Category Archives: Waccabuc NY

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Regulators | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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U.S. regulators are investigating 19 mortgage-related companies over potentially misleading advertisements, including some that used Facebook Inc. (FB)’s website, the agencies announced today.

“Misrepresentations in mortgage products can deprive consumers of important information while making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives,” Richard Cordray, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, said in an e- mailed statement announcing the probes. “Baiting consumers with false ads to buy into mortgage products would be illegal.”

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Two U.S. Agencies

Ads by 19 Mortgage-Related Companies Probed by Two U.S. Agencies

The consumer bureau said in the statement it had opened investigations into six companies. The Federal Trade Commission, the other agency involved in the probes is looking at 13 firms, Thomas Pahl, the FTC’s assistant director in the division of financial practices, told reporters on a conference call.

Neither agency released the names of the companies.

The CFPB and the FTC also announced they had sent warning letters to 32 mortgage-related companies that the agencies said may be violating the Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule. Of the 32 letters, 12 came from the CFPB and went to mortgage lenders and brokers, the agency said.

The rule, which was approved by the FTC in 2011 and is jointly enforced by both agencies, does not apply to traditional depositories, so today’s actions affect only non-banks.

The agencies’ warning letters from the agencies urge the companies to review the rule to assess compliance, and do not accuse them of legal wrongdoing.

Preventive Measure

Since the housing bubble burst, mortgage advertising has been down and may rise in the future, Pahl said.

“One of the things we wanted to do through conducting this sweep was to make sure that when mortgage advertisers start disseminating claims again, that they are aware of their obligations to make sure that none of those ads contain deceptive claims,” Pahl said.

The actions grew out of a joint review of about 800 randomly selected mortgage-related advertisements that appeared in newspapers, on the Internet and in direct mail and e-mail, Pahl said. The Internet ads included ones on Facebook, he said.

Some were provided by state attorneys general including Kamala Harris of California and Lisa Madigan of Illinois, Kent Markus, the CFPB’s enforcement director, told reporters.

The CFPB focused its review on mortgage advertisements, particularly ones targeting older Americans or veterans, according to the agency’s statement. The FTC looked at ads by home builders, real estate agents and lead generators, services that collect consumers’ information and sell it to service providers.

Potential Violations

The review turned up four potentially illegal practices, according to CFPB. Some ads contained seals that appeared to imply a government affiliation, while others promoted potentially misleadingly low interest rates. Some understated the costs of reverse mortgages, and others may have misrepresented the amount of cash available to consumers by for example, including a mock check.

Markus said the dividing line between warning letter and enforcement action depended on the severity of the potential violation. A “clearly false” statement brought an investigation, while something that might be technically true would prompt a warning letter, Markus said.

“It’s not a technical reading of the ad,” Pahl told reporters. “It’s as if an average person is reading the ad.”

via bloomberg.com

Fed Gov. pushes separate lending rules for community banks | Waccabuc NY Homes

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The threat of losing community banks in the home lending space, prompted Federal Reserve Board Governor Elizabeth Duke to propose the creation of a separate regulatory regime for smaller banks this week.

While speaking to the Community Bankers Symposium in Chicago, Duke said one-size-fits-all regulatory structures ignore the unique burdens community banks face when dealing with Dodd-Frank Act rules and Basel III capital requirements.

“Balancing the cost of regulation that is prescriptive with respect to underwriting, loan structure, and operating procedures against the lack of evidence that balance sheet lending by community banks created significant problems, I think an argument can be made that it is appropriate to establish a separate, simpler regulatory structure to cover such lending,” Duke said during her speech.

Duke is one of the first Fed Governors to go on the record, saying she believes regulation is starting to reach a point where its benefits are now outweighed by the risks of overburdening community banks and forcing them out of home lending altogether.

For starters, higher-interest rates and balloon payments have become targets of lending regulations tied to Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But community banks have successfully used these products time and time again in the past.

Unlike subprime lenders, which abused these tools to drive volume and then sold them through the securitization channel, community banks generally hold the risk on their balance sheets, Duke asserted.

“They use higher interest rates to compensate for the lack of liquidity in these loans or to cover higher processing costs because community banks lack economies of scale, and they use balloon payments as a simple way to limit their interest-rate risk,” Duke said.

