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7 Targeted Social Networks Niche Marketers Should Try | Chappaqua NY Realtor
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Category Archives: Cross River NY
Carolwood Estate Hits Market for $90 Million | Cross River NY Real Estate
A new addition to the most expensive homes list just hit the market, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Listing a home for $90 million is a big deal — even in the pricey Holmby Hills area of Beverly Glen, where the median home value hovers around $1.4 million.
Perched on North Carolwood Drive, the Carolwood Estate is in good company; it’s located near Fleur de Lys (priced at a hefty $125 million), Michael Jackson’s final home (priced at $23.9 million) and the Owlwood Estate, which is rumored to be privately listed at a jaw-dropping $150 million.
Historically, the property is even more significant as it once was Walt Disney’s estate.
The media company mogul had a barn on his estate to hold his projects, in particular a miniature steam train that would eventually lead to his plans of Disneyland.
When Disney passed away, his wife, Lilly Disney, continued to live in the home on the property. When she died, the property was taken over by the Walt Disney Foundation, which eventually sold the home to investor Gabriel Brener.
Due to asbestos concerns, the Disney home needed to be torn down, but Diane Disney Miller, the daughter of Walt Disney, asked Brener if she could move the Disney barn off the property. The structure was dismantled and reassembled in Griffith Park, where it is now a museum.
Brener then began construction on his private home, Carolwood Estate. Measuring 35,000 square feet, the home was finished in 2001 and has 8 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms.
According to the listing by brokerage The Agency, the home opens with a “two-story oval foyer with plaster-veneered walls, crown molding, and statuary and verde jade marble flooring.” A grand staircase off to the side leads to rows of suites used as children’s rooms.
Each room in the main living area has 12-foot ceilings and 3-inch thick mahogany doors. Marble fireplaces, crown molding and other high-end details round out the rest of the home.
The listing is held by real estate agents Jay Harris and Mauricio Umansky of The Agency.
via zillow.com
Tory Burch’s Hamptons Mansion Sells at Deep Discount | Chappaqua Real Estate
Source: Wikicommons
Eleven million may sound like a lot of money, but for a South Hampton waterfront mansion, it’s spare change.
Tory Burch’s home has finally sold after a series of price cuts, and it represents a steep loss: The apparel, shoe and handbag designer bought the home in the wake of her divorce for $22.5 million.
The deeply discounted selling price not only hurts Burch, but according to the NY Post, it hasn’t made some of her neighbors too happy either. The waterfront estate is located at 2080 Meadow Ln, Southhampton, NY 11968, a prestigious area that is home to big names like David Koch, Calvin Klein, Janna Bullock and Rachael Ray.
A source told the New York Post:
Everyone in the neighborhood is staggered that she sold it at such a low price. It has sparked a lot of worry if this will affect the market and their own homes, but also a lot of speculation as to why she sold it off so cheaply.”
The home did have water damage from burst pipes, and Curbed called the home a “tear-down,” but $11 million for the property, in an area where homes sell for $30 to $50 million, still has the neighbors concerned.
via zillow.com
Katonah Real Estate | How to Use Social Media to Close More Deals without Being a Pushy Salesperson
C’mon folks it’s 2012, the days of being able to close on most sales transactions with the style of a pushy used car salesman, are gone. That window closed over a year ago.
Not that you can’t still close people, but the residual factor is usually gone when you use this approach. We now have to consider the “Life Time Value” [LTV] of each prospect we come across.
The reason is simply because of social media. Thanks to thought leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, the whole way that we perceive salespeople and marketing tactics, is changing at a rapid pace. Plus now we have a way to stay connected and engaged with our clients/prospects in a seemingly real way. It’s every salesperson’s goal to be the first person your past clients think of when they are ready to buy your product and services again.
Thanks to social media you can make that happen. You just have to be cool about it.
Social is Visual
We are becoming more visually stimulated beings. We want to look at content with infographics. We want to look at facebook posts with pictures.
On a side note: I think it is all Pinterest’s fault. Things that really stand out and are aesthetically pleasing to our eyes are the only things that matter these days. It’s no longer a world were cold hard sales calls full of feature dumping, are the most effective way of marketing.
Matter of fact they are the least effective.
Is Email Effective?
