regular paycheck to go 100% commission.  I look up to everyone who has made this leap for a go at it in real estate.  I think someday my time will come.  But in the meantime, I will have to settle for just buying homes (I have four right now!). 

3.  When I first started at Zillow, I didn't have any faith in the idea of blogging.  I remember meeting David G. my first week in Seattle at the Zillow headquarters and finding out what he did.  The first thought that went through my mind- so this guys gets to sit around and surf the internet all day and email with people??  (Sorry, David).  Obviously I have since learned that he does A LOT more.  But I have also learned that blogging is POWERFUL stuff.  Last week I spoke at a blogging seminar (organized by Lola Audu, who I met through AR).  To go from not fully believing in the medium to speaking at an event about it a year later is crazy to me! 

4.  I love working for Zillow.  I spent the last five years prior to Zillow as the National Sales Manager of at The Real Estate Book magazine.  I learned so much about how traditional advertising works and learned even more about real estate in general.  I personally met with or presented to over 1000 Agents during my time at this company.  Overall, this was a pretty 'safe' job, a good place to get the training wheels going.  Now I come to Zillow with this great base knowledge of real estate and able to apply it to a very dynamic and interactive environment.  I have learned so much from co-workers that come from places like Ebay, Amazon, and Microsoft- and in return I think I have taught them a lot of about the real estate industry.  To bring all this to a new platform that is so public and is the catalyst for so many blog posts and discussions, really keeps me on my toes and constantly thinking about the next step.  I have had some of the most thought-provoking conversations with co-workers, bloggers, and real estate professionals since coming to work for Zillow, and look forward to those conversations to keep happening. 

5.And to end on a lighter note-  I am a girl's girl.  Write a blog post about hair products, new salon procedures, or a fantastic find you got on a recent shopping trip and I am all over it!  I am not a techy person, I only play one on Active Rain.  That is, until the day a computer can go shopping with you or apply or make-up, then I might try to learn a thing or two about them.

I glad to be part of the team that got Meme'd.  More so, I am glad to be part of the AR community. 

So, now I get to pass the tourch on to three more people.  I think I will look to my Associate list for this one. 

Sharon Leigh - Because she is the first person that ever added me as an Associate. 

Jeff Kessler - Because he is the last person that added me as an Associate.

Amy Fewless - I met Amy at a Blogging seminar last week and afterwards she added me as an assocatie.  She is just getting started at Active Rain and with Blogging.  Good luck Amy! 

I just searched for Real Estate on AOL, only to find that Realtor.com is no longer powering the section.  I couldn't find any information on what happened to the deal and was wondering if any in the AR community knew?  Did Realtor.com just not renew the partnership?  If so, why not? 

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In November 2005 Realtor.com signed a 2 year deal with AOL to power the Real Estate section of the site.  The deal expired on September 30, 2007 (last month).  I do not know the exact amount Realtor.com paid for this distribution.  I do know in 1998, Realtor.com paid $14 million to AOL for exculsive exposure in the section for 40 months. 

In talking with Realtors across the county for the last 9 years, I never once heard anyone rave of leads or listings they had gotten because of exposure on AOL.  So maybe it is good our dues are no longer being spent to fund such a deal.  However, I find it strange that no news was made of the relationship no longer existing (or did I miss it?).  If I were a practicing Real Estate agent, I would have had AOL's name in the list of sites that I give my client exposure on.  And if I were a home seller, I would be double checking that I my house was on every site that my agent said it would be.  So with no notification from Realtor.com about the ending relationship, I bet there are a lot of listing presentations being given with mis-information and a few home owners scratching their heads when they can't find their home on AOL. 

With so many sites that allow Agents and Brokers to upload listings for free (Zillow, Homescape, Craigslist, and Trulia to name a few) I wonder how this change from the way listing content deals were brokered in 1998 changed the dynamics of trying to renew this deal today.  In the heyday of the internet bubble in 1998, $14 Million sounded like a lot, but not totally insane.  Compared to today's rates of FREE, $14 Million is inconceivable.  Of course a premium is still expectable if there is some position of exclusively, such as what Realtor.com had. 

