Murfreesboro Real Estate Blogs

I’ve been looking lustfully at the rumoured Apple tablet for months, wondering about the possibilities. As of Wednesday, Steve Jobs and his team have finally put to rest most of those rumours and have released to the masses the iPad, Apple’s first stab at the tablet market.

There’s much to be said about the iPad, some good and some bad. So without further hesitation here’s a take on the product from the perspective of a real estate professional (not a Realtor, not an agent, just a Marketing & Technology Consultant that deals with real estate transactions of all sorts on a daily basis).

First the good. The iPad is going to impress your clients and make other agents envious. It’s pretty. It’s light. And it will be fast. With a 9.7-inch display and a mere 0.5 inch thick, it weighs in at only 1.5 pounds. Powered by a 1 gigahertz processor, it will be available with up to 64 gigabytes of storage. You’ll be able to view your photos quickly on a large screen, browse (most) MLSs via Wi-Fi or for a modest $14.99 to $29.99 AT&T will allow you use their 3G service and supposedly there will be no contract required.

Headed to a listing appointment? Woo them with a presentation made in Apple’s iWork Apps which look simply amazing. Flip the iPad from your perspective to your clients and the screen instantaneously adjust for their viewing pleasure. Running a CMA? Cloud CMA will provide an amazingly intuitive experience and keep you completely mobile. You'll also be able to browse maps and get rid of your Garmin or TomTom with the iPads GPS functionality.

An added advantage is Apple’s latest addition to the iTunes Store. The iBook store will put all your favorite motivational books at your fingertips, and possibly allow you to publish your own within the store. I can see it now…your clients searching your city not only to find your iPhone App which works on the iPad but also your listing presentation. Books not your cup of tea. Take notes and schedule appointments on the iPad without having to carry around a pen and paper or struggle with your smartphone’s tiny screen. Email is sure to be a breeze on the iPad as well.

Now for the not-so-good. The iPad doesn’t support Flash. That means your Flash based website will look a little lackluster and all those online videos not on YouTube and Vimeo won’t be readily accessible. That’s really about it for the bad.

Many technology experts are slamming the iPad for not including a stylus for taking notes and signing contacts etc. I expect that Apple will be releasing a pressure sensitive stylus in the near future, as Steve Jobs certainly didn’t completely overlook such an important feature for a tablet. I will likely be an add-on much like the physical keyboard which is already on the Apple Store.

Lastly, while we can’t be sure of it’s compatibility at this time, it is reasonable to assume the iPad will be  able to be tethered with most DSLR cameras, allowing use as a field monitor for shooting photos and video. Alternatively, one could use an Eye-Fi card to wirelessly upload photos and video directly from any camera to the iPad. That could provide a great WOW factor for your clients as they view your photos of their listing instantly as your taking them throughout the property.

However, the best feature of the iPad is it’s amazing price. The base model is priced at $499 going up to $799 for all the bells and whistles. That puts it in your hands for less than the first release of the iPhone. The price point alone will make the iPad an instant celebrity in the world of technology. When can you get your hands on one? The Apple iPad is slated to hit the streets in April 2010.

It's now been a little more than a month since Google announced they are working on a real estate search engine. Today I came across posts by Joel Burslem on The Future of Real Estate Marketing blog and Matt McGee of the Search Engine Land blog and followed the stories a few pages in and eventually came to the live version of this platform in Australia.

After further investigation I happened upon the US version which is still basically a combination of Google Maps and Google Search that allows the user to customize the search with real estate fields such as bedrooms, bathrooms, garage capacity, square feet and price. 

To my delight our listings were well placed among those currently on the platform in the Murfreesboro area. I suspect this is related to our already stellar rankings in comparison to our local competition and am excited about the possibilities that may be ahead for our team utilizing this platform.

Check out this link to the Google Real Estate Search Engine. I see big things ahead for our industry if and when the big brains at Google get their Real Estate Search Engine and Google Goggles (which is VERY cool looking considering how it may affect the real estate industry) up and runnin' in tandem!

Imagine taking a picture of a property with your phone and instantly receiving the price, listing info, virtual tour, neighborhood map, community event calendar, and perhaps even the property tax information, floor-plans and more. This technology, no doubt, has the capacity to change our industry in a BIG way and our company is delighted to be at the forefront as innovators in the industry in both Rutherford County, Tennessee and the United States at large.