Let’s talk about the variety of ways you can stay in touch with your past, present and future clients. First up, let’s look at email. Email is no longer considered one of the highest influential ways to market. The truth is, that the average email open rate is only 12%. Don’t EVEN allow me to go there on direct mail. Most of it gets thrown away, and only 7% of direct-mailers actually show a positive ROI.
Even traditional media is becoming less and less influential. (unless you’re in politics) Only 16% of all TV and Radio marketing campaigns yield a positive ROI. Now, don’t get me wrong. If you are doing these things, you are good at them and getting above average results, DON’T STOP. Always keep doing what works.
Solve Problems Rather than “Selling”
What these numbers tell us, is that our audience is getting smarter. They’re getting more hip to the same old sales pitches. The marketplace is demanding for someone to listen to them. Someone to give them transparency in marketing. Someone to show them where their pain actually is, and then cure that pain. You need to step into that space, and step out of being an old school pushy salesperson.
You are now responsible for being THE expert consultant, with a much needed solution to their big a$$ problem. It’s at this point when your sphere of influence becomes a buyer from you. It’s at that point that you become a “Closer”, the sales equivalent of a “Made (Wo)Man” It’s that plain and simple.
So you might ask “That’s all fine and cool, but how do I go about doing that?”
My answer to you is simple. “Follow the steps below.”
Step 1: Listen to your audience.
How do you listen to your audience with out physically talking to them? The best way to listen to your audience, without having to pick up phone and have a conversation with them, or without having to really get to know them better is to stalk them online. Take a look at their Facebook page. Take a look at their Twitter, their LinkedIn page, find out the things that they’re saying. Actually read their posts. Look at their pictures and familiarize yourself with their online character. Chances are, what they care about on SM and in life are usually the same.
See if your prospects talk about their family life. See if they are into sports. Look and see how often they post about their business. This gives you instant ammo to start a conversation that they also WANT to have. With a little finesse, you will have them telling you what you need to hear in order to close the deal.
Step 2: Connect and engage with your audience.
We all know that it takes seven touches in order to influence an individual and for them to become familiar with you. We also know that people buy from people they know like and trust. With these things in mind the easiest, fastest, and most influential way to accomplish the seven touches you need, can be done easily via social media.
- The first touch comes from the prospect seeing your post.
- The second touch comes from when they like or comment on your post.
- The third touch comes from you @taggging them in your response comment.
- The fourth touch is a gimme, everyone likes to see their name written and hear it spoken.
- The fifth is when almost all SM sites automatically send an email when you mention them, retweet them or whatever.
- The sixth and seventh are when you keep the conversation going by keeping the comments engaging.
Remember this: Statements end in a period. To really engage your sentences should end in question marks. There’s the six and seven touches that you need accomplish to immediately gain influence and familiarity with your audience. this compels them to buy from you, without you having to jam features and verbally vomit why they should be buying from you.
Let them come to you and say “this is why I’m with you, it’s because of your expertise.”
Step 3: Question the confession
So what does question the confession actually mean? Well first off, that’s my saying. I believe you have to ask the right questions to make a sale. Too often times salespeople try to tell tell tell tell tell tell tell. If I’m constantly just telling you stuff/features, and even if you’re listening, you’re only trying to convince them of something you’re not closing,
A true closer is waiting for the prospect to talk about the bad. Many times we are on sales calls and listening but to only the good things. Who cares about good things? If things were good, you would not be talking. You poke around and ask the hard questions. The ones that make them uncomfortable and realize they need improvement. Then once they tell you what that pain is, you tell them you can make that pain go away. Easy, simple and a lot less words and energy.
The Sales Conversation
One more thing you must know though. There’s a big difference between just a conversation, and a SALES conversation. A conversation is someone that you’re just talking to about your business, and has no inclination of buying your stuff, and is not even remotely interested in your services. A sales conversation is knowing you have someone on the line that has the ability to buy your product. A sales conversation is with someone who can significantly and immediately benefit from what you have. So now with that being clear…
Ask More Questions
So we are having a sales conversation, then what? Turn that conversation over completely to them. You ask short questions, they give long answers. If their answers are short, ask more/better questions. This requires a great deal of patience. In the end, they will have told you what they are good at and if you are good, they will have told you what they are bad at. It’s at that very moment you offer the solution you know will fix the problem. If they show resistance your response is simply “but you did say that you [insert what they said here]” it is at that point they usually say “you’re right, thank you, let’s do this”
Three simple steps you can use to convert social media friends into great customers that you know and like working with. Try it. it is not easy, but it is simple. If you will simply have a little patience and wait for them to tell it, you can SELL IT!
