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So how do you capture a typical real estate customer? According to the National Association of REALTORS® 2009 Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers, 94% of all home buyers and sellers begin their quests on the Internet, and many of them begin by going to a search engine like Google or Yahoo, where they do a search for homes or listings.

Then they choose a link to a real estate website and visit that agent’s site hoping to find help in their search. The overwhelming majority of these real estate customers are looking for home searches. If they don’t find a good, easy-to-use home search, they will generally move on to another website.

That seems pretty easy, then — just get a website with an IDX home search. Heck, you probably have one already. But here’s where we come to the first problem. Most real estate websites do an amazingly poor job of capturing leads.

If that website is a “typical” real estate website, a very small number of customers will fill out a guest registration form and identify themselves — generally just under 1%. Last year’s numbers from the National Association of REALTORS® pin that number at an astoundingly poor 0.87% capture rate.

What this means is that, out of every thousand visitors, you, the website owner, will actually capture only about nine leads. Sound familiar? The capture is very inefficient because real estate websites are not designed around capture, but rather around giving out information.

So here’s the problem: Internet traffic costs money. Either through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or through search engine optimization (SEO), the website owner is able to have his website listed on the search engines in such a way as to be displayed whenever a customer does a real estate search.

Pay-per-click advertising costs from under a dollar to several dollars per visitor, while search engine optimization costs several thousand dollars up front and needs to be continually managed in order to keep the site ranking high. So again, Internet traffic costs a lot of money.

Now, when you take that high cost of traffic and combine it with the low capture rate (0.87%) of real estate websites, the actual cost per lead becomes extremely high, usually well over 0 per lead. This is the reason that many agents, even those with websites, choose to purchase Internet leads from vendors rather than making their own.

Lead generation companies often charge and up for leads, and many times they sell the same lead to multiple agents. Some vendors charge as much as 30% of the closed transaction, resulting in lead costs of over 00. To make matters even worse, not only are those leads expensive, but often the lead quality is poor as well.

This is the very problem that caused me to begin to look for a solution. When I couldn’t find either an efficient website — a website that was designed specifically to maximize lead capture — I decided to build one. Several generations later, we ultimately developed a technology we called an LCM Gateway. LCM stands for “Lead Capture Module”.

Instead of having the inefficiencies inherent in even the best real estate websites, which are designed around delivering information, this LCM Gateway was designed to do only one thing: to capture Internet traffic.

Rather than having a capture rate of less than 1% like typical websites, the LCM Gateway captures between 30% and 40% of all its visitors, bringing the cost per lead down to as little as . More importantly, the quality of the lead is much higher than the quality of the leads supplied by lead vendors.

I can still remember those days of buying leads from companies like HouseValues (now called Market Leader), HomeGain, and Service Magic. I remember getting the same lead that had been sold to three other agents, and I remember getting some “leads” that had only a name and an email address!

I still remember spending lots of money and getting a high number of bogus leads. It was very frustrating, but I was desperate. So I decided to learn how to make my own leads. Now we generate all our own leads using our technology — tens of thousands of leads every single month! Is it any wonder that we’ve grown so fast?

And there’s no reason you can’t grow this fast as well. What it comes down to is having the customers. Let me give you an example. In Eagle, Idaho, we have an agent named Kyle Wilson. A relatively new agent, Kyle worked for Silverhawk Realty and had closed a very respectable 25 transactions in his second year. Not too bad for a new agent, I think you’ll agree.

He began using our LCM Gateway technology and soon he grew to a team of thirty agents and started looking at expanding to other markets. Kyle went on to do hundreds of real estate transactions that year, and became one of the biggest producers in Idaho. He listed homes at 8%, and the only thing slowing his growth was his ability to recruit and train more agents. What a success story!

So let me ask you a couple of questions. Did Kyle suddenly get smarter? Did he start working twice as hard? No. The fact is that Kyle is a very sharp and very talented guy. We simply helped point him in the right direction and gave him a few tools to make the process easier. He created the success.

And the truth is that it could just as easily be you. Why not? Do you work hard? Are you smart? If you answered yes to those questions, not only could it be you, it should be you! Why shouldn’t it be you?!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve told you how we ditched the typical real estate website design and developed something much better — our LCM Gateway technology. If you’re following along and feel like doing something simple to produce the leads you’ll need to use this approach, you’ll need to know how the LCM Gateway works.