Admit it. You've all done it. Your driving down the highway, a text message comes in and you go ahead and read it. Maybe you even reply and many of us have actually experienced the "almost accident" due to our CrackBerry or iPhone addictions. Now there's a solution to avoid those costly Driving While Texting tickets and fines that many states across the country have implemented. It's fittingly called www.DriveSafe.ly. This application can read aloud email and text (sms) messages sent your mobile phone automatically and even send an automated reply to the sender letting them know you're busy. You can customize the auto-response to suit and continue on to your next showing or listings appointment...safely. The upgraded Pro version of DriveSafe.ly offers a few added perks like the ability to read up to 500 words (the free version only handles 25) and the option to have a male voice read messages from male contacts and a female voice to read messages from the ladies.

Traveling in traffic or listig a home in the sticks...Stop by  http://www.ispeech.org/ and convert some of your documents or online books to an audio version so you can listen while you travel. Now can they just develop a Blackberry app that will read my mind and reply to all those messages with a censored version of my would be reply :)

You know you hate it. You're at a listing and fighting that measuring tape to go where you want it, how you want it, and stay in place. Agents meet the Sonar Ruler. This new iPhone App can measure distances of up to 60 feet by sending a short pulse (more like a clicking noise) to the wall of what-have-you and measuring how long it takes to return to the phone...and it's pretty darn accurate. I wouldn't measure inches with it by any means, but for measuring smaller rooms this inexpensive app allows you to get a very close estimation, which you're more than likely going to round anyway. I still haven't found a cheap solution for larger rooms, so you'll probably still need your tape measure if the home's got good sized living space, but for your typical bedrooms the Sonar Ruler iPhone App is just the ticket.

Buy it now for only $0.99 HERE.

Well, that's a very bold question. It could! The Canon EOS 7D not only expands on the functions of the uber-cool (and uber-expensive) Canon 5D Mark II but it actually simplifies them too. You can check out all the specs here.

For real estate agents this camera will put bothan 18mp (mega pixel) DSLR camera and a full HD video camera in your hands for under $2000 ($1700 for the body only or $1900 with the lens) making it about $800 cheaper than the 5DMKII. This is great for all you would be videographersout there who want to shoot video of your home listings or just post a video blog. The camera has a cool in-camera trim feature (only for the beginning and end of the video) and can record either 1080p at 30 fps (or 25 or 24) or 720p at 60p. It records with the H.264 codec which is now the web standard and outputs to a .MOV file, making your footage ready for upload to YouTube or what-have-you straight out of the camera. The built in mono microphone is expected to be "only OK" like the 5DMK2's and probably not as good as the Nikon D90's (but that's OK because you're all going to be using the stereo mic input anyway RIGHT). Here's some footage so you can see this baby in action.

And for those of you who think that looks to good to be true for your untrained or unskilled hands here's what to expect as a novice. And if you're REALLY concerned about the video functions of the Canon EOS 7D read this.

For your photos you'll love the addition of a built-in flash. For you real estate photographers out there, the wireless flash control will also be a great new feature, as will the 7D's new dual axis electronic level. As we all expected, it has autobracketing so HDR photography should be as easy as pie. The new custom controls feature will keep all of your favorite functions handy.

The EOS 7D also has a new viewfinder allowing a 100% view of your shot, making framing your shot easier and cutting down on Photoshop time cropping later. It has an upgraded autofocus and from what I can tell the low light sensitivity looks pretty darn good. What more could we ask for you ask. Essentially nothing. I'd prefer a full 35mm sensor the the APS-C CMOS sensor, but that's just personal taste because of my lens collection. Now it looks like I'll be adding a new wide angle lens to my collection to cope with the 1.6x cropping but other than that the 35mm Canon lenses should be manageable.

When and where can I get one you ask? The release date is "Late September", that reminds me of a song by some good friends (see player below), but word on the street is that pre-orders from Best Buy ship October 15th and I expect B&H will have a similar timeline.

So why do I think the Canon EOS 7D has the potential to change our industry? Simply put it can improve your pictures whether it's by sheer quality or wider lenses and will put the power of professional flash and/or HDR photography into just about any Realtor's hands (a quick study here can aid you with that). Meanwhile, real estate agents will be able to do videos of homes (which you'll post and syndicate via www.TubeMogul.com) and start or improve on their video blogs. This camera has everything you need in one handy-dandy little package that won't break the bank.

Social media is actually a great tool for real estate but as Realtors we have to be careful to keep it "social". Posting home listings all over Facebook and Twitter can be a quick ticket to having no friends and followers. Most good agents in our area have figured out that social media can be a great way to network and build relationships that will eventually turn into clients and referrals.. One of the things that sets the top agents apart from the pack is the ability to take those mediums beyond networking platforms and create brand awareness and website visitors from them. Our video blog "Tuesday Morning Coffee" has created a great fusion between local real estate information and social media and also allows us to connect with viewers on a more personal level. 