Concerns over new capital requirements and additional operating procedures could push community banks away altogether, Duke said.  This is a problem when considering banks and credit unions together represented 25% of all originations in the U.S. marketplace last year.

Rather than imposing the same regulatory structure on all institutions, Duke proposes the creation of a separate regulatory regime that possesses the skills to evaluate smaller banks on the disclosures they make and through on-site bank supervision.

via housingwire.com

BofA offers 30,000 borrowers $4.75 billion in principal reductions | South Salem NY Real Estate

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Bank of America ($9.12 0%) approved 30,000 mortgage customers for principal reductions on first-lien mortgages with a total value of $4.75 billion as part of its consumer-relief mandate under the national mortgage servicing settlement program.

Bank of America executives participated on a teleconferenced update to the settlement.

They said that, through September, BofA completed or approved $15.8 billion in mortgage debt relief for 164,000 homeowners.

The progress report comes the same day that four other banks are expected to release their compliance updates with the national mortgage servicing settlement. The $20 bilion-plus settlement, which was reached between the big banks, state attorneys general and the federal government, outlines consumer-relief mandates and servicing requirements for the nation’s largest mortgage servicers.

BofA said in addition to $4.75 billion in principal reductions, the company has extended $230 million in pre-settlement forebearance.

And to date, 45,000 homeowners with mortgages serviced or owned by BofA have received $2.5 billion in relief through programs offering extinguishment of home equity loans and lines of credit.

Another 62,000 BofA customers were greenlighted for short-sales or deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure offering another $7.4 billion in relief on unpaid principal balances.

By Oct. 31, 23,000 homeowners had been offered assistance via interest rate reductions, with most of that activity occurring in just the past month.

Through September, about 1,000 rate reductions were completed with interest-rate aid totaling $250 million in unpaid principal balances.

BofA notes that when evaluating the gross amount of forgiveness activity, the relief is not always calculated dollar-for-dollar, so the aid amount is often higher than what is credited.

via housingwire.com

Perks lure tenants to online rent payments | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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About six years ago, Steven Van Praagh received a call from a friend who owned a couple of rental properties in the Harlem area of Manhattan. Praagh, who was a commercial website developer, listened to his friend’s rant about being sick and tired of dealing with paper checks for rent payment.

What his friend really wanted to know: Was there a way create a payment service online?

Praagh listened, and then asked, “Would this be like PayPal for real estate?” And his friend’s response was, “Yeah, exactly.”

Six years later, ClickPay is a bustling business. In short, the company provides property owners and managers the ability to accept secure online payments (rent, homeowners association fees and dues, maintenance fees, etc.) from residents via e-check, credit and debit card.


Steven Van Praagh

What apartment owners and managers like about ClickPay is that they don’t need a bunch of workers to hang around opening envelopes, processing checks and visiting the bank. What tenants like about ClickPay is that it saves them time. They don’t have to write a check and drop it off at management.

Tenants who use online banking to mail their checks think they are paying electronically. In reality, a paper check still gets mailed, Van Praagh said. “What ClickPay does is form partnerships with the banking networks to keep the payments electronic. The banks like it because they save the on postage.”

In New York, where rents can easily be four or five digits, it has become a marketing tool for the landlords.

This is the way it works. Let’s say you are an owner of 750 apartment units in 10 New Jersey buildings of 75 units apiece and you want to use ClickPay.

Someone from ClickPay interviews you to figure out the size of the portfolio, management and types of tenants, as the company wants to make sure ClickPay is marketable to those same tenants. Then ClickPay talks to property management about accounting software to make sure its program can integrate. Once all that happens, ClickPay offers a couple of different services.

Once live on the system, ClickPay does customer training for all bookkeepers, controllers, property managers and asset managers. There are no setup fees or set costs.

Finally, tenants get a note to let them know their rent is due. ClickPay will send rent bills, including emailing a PDF of the bill. In the invoice there is a link that says, “Pay Your Rent Now.” If tenants click on that link, they will be forwarded to the ClickPay website. All they have to do is check in, change the password and take over their account.

Other tenants in other buildings can use the search engine, find their complex and see if ClickPay is available. If so, they find their unit, put in the leasing information, and as long as it matches up, they can use ClickPay.

Although ClickPay works with more than 100 property management companies, a couple of real estate investment trusts, Apollo Real Estate Advisors and hundreds of thousands of tenants, you’ve probably still never heard of ClickPay or its payment system. That because it is still Northeast-centric. Property management in Toronto embraced the evolving trend.

