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The Crossland Team
Sylvia Crossland, Broker Steve Crossland, MPM (512) 301-5811 |
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Featured Listings
Austin MLXChange MLS Software Still Falls Short
April 20, 2008
I just finished running my stats for my Austin Rental Market update. This month I only had to report three listings to the Austin Board of Realtors which had bogus and incorrect data. Check the screen shot above to see the sort of thing Austin Realtors deal with on a regular basis.
Hopefully if you have an agent running a Market Analysis for you, he or she is keenly aware that the data from MLXChange cannot be trusted. It needs to be double checked before you rely on it. How would you like to go into an important math test with a calculator that spits out bad answers? Well, imagine trying to be an effective Realtor with an MLS System that spits out bad data.
As agents, we really have to pay attention to the MLS data from MLXChange. I always have a calculator at my side when crunching numbers because the MarketLinx MLXChange MLS system for Austin cranks out unreliable results. I could make 10 screenshots like the one above with other examples of miscaluculated data, the most frustrating of which is incorrect price per square foot calculations.
Those price per sqaure foot amounts you see above?… they are incorrect. I should have circled those in red also for the screen shot. Divide the average square foot Sold/Leased price by the average square foot amount from the colums to the left and the number is way off. They’ve had 6 months to fix this and it still produces incorrect values.
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New Crossland Real Estate Website and Blog - All Wordpress Now
April 18, 2008
After spending the past few months redesigning and completely redoing our Crossland Team website and blog, it’s finally done - well, close enough. It’s live and you’re seeing it now. I’m still ironing out some things, but that will always be true with any website, forever. A website is never really done. Whew! It was a lot of time and effort.
The problem I had with the old website was that it had been cobbled together using the Joomla CMS, OpenRealty for our Listings, Wordpress for the blog, and then we sent users off-site for the Austin Realtor Listings search because I never could get that part to function correctly inside a framed Joomla page.
Having what was really three separate sites trying to work together and appear as one made it a nightmare if I wanted to do something as simple as add another menu item. To do so, I would have to make changes to the coding of three different back-end templates, otherwise the site would lose the consistent navigation and look it had. I can’t believe I let myself get talked into a setup like that to begin with. It was a real mess.
The new website, for which this is my first blog article, runs 100% on Wordpress except for the Our Listings manager, which is an old customized version of OpenRealty that my programmer Ben at Seedling.com integrated into wordpress for me.
The advantages of having a Wordpress based real estate website are numerous, as I will explain in further detail below.
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How to Leave a Proper Voice Mail Message
February 16, 2008
As a Realtor, I leave and receive a lot of voice messages. Sometimes dozens a day or more if I’m showing a lot of occupied homes, or have a hot rental listing in Central Austin. The most I’ve ever had to return was seventy-something. One learns to get to the point when you have more calls to return than you have time to make them.
I’ve noticed that many people don’t leave very good voice messages. There is a lack of voice mail etiquette in the world today. Problems included garbled speech, fast speech, bad cell connection, no phone number, no information, no name, etc.
I actually delete a lot of voice messages without returning the call. Sorry, but after I listen for the 2nd or 3rd time and still can’t understand what you’re saying or a phone number, I move on to the next message.
As someone who has to weed through a lot of voice messages, here are Steve’s Tips on how to leave a good voice message.
1) State your name (first and last) and phone number in a slow clear voice at the very front of the message.
“Hi, this is Steve Crossland with Keller Williams…301-5811 …” (include area code if calling non-local).
This let’s the person write down these two most important things right away. How many times have you received a long, 60+ second rambling voice message and still the person hasn’t provided their phone number (and sometimes never do)? This is when I want to scream into the phone “ok! I know who you are and why you’re calling! Now shut up and tell me your blasted phone number!”
2) State the purpose of your call in a short, succinct manner.
“I’ll be showing you’re home at 123 Elm St. today sometime between 3PM and 5PM…”
Don’t say anything more than is necessary. For example, I don’t need to say “I have some buyers in from out of town, a nice young couple, and we’re going to be viewing homes in South Austin today, and your home is one of the homes I’ve selected to show, and my best estimate of when we might be coming is about 3PM or sometime after, maybe as late as 5PM, it depends on …blah blah blah”
ALL of the extra detail is unnecessary. Be succinct and to the point.
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How to set up a KW Agent Real Estate Blog
January 30, 2008
Today at our Keller Williams office in Austin we had a “Blogging 101″ class that I put together to help agents better understand everything involved with having a real estate blog. According to a National Association of Realtors agent survey, less than 2% of Realtors publish a real estate blog.
