Posts Tagged ‘real estate website’

How To Sell Your House Fast In A Slow Market

Friday, January 20th, 2012

In today’s real estate market, more houses are sitting on the market than there are available buyers.   Still, every day lots of new homes enter the saturated market with home owners trying to sell the homes or banks trying to offload their foreclosed homes.

Selling your house fast can therefore quickly become a challenge.   So how can you get your house sold in such tough conditions?

When most home buyers start looking for houses, they start their search on the internet.  Most of the times, they are usually able to access houses listed in the MLS like realtor.com and other real estate websites.

Usually this happens long before they call a Realtor. What they do next, such as narrowing down on the right home, driving out to see it, etc, depends on several factors.

1) Price
Once they search their house using the right criteria, such as size, neighborhood, price range,  the first thing they look for is the price.

Of course a home buyer is attracted by the lowest priced homes.   So it means pricing your house lower than similar houses in the neighborhood will make it sell faster.

Of course price is not the only thing home buyers notice, but it the first thing they notice.

Newly listed houses are more attractive than old ones, so getting it right the first time is important.

Of course you can only price it low if your mortgage balance allows it.  Your Realtor should be able to guide you to get the best price for your house.

2) Staging and presentation
Staging seems to get overlooked when selling a house.  The pictures posted with the listings can make a big impact with the buyer.

Again, notice this happens long before they drive out with the Realtor to see the house.

Do the pictures make it presentable?  Are the most prominent features of the house highlighted by the pictures?

Whenever possible, it is easier to present a house that has furniture than one with no furniture.   If no furniture is available, try to cover all angles of the house to present the best features.

Remember, the first impression the home buyer gets will determine if they come take a look at the house.

3) Curb appeal
Once the home buyer decides to drive to your house with their Realtor, the first thing they will notice is how the house looks like on the outside.

How clean does the yard look?  Is the roof covered by a tree hanging over it? A simple coat of paint on the outside and the mailbox can drastically improve the curb appeal.

Remember the house must be attractive for them to even take a look inside.

4) Condition of the house
Does the house need repairs?  Most buyers are turned off by repairs.    Most cannot handle any repairs.

And if they can handle it, they will expect a further price cut to cover it.

Are the main appliances working?  If at all possible, fix the house with a new coat of paint and carpet.   Do not over-do repairs or you might break the budget.

5) Negotiate
If an interested buyer asks for it, be ready to negotiate.  A small price break might be all they need.   It can make the difference between selling or not, or even keeping it for months.

Most home buyers start their search on the internet from websites that have mls idx where they can search for homes available. If you are a Realtor, learn how you can super charge your business with an automated direct response real estate website .

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How To Identify A Good Deal For Real Estate Investing

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

The current real estate market continues to deteriorate and house prices continue to go down.  More and more people need to sell their houses or lose them to an already saturated market.

We are likely to continue seeing this trend for a while, which means house prices will continue going down.

So how do you identify a good deal that will hold its value until you sell?

Most home owners looking to sell their houses now understand that the value of their house is quite unstable.

They understand that their houses are losing value every day, and that they cannot rely on prices just 2 months old.

They also know that they can no longer sell their house at market value any more.

Too many houses are sitting in the market that you can almost certainly negotiate the price down on most properties even if the asking price is well below market value.

Motivated sellers know that you must also give a discount when you sell your properties, so they do understand the discount they give you will be passed on.

If you buy, fix and sell for instances, you can end up holding your houses for as long as 6 months.

How much value will the house lose in this time?

If you do not answer this question before you buy, you are likely to end up paying too much for your investment properties.

Even if you wholesale houses, you still need to answer this question.   How much will your buyer need to discount the property when they sell?   As a general rule, you can only wholesale houses if you leave enough money for the wholesale buyer to make money also.

Lots of investors have previously been quite comfortable buying houses at 70 cents on the dollar less repairs.  Some real estate investors still use these numbers.   In this market, 60% minus repairs is barely enough.

If you buy properties to hold as rentals, then these numbers can work perfectly.

If you fix properties to sell them on retail, then your numbers must cater for long holding costs and associated price drop.  Naturally you should cater for the discount you will give when you sell!

These days, a discount of as much as 15% to 20% is not uncommon.   Is that enough to make you a profit?

Motivated sellers understand this quite perfectly, and I find it easy to use it to negotiate my prices.   Of course, the discounted dollar figures they give you might look big.  Any good real estate investor knows that we work with percentages, not dollar figures.

Once I explain my numbers in percentages, they can easily see how it small my margin really is.  Once they realize you are not taking advantage of them, they will sell their house to you at a price that makes you a profit.

Have you seen a drop in profits in the current market because you see to be out-priced by the drop in house prices?  Get more in-depth articles in our real estate blog and find out how you can run your business from an interactive real estate investor website that automates most of your business so you make more while spending less time, money and effort.

