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| November 16, 1999 |
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Peter G. Miller
Hardly a day goes by without a news release promoting the latest online site, system, or idea. While it's great to see so many alternatives for both consumers and brokers, the harder question is figuring out what actually works.
In most businesses there is a trail of events which leads to the promised land of checks that don't bounce. You first create a product or service, promote it, develop a client base, do business, and if you do enough business you then get to eat regularly.
For real estate brokers, the usual process is to do as much marketing as possible to obtain qualified prospects -- people who are ready, willing, and able to buy professional services and pay an acceptable level of compensation. Because the Internet reaches a large and growing user base, it follows that the Web has enormous potential as a prospect-generating device. No less important, the cost for brokers to market online is relatively low when compared with traditional media.
But given that there are so many sites and options, which ones deliver the most quality leads to brokers?
We could look at such measures as page views, dollars invested, unique visitors, ad budgets, site revenues, cash profits, and other benchmarks. We see references to such yardsticks constantly, but for brokers there is one measure that trumps all others: checks.
Jim Lee, a net-smart Realtor from Knoxville, says "I define a quality lead as something that I think has a reasonable expectation of producing a sale leading to a commission check I can deposit in my bank account."
In other words, the typical benchmarks used to measure online success for much of the Internet are irrelevant to brokers.
Rather than the measures now commonly found online, there's an easy way for realty web sites to establish their worth with the brokerage community: Just post uncompensated accolades from large numbers of brokers and salespeople, praise which plainly says, "I got a check."
The Common-Sense Mortgage
The latest edition of The Common-Sense Mortgage is now available in bookstores online and off. In print for nearly 15 years and widely recognized as the standard consumer guide to real estate financing, previous editions have been described as "virtually in a class by itself" (The Philadephia Inquirer) and as "one of the best available guidebooks to the realty financing jungle," (The Los Angeles Times).
Whether financing or re-financing, whether you're a borrower, broker, or loan officer, this money saving, easy-to-read and well-organized guide is a necessity for anyone in the real estate marketplace. For additional information, press here.
Question Of The Week
Q: My credit is horrible because of a recent bankruptcy. Given my finances, does it make sense to enter a lease-to-own arrangement?
A: For obvious reasons, lenders are not thrilled by bankruptcies and foreclosures, especially recent ones. They want would-be borrowers to re-establish credit over time, especially if the default is a result of financial mis-management.
If you rent with an option to buy you need to look at a number of basic issues. How much of the monthly rental, if anything, will be a credit toward the purchase? Is the purchase price locked in? Will the seller provide financing? On what terms and at what costs? Is there a point where you will need to refinance and thus get loan approval from conventional lenders? Etc.
You'll want to work with a broker to find a good property, and the paperwork should be reviewed by a knowledgeable attorney before signing.
Weekly Resource
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