I was joined in the presentation by fellow KW agents and bloggers Dee Copeland and Sam Chapman. I wanted other blogger agents involved because we all have slightly different takes on the best way to run a blog, tools to use, do’s and don’ts, etc. It’s better that agents who know nothing at all about blogging hear several points of view about what’s involved. I could confuse them enough myself, but with three of us we achieved an even greater level of confusion!
One of the things we sought to impart to the attendees was the different choices available in setting up and starting a blog. One can start instantly, right now, by signing up at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, but I am of the camp that believes a blog should be integrated into an existing website, not kept at a hosted location or separate from an agent’s main site. The CrosslandTeam.com website is an example of the two being integrated on a common domain with a common theme.
So, if you’re just starting out, I think you should have your own domain name, your own web hosting account, and run a downloaded version Wordpress on your website.
By doing so, all of the content and information you create on your blog directly benefits your website because it is your domain name and website that is indexed by all of the search engines. With a hosted blog site, people may find your blog, but you miss out on the seo benefits, which is why you want to write a blog in the first place.
In trying to explain this during the class, I lost a few people, so I promised I would write up a step by step guide to follow for those wanting to own and maintain their own website/blog, and so here it is.
Step 1 - Register your own domain name.
Get out your credit card and visit Godaddy.com. On the home page, there is a box to type in domain names and check availability. You want a website dot.com name that is a) easy to say, b) easy to spell, c) easy to remember, d) short if possible and with no dashes or numbers. Remember, as a Realtor, you’re telling your email and website address to people on the phone a lot, and you don’t want to be spelling it out and repeating it every time.
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Moving Tips: How to get a better price on existing services
December 11, 2007
We’re in the process of moving. I called Time Warner to move my internet service to my new address, but when they answered, I told them I want to cancel the internet service instead. I don’t want to cancel (though I truley was considering it), so why did I do this? To get connected to the customer “retention” department.
Why the retention department? Because they are the ones who are authorized to negotiate a better deal that the one I currently receive. If I simply move the service, they will keep charging me the same rate. But by telling them I need to cancel and that I’m thinking about switching to AT&T DSL, that results in my being transferred to the “retention” department, though they don’t say that.
Once the retention person has me on the line, it’s their job to talk me out of switching to DSL. It’s my job to play hard to get. End result, they talked me into staying and dropped my monthly bill from $44.95 to $34.95 for the next 12 months, at which time it will go back up. But I’ll take the $120, and I enjoyed dealing with the better trained, more knowledgeable customer service rep (they don’t put newbies in the retention department).
This works the same way with your cell phone provider. If you’ve completed your 1 or 2 year term and have no intention of switching providers any time soon, call in and tell them you need to cancel. You’ll be sent over to a retention specialist whose job it is to talk you out of canceling. In doing so, if you hold out long enough during the conversation, they will eventually offer you a pretty sweet deal, with a better plan and a free new phone. Several years ago, I had the monthly fee for my Pitney Bowes postal machine cut by more than 50% by making one of these calls.
These businesses know that it is far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Wireless companies spend more than $600 per new customer acquired. If they can spend less than that to keep you, it makes good business sense.
Computer Disasters Less Painful that in Past
October 25, 2007
Sylvia’s work computer crapped out on us yesterday. It won’t boot. Now it’s in the shop and probably has a bad motherboard. We’ll get it back, if it’s worth repairing, by Saturday or Monday, but it’s really no big deal.
Not many years ago, a PC going belly up meant that most productivity came to a grinding halt, email and other files were not available. No MLS access (it’s all web based now), and work life became difficult.
Not anymore. We’ve learned our lessons, and we have better tools and strategies to lessen the pain and impact of computer failure.
Let’s take a look at two simple things we do that allow us to keep working without a hitch when one of our computers decides to kick the bucket without notice.
1) Multiple ways to access email
At present, if you send an email to me or Sylvia, a copy is also sent to free Gmail and Yahoo accounts, such that the Outlook email client on the computer is not needed to keep receiving and responding to email messages. This means that any emails or email attachments that need to be accessed can be without relying on the PC-based email client.
If you are not doing this already, even with your personal emails, there is no reason not to. Plus, Gmail acts as a permanent and easily searchable archive of all emails ever received. This has come in handy more than once.
2) Automatic and Instant backup of all important files
When my computer went south for about a week earlier this year, it was a problem because mine was the file server we used to keep all of our deal documents, pdf files, faxes, etc. Sylvia accessed files from her computer via our network, but everything was stored on my hard drive.