That way whether you ultimately decide to license the technology from our company or you decide to build it for yourself, you’ll understand it. And that’s what I’ll cover in depth in the next part. If you don’t get anything else from this entire approach, learning how to produce lots of your own inbound leads will change your practice forever, so don’t miss it!

Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com and nationally syndicated author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, and 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask. Jones’ North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN’s Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is “changing the way real estate is being done in America.” This content is cross-posted in the following locations: BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, and now Amazon Kindle.

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Here we are with summer in full swing and business is, well, let’s say interesting.  As we refocus our efforts on the balance of the year, now is a great time to really stop and look at where we are, and what must be done to hit our goals for 2010.

Some of the biggest challenges we face today is the complicated nature of every transaction, with appraisals, lender restrictions, buyers that can’t decide and are waiting for further drops in prices, and the sheer amount of paperwork that is required to manage a deal.  It seems we need more help to do fewer transactions than ever before.   So what do we do?

Here are a few ideas that can make your world seem like you have some level of control:

First, block time every day to work on your business.  This sounds simple, but you must take time to focus on the things that will allow you to grow your business and earn additional profitability, for example:

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Home Buyers who are looking to live on or near a golf course will find one in Elk Grove, CA.

Valley Hi Country Club is located in Elk Grove, CA between Interstate 5 and Hwy 99 just 20 minutes at most from Downtown Sacramento. This is where you will find some of Elk Grove real estate in a spectacular Elk Grove neighborhood.

This private 18  hole golf course has full amenities with club house, pool, restaurant and facilities for weddings available to the membership.

Backing up to Valley Hi Country Club are some spectacular custom homes. There are homes in different price ranges depending upon the size and the proximity to the golf course or lake. There are a variety of homes on and near the golf course ranging in size. 

Be sure to call me, the elk grove realtor,  if you are interested in living in Elk Grove and would like to see Elk Grove homes for sale in or near Valley Hi Country Club area.

Elk Grove has 3 zip codes with an array of homes to chose from and priced well for any home bueyr from low, moderate to high.

You can always take a look at Sacramento Real Estate Neighborhoods for Elk Grove homes for sale.

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What exactly is a lead capture gateway and how is that different from my website?

In this part, I’m going to explain how lead capture technology works. Just like in the example above, imagine that same real estate customer going to a search engine and clicking on a link to find properties. But unlike the previous example, this time the customer is diverted to our LCM Gateway technology.

Unlike a website, our LCM Gateway is designed to capture a maximum number of visitors, so instead of capturing only about one percent of the visitors to your site, you’re now capturing between 30% and 40%. The first time through the gateway, the user has to register to use your website. From then on, he or she can come and go freely without ever re-registering. This process is seamless and it’s very effective.

Why does the lead capture gateway work so much better than the registration forms on most real estate websites? Why couldn’t you just put a registration form in the customer path and receive the same results? Well, you could. If you did, you would probably receive much better results than you receive now.

We’ve seen some agents take their site conversion up to the 5% range just by doing that one thing. But the LCM Gateway is specifically designed to maximize lead capture, while web forms are not.

Lead capture is a science. Everything about our LCM Gateway continues to be tested and modified in real time, so as to maximize lead capture. As I’m writing, we’re testing three distinct versions of our LCM Gateway, all in real time, and all with real customers. The data is astounding.

What we continue to learn is that every subtle nuance makes a difference — from font face, to font size, to font colors, to page background, to icons, to server side scripts, to programming languages like PHP, Java, and CGI, to client side scripts, to form validation, to everything.

What worked well last year is not necessarily working as well this year, as Internet shopping habits continue to change with the maturity of the Internet. The more people become familiar with the web, the more subtle the changes have to be in order to be effective. And as more agents become familiar with Internet marketing, the cost of traffic continues to escalate with the additional competition, making capture efficiency more important than ever.

For example, several months ago we experimented with changing one phrase on the LCM Gateway landing page. We tried several different versions over a period of a month or so, with over 50,000 unique visitors, and we learned that one particular offer consistently pulled nearly 3% better than another.

Some of the differences were visible, while others had to do with the processing of the online registration form. Since our first generation LCM Gateway, we’ve made hundreds of little changes, as well as dozens of major changes, every time improving conversion rates and the number of leads captured for our agents.

Remember, according to the NAR, the typical real estate website, even when all the registration forms are enabled, only has a site capture rate (CR) of just under 1%. Even the very best and most expensive sites only capture about 6%-8%, making any real lead capture on the website impractical and expensive, while continuing to get even worse as more and more people are bidding up the cost of Internet advertising.