Social media has been a hot topic this year among the real estate community and new approaches to social media are constantly developing for our industry but the bulk of them miss the mark on doing more than annoying both friends and followers. You'll be seeing much more real estate content as the lagging Realtors catch on, but I suspect (at least for the moment) that most of them will continue making the same mistakes as those before them.

"Can social media help sell a house?", you ask. Absolutely! You just need a Realtor who has embraced Facebook and Twitter for what they're meant to be and not as an advertising platform.

www.facebook.com/TuesdayMorningCoffee

www.twitter.com/JohnCJones

www.facebook.com/akaPeanut

In this tutorial I show you how to inexpensively create and edit high quality video and get it on your Real Pro Systems website.

Short Version

To clarify on encode settings. A Quicktime (.mov) or MPEG4 format is your best option, but you should use the H.264 video codec and the same aspect ratio as your footage (on most HD cameras that is 1280x720 or 1080p). The frames per second doesn't have to be 24fps as I suggest in the video above. It should match the fps of your footage. For a Flip HD camera (and most others in that price range) that is 29.97fps.

Detailed Version

The HD revolution is now in full swing and you can now embed your YouTube videos to show in HD by default easier than ever. While you can still use the old &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 code before the &h1 in your embed code, you can now simply click on the video's embed code and the resulting menu appears to "Show In HD". Click that check box, copy the embed code and proceed as normal. It's going to be a great tool for making the internet a much more attractive place, putting HD in the hands of average YouTuber. See the difference below.

There is a lot that can be said about Zillow.com's Zestimates. First off, what is a Zestimate? Well to put it simply its Zillow's estimate of what a home is worth. They pull their information from a number of sources and then run that info through an algorithm that spits out a number (which is supposedly what your home is worth). My "beef" with Zillow is that this number is completely and utterly wrong as much as it is right (at least in the Murfreesboro real estate market). Not only that, buy sellers are actually believing the Zestimates and expecting agents to be willing to list their home at inflated prices. 

So is it Zillow's fault sellers are peddling their home to the Realtor with the highest list price? No way! Zillow freely admits it's an inexact science. Here's THEIR explanation of what a Zestimate is:

More and more we're finding potential sellers interviewing Realtors to list their home, sellers who are shopping for a real estate agent to give them that magic number they can sell the house for. Here's the bad news for those sellers, the Realtor doesn't have a say in what your home is worth! An agent can tell you all day long your home is worth $189,900 to get the listing when it's really going to sell for $164,900. Yes that is less than you paid for it and yes that is $15 grand less than the Zestimate (did you really think a machine or person who has never set foot on Tennessee soil could give you a good representation of what the local market will think your home is worth?) In fact, the Zestimate is more than we're even willing to LIST the house for (likely more than it will even appraise for, and most of the time you CAN'T sell a home for more than it appraises) fully expecting that we won't see a full price offer in a Buyers market like we're currently facing. You overpaid for the house two years ago, but lucky for you so did the guy who owns the house you want (and he's taking an even bigger hit).

In my time working for John I've heard one quote more than any other. It may be John's mantra, it could be inscribed on his headstone because he undoubtedly believes it to be words any Realtor can live by, "Your home is what someone is willing to pay for it". Not what you think it's worth, not what I think it's worth, not what any Realtor, nor Zillow, Trulia, the appraiser, the bank, the tax collector, the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker.

Lucky for you...if you have the right agent to market your property (who didn't allow you to allow them to take an overpriced listing) and 5 buyers willing to "pay for it" at the same time. You'll probably still come out alright, if not better, than if you'd listed it John R. Realtor who'd still have it $10 grand overpriced 3 months from now with ZERO offers. (F.Y.I. that's another 3 payments you have to make on it and the market may be worse than it was...you missed the SUMMER BUYERS BOOM). You missed every buyer that was searching online under $175,000 (probably their agents too) which is a BIG chunk of the buyer pool.

What's the point to all of this you say? When choosing YOUR REALTOR you have to look past the numbers they are spitting out. Any man, woman, child, or machine can spit out an estimate of what your home is worth but what it all comes down to is who knows about your home and what it's worth to THEM.

Now for the shameless plug. Want a Murfreesboro locals educated opinion of what your home is worth? Try http://www.MidTNHouseValues.com

Virtual Tours have gained a lot of popularity in recent years. There is no doubt that they can help a home sell faster. Statistics from REALTOR.COM show that listings with virtual tours get clicked on 40% more than listings without virtual tours." As more and more real estate agents have discovered this the internet marketplace has become diluted with more and more virtual tours that are really no more than glorified slide shows. Agents are wasting good marketing dollars to have one of the many online companies plug photos of the property into a program that animates the still images with motion. The reality of this method is that it's simply not cost effective for the agent and really doesn't offer the potential buyer any more info than the photos within the original listing.

