Murfreesboro Tennessee Real Estate Blogs

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

This week Bob Sokoler, a Realtor in Louisville KY, takes over Tuesday Morning Coffee. Bob's guest blog was shot while attending the 20th Annual Star Power Conference in Denver CO. The 2009 conference brought together more than 1,200 real estate agents from across the US to discuss what's happening in the nation's real estate market and learn how to better serve their customers. The conference staff included nearly 200 Star Power "Stars" two of which were John Jones Real Estate's very own John Jones and Joe Hafner. Look out in the coming weeks for more guest appearences on Tuesday Morning Coffee by the nation's top Realtors.

If your looking to buy or sell a home in the Murfreesboro area you're in the right place! If you're relocating to or moving within the Louisville KY area go on over to http://www.WeSellLouisville.com and see how Bob and his team can help you with your real estate needs.

This week on Tuesday Morning Coffee John Jones talks about the 20th Annual Star Power Conference and the real estate market predictions made by 4 of the nation's real estate company heads. 

There are plenty of ways to make your house more desirable that won’t cost you much more than time and elbow grease.  The condition of your home is one of the most important features buyers look at.  Strong ‘curb appeal’ can be the difference between getting a solid offer on your property or driving your potential buyers into the arms of another seller with a house in better condition.

Start on the outside by making sure your lawn is well manicured and hedges or shrubs are neatly trimmed.  Pull weeds from flowerbeds and dress them up with fresh mulch.  Clean any dirt or mildew from the brick or siding and roof.  Remove debris from your gutters.  Scrub the windows until they shine and apply fresh paint and calk to all of the trim.

On the inside, clean like you’ve never cleaned before: pull out the refrigerator and stove so you can sweep and wash the floor and walls behind them.  Wipe down the baseboards, doorframes and any other trim to remove dirt and dust.  Make the bathrooms sparkle.  If walls are marked up, consider painting.  Here’s a good trick—if you match the paint color and type exactly, you can often just roll the walls and not be forced to do the tedious work of cutting in the paint next to the ceiling and trim.

Keep in mind that the appearance of a house you are trying to sell is much different than that of the home in which you live.  Depersonalize your home by removing family photos, children’s artwork, and all of the stuff that ends up on the refrigerator door.  You want prospective buyers to imagine themselves living in your house, not feeling like they are intruding on your private space.  Finally, de-clutter.  Leave just a few pieces in each room that define the purpose of that space.  This will make your house seem more spacious.

In this episode of Tuesday Morning Coffee John Jones addresses the question of how to pick the right real estate agent. In simple, ask the right questions! But what are the questions you should be asking the Realtors you're interviewing to sell your home? Find out in this to-the-point video.

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 price shifts in Rutherford County have been an excellent example of supply and demand at work in our economy. 

A few years ago, there were many more buyers than sellers—meaning there was a small supply of homes for sale and a huge demand from potential property purchasers.  When more consumers chase after few products, it creates an upward pressure on prices.  Today, we are experiencing just the opposite: many sellers chasing after few buyers.  This has created downward pressure on prices.

Property values will begin rising again when excess inventory is cleared out and more buyers enter the marketplace.  The biggest single factor that will set this process in motion is buyer confidence.  Right now many potential buyers are choosing to delay home purchases because of uncertainty.  Fears about employment, the economy, credit scores, whether or not the market will decline further, and myriad other things have eroded buyer confidence in real estate.  Once enough potential buyers regain the confidence to reenter the marketplace, home values will begin to rise once again. 

Just remember that comparable sales are a study of the recent past.  This means that appraisals that rely on comps will lag slightly behind an up trending market.  That is why one of the biggest challenges in a shifting market is that appraisals often come in too low.

John answers viewer questions regarding the effects of appraisals in the real estate market downturn of 2008 - 2009. If home values are based on appraisals which are based on recent sales do appraisals in effect put a cap on how quick a real estate market can recover? Find out in this edition of Tuesday Morning Coffee.

Partially. While the value of a property is greatly impacted by location along with condition, pricing is still the most important factor in selling a home.

However it could be said that "location, location, location" is the most important part of marketing a property. That's one of the biggest factors For Sale By Owner properties miss out on because they don't have the means to efficiently market their home.  It is the primary reason why most FSBOs are unsuccessful at selling themselves.

Your property's visibility on the web is key in the Web 2.0 age where upwards of 90% of buyers begin their home search by looking for houses on the Internet. You want your home to show up anywhere and everywhere.  The local MLS will soon be rolling out a platform to aid agents unskilled in generating an online presence, but it will be the agents who are seasoned in online visibility that continue to sell homes due to their extensive reach in cyberspace. When choosing an agent to market your home, consider the web the MOST important platform.  

There are a few agents in our area that do a great job of creating an internet presence for their listings and it's no mistake that those are the same agents that get the job done for their clients.

No matter who you are, your day to day actions have an enormous impact on those around you. In this episode of Tuesday Morning Coffee John Jones tells the story of one man who's simple act of kindness had a profound impact on another's life.