real estate

I was surpised this morning to see “Steve and Linda Crossland” featured as “Blogging Agents” on the Business front page of today’s Austin American Statesman. I’ll be calling Sylvia “Linda” for the next few days, until she has enough of it and threatens me with disaffection. We were not contacted for the article, which is about social networking tools and real estate, and therefore not quoted in it, but we were listed in a sidebar as “blogging agents” in Austin.

I’ll take it. I’m not complaining. We’ll see if our web stats log a bump in hits to the blog over the next day or so. The Statesman did spell the url correctly, and that’s what matters most, even if “Linda” is slightly annoyed at her correct name not being used. If you were led to this site from that article, welcome! And thanks for stopping by!

I will nevertheless use the opportunity to write about Social Media as a real estate marketing tool, and what has and hasn’t worked for me and “Linda”, and the Buyers and Sellers we seek to help buy and sell homes in Austin.

First of all, let’s start with the basic premise upon which Sylvia and I operate our real estate business, and a bit of context as to how we’re doing in this “bad” real estate market. Mainly, we ignore the media hype and the negative attitudes of which we hear so much. Instead, we focus on the specific needs of the buyers and sellers who find us, and advise them within the context of current market conditions. We don’t think the “market” determines our ability to succeed in helping buyers and sellers, but rather our ability help buyers and sellers make decisions that fully acknowledge external market factors and the reality of the market.

Therefore, as we see many agents in our office and around Austin struggling, leaving the business or taking part-time jobs to get through the slowdown, we are having another great year as Realtors. Here are a few data points on how we’re doing in 2008, then I’ll get to the larger point of this.

– We’ve never “capped” this soon (reached out annual $2M sales split cap, at which we go to a 100% commission split at Keller Williams). We did this in record time in 2008, in less than 3 “slow” months (Aug-Oct).

– We’ve haven’t, for whatever reason, had a November closing in three years, and we’ll close over $1M (3 sales) this November.

– Crossland Team has had Zero Expired or Withdrawn listing for 2008, in a year that will, by year’s end, have seen almost 50% of all Austin MLS listings result in Expired or Withdrawn status instead of Sold. That’s right, in this “lousy market”, we’ve sold every listing we’ve taken (except those still active).

– We’re on track to again be among the Top Keller Williams Teams ( a “team” is two people) in Austin in total volume and closed units this year, down somewhat from last year’s totals, but holding steady in relation to the overall reduced market volume.

So what gives? How is this happening? Is it because of Social Networking such as Twiiter or Facebook, or our Blog?

Read more