“We work with 10 percent of the top multifamily managers in the country, but in New York, we have 30-40 percent of the top managers,” Van Praagh said. “We have deals with most of the who’s who in New York.”

ClickPay’s penetration in the Big Apple is partly due to the fact it was the first 100 percent electronic payment system offered in the city.

“There were other lockbox services that had other types of electronic systems, but we were the first totally paperless,” Van Praagh said. “We are still the only one in New York.”

Other companies that facilitate electronic rent payments include RentPayment, PayLease, eRentPayment, PayYourRent.com, and SmartRentOnline.com.

“Until recently, it was a fragmented market, but now there are some big players,” Van Praagh said. “Companies that were in the utility payment business have now gone after payment of rent as a new business line.”

At the moment, Van Praagh is not dismayed by the new competition. “It’s not all they do, so they don’t focus 100 percent on it like we do. That’s good for us,” he said.

This is a relatively new product and new product sector, so there’s a lot of expected growth ahead.

Even in buildings where there is ClickPay, penetration varies.

“We range from 30 percent to 70 percent adoptions per building. We have some buildings that are 100 percent, but they are small,” Van Praagh said.

The concept behind ClickPay as a kind of PayPal for renters seems so apparent — a basic service that the industry needed — that it was somewhat of a surprise to me that such a system wasn’t invented back in the 1990s.

ClickPay was founded in 2006, and development was very slow at the start because real estate is a very complicated business due, for example, to the vast amount of federal, state and municipal regulations.

“There are a lot of nuances when it comes to processing real estate versus any other business,” Van Praagh said. “Then you get into places like New York City, which has so many of its own regulations. When you start dealing with large property owners, you quickly see they are dealing with such challenges as collection, rent subsidy, Section 8 housing, etc., so you need a lot of bells and whistles just to be able to tie your software to the property management and accounting software packages.”

I would have thought once ClickPay signed with a management company, it would offer incentives early in the game to entice clients to come over to the new system.

That doesn’t happen.

However, ClickPay, like your airline, does have a loyalty reward program. A client who uses ClickPay gets access to its perks network that boasts a couple of hundred thousand vendors giving rewards of one sort or another.

ClickPay figured it had to do something to make tenants feel better about paying those substantial rents in places like New York. If you’re paying $2,000 a month for a studio apartment, you might just want a toaster to help ease the pain.

via inman.com

FHA’s $16.3B deficit raises specter of taxpayer bailout | South Salem NY Real Estate

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A fund used to support the Federal Housing Administration’s single-family mortgage and reverse mortgage insurance programs ended fiscal year 2012 with a $16.3 billion deficit, according to an annual report submitted to Congress today.

The shortfall raises the specter that the agency will require a taxpayer bailout next year for the first time in its 78-year history.

In order to avoid a bailout, FHA will raise annual insurance premiums, sign off on more short sales, streamline sales of foreclosed properties, offer “deeper levels” of payment relief through its loss mitigation program, expand sales of delinquent loans, and, for new loans, reverse a policy instituted in 2011 that canceled required premium payments after loans reached 78 percent of their original value.

Next year, FHA plans to raise the annual insurance premium paid by borrowers on an FHA loan by 10 basis points, or 0.1 percent, which is expected to add $13 a month to the average borrower’s monthly payments.

The agency has also vowed to expand its sales of delinquent loans under its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, committing to sell at least 10,000 such loans per quarter over the next year. Because such sales require investor purchasers to delay foreclosures for a minimum of six months, they represent an opportunity for borrowers to possibly avoid foreclosure while reducing FHA’s costs, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), of which FHA is a part.

The FHA has been hard-hit by defaults from housing bubble-era loans made from 2005 and 2008, with future losses estimated at $70 billion for loans made in 2007, 2008 and 2009 alone.

The agency has taken steps to strengthen its capital reserves in recent years, including raising mortgage insurance premiums three times in 2010 and again earlier this year. The agency has also tightened credit standards and prohibited seller funding of buyer down payments, a practice the agency now estimates will cost it more than $15 billion on loans issued before 2009.

“While the loans made during this administration remain the strongest in the agency’s history, we take the findings of the independent actuary very seriously,” said FHA Acting Commissioner Carol Galante in a statement.