AOL traditionally has been about the fourth or fifth most trafficked consumer real estate site.  How this lack of content will affect their rankings?  The obvious guess is that their numbers will suffer, depending on how quickly AOL can build this content back up from other sources.  If I was a major Broker, I would be expecting a call any day now from AOL asking for my listings, which they used to charge millions of dollars to display. 

This is obviously a big line item no longer on Realtor.com's balance sheet.  Wonder where the money was re-allocated?  Is what you were paying for on Realtor.com any less valuable today since a major distribution has been eliminated? 

Would love to hear Agent's reaction to this.  Will be interesting to see how it plays out and what happens to AOL Real Estate site.  AOL's site now says it is in beta, insinuating that they are up to something....

Awhile ago, we at Zillow announced that we would soon have a way for Brokers to mass upload listings to our site, verses the one-by-one upload process that is in place today.  After many late nights for our developers, we are almost there! 

This week our first, inaugural partner was announced- ERA Real Estate! 

What does this mean for ERA agents? 

Each day more than 80,000 ERA listings will be automatically uploaded and updated on Zillow.  ERA agents will gain marketing exposure on one of the most-visited US real estate sites, which more than 4 million people each month.  

"Our listings distribution initiative aligns marketing strategy with consumer behavior - 80% of all buyers are now starting their search online," said Brenda W. Casserly, president and CEO of ERA Real Estate.  "Zillow is a compelling information resource with millions of visitors each month.  Syndicating our property listings with the most highly trafficked real estate Web sites in use today is of great benefits to consumers and real estate professionals alike." 

Through the ERA listings hosted on Zillow, consumers will be linked back to ERA.com where they can locate a sales associate to guide them through the home buying and selling experience. 

ERA Agents- make sure you get your listing presentations updated to include this powerful new listing distribution channel!

I often get people that ask me questions about Zillow through my profile.  I try to answer each one, so keep them coming!  They give me good fodder for blog posts!  But it is also interesting to hear what is going through your minds with regards to Zillow. 

I was recently asked the following question from Carl Martens: 

Zillow really hit the market strong by providing a site where homeowners could find out what their home was worth, however once the data was determined to be inaccurate Zillow caught a bad rep...what has Zillow done to correct this and/or regain the trust of consumers?

To answer his question:

Actually, based on internal research, we don't have a bad rep with homeowners.   We found that 88% of our audience is likely to recommend Zillow to someone they know.   And 65% of our monthly traffic comes from repeat visitors.  Further, 25% came 10+ times last month!  So I don't think people would recommend the site or continue to visit it if they were having trust issues.   

Zestimates are something that we are constantly working to improve.  However, we know that we will never be 100% accurate.  We have tried to be as transparent as possible about this by 1) Posting our accuracy numbers for every county and 2) by placing a disclaimer next to every Zestimate that says if they would like a more accurate valuation the homeowner should contact a real estate professional.  We have also let home owners 'claim their home'which allows a homeowner to update/correct any information displayed online by creating an 'owner's estimate'.  An owner can publish information such as a kitchen remodel or a view they may have that adds value.   

We are also working to expand our product offering, beyond Zestimates, to make Zillow a site where people routinely come to discuss real estate.  Since launching Zillow in Feb 2006, examples of some of the functionality we have added include:

• The ability to advertise "For Sale" properties for free.  You can upload unlimited photos to each listing. 
• A Real Estate Guide with 100's of articles that anyone can read, post to or edit.
• Q&A modules on each home which anyone can ask or answer questions about a specific home.
• Over 6,500 online neighborhood communities across more than 130 U.S. cities where people can discuss their neighborhoods.  This is a huge opportunity for real estate professional to jump in and showcase their neighborhood expertise. 

