By Laura Price, Marketing and Communications Specialist, Keller Williams Realty International Support Center.

Several months ago, I attended a Ben Kinney Internet Lead Generation training session at the Austin Southwest Market Center.

After the presentation, Ben and I got to talking about how agents communicate with their clients online and how they are using social media platforms to successfully influence people who follow them. The conversation led us to questions about Facebook, Twitter and social media’s return on investment (ROI). At which point, Ben asked: “Have you heard of Klout?”

For those who don’t know, the Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses more than 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

“Of course I have” I said. “All I see between you, Liz Landry, Mariana Wagner, Jay Papasan, Chris Smith and a handful of other popular social networkers is you tweeting back and forth about how high your Klout score is but What I want to know is how does your Klout score bring in more business? How can we help agents understand the purpose behind communicating in the online environment as a strategy for creating meaningful relationships that turn into clients? In other words, how does Klout =  Closings?”

“I think I can answer that.” Thankfully there was a camera handy. Here’s Ben’s explanation on Klout and some ideas for using your influence as an effective marketing strategy to generate more business.

Continue reading ‘Ben Kinney on winning clients with KLOUT’

 Are your clients ever stuck on one piece of information – one statistic, one headline, or one anecdote – that threatens to get in the way of taking positive action and moving forward?

The culprit might be a recent headline suggesting that home prices are going to continue to drop, or a conviction that this is a bad time to sell, or a story about a friend or family member who got burnt on a recent real estate transaction. 

The shifted market has given rise to some raw emotions and difficult conversations as clients try and make sense of the market and get a handle on what to do next.  Our job is to help them to see the big picture, and decide within the context of all the facts how they are going to move forward. That’s what separates good agents from awesome agents and there is only one way to get there: spend some time with the numbers.  

Early in my career, I made a commitment to digging beneath the surface and understanding the critical interactions that drive the real estate market. I’ve never lost my fascination for the facts behind the headlines, and today I believe that Keller Williams Realty’s sharp focus on research and an understanding of the big picture is central to what sets us apart as a company. It was also our motivation behind the creation of the KW Market Navigator.  In one volume we have interpreted a year’s worth of KW Research findings for both the United States and Canada, and combined it with the data from my annual Vision Speech – in a graphically compelling format that’s actually fun to read.

When clients come to the table with concerns and opinions, you need to be in position to move the conversation forward with facts – facts on subjects such as how to beat the odds in a buyers’ market, the degree to which “green” features enhance the value of a home, staging strategies, and the prevalence of distressed properties in the current market.

 If you haven’t already done so, I strongly urge you to order a copy today – at the bargain price of $5 for KW Associates – and keep a few extras on hand to share with your sphere.

More so than ever before, our clients are looking to us for knowledge, expertise and reassurance.

The 2011 KW Market Navigator offers a wealth of all three, and it’s the fastest way I know for real estate professionals to get briefed on the big picture.

 ONWARD …

By Danny Thompson, Director of Keller Williams Realty Publishing

Recently, I was reading through The National Association of REALTORS 2011 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey and I got to thinking: With the opportunities that this market is affording us, how much of the buying population is going to be investors? Let’s start with some interesting stats: Total home sales for 2010 was 5.2 Million new and existing homes, keeping close pace with 2009 sales.  The beginning of the year saw a large amount of first-time home buyers in the median and below median price range, followed by a slight lull of sales after the tax credit opportunity ended, ending the year fairly strong with continued low mortgage interest rates.

None of this is really news.

What IS interesting is that investor purchases were 17% of that amount, roughly 884,000 home sales, with an average sales price of $94,000, down from $105,000 in the previous year.  This is actually a smaller percentage than in years past … in 2005, investors were buying about 25% of all residential properties sold.  The decline has much to do with the tightening of the mortgage requirements, and of course was influenced by the decreasing home values.

Continue reading ‘NAR releases 2011 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey, and the numbers may surprise you!’

Home affordability in the United States is nothing short of amazing. Even though current price trends for the United States and Canada are considerably different, the same principle applies in both cases: clients need perspective and they need to look beneath surface statistics before making informed decisions

The first chart below dramatically illustrates the impact of lower interest rates on housing costs, and the relative affordability of housing in the United States. The cost of a loaf of bread and a gallon of gas has more than tripled since 1989, and car prices have nearly doubled. While the median price of a new home has increased by 70 percent, mortgage interest rates, which stood at 10 percent back in 1989, are less than half of what they were back then. The impact of rock-bottom interest rates is that the monthly mortgage payment on a median priced home in the United States has increased by a mere $4 since 1989.

Unless a buyer is paying cash, the monthly payment tends to be a far more relevant number than the home’s actual purchase price. So for buyers who are waiting for home prices to hit the floor, before buying it’s important to point out that the possibility of a slight drop in the price of a home will have very little impact on the monthly payment, while even a slight rise in interest rates (a far more likely scenario) will have a significant impact.

Continue reading ‘Do your clients get it?’