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Why Every Realtor Should Consider Blogging
September 28, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest panelist on a webinar/conference call for about 50 real estate agents from across the country. I was invited by the course instructor, along with two other real estate bloggers, as part of an online marketing course he was teaching for Keller Williams University (KWU). The three of us were interviewed by the moderator while everyone else listened in and sent questions through a web interface. It was my first time to participate in a web/voice conference like that and it was pretty cool.
We covered a lot of information, and I enjoyed hearing what the other two bloggers had to say, as they have somewhat different approaches to blogging than I do, but their approaches work well for them and mine works well for me.
But the main question was “Why should a Realtor spend time blogging?“, and I’m going to cover that topic in this post.
There two main reasons a Realtor should maintain a blog. First, by having dynamic content on your website, search engines have more content to index, more reasons to visit your website, and therefore your website becomes more visible and easier to find by the people you want to help. Second, it allows prospective clients to get to know you without having to pick up the phone or send an email.
Sylvia and I receive phone calls and emails regularly from prospective clients who have already decided to hire us before we’ve even spoken because they’ve spent time reading the blog and feel like they already know about us. That’s powerful. That’s very powerful. Here are a couple of recent examples.
I received the following email on September 7th.
My name is {Client’s name) and I am looking for a home. I found a link to one of your blog entries. Now, having read several entries and your About Us page, I would like you to be my agent(s)…
How great is that? I love those kind of emails and phone calls. This is why I spend time blogging. After receiving the above email, I contacted this prospect, had him get pre-qualified for a loan right away, started the home search process and found a home. He closed on the sale 2 days ago on September 25th, less than 20 days after I received the initial email contact, and is moving in this weekend. Without the blog, this client may never have found me and Sylvia.
Here’s another on, received September 4:
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Education and Technology in Austin Schools
August 16, 2007
It’s gone too far. The notion that we need to cram computers and technology down the throats of our kids at younger and younger ages has just gone too far. On page 20 of the Aug 10, 2007 issue of the Austin Business Journal is a listing of Austin Private Schools, listing the top 25 private schools in Austin. A sidebar to that list of private schools asks the following question:
“How is your school using technology to enhance the learning experience?”
The answer from the Superintendent of Hyde Park Baptist is the following:
“We have updated our computer labs with new computer systems and provided new mobile wireless labs that bring laptops into the classrooms. Hyde Park’s curriculum prepares students by integrating technology into all grade levels from kindergarten students creating Power Point presentations to high school students in web design courses”.
Good grief! Kindergarten students creating Power Point presentations? It’s just gone too far.
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Austin tops the nation for business
August 6, 2007
The Austin Business Journal reported today that Moody’s research has named Austin #1 out of 400 metro areas for doing business. These small nuggets of news and ratings, rankings, “Best of” lists, etc. help support the notion that Austin’s strong real estate market is grounded in real, actual economic success.
The article states:
the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) earned the top spot over almost 400 metropolitan areas tracked by the company’s economic vitality index….The index, published since 2001, evaluates current economic conditions, expected trends, and potential risks, taking into account factors such as employment growth, household income, productivity, net migration, industrial diversity, and cost of doing business.
Austin is a great place to live and a great place to do business. We could not be asking for a stronger foundation upon which to be moving forward.
Read the full article here.
Why you should register YourName.com
July 7, 2007
A Realtor friend of mine, from a city and state which shall remain unnamed, called me the other day to ask if I knew what could be done about the fact that a disgruntled party in one of his deals (not his client) had registered the dot com of his first and last name and put up a “this Realtor Sucks” website. He called me because he knows I know a lot about this stuff. Unfortunately, all I could suggest was contacting an attorney. Once that domain is registered by someone else, he has no control over the content of the website. I checked in with him a couple of days ago and the attorney had drafted a strongly worded letter and was taking quick action. The person who did this could actually be in big trouble for liable and slander. Hopefully the site will be down soon.
This brings up a good point though. Even if you are not in an occupation that requires regular public interface, such that your name is part of your business and branding, you should register yourname.com, if it’s available, so that someone else can’t do what was done to my friend. I’ve registered mine and my wife and kid’s names for that reason.
You never know when your 15 minutes of fame might strike and suddenly yourname.com has value as a destination that curious people type into their browser and search engines. More importantly, you want to have it so someone else can’t grab it and do what was done to my friend, or worse. What if your angry ex decides to put a site up at yourname.com with some embarrassing home photos or movies? It’s a different world we live in now-a-days. In the case of my Realtor friend, a Google Search for his name brings up the offending site already as the number 2 result, right below his real website. That’s not good.
For $5 or $10 per year, there is no reason not to register yourname.com. Go to GoDaddy.com and see if yours is available and grab it while you can.