And right now we are working on a tool that will allow Brokers to bulk upload their listings for freeto the site.  All of these components of Zillow are attracting an audience of about 4.4 million uniques each month. 

Hope this answers your question!

Sara

We at Zillow are looking to expand on our relationships and business opportunities with those inside the Real Estate Industry by hiring a Partner Relations Manager.  I often get contacted through my AR profile asking about employment opportunities, so I thought I would highlight the opportunity here.  This is the team I work on and it is a great group of people. 

Below is the job description taken from the posting on our corporate website.  If you are interested in applying, there is an email link at the bottom. 

We fully recognize how important the Real Estate community is to Zillow and we want to make sure we have a quality team in place to answer any questions you may have about Zillow or Internet advertising; and make sure you know all of the latest and greatest opportunities available on the site. 

Partner Relations Manager

Zillow.com is seeking an exceptionally driven and talented individual for our Real Estate industry partner outreach and development efforts. Over the past two years, Zillow.com has created one of the most trafficked real estate sites on the Internet and one of the best marketing platforms for industry professionals. As such, the Partner Relations Manager will serve as a Zillow evangelist and introduce Zillow business opportunities to Real Estate professionals. The position is Seattle based, but will involve a fair amount of travel.

The Partner Relations Manager will report to the Vice President of Partner Relations.

Responsibilities:

• Identify, develop and manage key account relationships
• Develop and drive new business initiatives to support our partners
• Achieve superior results across a clearly defined set of metrics
• Plan and execute showcase events evangelizing Zillow in the market
• 
  

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of successful sales, business development, or market management experience required.
• Proven experience creating and growing partnerships.
• Extreme attention to detail and data driven decision making skills
• Experience presenting to and managing relationships with C-level and VP level executives.
• Exceptional communication skills, written and verbal.
• Undergraduate degree required (MBA a plus).
• Knowledge/passion for the residential real estate business a plus, as is previous experience with saleforce.com and Microsoft office applications.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Please email your resume in MS Word, RTF, HTML, or ASCII text format to the address below. If you wish to enclose a cover letter, please include it in the body of your email message.

12803-CJB-0@zillow.hrmdirect.com

ThePropertyPundit.comis a relatively new blog focuses on real estate investing.  Each day this week they are highlighting a guest blogger and Monday was my day to discuss Zillow and how it relates to real estate investing.  Thought I would rerun the article here to share with AR community. 

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When Steve asked me to guest blog, I thought I should do a post that ties in my background with how I came to work for Zillow. So, when I think back to my early days and the first investment property I ever bought, I think man, did I get lucky. I actually cash flowed the property for a few years and sold for a good profit. But seriously, it was luck. Now, with all of the great online tools available for investors today, luck is still a factor, but savvy real estate investors have more technology and tricks to tap into.

Today, I am part of the Broker and Industry Relations team for Zillow and part of my responsibilities is to help investors and real estate pros learn about tools they can use - for free - to make better real estate decisions.

Database of 70 million homes - We have taken as much public record data as we could get our hands on, and organized it into a single record for each home. When available, you can see information such as the last time the house sold, core facts about the home, bird's-eye view images of a home and, of course, our Zestimate (a computer generated home valuation). Want to know what kind of city view they have? Or the amount of rent the home is currently fetching? On each house you can post a question and anyone - including the home owner or listing agent - can answer it.

Make Me Move - If you're an investor, either you or your Realtor are constantly scouring the MLS or FSBO sites regularly for the next great deal. While you can also do this on Zillow, we have a whole other database of homes you can search. "Make Me Move" is where the owner doesn't necessarily have the home on the market, but they have set their magic price that will make them turn over the keys. This is a whole new pool for you to prospect.