“We will continue to take aggressive steps to protect FHA’s financial health while ensuring that FHA continues to perform its historic role of providing access to homeownership for underserved communities and supporting the housing market during tough economic times.”

In today’s report, the FHA said its capital reserve ratio, which measures reserves in excess of what’s needed to cover projected losses over the next 30 years, had dropped to -1.44 percent from an already slim 0.24 percent in 2011. Congress requires the agency to maintain a 2 percent ratio — a mandate the FHA now projects it will meet in 2017, up from 2014 in last year’s projections.

HUD said this year’s deficit “does not mean FHA has insufficient cash to pay insurance claims, a current operating deficit, or will need to immediately draw funds from the Treasury.” The deficit, calculated by an independent actuary, also does not take into account an estimated $11 billion in capital accumulation expected by the end of fiscal year 2013.

“Coupled with the $11 billion in additional capital from expected new insurance guarantee volumes in fiscal year 2013, we believe it is possible to return the (fund’s) capital ratio to a positive level within the year, and reduce the likelihood that FHA will need to call upon the Treasury for any special assistance this fiscal year,” wrote HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in the report.

Whether FHA actually ends up needing a bailout will be determined not by this report, but by a valuation of the fund made for the president’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014 to be released in February. A final decision on whether to draw funds for FHA from the U.S. Treasury will be made in September.

This year’s report projections are less sanguine than last year’s because of changes in its economic modeling, lower interest rates that have spurred refinancings and yielded lower premiums, and lower expectations for home prices, which turned around later than projected this year. Appreciation estimates do not include home price improvements since June.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), which describes itself as a nonpartisan research and educational institute, said today’s news was “almost inevitable” after the FHA stepped in after the housing bubble burst and private capital fled the housing market.

“By living up to its congressional mandate to provide support to the housing market in hard times, the Federal Housing Administration not only funded home loans for 7 million families, but prevented even more catastrophic home price declines,” said Julia Gordon, CAP’s director of housing finance and policy, in a statement. “Such declines could have cost 3 million additional jobs and sent our economy spiraling into a double-dip recession.”

Gordon noted that FHA still has more than $30 billion to settle claims, but federal budgeting rules require the agency to hold enough capital to cover all claims over the next 30 years.

Debra Still, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, agreed that FHA plays a crucial role in today’s market, particularly since the agency is nearly the sole backer of credit for first-time buyers with less than 20 percent down payments.

“These buyers are a necessary support for the housing market. While there is near-unanimous agreement that FHA’s role in the single-family housing market today is too large, we must remember that the housing market would be far worse off, today and in the future, without FHA,” Still said in a statement.

She added that MBA stands ready to work with policymakers to protect the fund and enable FHA to continue to perform its mission in the single-family market. She cautioned, however, that “ensuring the right balance” in forthcoming regulations defining rules for a qualified mortgage (QM) and a qualified residential mortgage (QRM) were important for future credit availability.

QM would establish standards for borrowers’ “ability to pay” the mortgages they seek, while QRM would establish certain baseline standards for safe underwriting and require lenders to retain a 5 percent minimum ongoing stake in any loans they originate that don’t meet QRM requirements.

“For example, a final QM rule could drive an even higher share of the single-family market to FHA if it is not carefully crafted to protect consumers while ensuring the availability of credit from private sources,” Still said.

“More broadly, the best medicine for FHA is a steadily growing housing market with stable home price appreciation, a less likely outcome if the rules cause lenders to increase cost or tighten qualification requirements for borrowers.”

The regulations are under the aegis of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which postponed action on both rules in June after protests from Realtors, builders, banks, unions and consumer groups. Under Dodd-Frank, the CFPB is required to issue the qualified mortgage rule by Jan. 21, 2013.

The FHA has repeatedly said it will not require a taxpayer bailout. The National Association of Realtors has supported that stance, and urged Congress not to take steps that might discourage homebuyers, such as raising FHA minimum down payment requirements.

Earlier this year, the FHA got some breathing room after receiving a one-time payment of almost $1 billion from a $25 billion national mortgage settlement with the nation’s five biggest loan servicers.