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Posted in House Flipping Website, real estate investing, Real Estate Investing web sites, Real Estate Squeeze Pages | No Comments »

Attracting Targeted Clients Through Search Engine Optimization in Real Estate Investing

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

An effective website for real estate investing is necessary for the success of a real estate investing business. A website that receives few or no visitors brings little to no money. The secret to having a successful website is to receive targeted visitors who are interested in what you offer.

A website that attracts visitors through the search engines is therefore a big asset for a real estate investing business. In this article, we cover how to optimize a website to attract leads, and closed deals, through the search engines.

What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making a website popular in the search engines thereby achieving higher ranking for the keywords it is optimized for. A keyword or key phrase is the term a person looking for your services is likely to type in a search engine such as google.

Whether we are referring to a single word keyword or a long tail key phrase, we will refer to it as just keyword for our purposes.

Search engine optimization comes in two parts:

1) On-site search engine optimization
This involves making sure the content of the website talks about the keywords you wish to target. If you buy houses, this could be keywords like we buy houses, sell your home, sell my house, etc.

The keywords must be included in the title, meta description and the content. Keywords in the meta tags play little to no role. Keywords in the domain name can play a big part in achieving superior search engine ranking.

2) Off-site optimization
Off-site optimization involves creating one way links from third party websites to your website. Search engines consider websites with more links pointing to it as being more popular than those with few or no links and are ranked more highly.

There are lots of elements involved between these two, but your website must include these two to be highly ranked by search engines.

How do you target the right keywords?
Every business starts with market analysis to find out if it is worth investing your time and money in that niche. Once you have decided what you want to do, you then narrow down on the right keywords.
It is always a good idea to be as narrow and targeted in your keywords as possible. For example, the term real estate would be too broad and most likely, too competitive.

First, it would take a lot of effort and money to rank highly for this keyword. Secondly, most of the visitors you get are not likely to convert into clients. Likewise, the keyword we buy houses is likely to be too competitive.

In real estate investing, the best keywords are the ones that target a small (narrow) niche and possibly your geographical location. For example, the keyword sell my house in Dallas is much more effective than just sell my house.

This way, your website will attract very targeted visitors who are likely to be looking exactly for the services that you offer. It is also likely that you will rank much higher, more easily with less effort and money when your website has a targeted niche market.

Why is SEO important?
Obviously, getting high rankings in the search engines will bring you new clients, maybe for years to come. In real estate investing, most real estate investors do nothing after they get their websites. They never optimize them, and just hope people will somehow find them now that they have a website!

This puts you at an advantage – just a little input or some modest SEO on your website is likely to put you in a leading or top position for your keywords in your local market.

The competition is not too much in this niche, and you are likely to stick at the top for years with the right search engine optimization for your website. This can mean continued business and profits for years to come just with a one-time targeted search engine optimization.

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How To Keep Your Real Estate Investing Mailing Lists Clean

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

Successful real estate investors run direct mail campaigns to keep the leads coming in..  I send out post cards and letters to potential motivated sellers in my business. Motivated sellers are people who need to sell their houses, probably because they are in trouble that can be relieved by selling their property.

 There are so many motivated sellers in today’s real estate market that you cannot handle all of them.  To save money and be more effective in your direct mail campaigns, you must therefore clean up your mailing lists.
 Here is how to get a good return on investment in your direct mail.

 People in trouble who own real estate form my mailing lists, such as people going through divorce, people with liens, bankruptcy, etc. Most likely these people are looking to get rid of their houses or they end up in foreclosure.

I also look for people who have inherited properties.    Sometimes they inherit the mortgage and if there is no mortgage, they need to cash out.   The beneficiaries usually cannot fix them up and find it hard to sell them in the open market.  These probate properties can be very profitable.

 Absentee owners also form part of my mailing lists. Usually these are land lords, and sometimes people who either divorced or work out of town.   Most land lords are looking to get out after having being burned by bad tenants.   Usually they own several properties which can all be good deals.

Expired listings from the MLS also form a big part of my target properties.  Of course these people have been looking to sell, but have not been successful.

This means I sometimes end up with 1500 to 2000 new leads every week. All this means I can have 1500 to 2000 new leads a week.   I must therefore clean them up and target them better.

1) Geographical area
 Since I live in a big metro area, I can only buy houses from a small area.  This means I only target certain zip codes.   No matter where you live, avoid war zones.

 I avoid houses more than 30 minutes drive away.

2) Price range
Since I wholesale most of my properties, I avoid the very low end properties and the very high end properties.   The middle range properties are better for me because there are more buyers.

3) Recording date
If a property was last recoded less than 10 years ago, it’s out of my mailing list.   Sometimes inherited properties can have exceptions.

 This is because they could have some equity.   If they have refinanced they may not have as much equity.

4) Return mail
I send 2 post cards and if sending direct mail to probate leads, I send several of them over a few months.   Some of these addresses are undeliverable and bounce back.   You must get rid of these  addresses in your next mail sequence to save money.

Simon macharia invests in real estate in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. His real estate investing business is fuelled by leads generated by direct mail and through his real estate website. Learn how a good real estate investor website can help you close more deals while spending less money, time and effort.