Quarterly Trend Reports - Our statisticians look at zillions of data points each and every day, and are able to spot housing trends based on that information. We package this information and release reports each Quarter, found in the footer of each page on Zillow. This data can be viewed at a national level, or broken down to a neighborhood view. For example, in the Chicago area, Quarter over Quarter I can see that Southside Area in Joliet, Will County, had the best appreciation at 13.2%. Year over Year Oak Park has remained strong, appreciating 16.5% with a median home price today of $194,096. However, Oak Brook hasn't fared nearly as good, experiencing a 11.8% decrease in appreciation from Q2 of 2006.

Discussions Forums - Are commercial investments for you? How is the market in North Carolina? Want to connect with other real estate professional across the country? Then get involved in our Discussions Forums. It is a great way to give and get advice on a number of real estate topics.

Our hope at Zillow is to bring all of the interesting conversations that are happening every day about real estate across the country online. When you open these conversations up for anyone to join in, fascinating comments are made and information is passed along among community members. As we continue to roll out and refine new tools on the site, watch for announcements on the Zillow Blog. Even if we're not talking about Zillow tools, we're posting interesting information, such as what the Extreme Home Makeover team is up to and news that Red Sox owner John Henry wants to tear down a mansion he just purchased in Brookline for $16 million. Or, what's up with that brothel in Westchester County, NY?

Thanks for the space, Steve!

We all know Internet advertising is a must these days, but figuring out where you spend your time and money is the challenge when putting together an advertising plan.  Everyday real estate professional are bombarded with opportunities to advertising on all types of sites.  Some are legit and some are a waste of resources. 

To help with figuring out which sites are worth your attention, I wrote some questions that you should ask when considering a new advertising venue.  I broke the questions down into the three most popular types of real estate Internet advertising: Display Advertising, Features Home Advertising, and Listing Distribution.  Hopefully these questions will help you weed out the good sites from the bad. 

Internet Display Advertising (i.e. Banners, Tiles)

• How much traffic do you have - IN MY AREA? 
• How are you different than sites that offer similar services?  What makes people stay on your site?
• What is the average Click Thru Rate on your ads?
• Can I target: By zip? By housing type? By price point?
• Do you guarantee any results? any impression amounts?
• Can I change my creative as often as I would like?
• What type of tracking do you offer?
• How long do I have to sign a contract for?  What if I am not happy mid-contract?
• How many other ads will be on the same page as mine?  Other real estate ads?
• Will my ad be above the page fold?
• What are the set up and ad design costs?

Featured Home Placement

• Can I zip code target?
• Does home have to be featured in the zip in which it is located?
• How often can it be changed out?
• Are you buying exposure for a particular home, or are you just buying the slot?
• Can I link to more information about the home on my page or does the link need to stay on your site?
• How many other homes will be featured on the page?
• Will my home show up every time the (zip code) is searched, or will it rotate with other advertisers?
• What other benefits come with buying the slot?  Link to more photos?  Link to virtual tour?  My email address displayed? Is my company name displayed?
• How did you determine the cost of the placement?  Audience size? Demand for that price point or area? Cost of the home?
• What happens to the ad when the home sells?

Displaying Your Listings Online

• How much does is cost for my listings to be on your site?
• Do I pay per listing or for an account?
• Is my Broker or Franchiser already feeding my listings to you?
• How do you handle leads that come through my listings?
• Are there referral fees?
• How does your site make money?
• How do people know to visit your site?
• If I give you permission to display my listings, do you send them anywhere else online?
• Do you collect the names of people who send leads and market to them or sell their information? 
• Am I the only one who gets the lead generated from my listing?
• When the house sells, how does it come off your site?
• How do you handle house price or status changes?
• How many photos can I display per listing?

I would like to invite you to the free seminar Building An Advertising Plan on October 17th from 10am-12pm at the Chicago Association of Realtors, Central Office.  We will discuss how to use Internet, Newspaper and Magazine advertising to effective build a personal marketing plan. 

I will be speaking on the subject of Internet advertising, covering topics such as buying Internet display advertising, pay-per-click search advertising, online listing distribution, and blogging. 

