Getting a $15,000 tax credit when you purchase your next home could be as easy as stealing candy from a baby… by Greg Swann at Bloodhound Realty

Google Gets Serious about Real Estate Search by Joel Burslem at Future of Real Estate Marketing

50 Sound Real Estate Blogging Tips by Jim Cronin at Real Estate Tomato

Put Your Listings on GoogleBase and See Them on Google Maps. Add Video, Photos and More by Joseph Ferrara at Sellsius Real Estate

Google may kill Microsoft, but it won’t kill real estate by Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting

1. Business decision, not a personal one

Selling your home is not an easy task in today’s market. It is challenging and you need someone that is up to the task. Use a full time real estate professional with a proven track record. Think twice before using a family member or friend who has not sold a home since 2005. This may be the largest transaction of your life so make it a business decision. It is best to hire good representation from day one.

2. Ask for a referral

Ask your friends and family members to refer you to a good Realtor. Someone you know has probably used a good real estate agent. Ask around and get a list of good Realtors to interview. They will probably tell you a few not to use.

3. Interview Realtors

Most Realtors hate this tip. Meet with more than one agent and have them do a listing presentation for you. This usually consists of their marketing plan, backgrounds, background on their brokerage and a valuation of your property.

4. Hire the biggest producer?

Don’t assume that the highest producer is the best Realtor or gives the best service. Would you rather work with a good Realtor who has forty listings or a good Realtor that has ten? You probably will end up with better service with the Realtor that spread between only 10 listings. That is not always the case but this is what you can uncover when you interview them. The larger producer may sell ten homes between $2 million and $3 million a year. If your home is worth $300,000 would you rather use that Realtor or one who sells twenty homes a year priced between $300,000 and $400,000?

5. You get what you pay for

I am just as frugal as the next guy. However, often times you get what you pay for. The market dictates what Realtors charge for services. It is a negotiable item and there are discount brokerages out there.

From the outside it appears that Realtor make way too much money. 6% of $400,000 is $24,000. That is a lot of money. However, when you break it down and spread it around it isn’t as much as you think. That commission is usually split between the listing agent and selling agent. The Realtors have to split with their brokers. Brokers have to pay their staff, rent, advertising, light bill, utilities, etc. Promoting your listing to find a buyer costs money so there are expenses like photography, advertising, direct mailers, signs, websites etc. The agents belong to one or several Realtor Associations. We have to pay dues to all of those Associations. To promote the listing on the MLS we have to pay dues to access the MLS. The expenses go on. Realtors probably don’t make as much money as you think.

I have a friend in the business who says, “If you want to pay peanuts you end up working with monkeys.”

6. Don’t let the Realtor buy your listing

This is fairly common occurrence. Realtors are fighting to get listings and they could tell you an unrealistic price for your home just so they list with you. Realtors either know that they are doing this or they are just horrible at pricing property. Make any agent you interview substantiate their valuation with market facts, data and trends. Often times, the Realtor with the lowest valuation is your best choice because they are most honest or most in tune with the market.

7. Interview a Realtor that specializes in your area

Some Realtors only work a small niche. Those agents typically know their niche or market area more than their competitors. They are good to have on your side. However, the process of valuing and selling real estate is essentially the same in all segments of market with slight variations. You don’t have to hire a specialist or niche Realtor.

8. Be Leery

Be cautious of Realtors who tell you everything you want to hear. I would rather be told the truth versus what I wanted to hear only to find out the truth later. Some Realtors are total “yes” people and lead you believe what you want to believe just to get your listing.

Keep these tips in mind and they will help you make a wise choice in hiring a Realtor. Selling a home is not rocket science but you can waste a lot of time hiring the wrong agent. The way home prices have been falling listing with the wrong agent can cost you a large amount of money.

by Art Penz, Realtor on Siesta Key, Florida - Siesta Key Real Estate

Google pulls their real estate listings from different places such as homesandland.com, prurealty.com, mls.com, and plenty of others.

When you hover above a listing it will give you as much details about the property that’s available.

It will be interesting to see how agents use this to marketing their properties or if home buyers will use it to find homes their interested in purchasing.