The government has since sued one of the loan servicers, Wells Fargo, for “hundreds of millions of dollars” due to alleged “reckless origination and underwriting of its retail FHA loans over the course of more than four years, from May 2001 through October 2005.” The bank claims that the lawsuit violates the terms of the $25 billion settlement and has asked a federal judge to throw the case out.

via inman.com

Empty Idaho Governor’s Mansion Riles Residents | South Salem Realtor

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It’s a stunning, 7,100-square-foot mansion — ”visible for miles,” some have said — sitting on a grassy hilltop in Boise, ID with views over the scenic Boise Valley. The magnificent, Mediterranean-style structure commands 37 green acres and boasts a library, a boardroom, two kitchens and ample entertainment spaces. A dream home, it seems — so why is it so hard to get someone to take it?

You’d think people would be fighting to lay claim to Idaho’s majestic governor’s mansion, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, the state’s governor doesn’t even want it — and never did.

After being elected governor in 2006, Clement Leroy “Butch” Otter politely declined to occupy the State of Idaho’s Executive Residence. Instead, Otter chose to live on a much humbler riverside ranch in western Idaho. So the Idaho governor’s mansion, also known as the Governor’s House and the Idaho House, has remained empty, aside from the occasional state function.

But it sure does cost a lot to let a house like that sit vacant. Keeping up with the maintenance of the home continues to cost Idaho taxpayers at least $125,000 a year. And just this year, the maintenance price tag was even higher: $177,400.

Public outrage

Angry residents have demanded that the empty, 32-year-old home be returned to the Simplot family, the founders of a potato-farming empire who donated the hilltop mansion to the state in 2004 for the sole purpose of it being the governor’s residence — something that didn’t become official until 2009. Yet Gov. Otter, whose marriage to a Simplot ended in divorce in 1993, has never moved in.

“It’s inappropriate to continue funding this mansion on the hill,” Boise resident Barbara Kemp said during a public hearing held by the Governor’s Housing Committee on Oct. 2. Kemp told the committee that potato magnate J.R. Simplot himself, who is now dead, would have seen the mansion as a “waste of money” and financial drain on a state that’s already “tapped out.”

Kemp’s thoughts are echoed by former Boise legislator John Gannon, who said at the hearing that Idaho’s governor’s mansion program (which includes a maintenance fund that has plummeted from $1.5 million in 2005 to $900,000 in 2012) is both costly and outdated.

“There is nostalgia for a governor’s mansion, probably based upon the beautiful century-old homes that many other states have. But I think many Idahoans are frustrated that the idea just hasn’t worked in Idaho,” Gannon told AOL Real Estate. “After 25 years, many expensive plans, and a costly, empty mansion for six years, the governor’s mansion program has failed.”

Despite pressure from Boise residents to hand the keys back to the Simplot family, the heirs to the Simplot estate have said that they have no intention of taking it back.

“It’s a special piece of property that the Simplot family intended to be used for a special purpose, and being utilized as the official residence of the governor would fulfill that intent,” Simplot spokesman David Cuoio said in a statement to AOL Real Estate. “We are satisfied with the agreement we made with the state.”

A proposal was made in February to sell the mansion in order to save Idaho’s drowning state parks system, but it was rejected by lawmakers.

An ‘outdated’ program?

According to Gannon, the very idea of having a governor’s mansion is becoming “obsolete.” The traditional, hierarchical ideal of having a governor “watching over” his or her people and the necessity of designated housing for the chief executive (conventionally meant to symbolize the “grandeur of government”) is backward and does not cater to a “modern-day” governor with his own family, tastes and preferences.

“This is fundamentally why the modern Simplot mansion has been empty,” Gannon told AOL Real Estate. “No person should live in a home chosen by others.”

And it’s not just Idaho’s Gov. Otter who thinks so.

Governors from several other states have also declined to move into official residences or only occupy them part-time, including Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, Michigan‘s Rick Snyder, Indiana‘s Mitch Daniels, New Jersey‘s Chris Christie, New Hampshire‘s John Lynch, New York‘s Andrew Cuomo and Ohio’s John R. Kasich. In some cases, governor’s mansions have been transformed into museums or wedding mills just “to make ends meet.”

The future of the Idaho House is now being questioned in a series of public hearings taking a look at how to fend off some of the state’s fiscal problems. Though there is a case to be made for preserving historic structures and landmarks, “I can’t believe we would let this symbol of Idaho go to some developer,” Boise resident Michael Costanecki said at one public hearing.