The real benefit of a virtual tour comes from a REAL virtual tour. This means a tour that presents the home in a panorama or 360 degree tour which the end user can navigate at will to see all the features of a room. There are a number of different approaches to this, and most require a professional real estate photographer to take the images and create the tour, which can be more expensive (usually anywhere from $100 - $500 in our area) than the still image variety, but the results are typically quite astounding. Buyers can get lost in a tour and become emotionally attached to a home before ever setting foot in it.

Here's the low-down on both types of Virtual Tour Providers:

www.JohnCJones.com - My favorite of all virtual tours is the 360 degree and still image combination that we do in-house at John Jones Real Estate (of-course I'm partial, but I'm also one of the few people who have tried, and continue to try, nearly every virtual tour option available).

This service is in partnership with a national provider which I'm keeping confidential (consider it a trade secret, like the recipe for Coke or KFC). The beauty of this tour is it is high-def, can be full-screen, embeddable, and you can add custom audio for the tour (or each image if you'd like, no more lame elevator music...record a description of your property to point out the features of the room they are looking at). Not local to Murfreesboro, Tennessee? Send me a message and I'll clue you in!

As a Real Estate Photographer, I offer this same service to other agents in the area, so it's not exclusive, but it's one of the many benefits of using a company with a full-time Technology Consultant. HERE and HERE are two examples.

www.propertypreviews.com - My personal favorite of the still-image-with-motion variety. The service is FREE (which is why it's my favorite and they do offer some additional paid syndication options, including export to YouTube) and easy to use. See an example HERE.

www.youtube.com- Create your own with software you didn't know you had. Most Windows XP PCs have Windows Movie Maker pre-installed which makes animating the images (or video if you'd like) as easy as drap-and-drop, save, upload, done. The best part of using YouTube is that search engines LOVE YouTube videos. See an example HERE.

www.visualtour.com- Another create-your-own company. This one is one of the top national competitors. Their service relatively inexpensive (a setup fee and $29.95 per month for all the tours you can muster) but also a little dull considering that propertypreviews.com offers almost all of the features for significantly less money. See one HERE.

www.tourfactory.com - Yet another national competitor, Tour Factory is very similar to Visual Tour in almost every way. One of my favorite "Techie" agents Sam Miller is an avid Tour Factory user. They offer competitive pricing ($49.95 per tour or discounted monthly packages) and the interface is simple and effective. They also offer the option of having a professional real estate photographer photograph your property for an additional fee. See an example HERE.

www.obeo.com- These are a little on the expensive side coming in at $200 - $350 depending on the features. They send a professional photographer to shoot the property (though in my experience the provided photographer left something to be desired, but bear in mind different areas provide different photographers). Obeo offers REALLY COOL add-on features that are worth the money on a high end listings, such as interactive floorplans (see how you can arrange your furniture) and Style-Designer (try out different paint colors, flooring, cabinets, and counter tops). These features are by far the cream of the crop when it comes to "helping" a prospective buyer become emotionally attached to a home. You can get lost in an Obeo tour and spend hours on end imagining the possibilities of a home. Try one yourself HERE.

www.realtourvision.com - This company is another national competitor. They offer 360 panoramic tours through area vendors or you can attempt to create-your-own. (I don't suggest going that route unless your looking for something to kill ALOT of time. Trust me. It ain't as easy as it looks.) The quality is pretty good and the "hot spots" (spots they can click on to move from one area to the next) are a great function, giving the user a sense of moving through the house. Try one out HERE.

Videographers - I must admit I've never used a videographer but a professional real estate videographer can take a virtual tour to a whole new level. True...there is no interactivity like many 360 degree tours, so the user cannot choose what they want to see. So what makes this superior to the normal old photos-with-motion approach? It can look phenomenal and can give a buyer who's been combing through hundreds of home listings a welcome bit of relief with the freshness and uniqueness is provides them. We know for a fact that the most important part of a buyers experience is their emotional connection to a home, hence the smells and depersonalization that created the industry of home staging. Real estate videography it it's online equivalent. But be careful results can vary widely. Your best bet? Visit www.wellcomemat.com/videographers and see who's available in your area. HERE's a good example I found.

There are a number of other options for providers that do basically the same thing. The important thing is to decide if a virtual tour is important to you (and it should be) and what kind is right for you, your area, and your budget. Many Realtors will take care of this for you (whether it be included in their fees or an additional cost), some offer the service if you'll just request it, and others are still stuck in the dark ages.

The most important thing to remember is the addition of a virtual tour usually entices a buyer to linger on your property longer and in our business that's usually a good thing!