But with the addition of an LCM Gateway in the customer path, website lead capture is not only practical; it’s probably the cheapest form of lead capture available. Just adding that one tiny change and the customer capture improves by a factor of 30 or more! And that drives the price of Internet customers down to an affordable level.

I can tell you that in our market, we capture some customers for less than per lead, and we produce our most expensive Internet leads for under each! With lead costs that low, we can afford to make more leads than we will ever use.

And having more leads than we can work allows us to relax. It also gives us room to grow. It means recruiting and team building. It means increased market share.

But every agent is different. Some have no interest in building a large team, while others do. We have one agent who creates thousands of leads, does the initial follow-up, and then hands off warm leads to other agents in his market for a referral fee.

He no longer works with customers directly but manages his own private relocation company! How you choose to work your business is entirely up to you. The key is that, with lots of customers, you have lots of options.

So how well are you tapping the largest of all markets — the Internet? Do you have efficient lead capture on your website? If you don’t, the first step to becoming a dominant real estate agent is having too many customers. You really have to start there. Everything else is second to that.

Today, lead vendors, and national real estate companies are spending lots of money tapping the Internet. If you’re going to compete with them, you’re going to have to have technology that puts you on the same level. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself depending on lead vendors for much of your business.

What’s next? Next, we’ll be discussing advertising. Where should you be spending your marketing dollars if you’re to become the top listing agent in your market? What strategies will get you the most bang for your hard-earned advertising buck? Is it possible to be effective in advertising without breaking the bank? How can you know for certain which ads are working and which ones aren’t?

All these questions will be answered in the next installment, so you won’t want to miss it. I’ll also be telling you my secret for finding hundreds of new listing leads without ever calling a FSBO or an expired listing! In the meantime, work on getting efficient lead capture technology in place. There’s never going to be a better time to start than right now.

Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com and nationally syndicated author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, and 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask. Jones’ North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN’s Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is “changing the way real estate is being done in America.” This content is cross-posted in the following locations: BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, and now Amazon Kindle.

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Morgan Creek Golf & Country Club is a private 18 hold golf course with club amenities located in West Roseville around some spectacular luxury custom homes on 1/2 acre lot sizes that wind through the front nine. This is some of Roseville real estate in a neighborhood that is sought after.

This 546 acre master-planned community had 3 primary builders, JMC, Lakemont and  William Lyons. There are many semi Custom homes on at least 1/4 acre lots. 

Artisan homes with Tuscan architecture, villas on the Green where 64 European home designed with maintenance free living and ranging from 2654 to 3128 square feet are situated on an 18 hole putting green.

The community is secured with greeters to help answer questions and assess the nature of the visitor.  Give me a call, the Roseville Realtor ® to help you, the home buyer gain access to this West Roseville neighorhood and the pride of Roseville real estate.

Pinehurst and Cypress are located on the south side of Morgan Creek along the back nine.

Yet, around the borders of Morgan Creek, there are equestrian trails, ranches and farms to give that country feel and yet just minutes from the bustle of the Galleria Mall and everything you need at your fingertips.

Schools for this area are, Dry Creek Elementary, Creekview Ranch Middle and Oakmont High.

Check out the homes for sale at Sacramento Real Estate Neighborhoods or give me a call and I will help you find just what you are looking for.

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As a luxury real estate marketing professionals you can steadily increase readership of your blog by expressing your personal views about what it is like to live and play in your area, your local marketplace.  Expressing your voice, your viewpoint is what will make your blog interesting and will attract your readers to do business with you.  People like doing business with people like themselves.  It is, therefore, important to express your personal point of view so other with the same values can identify with you.  We call this “romancing your marketplace”.  Here is an example.

One of our favorite attractions here in Santa Barbara County is the Carpinteria Salt Marsh Nature Park. The park encompasses 110 acres of prime ocean front land, and is reserved as a sanctuary for rare and endangered plants, birds and wildlife.  It is located within a few blocks from our home. The trails of the salt marsh, that we love exploring, meander through the estuaries that lead to the beach.

Chaparral Mallow

This Sunday, as we walked to the beach, we saw a blue heron preening his feathers, a snow white egret fishing on the banks of the waterway, a couple of cottontail bunnies hopping along our trail, and a family of mallards gliding on the water.  One of the paths was bordered with a riot of pinkish purple blooms on silvery bushes called chaparral mallows, which are native to the California seaside.  On Saturday mornings, there are docents present for those who like guided tours.