Andrew Waltor from the Chicago Tribune will discuss how to effectively write a classified ad and create memorable display ads. 

And Jim Konig from The Real Estate Book will talk about important questions to ask before committing to buy a magazine ad and will cover tips to create an ad that makes your phone ring.

Listening to speakers from these three media should give you an interesting blend of ideas for constructing a personal marketing plan.  

Simply rsvp here on the Chicago Association of Realtors website.  This program is part of the Member Profitability Program, brought to you by CAR as a benefit of membership. 

I was preparing for the upcoming Blogging and Technology seminar in Grand Rapids, MI and I stumbled across one of the most powerful testimonials for why you should blog that I have seen for awhile.  Instead of me writing about it, I think it is best to let the comments speak for themselves. 

Site: Trulia Voices

City: Grand Rapids, MI

User Question: I'm looking to rehab, what sale price should I be aiming at for the fastest sale? I'm looking in the GR area and want something I can afford to rehab, .....What do you think?

5 Answers- 2 were from Grand Rapids agents with appropriate responses and one was a generic response from a random agent, but here are the other 2 from out-of-towners that caught my eye:

* I would contact Lola Audu at Audu Real Estate in Grand Rapids. I am sure she can give you good advice on the Grand Rapids market.

*  Use a local realtor to determine market value now and after it is fixed up. I agree Lola is the best. Her email is laudu@grar.com.

What is amazing is that Lola had no idea this conversation was taking place nor has she ever physically met these two ladies that are recommending her.  She has just built up such a great rapport with them through blogging that they all feel like they know each other. 

Imagine if you could build that type of rapport with the home buying audience that you are trying to target!  They will feel like you are already friends from the first time they pick up the phone and call you based on the personality you displayed through your writing.  And they can get a sense of your work ethic simply based on your commitment to maintaining your blog. 

Why do Web 2.0 sites like Zillow and Yelp and Trip Advisor work?  Because people love to share information.  They love to feel like they are a contributing part of a community.  They love to talk about their passions whether that be their neighborhood, a favorite restaurant, or a trip they just took. 

There is a Realtor in Grand Rapids, MI, whom I am sure Active Rain regulars know about as she is featured quite often, Lola Audu, who in the past few years has gone from not knowing what a blog is to being one of the best bloggers out there.  She has used this new medium to not only build her reputation nationally, but has actually generated a lot of business from her efforts. 

 Think back ten years ago and imagine you just developed this awesome system for generating new leads.  Would you go teach everyone else how to do it, including Agents from competing Brokerages?  Probably not.  In fact, as someone who has sold advertising to Real Estate Professional for 10 years now, this was always a challenge for me.  When someone had great success with something, they didn't want to tell anyone for two reasons.  1- They wanted all the leads this successful advertising was bringing in to themselves and 2- They didn't want their advertising rates raised because they probably weren't going to cancel if they were making money from the product.  This is Web 1.0 thinking. 

Fast forward 10 years and there are Realtors like Lola all over the country having success with new online applications.  So what does Lola 2.0 do?  She holds a seminars and offers to teach anyone who wants to come how to experience the same success she is having.  This is such a Web 2.0 way of thinking and I applaud Lola for incorporating these 2.0 concepts of sharing and wanting to build a strong community into her every day life. 

When she and I were talking about the concepts that were going to be covered at her upcoming Blogging and Technology seminars in Grand Rapids on October 25th and November 7th, finally I just had to ask her one question- Why are you doing this?  She isn't making any money from it and it is taking a lot of time to organize.  Her answer- When you are going down a dark, unknown path with one flashlight, all you can see is where you are flashing the light in front of you.  But when you take others down the path, all the flashlights together illuminate the path so that not only can you see in front of you but all around you as well.  Lola truly wants to take people with her down this path that she has experienced some much success on herself. 

This is why Lola will be successful.  And this is why Web 2.0 is successful.  Together the community illuminates and shines lights on things that are important to us and teaches us how we can come together and learn from each other.