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Posted: 02 Apr 2011 06:18 AM PDT

A quick rundown of the important real estate news from the week of March 26 – April 1, by the numbers:

8.8% – U.S. unemployment rate. It’s down from the previous month’s 8.9% rate, as 216,000 jobs were added.

7.5% – Projected increase in rents in San Jose, CA for 2011, according to REIS. It’s the largest projected increase in rents by percentage for major cities in the U.S. On average, rents are projected to increase by 3.4%.

0.9% – Projected increase in rents in Las Vegas, NV for 2011, according to REIS. It’s the smallest projected increase in rents by percentage for major cities in the U.S.

$1.8 Billion – Amount Donald Trumps’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, paid at the height of the real estate boom for a 5th Avenue office/retail building in NYC. At the time of purchase, it was the most ever paid for a single building. “Now he [Jared Kushner] is dealing with the consequences. With cash running low, the 30-year-old developer is scrambling to hold on to 666 Fifth Ave. ahead of a looming default deadline.”

$100 Million – Amount Russian billionaire Yuri Milner paid for a home in Los Altos Hills, CA. It’s the most ever for a single-family home in the U.S. Yuri Milner runs Digital Sky Technologies and made investments in Facebook and Groupon.

4.86% - Average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage.  That’s up from last weeks 4.81% average rate.

11.4% – National housing vacancy rate according to the Census Bureau. Maine had the highest percentage of vacant homes, with a 22.8% rate.

$18 Million – Loan commitment Grubb & Ellis received from Colony Capital, LLC, a private equity firm. ‘In turn, the Los Angeles-based international investment firm has secured the right to negotiate exclusively for 60 days with Grubb & Ellis to evaluate a “potential larger strategic investment.”‘

1.8 Million – Number of Shadow Inventory, or troubled homes that have not yet hit the market in the U.S., according CoreLogic. The 1.8 million homes, or nine month supply, is a decrease from the 2 million shadow inventory in January 2011.

My last post, Anyone Can Blog about Listings & Market Data – Where are YOU adding Value?,

led to so many great comments that I thought I’d write on the topic of added value.

So many of us have probably never sat down (or it’s time for a refresher) to figure out what value or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) we can offer our clients or can use to differentiate ourselves from our competition.

Take mortgages for example – it seems the majority of mortgage advertisements focus on either “lowest price” or “great service”.

A Google search of “lowest mortgage rate” leads to 5,910,000 results!

How can even 50% of the lenders out there all have the best price? 

It’s not possible, but it seems to work as “everyone’s” doing it.  A decent percentage of consumers actually believes enough in these ads that they do business with lenders that choose to focus on this message.  But, it’s not very unique and ultimately the consumer probably doesn’t end up doing business with a lender strictly because they claim the lowest price.

A very prophetic saying in sales is, “you sell price when you have nothing else to sell”.  What this means is that if you have no other value(s) to offer customers, you’re left with nothing but trying to get business by offering the lowest price.

So, what does that say about all these lenders claiming to have the lowest price?  I’ll let you think that over and come to your own conclusions.

The same applies to real estate brokers & agents advertising for business by promising low commissions.  A Google search for, “discount real estate commissions“, leads to 10,400,000 results. 

SIDE NOTE: it’s very interesting to encounter agents shopping for the lowest mortgage rates for their buyers.  Most of their buyers didn’t find the agent by shopping for the lowest commission!
Now what about “great service”?

Someone please define that for me in metrics that can be measured!

“Great service” is extremely subjective.  What satifies one does not satisfy all.

For example, my team sends out very detailed Weekly Status Reports that impress many, but not all agents and clients. 

So, what specifically really qualifies as ”great service” for everyone?

Is it being “available 24/7″?  That statement implies, but doesn’t necessarily mean, great service.  In fact, I could argue it implies the opposite.  If the expectations of most customers are properly managed, they won’t need to get ahold of someone late at night or on an off day.  I’ve also never heard of a “life or death” situation occuring in real estate that needed immediate attention.  Actually, very few situations can’t wait until 8 or 9 am the next day or Monday morning.  Most late night or weekend calls are little more than “hand-holding”.  Is this hand-holding great service?

How about free reports and free listings?  I suppose they mean something to some, but not all potential customers.

As you can see, great service is not that easy to specifically define. 
So, where does all this leave us?

I believe we all need to find our own USP, but understand we can’t be everything to everybody.  Once a USP is selected the message should be woven into everything we do. 

The challenge is developing a USP.  It’s fairly easy to look at someone’s blog or marketing materials and figure out if they have a clearly defined USP or not.  Those that do are typically leaders and top producers.

Fort those looking for a USP, here are some possibilities to consider:

• Knowledge – difficult to make people care
• Experience – same as above
• Fast service – offer a guarantee?
• Specific area specialist – city, town, waterfront, etc
• Specific property specialist – condo queen, vacant lots, mobile homes, etc
• Specific transaction specialist – refinancing, jumbo mortgages, short sales, REO, etc
• Exclusive buyers’ agent

I’d like to hear from a few agents and lenders out there what you think of USP’s and what’s yours!

MORTGAGE, EXPERT, MICHIGAN, BIRMINGHAM, BLOOMFIELD, DETROIT, ROCHESTER, ROYAL OAK, TROY

I follow a lot of industry blogs. 

I prefer to read blogs with catchy titles that also make me laugh or think.  Believe it or not, they’re often pretty difficult to find!

Why?

Because too many industry blogs are solely about listings & market data with no analysis or added value.

Homebuyers & Sellers – this section is for You

If you’re reading this and you’re looking for an agent to represent you on a home purchase or for the sale of your home – how are you evaluating agents from their online presence?