The reason potential clients and referral sources follow your blog is because it speaks to their interests and values.  The connection and often the referral happens when they find out that you love wildlife, nature walks or the environment too, not necessarily when you tell them about the latest real estate statistics.

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Many times I am asked as a Sacramento Realtor ® if it is necessary to have a home inspection when the homebuyer is purchasing a Short Sale or a Bank Owned Foreclosed home for sale.

My answer is always, YES!  There are so many reasons why a home buyer should always have a home inspection whether or not the seller will pay for repairs or not.  Here are just a few of the reasons why every home buyer needs to pay for a home inspection.

Determines if the home buyer can afford the repairs and afford to buy the house
Gives the home buyer a punch list of needed repairs to make down the line

The Sacramento home buyers I work with know the value of having a home inspection and always decide to spend the money for one.

If you are thinking of buying a house sine interest rates have never been lower and we won’t see interest rates at this all time low in our life time again, be sure to check out all the homes for sale at Sacramento Real Estate Neighborhoods which comes directly to you from the MLS.

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When the hostiles are charging and you’re out of ammo, you start throwing things. That’s where the Federal Reserve is today. Having flooded the financial system with liquidity and pushed interest rates down to zero for banks, they have now moved to pump more funds into the system. Yesterday’s action was the equivalent of throwing stones after all the guns have been fired.

The dirty secret of monetary policy is that it cannot force anything. It persuades, cajoles and uses market channels to try to get banks and other financial institutions to do what it wants but it can’t mandate any action (unlike fiscal policy which operates through the enactment of laws that must be obeyed–or, in the case of taxes, circumvented). So while the Fed has done what if can do, the banks sit on their hands, refusing to lend and thus stimulate a naggingly moribund economy. Rather the banks have used the liquidity to play the short term securities markets and increase their profits. To the extent that these profits have been returned to the government in the form of repaid TARP money, we the people benefit. But most of these profits have been held in the banks, pushing up their stock prices and increasing the wealth of bank owners and executives.

The Fed has done what it can. But if monetary policy is going to help this economy grow, the banks need to step up and do their duty, instead of behaving like pure profiteer who don’t care whether the economy shrinks or grows.

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As you can see by the graph below, 1,262 homes sold in July with 2,321 homes receiving offers. Inventory has steadily climbed since November leaving Sacramento with 5,085 homes for sale.
Overall, inventory is up 7.4% over last month with solds down 30.4%. Not a good picture for real estate. With the current inventory based on the sold properties, Sacramento has 24.8 months worth of inventory left to sell.

To break this down further, there were 1,059 bank owned REO Foreclosed homes for sale with 480 sold. Inventory was up from the previous month by 6.6%.
And Short Sale inventory was up 12.2% with 1705 homes for sale with 302 homes sold down by the previous month by 38.1%. The good news is that there were 1,001 homes receiving offers, placing them into the Pending Sale status. 

There were 2,321 Traditional homes for sale (not bank owned and not short sale) in July up from the previous month of June by 4.3% however, 481 homes sold bringing the tradition homes sold down by 29.7% from last month.

It would appear that home buyers have certainly declined and one of those contributing factors would be the elimination of the home buyer tax credit that the Federal Government offered.

What is surprising is the with interest rates at an all time low and interest rates where we will never see them in our life time again, home buyers are not jumping at the chance. I sure hope, those with equity have refinanced since it is an opportune time to refinance.

If you would like to view homes for sale, be sure to check out Sacramento Real Estate Neighborhoods and simply sign-in with your email address to receive the latest homes for sale each morning.  Then, give me a call and let’s get started finding you just the right home.

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See the ad…on the right sidebar?

We’ve all been logged into Facebook and then off to the right of our page seen one of those little “sponsored ads”, right?  They are often times things or services that you are interested in, rather than just vague, off-the-wall ad slams.  How do they do that?  It’s simple, but genius at the same time.  Facebook uses the information that we have all entered into our “Likes / Interests” area to send you ads that it thinks you might respond to.

As an example, for my purposes, I decided to create an ad for one of my online networking associations, thinking to boost traffic to the website only at the time.  That happened, definitely…I set up the ad so that I only paid on click thrus…which in the less than 24 hours, I received 126 click thrus…scratch that….targeted click thrus to my site.  This association targets female real estate agents, so I set up my ad this way:

Targeting

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