We will be hosting the “Meet the bloggers” event at the NAR convention in Las Vegas in a few weeks. So far, Mike Price from MLBroadcast.com has been doing a great job at getting bloggers lined up for the event. It should be a good event with lots of bloggers in attendance.

If you’re going to be in Vegas for the NAR convention, feel free to stop by the Incredible Agent booth to meet up with all the bloggers. Our booth number is #3444.

Click here for the full lineup of speakers.

If you have any questions, please contact Mike Price and he’ll be able to take care of you.

I’ve always been a big fan of the stories from the old days. Usually the ones that stick around long enough have great lessons to be learned in them. Everything from stories in the Bible to basic Aesop fables. One of my favorites, that I admittedly don’t always remember, is the story of the Grasshoppers and the Ants. You know, the one where the grasshoppers party all summer and the ants work all summer storing their food for winter. Guess who makes it thru winter?

Well I can’t help but think this story applies to today’s current real estate market more than ever. We’re officially in the heart of one of the coldest winters in real estate. We all knew the market couldn’t continue to grow at the rate it was growing in 2005. Yet so many Realtors forgot the lessons we’ve all been taught and bought luxury cars, second homes, furniture, investment properties, etc. Thinking the money would always be coming in. Those days of easy money are now over and bills seems to be holding many agents from being able to invest in their success coming out of the downturn.

Let’s not forget these days/months/years of struggle that we’re going thru right now. Let’s bookmark this era in real estate so we can take these lessons and teach them to the future of real estate.

There’s a reason those stories have been around for so long. Let’s keep them around until we all learn the lessons from them.

The longer I am a participant in the real estate industry, the more I realize just how different it is from any other that I have been involved with. Sure, every industry has its distinctions, but real estate has a unique facet that puts it in a rare class. In most industries, whether they admit it or not, businesses are run from the top down. Real estate is all about bottom up…..and that’s a problem right now. Many will strongly disagree, but the industry is in dire need of top down changes.

The consumption of real estate technology is an illustration of the need for change. In traditional industries, technology is sold to companies, not employees. The reasons are numerous, but one is that companies want to control the tools that their employees use in order to maintain efficiencies, product and service quality, marketing messages, and so on.

In my company, if I informed each sales rep that they had to evaluate, select, and pay for their own contact management system, leads, website, and other tools, most would quickly fail. I would be asking them to divert a degree of focus away from their most important responsibility which is bringing in new revenue and providing great customer service. As a kicker, I’m going to have them pay me for the privilege of working for my company. A couple of outstanding individuals may survive, but for most, one of two things would happen.

About 80% would do a very poor job of finding and using the technologies, either because they simply can’t, or wont because of concerns over time away from sales activities. The other 20% would spend a great deal of time on the technologies, implement a couple of decent ones, and have little time left to spend servicing clients. To me, both alternatives are losing propositions. Never mind the fact that the sales reps are not even qualified to do the job that I would be asking them to do. That’s not an indictment of them; it’s just a statement of fact that that is not the skill set they were hired for.

Why then has this become the accepted model in real estate? I think it’s simple. The old adage of “If it aint broke, don’t fix it” is alive and well. During a recent conference, I spoke to several agents who pointed out that many of their peers don’t even have e-mail. My question to them was, “Why would the broker allow this”? Their response was “Those agents continue to pay their fees”. Now, I understand the fact that real estate agents are not employees, they are independents, but the bottom line is that the agent is still a reflection of the brokerage. Furthermore, the performance of the agent is the number one contributor to the perception of the real estate professional community as a whole, and that perception isn’t very good right now.

So what if the system is truly broke but nobody realizes it yet. Although new technologies have been trickling into real estate for the past 10 years, they have really just recently hit their stride. We haven’t had time yet to grasp the very real possibility that independent agents will never have the “appetite” to consume this much technology. The technologies aren’t just going away though. So what does this mean? I believe it means that we are on the cusp of seeing tangible changes in the relationship between real estate companies and their agents.

Real estate companies are indicating awareness of the issue by stating their need to do a better job of education. I’m sorry, but this is not enough. I don’t want to take anything away from excellent training. It’s critical to a company’s success. Unfortunately though, “more training” has become a cliché. Everyone says they are doing it, and very few really are. I’m personally tired of hearing the excuse that you can’t make your agents do this or that. If the same amount of effort was put into active agent management as is put into making sure the broker logo is properly displayed on every agent website, we would probably be a lot better off.

Not all is negative however. New real estate companies are springing up and experimenting with exercising control over their agents marketing and technology. I predict success for several of them. The manner in which companies provide and manage technology for their agents is going to be important when those agents are selecting their brokerage. I even believe that agents will pay slightly more for access to these technologies as long as it is measurable, and the reality is that large brokerages and companies can secure the technologies at a fraction of the cost that an agent can. Finally, I believe that the days of real estate companies relying exclusively on their brand as a way to recruit new agents are numbered. In the future, brokerages are going to realize that the way to provide the best possible service to their prospective home buyers and sellers is not to tell their agents to use technology, but instead, demand it and ensure it by driving the bus.

Would you rather buy a house or a website? This is a question I’ve often asked myself. I personally believe a website is very similar to an investment property. For several years I’ve been comparing those two items and have found websites to be a far better investment than a home could ever be.

It all comes down to traffic and value: real or virtual. If you have 100,000 visitors a month to a website and you’re well ranked in Google, Yahoo and MSN; why is that any different than having a rental property that has a few hundred a month in cash flow for you. From a business perspective, I see the two items completely identical. There are only a few differences that I can find; 1. A house is not going away anytime soon and will go up in value over time with guaranteed certainty. 2. I don’t get to depreciate my websites like I do with real estate. 3. A website is a small investment compared to a rental property. 4. I don’t have to fix the toilet in the middle of the night with a website. 5. I own 100% of a website.