Is it by who pops up the most on Google?  How about who’s most entertaining?   Or, is it by how knowledgeable they seem to be?

I’m sure all those items factor into evaluating who to choose to do business with. 

Just be sure not to confuse volume or the mere presentation of market data with actual expertise and market knowledge!  A true expert understands and interprets data.  That’s what you should be looking for.
 

My Listing’s Presentation is Better Than Yours

It seems posting about a listing is the first thing every agent does when they start blogging!  Unfortunately, few do it well and they all start to quickly look the same.

Ever hear the phrase, “you can’t be everything to everyone”?  Apparantly a lot of agents haven’t or have forgotten that phrase or what it means.  Many listing blog posts are pretty VANILLA as it appears they’re written to appeal to anyone & everyone – despite the fact that only one person will eventually buy the property.

Of course, many posts on listings are probably written solely to show the seller that their property has “maximum exposure” to get it sold.  That doesn’t mean a listing post can’t be well written and entertaining.

There are several books and articles written about how to analyze the features and shortcomings of a property and then discern the characteristics of potential buyers.  This is supposed to help agents focus on a narrow target market for better success, but it appears to be rarely done.

So, because they don’t know how to aim their marketing efforts, shotguns rule over rifles.

How come agents don’t get more creative & daring when presenting their listings? 

Why always several pics, a laundry list of features and a poorly written title?  Where’s the pizzazz?  The emotional words that will grab attention?  You can’t bake cookies and publish the aroma on the internet (yet) to help in selling a property.  You have to use words and creative pics.

By the way, did everyone forget that most buyers can find your listings at Realtor.com?  What is blogging about them supposed to do?  Get them more exposure than the thousands of dollars Realtor.com and the other related websites spend?

Have you ever read some of the comments written on listing posts?

“Nice house, good luck with the sale”.

“Hope it sells quick for you”

“Charming house and nice presentation”

Are those vanilla or what?  But what else can someone write in respone to a vanilla post?

Data Overload

Now let’s talk about market data.  Does anyone really think that in this “Age of Google”, that agents have some type of exclusive access or control of housing market data?

Have you been to Zillow or Trulia lately?  The public can Google just about any data they want these days – recent sales, foreclosures, short sales, school rankings, crime, sex offenders, etc.

It’s almost impossible to own data these days.

So, what do many agents do? 

They post data, sometimes including nice looking charts & graphs.

That’s just great, but what the heck are readers supposed to do with the data?

What’s it mean to a buyer?  To a seller?  Are they supposed to draw their own conclusions?

It’s no wonder agents aren’t highly thought of by the public!

What would happen if you took your sick child to a doctor and he said something like, “blood pressure is 90 over 130, temperature is 99.1 degrees, and they have swollen glands” – and that was it.  Didn’t offer a treatment, any suggestions to take care of the symptons or anything.

That’s what I think of everytime an agent posts data without bothering to analyze what it means for their patients, err, I mean clients or target market.

Where’s the expertise?  What are you’re clients paying you for?  To be their Best Friend Forever, or for at least as long as it takes to complete their transaction?
Be a Lean, Mean Blogging Machine!

The great thing about blogging is that you can find an audience for just about anything written.

A target market though, should be clearly defined as opposed to trying to be everything to everybody.

There’s nothing wrong with blogging about listings & market data and even vanilla blogs are better than no blogs at all.   Over time though, one should strive to improve their creativity and targeting to improve their results. 

Experiment, be daring with your posts and try to distance yourself from the herd.

Be true to yourself by not conforming.

MORTGAGE, EXPERT, MICHIGAN, BIRMINGHAM, BLOOMFIELD, DETROIT, ROCHESTER, ROYAL OAK, TROY

You’re looking for a home and/or mortgage, so you’ve started your search online like over 70% of consumers.

There’s so much information, it’s overwhelming.

A simple search like, “Birmingham Michigan Mortgage Rates“, returns 180,000 results!

How do companies and individuals stand out in that big of a crowd?

They all compete to be on the first page of Google as over 90% of those searching Google don’t look further than that. 

Does being on the first page of Google mean that company/person is an actual expert or the best one to call?

Not by any means. 

All a high Google ranking MAY imply is that:

• that company/person has put out enough content to be noticed by Google.  That doesn’t mean it’s good content though!
• the high ranking company/person hired a company to post content for them and do other things to manipulate them to the top – they’ve basically bought there way there.

So how can someone searching the web be sure their search leads them to the right expert?

Read the content associated with the company/person your search leads you to!

• Once you do that, several patterns emerge:
• You’ll see real estate agents that only post listings for sale.
• Other agents may only post sales data.
• Many lenders and loan officers only post interest rates.
• Too many basically just brag about how good they are.

True experts, the one’s you should hire, will show their expertise by doing more than the above.

Think about it this way, you don’t need a real estate agent to find homes advertised online for sale.  Information is also readily available online about sales data and trends.  Same goes for interest rates.

As I pointed out with the 180,000 search results for “Birmingham Michigan Mortgage Rates“, that’s way too much data to interpret.  That’s what you need an expert for.

A true expert will assist you in efficiently and logically understanding what the data means for your situation – whether buying or selling real estate or looking for a purchase or refinance mortgage.

Keep all this in mind the next time you search online for anything.

Experts earn that title, they don’t buy it.

BTW – as I’m considered an expertin my field and use that earned title to improve my Google rankings, I encourage you to check out my blog, website and fanpage to determine for yourself if I’m worthy of being called an “expert“:)

MORTGAGE, EXPERT, MICHIGAN, BIRMINGHAM, BLOOMFIELD, DETROIT, ROCHESTER, ROYAL OAK, TROY