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Posted in House Flipping Website, Private Money Websites, real estate investing, Real Estate Investing web sites, Real Estate Squeeze Pages | No Comments »

Easy Way To Approach Private Money Lenders For Real Estate Investing

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

 Access to unlimited private money is essential to success in real estate investing business.   Once you have private money, you can finance as many deals as you can find with little or no limitations.

It follows that you must approach potential private money investors and convince them to lend you their money for your deals.  This is where most real estate investors get nervous.

This article covers how to approach potential private money lenders and sell your ideas to them.

 As soon as you identify potential people with money to invest, you then convince them to invest in your deals.  This means that whenever you get new deals, you will be presenting them to your private money investors for funding.

 Lots of real estate investors first look for deals before they can approach potential private money investors.   Although this could be a safer approach, you stand the chance to lose the deals before they can get funded.  You might also have to leave out lots of good deals untouched.

Also, if you are using a broker to help you find deals, they are unlikely to spend their time working for you unless they know you have the money to make the deals happen.   They will be comfortable to work for you once they know you have the money.

 You are therefore in a better position if you can approach them before you get the deals.

This method is more aggressive but gets you better results.

Some prior preparation is necessary in order to convince potential private money investors:

1) Get a private money investors website
 Start with this as the first thing you do.  Even though you will talk to all your private money investors, you need them to learn about you as much as possible.

 A good private money investor website will help break the ice for you and tell them your story before you talk to them.   By the time you talk to them, you will be done with basics and discuss deals you may have for funding.

 You can also present the deals you have on your website.  We recommend a good website at the end of this article.

2) Draft a convincing sales letter
 If you have already identified potential private money investors, contacting them will be the next step.   This part can be tricky.

 When you send them a letter, it must provoke their interest with a strong call to action without being aggressive.

For this reason, you need to spend some time drafting a good sales letter.  Once to two pages is enough without being aggressive.

 Be sure to provide your website address and full contact information to make it easier to contact you.   You can also follow up with them with a phone call after a few days.  They will most like already know about you by the time you talk to them.

3) Present your deals
 The next step will be to present your deals for funding once you have them ready.

 As long as they look attractive to them, you are funded!

Successful real estate investors need to have a ready source of private money to finance their deals whenever they need to. A real estate website that targets private money investors and convinces them to invest in your deals is therefore necessary for your business. Find out how a private money investor website can super charge your real estate investing business.

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How To Use Private Money To Finance Reos And Short Sales

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

 Today, the real estate market is such that it is hard to get hard money.  Some hard money lenders have gone belly up, while the ones in business have tightened their underwriting procedures.

 Before you get funded, you have to make payments in points plus other fees in addition to high interest rates.  Of course this results to less profits. Of course a lot of them now even need credit rating to lend hard money.

This has stopped a lot of real estate investors from doing deals they once used to finance with hard money.   In this article we cover how you can finance your REOs and short sales.

 Banks always need to see proof of funds before they can allow the deal to go through.   A lot of real estate investors used to depend on hard money lenders for this.  Once you have lined up a reliable source of private money, this can be your proof of funds for your REOs.

If you wholesale properties the process will work the same as with other types of funding except you are using private money.  Contract assignment cannot work in this case.   You have to buy and sell the property on the same closing table in simultaneous closing.

The process goes something like this:

1) Identify the right property
In order to do a simultaneous closing, you must choose properties that will give you a sizable amount of profit.   This is because you must pay some closing costs both when buying and selling the property.  These costs should be absorbed by a big profit margin.

 A profit of $10,000 and above is good enough.

2) Identify your wholesale buyer
This is the person who will buy the property from you, usually a real estate investor.   These properties are usually sold at wholesale prices.

Make sure the buyer shows you proof of funds or the deal might not close!

 You will then sign a regular purchase sale agreement with them.

Of course, you sell the house more than you buy it.

3) Get your private money to the title company
 Have your private money investor wire the money to the title company.   This is the money you will use to close the first transaction.

Depending on what you have agreed with your private money investor, you will pay a small percentage between 1-2% for this transactional funding.

4) Your title company closes the two deals
 Once the deal is closed, you will walk home with the difference between your buying and selling price less closing costs and transactional funding.

 Since your fees are much less, you end up making more money.   This type of transaction works like this:

$100,000 – after repaired value
$50,000 – bank accepts your short sale offer
$75,000 – price you sell to your buyer
$25,000 your profit at closing
Costs:- $1000 private money fees plus any closing fees

As a cash buyer, it also means you can get your properties much cheaper than conventional buyers.

 You can use this method for both short sales and REOs. As long as the numbers make sense, your private money can buy you lots of deals this way.

In other words you use the private money as the source of funds to buy the property from the bank, then flip it on the same table to a cash buyer such as a real estate investor.

Simon Macharia invests in real estate and has done most real estate investing transactions. Learn how a good real estate website can attract private money investors for your business.

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Posted in House Flipping Website, Private Money Websites, real estate investing, Real Estate Investing web sites, Real Estate Squeeze Pages | No Comments »