Guest Author: Ryan Stewman from Hardcorecloser.com
Want to Learn How to Market Your Business and Brand on Social Networks?
My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.
It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.
I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 115,000.
You can download and read it now.
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via jeffbullas.com
3 Digital Marketing Strategies you Should Not Ignore | Cross River NY Real Estate
Everyone loves something for free. The marketing message varies but the core tactic involves the word “free”.
Phrases such as “buy two and get one free”, “free holiday for purchases over $1,000″ and the online shopping favorite of “free shipping” are the bread and butter for all marketers.
When you are starting your blog, website or start-up you usually don’t have a big bucket of money to throw at marketing. Traditionally you did something like a letter box drop, a direct mail after buying an expensive list from a database marketing company or you hired a telemarketing company to call people and annoy them.
In the digital marketing world it could be buying Google Adwords and commencing a digital marketing campaign that uses key words and phrases that people would use to find your product or service when searching online, it could also be Facebook ads targeting your city and target demographic. At the end of the day it can cost a lot of money to mount a major marketing campaign unless your family is backed by Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates or a drug baron. The money pit is not a bottomless pile of gold coins produced by the golden goose. You have to get smart and savvy and find cheap or zero cost alternatives or otherwise start robbing banks.
So you have to be clever and work out ways to get free traffic that you can convert to leads and sales.
The three digital marketing strategies that can pay off and drive free traffic include social, search and the all important “unique” content that is the foundation element that facilitates and accelerates the sharing and lifts your search results.
1. Search is Changing
There are two ways people find your blog or website when searching online. They either click on the paid Google Adwords that are placed on the side or the top of the search results page (that someone has paid Google to put there) or they clicked on the other links that are called “Organic Search Results”. These are earned through optimizing your website and blog for search engines.
Five years ago SEO consultants were all the rage. You hired them and put them in a dark room, fed them pizza and pasta and soon your site was ranking on the first page of Google. It was like magic. If you dug a little deeper they were doing things like buying links, setting up domains with the keywords in the URL that were important for your business and other tactics that gamed the search system.
But Google has started changing the rules. Strange sounding updates for Google that include the words “Panda” and “Penguin” are really code words for “watch out your site is about to drop from page one to page ten”
Plumbers, painters and podiatrists that were ranking on the first page of Google and had built booming businesses based on old school search engine optimization (SEO) tactics had dropped off page one and the inquiries and leads had dried up. This type of SEO didn’t require creating great unique content that the web needs and loves but just involved playing the SEO game.
The search game is changing with Google now putting major emphasis on content and social signals such as Retweets, likes, shares and the Google Plus one platform’s +1′s.
It is no longer about gaming the sytem but adding real value to the web through regular publishing of content that people love to share, link to and embed.
2. Content is the New SEO
Google’s updates have made content marketing the hottest trend since “planking”.
Create, publish and promote great content and Google (read search engines) will start to love you. That content can be a YouTube video, a blog post or a Slideshare presentation or any type of multi-media content. eCommerce stores are hiring magazine editors to lead the creation of content that is visual, viral and valued by readers and viewers.
A word of warning here. Google does not like duplicate content (it has new ways of detecting that) so just copying and pasting someone else’s content into your website or blog is frowned upon. It needs to be unique.
The challenge is to make the content so enticing that people will share it with their friends, family and colleagues. This does take some thought, skill and creativity.
Content with a good headline or a captivating image will be shared much more on Twitter or Facebook than a bland bit of poorly written text. You need to think about what sort of content captures your attention and then create that for your customers that is relevant and tempting.
3. Social is the Turbo Charger for Content
Social networks (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and social media (YouTube, Slideshare and Pinterest) provide the platforms to turbo charge your content. It is how people share content.
Social accelerates the discovery of your content. Before the rise of social web, content was locked up in filing cabinets, hard disks and printed offline articles. Sharing online was limited to sending an attachment via email. This limited its spread as it was private.
Content needs to be re-purposed (Make a blog post into a Powerpoint presentation and put it on Slideshare or take a printed press release and turn it into a blog post), published online and it then needs to be set free. It needs to be built for sharing.
