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Friday, January 18, 2008

Real Estate Leads 101:A System For Success

By Ashley Lichty

When dealing with real estate leads and converting leads to clients, there are three important questions to ask yourself:

1. How are you getting real estate leads?

2. How are you following up with your real estate leads?

3. Are you using a system for effective follow up?

How to Get Real Estate Leads

For questions 2 and 3 to even be an issue, you first have to figure out a way to GET real estate leads. You can't follow up with something you don't have! There are several traditional ways for real estate agents to collect real estate leads in their pipeline. One way is the direct marketing approach – basically you send out a whole lot of newsletters, fliers, and postcards with your contact information to homes in the neighborhood you're farming for real estate leads. If you start getting calls and emails, you've started building your own pipeline.

A second way of getting real estate leads is to network and ask past clients for referrals. As a real estate agent, you should always be talking to be people in the outside world, letting them know what you do, handing off business cards. Whether you're at a sports event, a dinner party or you're child's school play, there are plenty of opportunities to build real estate leads. Never be afraid to call on old clients for referrals either – if you did your job right,t hey should be more than happy to send friends and family your way.

A third way to get real estate leads is through internet marketing. In this case, I mean building your own website with contact pages as well as subscribing to some kind of online lead generation service. By doing both, you can both harness your own real estate leads and also get plenty of leads from an outside source.

My advice? Go with all three. A good mix of direct mailings, networking, and internet marketing should have your pipeline a mile long with real estate leads. Keep in mind though that you will have to spend a little money to get all those leads!



Following up with Real Estate Leads

Without follow up, your real estate leads will be leads forever, never clients. Following up simply means to increase the effectiveness or success of something with further action. Following up with real estate leads can involve phone calls, emails, direct mailings, dropping by the property, etc. Basically, use any means necessary (within reason) to make contact with your real estate leads to determine what you can do for them. It may take 2 weeks of follow up to convert a lead, it may take 2 months, it may even take 3 years, but as long as you are consistent and persistent with follow up tactics, you can convert your real estate leads into clients.

One thing to keep in mind with follow up is that you should always have a reason to be contacting your real estate leads. Don't give them to much information in one mailing, or else you use up your reason for contacting them at a later date. Instead, send them pieces of useful information regularly over extended periods of time. It doesn't even necessarily have to be directly relating to home buying or selling – you can send them information about their community they may not know, the schools, job opportunities in an area you know they were thinking about moving to, the standings for the little league championship their son was in, etc. The information you're sending your real estate leads should be a individualized for each lead.

Are you going to convert all your real estate leads? No. Do you need to convert them all? No. Should you still TRY to convert them all? Always! Most people will need a real estate agent at some stage in their life, so you might as well be the agent right there to help them out, answer any questions and keep them informed with useful information.

Employing a System for Follow Up

A system is simply any formulated, regular or special method or plan of a procedure for obtaining an objective. In the case of real estate, your objective is to convert real estate leads to clients through follow up. Your system of follow up is simply an organized, efficient and general procedure to get in contact with your leads.

Without some sort of system of following up with your real estate leads, it's very easy to waste precious time because of disorganization. Having a system is the most effective way to streamline your follow up so you still have time to actually list and sell your clients' homes! After all, with hundreds of real estate leads to constantly follow up with, when are you supposed to have time for listing presentations, settlement, advertising homes for sale, etc?

By having your own organized plan of follow up, you can dedicate certain hours in your day to your follow up of real estate leads. There are services out there that “sell” follow up systems to real estate agents, but they're really not necessary for everybody. If you're already disciplined and organized, there's no reason you can't formulate your own system of follow up, like designing several email templates, dedicating a certain amount of time each day to phone calls and creating an easy to access, track and monitor database of your real estate leads which includes all the important contact information needed to get in touch with them.

A system can be something as simple as creating a schedule for yourself and then rigidly adhering to that schedule. Having a systematic approach to following up with your real estate leads is the best way to maximize your conversion rate and minimize time spent following up.


Get more information on real estate leads by visiting GetMyHomesValue.com.


Ashley Lichty is a webmaster and the resident SEO of Web Xtreme, Inc. She has a background in real estate and marketing with an emphasis in writing.

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Commercial Real Estate Agents

By Marcus Peterson

Let’s face it – you cannot intelligently buy commercial real estate properties without the help of an expert. Hiring a commercial real estate agent is your best bet against losing thousands of dollars you’ll likely spend, when you make costly mistakes or miss out on solid, commercial real estate investing opportunities. That is why finding and hiring a commercial real estate agent should be your first and most crucial step – it can make or break your commercial real estate venture.

Benefits of hiring commercial real estate agents

Professional commercial real estate agents or broker companies give you access to the best commercial real estate information available. They provide you with information about the latest sales price data, vacancy and absorption rates and comparative tax and labor costs to help you make informed decisions.

Experienced commercial real estate brokers can also help explain to you the present market lease trends, the current demographics, and they will give you a straightforward competitive analysis of different commercial properties that fit your purpose and budget. Professional commercial real estate agents or broker companies give you all this information so that you can anticipate opportunities, gain a competitive advantage and implement the best possible real estate approach.

If you plan to build commercial real estate, an agent can help you determine the best location using scientific local market data and a keen knowledge of the economic trends that affect the commercial real estate market. These agents are specially trained to handle very large transactions – millions upon millions of dollars. Their purpose is to find investments that will not only increase in value, but also give the investor a good revenue stream.

Never try to invest in commercial real estate property without consulting a commercial real estate agent. He or she will have the right training to impart helpful research, advisory and transaction services to you so that your commercial real estate venture goes smoothly.


Commercial Real Estate provides detailed information on Commercial Real Estate, Commercial Real Estate Loans, Commercial Real Estate Agents, Commercial Real Estate Brokers and more. Commercial Real Estate is affiliated with National Association Of Realtors.

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Tips for Real Estate Investing in Las Vegas

By Stephanie Hetu

Real estate investing in Las Vegas is very popular. Not only in Las Vegas, but all over the world people are investing their hard earned money in real estate. Many times you can double your investment and make a nice profit if you know how to do it. Being careful in which real estate you choose and your plans for profiting from it will pay off in the end.

When choosing which real estate to invest in, in Las Vegas, decide what kind of investment you want to make. Do you want to resell the real estate? Are you thinking of renting out or perhaps leasing the real estate? Knowing what you plan to do with the real estate will and who is in the market for it will help you tremendously in this endeavor.

If you are looking for commercial real estate to place your investment in, the location may hold all of the cards where your profit is concerned. Of course you would not want a piece of commercial real estate that is not in a predominant commercial area of town. You also want to take into consideration the businesses that surround the real estate that you are looking into investing in. The businesses that surround the real estate you are looking at, will need to be reputable and of high value for you to make a good profit.

When looking to invest in residential real estate, notice the neighborhood that the real estate is in. Also consider how much you are paying for the real estate and the improvements you plan to make to it before reselling or leasing. This will have a big impact on how much of a profit you will make. Take into consideration the condition the real estate is in when buying ‘as is', and have someone come in and give you a quote on the improvements you are wanting to make. Doing this and having a plan before you jump into buying something will let you see if you will actually make a decent profit or not.


Find more information about Las Vegas Real Estate at http://www.vegas-real-estate-tips.com.


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