Real Estate Marketing and the Mortgage Crisis

A recent article on CNN.com, Experts Tell How to Deal with Mortgage Crisis, answers questions that millions of homeowners find themselves asking. CNN's Larry King talked with several real estate and financial experts to get advice on handling the mortgage meltdown. Another article on CNNMoney.com, New Home Sales near Historic Lows, sheds light on just how low home sales have fallen.

The articles are everywhere; foreclosure rates are up, the economy is down and everyone is asking whether or not the worst is behind us.

While years ago simple marketing strategies would sell a house with little to no extra effort, today's competitive market demands more creative marketing. According to an article from the Kansas City Star, Real Estate Agents are looking to marketing to survive this weak housing market. It is now more important than ever to look at your current marketing strategy and ask the hard question. Is it working? Is every dollar I am spending bringing me leads, or am I wasting money in some areas? Am I using the proper combination of marketing media to bring in more leads?

As a Dream house Photography virtual tour client, you have access to the tools you need to accurately measure the effectiveness of your virtual tour marketing. If you haven't done so already, now is the time to check out your HitStats for each of your virtual tours and analyze the results of your marketing efforts. If you find one media is bringing you more leads, allocate more advertising dollars toward that media. If you find that another media is bringing you zero business, cut off the funding for that media and allocate the funds elsewhere. If you don't know what marketing is actually working for you, then you may be making some advertising rep very happy, but you are hurting your business.

Have you heard of our PanoRiders?

If you are one of the few agents who have not started offering these fantastic add-on products to your list of offerings, you are missing out!

Missing out on what? ADDITIONAL REVENUE of course. These attention-getting sign riders can add significant traffic to your online listing.
 
With the current housing situation in most of the country, most real estate agents are cutting back on their marketing expenses. But this means they have to invest more time to sell a property. Why not use a PanoRider and set your listing apart from the crowd? These unique marketing tools are proven to save them time and bring you more leads in the process. In fact, several listings in the area have been receiving over 1/3 of their online traffic from the PanoRider!

If you don't have a sample PanoRider yet, now is the time to get one! Just bring a sample PanoRider to your next listing appointment and watch your sellers’ eyes light up. No other real estate agent will be walking in the door with this amazing marketing tool. So what are you waiting for? It is your business, so get busy and show your clients what you've got...show them your PanoRider and start generating more business in 2008!

But remember, it all begins with accountability. Make every marketing expense accountable for the results it produces. If there are no results, then cut the expense. Dream house Photography has provided our clients with the tools you need to succeed in this weak housing market!

Give us a call and get started optimizing your real estate marketing strategies today.

Featured Virtual Tour

If you are a real estate agent that sends zip files to homeowners, I would recommend that you add instructions on how to properly Unzip images. While many people are familiar with unzipping files, there are a few that are new to this process.

The easiest way to ensure uniformity (if you use Microsoft Outlook) is to setup a template that is sent out to each client upon completion of their virtual tour.

You can do this by writing an email as normal and then saving it by clicking on FILE>SAVE AS and then selecting OUTLOOK TEMPLATE from the drop down menu at the bottom. Remember to name your template something that you will remember before saving it. From them on it is as simple as selecting TOOLS>FORMS>USER TEMPLATES IN FILE SYSTEM> MYFILENAME.

I have included a sample for your convenience. Feel free to copy and paste this into your email template.

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To download photos:

1. Click on the photo link above.

2. Click on open

3. When the folder opens, click on 'extract all'

4. Extract the photos to a folder on your computer.

Please note that if you save the zip file to your computer, the photos cannot be uploaded directly from the zip folder. The photos MUST be extracted from the zip file as instructed above, otherwise your system may not recognize the images as valid and you will get an error.

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Adding these simple, yet straightforward instructions to your emails will assist those clients unfamiliar with Unzipping files and your clients that do understand will still have step-by-step instructions for reference.

Would you like to host your own tours on your server? Remote host tours now include four different viewers for you to choose from: a fully branded version, an unbranded version, a flash only version, and a java only version.

The fully branded remote host looks very much like our online tours, although it does not have all the capabilities as an online tour, such as email, hit stats link, view my gallery, or download tour. The viewer will also have buttons to toggle between Java and Flash.

The unbranded version is just the tour itself with the control buttons around it. The viewer will have buttons to toggle between Java and Flash.

 

The Flash only version is an unbranded version of the tour that plays in Flash. There is  Java support for your Flash remote hosted tour.

The Java only version is an unbranded version of the tour that plays in Java. There is no Flash support for your Java remote hosted tour.

You will need a webmaster to install your remote hosted tour on your server. The webmaster installing the remote host files on your server will have the ability of using any of the four options above. As you can see, our remote hosted tours have more features than ever before, and that flexibility will also benefit your clients and potential customers.

Remember, in order to use a remote host tour you must have a webmaster or programmer available to log into the server, make any necessary changes, and install the files.