Google has created Google+ to measure these social signals of sharing and is embedding and weaving social into search results.
Content that is shared on social channels is your new SEO.
What About You?
The days of single channel marketing are over. Combining and integrating social, search and content into your digital marketing strategy are now vital to move from visible to visible on a crowded and competitive web.
This blog was created on a foundation of consistent unique content that was shared on social networks. When I started, Google didn’t really know I existed. Today nearly 50% of my traffic (and it is free) is via Google organic search. That is over 160,000 page views a month. It doesn’t cost me a cent.
How are you playing in the digital marketing landscape? Is it social, search or content or have you moved to an integrated approach?
Which strategies and tactics are working best for you?
Look forward to hearing your stories in comments below.
Want to Learn How to Market Your Business and Brand on Social Networks?
My book – Blogging the Smart Way “How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.
It is now available to download. I show you how to create and build a blog that rocks and grow tribes, fans and followers on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It also includes dozens of tips to create contagious content that begs to be shared and tempts people to link to your website and blog.
I also reveal the tactics I used to grow my Twitter followers to over 110,000.
63
in Shar
via jeffbullas.com
How The Housing Recovery Will Take Shape In Coming Months | Cross River Realtor
More good news on the home front. The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index indicates that home prices gained 1.6% in July compared to a year earlier. Every city tracked in the 20-City Composite has seen prices rise for three straight months and 16 of the 20 cities saw year-over-year increases. “The positive news in both the monthly and annual rates of change in home prices over the past few months signals a possible recovery in the housing market,” noted David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a statement.
Blitzer is the latest housing expert to toss around the “r” word. Last week, for example, the National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales climbed about 9% nationally in August from a year earlier. “The housing market is steadily recovering with consistent increases in both home sales and median prices,” explained Lawrence Yun, chief economist of NAR.
A growing pile of data indicates that that national-level recovery is solidifying into a reality (albeit one taking dramatically different shape on a more local level across the country). In addition to the Case-Shiller index and NAR’s sales report, new home construction — a forward-looking indicator of housing market activity — is making a comeback.
August single family home starts are up a hefty 29% since last year, according to the Census Bureau, despite missing analysts’ estimates. Home-builders’ confidence hit its highest level in more than six years this month, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Companies like Lennar, the second-largest home builder in the U.S., have been reporting surprisingly positive quarterly earnings thanks to an uptick in both orders and selling prices, according to my colleague Abram Brown. And Fannie Mae economists estimate that residential investment in 2012 will positively contribute to gross domestic product for the first time since 2005.
All that good news begs the question: what can we expect from housing in the coming months?
“We got to the point where housing couldn’t fall any farther,” notes John Canally, an investment strategist for LPL Financial. “Seven years into it and we are finally seeing a turnaround — but it will be modest at best.”
Canally likens the national-level housing market recovery to a “crooked U” in shape: home prices fell dramatically from 2006 through 2009, then bounced along an uneven bottom (falling a bit more following the expiration of the 2010 home buyer tax credits) for three years before finally beginning to turn upward in recent months.
Lauren Pressman, director of real estate at Aspiriant, also believes housing is making a U-shaped rebound. “It does seem that we are on solid ground for a recovery, or least no more continued depreciation in home prices in most markets,” says Pressman. Yet she doesn’t expect prices to rise dramatically any time soon, thanks to the lackluster jobs market, an overhang of distressed shadow inventory, and ongoing credit issues.
Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com, has expectations that echo Pressman’s. “We think the bottom is going to be a long flat affair where home value appreciation over the next two to four years, depending on the market, will be in the 1-3% range,” explains Humphries. Zillow’s formal home value projection (which includes all homes, listed for sale and off the market) entails a 1.1% rate of appreciation from June 2012 through June 2013. Humphries believes a healthy (non-bubble) 2.5-5% rate of appreciation won’t kick in until sometime between 2014 and 2016.
Yet housing inventory levels are down and new construction will take years to move through the development pipeline. Realtors in some markets, like Phoenix, Miami and San Francisco, even report bidding wars. The rapidly diminishing supply of sought-after inventory has some analysts making larger projections. NAR estimates prices of existing homes will rise 10% cumulatively over the next two years. Barclays equity research division warns that a possible shortage of quality inventory could even fuel a “dramatic, multi-year recovery in home prices that could drive prices up 5% to 7% per year through 2015,” according to my colleague Agustino Fontevecchia.