I want to give you a quick example of what I’m talking about. My first real estate website: Arizona Real Estate Guide (MovingtoAZ.com)
This site was built in 2001 to generate real estate leads for the Phoenix market. It’s only gone thru 1 redesign in the early days and it has been very successful in the search engines. It has been on the first page of Google for “Arizona Real Estate” for over 4 years. That website has generated well over 25,000 real estate leads and millions of dollars in real estate commissions since it’s launch. Not bad for a website that cost me nothing other than my time to build it and get it ranked in the search engines. I admit that it’s not a fancy site for today’s standards, but it gets the job done and that’s all that matters.

Now, if I would have bought an average 3 bed, 2 bath home in Phoenix at the same time I built that website, I would have probably paid around $150,000 or $900/month after the down payment. If I rented the home I would have rented it for around $1000/month, making me a whopping $100 each month in cash flow. Nothing to call home about, the real gain is made with appreciation. If I sold that home today, I would probably sell it for around $275 to $300k. That’s a profit of around $150,000; which would be great over a 5 year period. Not a bad investment at all if you’re able to keep renters in the property 95% of the time.

I don’t dispute the benefits of investment properties, I just don’t believe they are for me. Buying an investment property is like having a baby, you usually have to get qualified for the loan, put down a bunch of money, manage the property, take a significant financial risk, deal with renters, etc, etc. All for a unknown amount of money at the end and virtually little cash flow during the whole process. On the other hand, I can build a website for pennies on the dollar, get it ranked in the search engines, build traffic, develop a financial model and begin making thousands every month with comparatively fewer costs and a heck of a lot less risk. In the end, I can turn around and sell that website to the highest bidder and not have to pay a penny to the bank when I sell it. 100% ownership is the road to happiness.

My frustration:
When I talk to any of the accountants I deal with they like to talk about assets and liabilities. At this point, I usually go into a rant about how Yahoo.com is a website and it makes billions and is therefore worth billions and yet somehow my websites aren’t considered assets even though they make millions in real estate commissions every year. I get the impression they would be much happier about my asset situation if I had a rental property with a few hundred a month in cash flow and a $100k in equity. Trying to get an accountant to understand this basic business principle is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and just annoys the pig.

When are we all going to realize that websites are assets just as much as any house, office building, land, retail space or business that’s out there? Why is it any different because its on the Internet?

For all you bean counters out there here are a few key definitions:
Assets = Any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation, especially that which could be converted to cash. (A good website)
Liabilities = A liability is a financial obligation, debt, claim, or potential loss. (A bad website)

Enough beating up on the accountants. I simply believe a website with monetized traffic is a far better investment than any property I could ever own. Just because I don’t have to call a plumber in the middle of the night to fix the toilet, doesn’t make it any less of an asset. In fact, it makes it that much better.

As an agent, following this principle has made me far more successful than ever buying that one house back in 2001. I now have over 170 different real estate lead generating websites throughout the country like the Arizona Real Estate Guide. All generating leads and commissions on a daily basis for other agents in those markets. I could have never done that if I would have bought a house instead of building a website.

Put this to use in your own real estate business. If you buy a house, will it generate the monthly revenue you need to survive? If you have a website that generates leads for you every day, will you turn those leads into commissions? Which one is going to make you the money you need to survive and grow your business? It’s a no-brainer for me, you simply need to decide for yourself.

The guys over at Sellsius, just wrote a great blog analyzing the difference between Internet Buyers and Traditional Buyers based on the 2006 California Association of Realtors study. It’s a good summary on why the Internet buyer beats the Tradtional buyer everytime.

http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/statistics/why-the-internet-buyer-is-the-preferred-client/2007/02/21/

This is good stuff that I highly recommend reading if you’re looking for a reason to jump on the Internet and start finding those Internet buyers.

I’ve been in the real estate world for about 5 1/2 years and I’ve always wondered what “By Referral Only” actually meant. Well this morning I found out. One of my colleagues called me up early this morning and told me there was a gaggle of Real Estate agents meeting at the Scottsdale Hilton for a meeting of some kind. This was only about 5 minutes from my house, so I decided to go down there and see what was happening.

Low and behold it was a “By Referral Only” mini session. In other words, they were trying to sell these agents on their upcoming conference in Las Vegas. The room was packed with about 250 agents. I had to stand in the back and watch the speaker razzle dazzle the audience with his knowledge about what agents are doing wrong in their business.

Their lessons were very important ones for any business. I quickly realized they weren’t teaching agents how to be agents, but rather teaching them how to be focused business people. There seemed to be more lessons in business than there were in real estate. In fact, I believe any small business owner would get a benefit out of their sessions. Especially if they’re struggling to grow their business and find their focus.

After standing around for a while I decided to move outside and talk to some of their staff about the full package of what they offer. Turns out they charge $998 to attend their “Main Event” 3 day conference in Las Vegas. I don’t expect the seminar to be free, but after a short amount of time talking to their staff I realized they really put the hard sell on you. They nearly ran me over and pulled the credit card out of my wallet. Personally, I don’t like the pressure sales tactics that so many companies use and I was out of there. Phew!

Anywho, training agents is an important part of what we do at Incredible Agent. Many times it does end up being a session on business rather than a session on how to be an Incredible Agent. I just want to make sure our trainings don’t end up turning into a “By Referral Only” seminar.