How You Link Matters to Google at House Blogger

Hoarding Listings? by Glenn Kelman at Blood Hound Realty

New brokerage model: from bust to boom by Marc Davison at 1000Watt Consulting

New Firefox Brings Location to the Browser by Joel Burslem at Future of Real Estate Marketing

Use eChirpy to Tweet Blog from Your Email (Huh?) by Joseph Ferrara at Sellsius Blog

Did you know that 74% of U.S. households use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally. 45% of local searchers have the intent of doing business locally. The percentage of people who use yellow page advertising decreased from 75% to 62% last year. If you’re one of the many Realtors who have a yellow page ad, it’s time to consider buying a smaller ad and shifting your marketing dollars to the Internet.

As a local Realtor, it’s hard to ignore these facts. If you want to compete in your local real estate market you must have an internet presence where your customers are searching. Google’s local, or “geo targeted’ pay per click marketing can put your real estate website on the first page of Google where your future customers are searching.

In a professionally created Google pay per click advertising campaign keyword phrases are used to trigger your ads when someone searches using that phrase. An example of a keyword phrase that might be used would be “real estate in Glens Falls”. When someone types in this keyword phrase your ad, pointing to your real estate website, would be displayed. Chances are you will also see ads for your competitors on the same page. The cost per click for ad positioning on this page may be somewhat competitive.

Now, this is where “geo targeting” comes in to play. A professional pay per click marketer would never use the phrase “real estate” for your pay per click campaign. Imagine all the people on the internet that type in “real estate” everyday. Your ad would show thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of times per day to people who are not searching for real estate in your area. Some of them will click on your ad costing you money.

However, when implementing a “geo targeted” pay per click advertising campaign, you can use a general keyword like “real estate”. It has also been my experience that the cost for that same click is much lower in a “geo targeted’ campaign.

Here’s why. When setting up your “geo targeted” campaign I use your physical address. Then I tell Google what the ’search radius” for this campaign will be. You can go out 5 miles, ten miles, or 100 miles. You decide how far you would travel from your location to do business. It’s entirely up to you. Google will then serve your ad only to searchers within that “search radius”. Now for the best part, your competition did not bid on the keywords “real estate”, he is bidding on “real estate in Glens Falls”. He does not have a separate “geo targeted’ campaign set up. So, there is a lot less competition in your “geo targeted” advertising campaign, hence, you pay less per click. In fact you pay a lot less. My Realtor customers save about 50% per click as opposed to all the other pay per click campaigns out there.

They also gobble up lots of local business right in their back yard. So, how do you promote your real estate website? Remember, real estate agents will not be replaced by technology, they will be replaced by the agents who use technology to their advantage.

By Mike Alves, the owner of www.Marketing4Leads.com

I’ve talked to many agents who say that they have all these contacts, but they’ve never had the time to put them into their database. This is one of the tasks that nobody enjoys, but to succeed, you have to take 10 - 15 minutes a day putting these contacts into your database.

The simplest reason is so you can contact your entire database quickly.

If you’ve just landed a contract on a house, you’ll want to email your database to let everyone know about it. If you don’t have your database ready to go, it will take forever to get it to the people you want.

Many database management systems will let you sort and filter your contacts by age, gender, income, and even the type of house their interested in. If your database is up-to-date, you can be sure that you contact the right type of people either by phone or email to see if their interested in the house.

It’s also important to keep your database as clean as possible. If you haven’t made contact with someone in over a year, it’s probably a good time to reach out to them and see how their doing. Then you can decide if you should keep them in your database as well. Nobody wants to receive a call from someone they haven’t heard from in years just to be sold to.

This all goes back to organization. The more organized you have your database, the easier it will be for you to run your business.

1 in 3 Buyers Now Come From The Internet by Tom Royce at The Real Estate Bloggers

A Real Estate Buyer Search Engine? by Joseph Ferrara at Sellsius Real Estate

There is no Web 2.0 bubble - and real estate technology ain’t what it used to be by Brian Boero at 1000Watt Consulting

8 Ways to Stay Positive in Today’s Market by Maya Bailey at RIS Media

WellcomeMat Brings Local Video to Your TV by Joel Burslem at Future of Real Estate Marketing

“Our service has always been popular among the Hispanic community” explained Sean Whaling, eCommission president, “but until now we have not committed ourselves to providing Spanish language information both online and in our customer service department. We believe these changes will make those Hispanic real estate professionals that feel more comfortable in Spanish more aware of the option they have to receive payment of their commissions whenever they need them, and more comfortable using the service in their native language.”

eCommission advances commissions on pending sales that are closing within 120 days. They also offer advances on active listings and pending short sales. For more information visit eCommissin Spanish or call toll free 1-866-283-8851.

