WebHomeUSABlog

The Best Sayings In Real Estate: From "Location, Location, Location" to "Traffic, Traffic, Traffic"

Each industry and every area of sales has its own Rules of Thumb, old saws and clever sayings. Real Estate is famous for "Location, Location, Location"; Speech Therapy for "Locution, Locution, Locution".

The best saying in Real Estate and the business of Real Estate have always intrigued and amused me:

Real Estate:

• Location, Location, Location
• There's nothing new in Real Estate.
• All Real Estate is Local.
• It's not about the house.
• Your first offer is your best offer.
• If you sleep on it, you won't sleep in it.
• Make it easy to buy a house.
• Your Trusted Adviser in Real Estate.
• Your Real Estate Resource for Life.
• It's only worth what someone will pay for it.
• List to last. Listers are lasters.
• Buyers are Liars. Sellers are Yellers.
• Show me the Numbers.
• Statutory Non-Employee.
• We're Professionals. Like Lawyers, Doctors and Hair Dressers.
• My way or the highway.
• It was time for a firing.
• FSBO? What kind of BO is that?
• Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and Real Estate Numbers.
• I'm an SOB. Son Of a Broker. (But what does that say about his Mother?)
• If you can't be number one in your niche, find another niche.
• High Tech, and High Touch.
• It wasn't meant to be.
• Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

Real Estate, Personal:

• No! Any other questions?
• No! Get back in the prospecting booth.
• No! We didn't have more awards than agents.
• You' re not cold-call telemarketers. Why do you think that?
• Competition with FSBO's. We're not in competition with FSBO's.
• You're not Real Estate whores. If you were, you'd get paid a lot better.
• I'm in Real Estate. I sell advertising.
• Mike Ferry says...
• Robo-Realtors
• Stepford Realtors
• Drink the Cool-Aid
• It's not original. He just made it up.
• (After bringing in a rubber stress-ball brain) When you go home tonight, take your brain with you.

Business:

• When all else fails, ask the customer.
• Find out what they want, and give it to them.
• A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
• Make 'em an offer they can't refuse.
• They don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care.
• How can you tell when a salesman is lying? His lips are moving.
• Cash is King.
• Content is King.
• It's not lying. It's sales.
• Close early and often.
• What gets measured gets done.
• What gets rewarded gets repeated.
• The 3 rules of business: 1) All things being equal, people buy from their friends. 2) All things being unequal, people buy from their friends. 3) Make friends.
• Don't sell the Steak. Sell the Sizzle.
• The best business is repeat business.
• The best business is referral business.
• Life Insurance isn't bought, it's sold.
• You are who Google says you are.

Any favorites?

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Foreclosure Rescue, Latest Real Estate Scam

Ever since the purchase of Manhattan from the Indians, and the many sales of the Brooklyn Bridge and Florida Swamp Land, Real Estate deals have suffered rackets, cheats, schemes and scams. These deals color our industry's image and reputation.

"I'm from the Real Estate Industry. And I'm here to help."

These scams make Real Estate Professionals look more like used car dealers, horse traders and parking- lot watch salesmen, than the licensed professional accountants, lawyers and doctors we want ourselves compared to.

The latest Real Estate scam is covered in a Business Week article, "The Foreclosure Rescue Racket" from their June 25, 2007 issue. The scam is facilitated by Websites publishing lists of court filings for "notice of trustee sale", the first step in the foreclosure process. As soon as the list publishes, "notice-ees" are deluged by torrents of "rescuers" and lanced by scores of white knights, like FSBO's after their first "for sale" notice and fish on Trout season opening day.

The "Real Estate Rescuers" put "The Skewer" back in "Rescuer".

The Foreclosure Rescue Racket is rife with pitches, paid seminars and infomercials. Nathaniel X Arnold of Real Estate Investor's Advantage (REIA) must have fancied himself, "The Tony Robbins of Real Estate Rescue" with his $1995 Seminars, Infomercials and "Real Estate Exchange & Profit System". But now he's facing bankruptcy. Maybe some of his former clients will help?

"I scheme, therefore I scam."

In closing the "rescue the home owner" deal, all the owner has to do is sign over his home to the investor, who then proceeds to charge rent at a rate insuring eviction, then pockets the equity. Nice deal if you can scam it. Another reason not to sign any contract related to your home without approval from your lawyer.

Few recent 100%-mortgaged owners are contacted. Only long time, cash poor, equity rich, unknowing, unsuspecting homeowners. I may be too much of a skeptic, but I wonder why?

Some States are moving to protect homeowners from these scams.

It behooves the NAR, the Lenders'Organizations and the Consumer Protection Services to educate our present, former and future customers to the scams and the scammers.

You pay for your education in one way or another.

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Online Cause Marketing, Virtual Virtue, Blogs Giving Back

As we built our online presence with our Website and Blog, I encountered an interesting convergence of powerful recommendations for Cause Marketing:

• When I was shown an example of a blog, the upper left hand column presented a button to easily link and donate to the American Red Cross. I liked it. Such valuable Virtual Real Estate dedicated to good, to virtue.
• On consulting with Howie Jacobson, Managing Partner of Dixon Schwabl, Horses (and almost everything else) on Parade, he recommended cause marketing affiliation or sponsorship. (Frontier Communications, our local phone company and a Dixon Schwabl account, encourages their customers to designate $1 of your monthly bill toward Golisano Children's Hospital.)
• In a talk on entrepreneurism at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School, Thomas Harrison, Chairman and CEO of Omnicom Group's Diversified Agency Services, the world's largest holding group of marketing services companies, said he'd instructed Omnicom's more than 160 companies to present their "Plan To Give Back".

Cause Marketing can improve your brand and promotes customer loyalty. Faced with many similar choices, customers select the offering with the added value of helping a charity or non-profit. Cause-related marketing can be a powerful differentiator, marking your brand as a brand with a conscience.

The 2006 Cone Millennial Cause Study found 9 out of 10 people 13 to 25 indicated they are "likely" or "very likely" to switch from one brand to another - providing the price is equal - if the second brand is associated with a good cause.

In selecting a cause market for our Website we considered several issues:

• Since our site was local, going national, we wanted a national cause with a strong local presence.
• We considered our local Realtor's Association Charity, but it doesn't go national.
• We considered some national non-profit's with local chapters, but many had political or religious affiliations, which could turn some people off.
• We decided on the Center For Missing And Exploited Children, children being an almost universally loved group.

We went to the CMEC's Website. They had a number of ways we could put their logo or banner on our sites. None were similar to the American Red Cross's button and fit our desire to put the CMEC logo and donation link in the upper left hand column.

We've put a CMEC "text message" on our Website with a link to their donation page. We're working with CMEC now on a better solution using their logo with call-to-action text.

When our data base of street address-hooked domains and Websites grows from "All Homes For Sale" to "All Homes", WebHomeUSA.com could be the best way for every government agency to reach all the people in their target area with weather, Amber or any other alert, in their "Reverse 911" format. We could provide an alert platform in addition to contact by: phone, page, text message, email, radio and TV; and provide all the up to the minute infomation these other media can't.

I'm reminded of the business quote: "They don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care".

And Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote: "No man can help another without helping himself".

What's even better is how good I feel about giving back.

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing