A thoroughly British Blog.

I have always wanted to go to an Inman Connect conference, but sadly being here in little old England has always meant I've followed the event from my computer screen...desperately waiting for the next tweet or blog post with all the hot RE gossip, tips and tricks.

Through platforms like ActiveRain I've come to know hundreds of US based RE folk over the past year and a half or so, and I was starting to think I'd never actually meet them 'IRL' (in real life).

This weekend, my luck changed dramatically :-D

On Friday night I entered a competition on Jay Thompson's popular real estate blog 'Phoenix Real Estate Guy'. The prize? A conference pass for the entire duration of Inman Real Estate Connect NYC (sponsored by the guys and gals at Inman News) and a whopping $1500 worth of travel expenses (kindly sponsored by the great team at HomeQuest).

When I entered Jay's competition I never thought I'd win, I won't lie and say 'I've never won anything before in my life' but the things I have won have usually been crappy things like pens or book tokens. A trip to New York? Unlikely.

I actually went to Brighton (on the English coast) for the weekend and wasn't even online when the draw for the winner took place, I was probably watching the sunset over the sea when Jay's daughter Lauren picked a name out of the hat for the prize. Just before midnight I checked my emails on my cellphone as I didn't have access to a computer, I was really just checking to see if I had any new Twitter messages or comments on my YouTube videos but there were a couple of direct messages through Twitter saying things like 'Congratulations'. The penny dropped when the next message said 'Can't wait to meet you in NY!'.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <------my reaction as I realise I must have won the competition.

I managed to find a friend with a dodgy internet connection where we were staying and logged on to Jay's blog to confirm the good news. I can't tell you how happy I am and how grateful I am to Jay, Inman and Homequest for making it possible for this loudmouth girl from London to hop on a plane to New York and attend Connect.

So I guess all that's left to say is that if you're going to Inman Connect...see you there!

If you're lucky, I may even bring British candy ;-)

 

 

A lot of the US agents I speak to are curious about the real estate buying/selling process that takes place here in the UK. After all it's not just interesting for curiosity's sake, it's very important if you're ever selling to UK investors who are used to a very different process.

I've made a little video over at AgentGenius to try and give a brief overview of what we do and how it's different, would be interesting to hear what you think of our system :-)

You can read the post and watch the video here.

Have a super Sunday people! :-D

So somehow I went from being that girl from London who posts on AR every day to simply disappearing all together.

Well, I didn't completely disappear, those who follow me on Twitter will know by my incessant tweets that I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth. Some of you may even have seen my latest video blog (link won't be suitable for all, we're pretty snarky in it), which the superb Carolyn was cool enough to blog about a few days ago.

So all in all, you can call off the search party, I'm alive and very, very well.

The reason for my lack of real estate blogging was simple, I just changed jobs :-D I blogged about the fact I had accepted a new job at uber sexy property search engine Globrix a while back, but I actually only just started my position last week.

In between leaving my old job and starting here I've done all sorts...I was given the honour of becoming an AgentGenius contributor, I'm the first Brit to be allowed to blog at AgentGenius so I feel very pleased with myself about that one. So far I've written about the problems of marketing yourself vs marketing your company and I've also been writing about the mistakes I've watched real estate pros make when discussing politics online.  Aside from all that I've been doing a lot of baking, watched a lot of Ricki Lake and even went to Israel. 

But now I'm back and I'll be blogging over at Globrix about all the UK property news as well as all sorts of clever online tips for agents, of course I'll still be blogging here but if you'd like to add the Globrix Blog to your feed reader then that would be unspeakably cool of you. You can find the Globrix Blog here.

I'll stop dithering on now and leave you with a couple of photos from Israel :-D

 

A typical Israeli breakfast

 

Tel Aviv beach

 

 

 

 

The internet has become such an important part of our lives. We book our holidays with it, read the news with it, some of us even find our life partners with it! And lets face it, it's changed the world of real estate! But how many of us were saying "oh just look it up on Google" ten years ago?

Not many of us, because a decade ago Google was still all new and shiny, just launched to the world wide web and probably none the wiser that it would become the world's favourite website.

To celebrate Google's tenth birthday, they've brought back the 2001 version for us to play with.

Searching 'property blog' on the 2001 archive brings up 2,310 results (of which none are actually property blogs) compared with today's 13,600,000 results for property blog, most of which are pretty darn accurate.

ActiveRain must have just been the apple of Jon Washburn's eye back in 2001, as ActiveRain only got two results on old Google...and neither of these were property related ;-) Today, you're looking at 1,810,000 results for our favourite real estate blogging community.

Searching for 'Globrix' (the property search engine I work for here in the UK) in 2001 would have brought you, well, nothing. Search for Globrix today and there are around 762,000 results.

'Real estate' has always been a popular search term it seems, even in 2001 you could have found 11.5million results, but compare that to today's 624million results and you can see that the world of online real estate has come along way. Buyers are now spoilt for choice when looking for property for sale.

I have to say I was impressed to see that when googling myself (not as dirty as it sounds) on the 2001 version of Google I found two accurate results, one a review of BBC comedy The League of Gentleman and the other a review of a new Destiny's Child album...what an uber cool 14 year old I was, hmmmm.

Go search crazy on the old Google here, and sit back and think how of how far we've come in just seven years.

I don't have a standalone webcam at home, so I've never really gotten into the whole 'vlogging' phenomenon. But my MacBook (which I use at work) does have it's little inbuilt iSight for recording video...so whilst I've been off this week I took my MacBook home and started playing around with video. I've had a blast!

To dip my feet in the water I used 12seconds TV. 12seconds is an alpha mode website where you can record video updates, it's been described as the video version of Twitter. Because just like how you're limited to 140 characters at Twitter, at 12seconds you're limited to...guess what... 12 SECONDS!

I don't see any huge real estate applications for 12Seconds, you can't do a great deal in 12 seconds :-) But it's a fun site, great for transparency and networking, people can comment on the videos and you can subscribe to peoples 'channels'. One thing I would say, is that because it only takes 12 seconds to record/watch a video, it's never going to eat in to too much of your work time. That's a huge advantage! It's a fun site and there are a few real estate people there already that I know of including Jeff Turner, Derek Overbey, Brad Coy, Mark Eckenrode and Ted Mackel. There are probably heaps more!

Here's a video I made a few days ago, my channel itself is here.

British Weather on 12seconds.tv

 

After getting used to 12seconds, I felt comfortable enough to record longer clips, so I turned my attention to Seesmic. Seesmic is a video conversation site, you may for example ask a question and then people respond to you via video. It makes for great worldwide conversations...heck I was even chatting in French with people from across the channel this morning!

I love this site, I really really do. After all, I'm all the way in England and don't get any real 'face time' with my pals in the US, so it's great that I can feel like they're opposite me having a conversation. There are even more real estate people over at Seesmic, it's like a video ActiveRain if you log on at the right time of day!

Go take a looksie, you can watch videos without signing up, but the fun comes when you're a part of the conversation! You can search for people you know (find me here) and 'follow' their videos, and best of all you can now tag posts e.g with 'real estate' so that they can be searched by users. Mike Mueller was very excited to rank number one for 'mortgage'! Maybe we'll see you over there :-)

 

 

…are themselves beginning to sound like a broken record. Everything has to be on a biblical scale when we talk about house prices and today is no different, year-on-year British house prices have fallen by 8.1% according to Nationwide. And, you guessed it, that’s the biggest annual drop since records began in 1991. This is the top story in most of our papers today, as you can probably imagine. Soon we'll be lining up the animals two by two and jumping in the ark to sail to safety.

House prices have been hugely overinflated in this country for a very long time, I know I say it often but even during this 'house price crash' it would cost you over half a million dollars to buy my (fairly crappy and tiny) one bed apartment in East London. I think this 'crash' is more of a 'correction', a reality check to those who have grown to think it's normal for small houses in nice areas to be worth the equivalent to a million+ dollars.

But, all that being said, news is news and today we've learned that the average British home has lost almost £15,000 (or 30,000 dollars) in value since July 2007 and the number of first time buyers has fallen by 41%. It's a difficult time for first time buyers, they've waited so long for the chance to buy a property, the prices come down and *BHAM* nobody will give them a mortgage. The average age of a first time buyer here is 34, I'd be interested to know how that compares to the US.

Anyway, a picure tells a thousand words so here's what's happening on the other side of the pond...