But the costs involved in maintaining a governor’s mansion is hard to justify and “not worth the expense,” according to governors from Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, which don’t have governor’s mansions, as well as California — where the governor’s mansion long ago was turned into a state park.

“A governor has the right to choose a residence and receive a housing allowance as part of the compensation package,” Gannon told AOL Real Estate. “In Idaho, it’s time to end a program that has failed.”

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via zillow.com

Other agents’ tired marketing pitches make it easy to stand out | Waccabuc NY Real Estate

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The end of the year is a great time to spiff up your websites and marketing materials, because things can get very busy in the beginning of the year.

After taking inventory of my personal online marketing, I decided that it’s probably doing me more harm than good. Other than some minor tweaks, I have not really changed my personal marketing — “branding,” as some call it — since 2006. And it was not all that great to begin with.

I started by writing a list of ideas that I want to emphasize. When I finished, I got on the Internet and started looking at how other agents market their services. I was looking for inspiration and ideas.

Here is a gem I found on one agent’s website: “I have more local websites than any other agent to feature your home for sale.”

That agent has me beat. Does this agent really believe in her own marketing? Do sellers work with her because of this? Does featuring a home on any website — even one with a lot of traffic — sell it faster? No one really knows because there isn’t any data, just hyperbole.

Most agents offer a “FREE” comparative market analysis (CMA) on their website, but they do not define what that is. I searched everywhere and could not find an agent who charges for a CMA, which makes me kind of cynical about the word “FREE” in all caps, bold print and in bright red.

It’s hard for me to trust someone who offers something for free but nobody charges for it. There are agents who will give buyers a free list of homes that are for sale. Why would anyone pay for a list of homes for sale when they can get the information for free on a zillion websites? Would you even want to work with a buyer who was intrigued by an offer of a free list of homes for sale?

There are several agents who advertise that they are “the No. 1 agent” in a particular market. Sellers almost universally prefer listing with the “No. 1 agent.” The problem is that there can be only one “No. 1,” and it isn’t me.

Or maybe it is, if I look hard enough. How much credibility do we have when we say we are “No. 1?” If I say I am “No. 1,” will I ever have to prove it?

Here’s another common theme in agent marketing: stress reduction. “Sellers, call us for a less stressful transaction.”

The fact that they want to be called causes me stress. I don’t think we are helping when we warn people about how stressful buying and selling real estate can be. We might scare them into renting.

Agent advertising promises: “We promise to make it a smooth ride,” and “We take the stress out of selling.” I have had clients who get stressed out and obsess over problems that exist only in their own minds.

The best I can do for my clients is to be there when they need someone to talk to, and to take care that my actions minimize their stress. I can anticipate and educate, so that they are not caught off guard.

As agents we like to tell our clients that we can control everything and that we can fix everything, but we can’t. I cannot make one of the most stressful experiences in life stress free.

The typical marketing pitch to buyers is similar. We want to take the stress out of the homebuying process.

Generally the process goes fairly smoothly until the buyers make an offer on a home, and then the stress begins. The buyers do not know if the sellers will accept their offer, and neither do I. That alone can cause stress.

With so many agents offering a stress free and smooth experience, you would think homebuying would be stress-free. Yet it is still considered one of life’s biggest stressors.

There are websites that offer “one-stop shopping” for buyers. I am not sure what that means. I sure hope homebuyers do.

When I looked at the “about me” sections on brokerage websites I found different agents with identical biographies. Only the names were changed. Some have for-sale signs or balloons where their face should be.

It would be fairly easy for an agent to stand out on a brokerage website by personalizing the biography and having a current portrait. If 1995 keeps calling because it wants the photo of the agent talking on the phone back, now might be a good time to update that photo with a new headshot.

It wouldn’t be hard for an entire brokerage office to stand out by having each agent create a unique biography. I found a few brokerage and team websites that showed some personality. The agents’ biographies made them more real and likable.

Modern marketing for most industries uses the phrase “customer experience.” The phrase is overused and not well-defined. I am inclined to consider it meaningless, and will keep it out of my marketing materials even though I am an experience that defies description.

My own online personal marketing is a disaster, which means it won’t be hard to improve. It should be easy to distinguish myself in the overcrowded market of real estate agents who take the stress out of homebuying and selling, and who offer free CMAs and lists of homes for sale.

What does your online personal marketing say about you? Would you hire you?

via inman.com