Blogs in particular provide a timely source of information and market news. There are numerous realty-related blogs on the web, but due to their very nature, blogs can quickly become outdated or obsolete. It can be very time consuming to sift through the blogs in order to find ones worth reading, so to save you the hassle, here are 10 blogs that offer realtors valuable information, expert advice, and entertainment all at once.

Bloodhound Blog - BloodhoundRealty.com/BloodhoundBlog

BloodhoundBlog is a “real estate market and technology blog” that discusses industry news, the National Association of Realtors, the role of real estate agents, and web marketing. With contributing authors of various specialties such as mortgage brokers, SEO’s, and agents, BloodhoundBlog is authoritative and edgy. Recent posts include: “Can a Realtor Truly be a Consumer Advocate?” and “Is NAR Criminal or Clueless? What Difference does it Make?”

Inman Blog - Inman.com/blog

From the folks at Inman News, Inman Blog features “Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers, and Investors.” Posts cover everything from social marketing, improving one’s online marketing campaign, as well as the latest technology for realty-related websites. There are also contests and surveys that aim to take the pulse of the national real estate scene. Recent subjects included “The Truth about Real Estate Compensation,” and “Confessions of a NAR Economist.”

The Real Estate Tomato - RealEstateTomato.typepad.com

Known for providing “juicy blogging advice for realtors,” the Real Estate Tomato is geared towards the tech savvy realtor who understands the importance of blogging to get website traffic, attract clients, and to establish oneself as an authority. In addition to blogging, the Tomato also talks about social networking sites such as Twitter, techniques for search engine optimization, and the latest trends in marketing online. A recent topic was: “An Honest Look at the Impact of Video on your Real Estate Blog.”

Real Estate Investing for Real - BiggerPockets.com/RENewsBlog

This blog is an offshoot of BiggerPockets.com, a popular site dedicated to real estate investing. Recent topics included “Is your Real Estate Website Committing this Conversion Killer?” and “How to Create an Effective Business Social Networking Profile.” Informative and current, this blog is a great educational tool for investors and agents alike.

Future of Real Estate Marketing - FutureOfRealEstateMarketing.com

As the title suggests, the ‘Future’ blog is all about e-marketing and utilizing the latest website technologies. “Photosynth Could Spark Virtual Earth Comeback” is one of the site’s recent posts.

The Real Estate Bloggers - TheRealEstateBloggers.com

Providing “Real Estate, Mortgage, and Development News” the Real Estate Bloggers focuses on a variety of topics, including creative marketing techniques. Recent posts include “$1 Million Real Estate Coupon – Thinking Outside the Box,” and “Why the Chrysler and GM Deals will Raise Mortgage Rates.”

Realty Thoughts - RealtyThoughts.com

With topics such as “ Why Realtors Need to Get iPhone Equipped” and “Delicious for Real Estate: Dwellicious,” RealtyThoughts keeps agents and brokers on the cutting edge of real estate marketing, technology, and lead conversion.

CopyBlogger - CopyBlogger.com

Though not specifically geared towards real estate professionals, CopyBlogger is essential reading for anyone putting content on the web. Whether you’re writing content for your website, or posting on a blog, CopyBlogger is extremely helpful in terms of attracting and converting leads. Recent subjects included “The #1 Conversion Killer in your Copy (And How to Beat it) and “Why Social Media Marketing.”

Seth’s Blog - SethGodin.typepad.com

Like CopyBlogger, Seth’s Blog is not directed towards the real estate industry. However, Seth’s refreshingly honest commentary on marketing and sales techniques can be a great resource for agents and brokers. Customer service, marketing, and the philosophy of selling are discussed. Sample posts include “On Becoming a Household Name,” and “Making Commercials for the Web.” Seth’s Blog is a great place to learn how to promote your brand and services.

It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! - LovelyListing.com

Because even Realtors need to laugh, It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! is a hilarious blog that teaches realtors the importance of taking proper listing photos. The blog shows bad listing photos from around the world. Highlights include graffiti on the wall, blurry photos, bad angles, rundown houses, and shots of family pets. There are also notable shots of Nazi memorabilia, filled toilets, and naked people in the background. What’s so fantastic (aside from the biting commentary the author provides) is that the shots have been taken by real agents, and used to market their properties. Learn how NOT to market your listing by following the hilarity on this blog. You’ll learn a lot.

By Tony Kawaguchi

Make your dreams come true by owning Hawaii real estate. Search for Ewa Beach homes and condos at AlohaTony.com, and soon you’ll enjoy the tropical climate of Hawaii all year long.