 

I don't think anyone will be framing this pic and hanging it over the mantle any time soon!

You betcha it is! The last couple of gems to come from Real Estate Connect relate to some of the key problems that any real estate superhero has to face…

• Your inbox has a zillion emails and keeps getting more, how the heck do you stay on top of it?
• You’ve signed up to twitter and your dog is sick, should you tweet about it?
• You want to manage projects with clients and colleagues, can it be done easily without losing your sanity?

Connect helped property professionals to answer these questions and luckily for us folk who weren’t there, there have been some nice blog posts detailing what was said.

So, if your inbox is making you want to run for the hills then check out Jay Thompson’s post on AgentGenius - ‘Approaching Inbox Zero’. There you can learn how to delete, delegate, respond, defer and do, which should help your inbox shed all that unsightly excess weight it’s been carrying.

If you’ve been listening to all the hullabaloo about Twitter and want to start pimping your property company online, you may be wondering what the best way to go about it is. Well, as Todd Carpenter points out in his post ‘People Really Do Want You To Tweet About Your Cat’ over at RealEstateTomato, the agent who just tweets links to listings and data reports is unlikely to gain any new best friends any time soon. So does that mean it’s cool to tweet about things that aren’t property related, to be (dare I say it) unprofessional? Absolutely! Social networking for business is not about being the formal square in the corner.

And then lastly, if you’re looking for an easy project management tool, Dustin Luther suggests taking a look at BaseCamp. We use BaseCamp here at Zoomf Towers so we concur that it’s a great product (and with it’s 30 day free trial you can decide that for yourself before parting with any cash).

I can’t finish this post without mentioning one of the other highlights of Connect, the Inman Innovator Awards. Major kudos to all the winners, which include the super cool Lani & Benn from AgentGenius and Derek & Co from Roost.

I guess that’s it from Connect, until next time!

Well I'm kinda overexcited right now, I just got a big delivery of groceries from my gorgeous friends Gia and Grant from Realseekr.com. I can't put into words how excited I am about my new goodies, so I made a video instead.....and to all those who have been waiting to hear my British accent - enjoy! LOL!!!

I’ve harked on about it before, but it seems there are still plenty of agents who haven’t grasped the importance of property photos in a listing. Over at Real Estate Connect, it’s been a subject of debate at one of the panel sessions. Lorna Borenstein, president of Move Inc, said that their research had shown that consumers doubt the credibility of the agent when there aren’t multiple photos on a listing. And she’s right, a lack of photos is likely to make you think either that the property has something to hide or that the agent simply can’t be bothered. Neither of those are good things for your potential buyer/tenant to be thinking.

John Helm, CEO of apartment listing site MyNewPlace.com, said that their research had shown listings without photos only get around 25% of the click-thrus that listings with photos get. In today’s market, surely you want to give your listings the best chance for a click-thru? Make sure you always carry a (charged) digital camera with you! And then when choosing the main listing photo, choose the picture that best represents the property. If the best part about a property is its fantastic garden, then don’t make the main listing photo one of the kitchen. Simple stuff, but all too often forgotten.

Remember…

• No photos - implies the agent can’t be bothered or that the property is a bit crappy.
• One photo - may whet the appetite, but if comparing with other listings with plenty more photos then the one photo listing will probably get overlooked.
• Lots of lovely photos - leads to lots of lovely enquiries! People can see every room, imagine where they’ll put the TV and will have already mentally moved in before you’ve even picked up the phone.

                                         

Yes, this is a real listing photo. No, you don’t need fake people to sell a house. In fact, you don’t want real people in your property photos either.

According to new figures from the Bank of England, in some parts of the UK as many as four in ten homebuyers pull out before they complete. I’m seriously resisting a sexual innuendo here, immature I know! The Bank of England said…

“‘In the market for established homes, more transactions were falling through, with some estate agents reporting a cancellation rate of up to 40 per cent recently. That was partly due to the unwillingness of many sellers to accept a lower offer.”

But, understandably, many are resisting buying now in the hope for a better bargain later down the line, which in turn is screwing up housing chains left, right and centre. All this coupled with record low mortgage approvals paints a pretty gloomy picture over here, unless you’re a landlord of course ;-)

UK property for sale.