Still, a handful of factors arguably stand in the way. Down payments and tight lending standards remain huge hurdles for aspiring home buyers right now. So does job certainty.
And while the Federal Reserve’s recently announced plan to buy mortgage-backed securities will likely push mortgage rates lower, inspiring some prospective buyers to take the plunge into home ownership, other large policy issues still loom. If the so-called fiscal cliff, in which the Bush tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts kick in, is realized at the end of this year, it could hamper home sales and new construction starts. If economic woes worsen in Europe, the consequent downward pressure to the U.S. economy could impact housing similarly. The same could be said of spikes in inflation or energy prices
So how will this housing recovery take shape? It will be a localized recovery in which some markets clock bigger gains than others. Markets like Phoenix and Miami will continue to log notable gains; markets like Chicago and Atlanta will continue to struggle as distressed inventory filters out into the market. Overall, however, many markets are stabilizing and beginning to reflect positive growth. That growth will translate into a humble increase in the annualized rate of national home price appreciation for 2012. In other words, the very worst of the housing recession is finally behind us but the recovery ahead is likely a long one.
via forbes.com
Investment Buyers ‘flocked To US Property’ | Katonah Realtor
Poll: Economists foresee weak but improving growth | Chappaqua Realtor
via sfgate.com
Realtor.com: Housing hampered by struggling job markets | Cross River Real Estate
Most key housing markets are in recovery mode, but industrialized areas plagued with falling employment numbers continue to deal with distressed assets, Realtor.com, the website run by Move Inc., said in a new September survey of U.S. housing markets.
List prices are still below 2007 peaks, but areas such as California, Seattle and Phoenix are experiencing a recovery while parts of the Midwest and Northeast deal with a lack of jobs and declining manufacturing sectors.
Housing inventory across the U.S. remained at historic lows with only 1.8 million units up for sale in September.
The median list price is slightly higher than a year ago, coming in at $191,500, and the median age of the inventory has fallen by 11.21%.
“Lower inventories, combined with somewhat higher median list prices, suggest that the housing market ending the 2012 home-buying season is in better shape than it was a year ago,” Realtor.com said.
The total number of listings, which stands at 1.8 million, is now down 17.7% from last year and 2.19% from August. Today, inventory is staying on the market 95 days on average, which is up from August but down significantly from last year.
With areas such as the Midwest and industrialized cities remaining the hardest hit areas, the housing problem is beginning to look more like a jobs problem based on data released in the report.
“These patterns suggest that the underlying nature of the country’s housing problems has changed,” Realtor.com said. “What began as a collapse of a housing bubble fueled by poor underwriting and toxic mortgage products has evolved into a housing recession that primarily reflects continued weaknesses in local economies.”
The report’s findings suggest that as economists mull over the housing economy, the lackluster jobs recovery — or areas with drying economic activity — are what is driving the remaining depressed markets.
via housingwire.com
Katonah Real Estate | Wells Fargo mortgage originations grow, profit climbs
Mega bank Wells Fargo & Co. ($33.68 -0.57%) posted a third-quarter profit of $4.9 billion, or 88 cents a share, up from $4.6 billion, or 82 cents a share, last year.
The company’s profit grew as the loans in its portfolio rose another $11.9 billion, driven by the firm’s mortgage and deposit businesses.
Mortgage lending alone became more robust with $139 billion in mortgage originations recorded at Wells Fargo during the period, up from $131 billion in the prior period. Applications, on the other hand, fell to $188 billion compared to $208 billion in the last quarter.
The total residential mortgage servicing portfolio reached $1.9 trillion during the period.
“Through the efforts of our more than 265,000 team members, we’ve now achieved six consecutive quarters of record net income and EPS,” said Wells Fargo chairman and CEO John Stumpf. “By focusing on earning all of our customers’ business and providing outstanding service, we continued to generate growth across our diversified set of businesses. In the third quarter, core loans grew by $11.9 billion and we saw continued strength in our mortgage and deposit businesses.”
Growth stemming from asset management, commercial mortgage servicing, lending and the real estate capital markets also contributed to Wells Fargo’s third-quarter revenue. The bank’s revenue hit $21.2 billion, down slightly from $21.3 billion in the second quarter.
via housingwire.com