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Bedford Hills NY Homes

B2B Pinterest Social Media Marketing: 40 Ideas To Get You Started | Bedford Hills Realtor

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Are you interested in using Pinterest as a part of your social media marketing strategy? Fifteen percent of Internet users are on Pinterest, making it almost as popular as Twitter, with 16% of internet users. The visually driven social network is known for driving referral traffic. As of September 2012, it was the fourth largest traffic driver worldwide.

Before you start pinning, we recommend evaluating what your Pinterest strategy goals are. Once you know where you’re going, it’s time to start pinning. This is not the time to reach a dead-end. You’ve decided your goals and you’re ready for action. Here are some ideas to fuel your Pinterest blast off.

Ready, set, pin (images of):B2B Pinterest Social Media Marketing: 40 Ideas To Get You Started image Rocket 225x300

Your People

1. Your employees

2. Your clients

3. Your clients’ brands

4. Your clients’ products or service

5. Videos introducing your employees

What You Do

6. Your products

7. Your products in action

8. Your work

9. Your work process (think stages or before and afters)

10. Videos of your product or service in action

11. A photo from a positive review of your product or service

12. Graphics from your latest blog post

13. News articles featuring your product or service

14. How-to videos for your product

15. Interesting graphs from your sales presentations or marketing materials

16. Helpful diagrams and images from your sales presentations or marketing materials

17. Anything valuable in image form from sales presentations or marketing material

Your Industry

18. Industry events

19. A visualization of the current state of the industry

20. Interesting statistics relevant to your industry (in a graphic format)

21. A blog post from an expert in your industry

22. Videos explaining industry trends

23. Videos of the latest industry news

24. Videos of the latest industry events

Company Culture

25. Your workplace

26. The office summer party

27. The office Christmas party

28. Office birthday celebrations

29. Any office celebration or amusing happening

30. The office pet (think Ziggy)

31. What inspires you in the office (art or other pieces of motivation)

32. A video tour of your office

Resources

33. A helpful checklist

34. Helpful infographics

35. Books you are currently reading

36. Books you plan on reading

37. Tools you use that are helpful in doing your job

38. Others’ work you admire

39. Powerful quotes from thought leaders

40. A podcast from an industry expert

What do you think are the most powerful images for B2B marketers to share on Pinterest?

Author: Lindsey Weintraub     Lindsey Weintraub on the Web Lindsey Weintraub on Facebook Lindsey Weintraub on Twitter Lindsey Weintraub on LinkedIn Lindsey Weintraub RSS Feed

Lindsey is the Social Media Strategist at ParkerWhite Brand Interactive. ParkerWhite is a San Diego branding and digital marketing agency that delivers branding, digital marketing, web development & integrated marketing with ROI…. View full profile

This article originally appeared on ParkerWhite Brand Interactive and has been republished with permission.

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Respond & Rebuild: Volunteers Tackle Mold in the Rockaways | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Hurricane Sandy left behind a full range of lasting and miserable effects. For some New York neighborhoods, one Sandy’s toughest legacies is mold. Nasty, smelly, irritating, and persistent, the forest of mold now growing in the basement apartments of the Rockaways is a discouraging and pernicious problem.

A grassroots volunteer group called Respond & Rebuild has made mold its top priority, and they’re attacking it with a basic arsenal: wire brushes, detergent, and elbow grease. Coastal Connection caught up with organizer Terri Bennett by phone in February. Bennett says there are thousands of homes in the affected boroughs of New York that have serious mold infestations. And she says homeowners are often at a loss about how to deal with the problem.

“We are an organization that uses volunteer labor to do various things in the recovery process,” Bennett explained. “In the beginning that meant we were shoveling out homes, cleaning debris, and gutting homes. And now we are really focused on mold remediation because it’s something that most people’s insurance doesn’t cover and it’s something that contractors can charge a lot of money for. So we provide mold remediation for people who can’t afford it, so that they rebuild safely and don’t just put up sheet rock over untreated wood that’s been saturated.”

Homeowners were surprised by the severity of the mold problem, says Bennett. “We started clearing out homes and gutting them, and we started talking to people about what to expect in terms of mold. And they were not prepared for what they were going to have to do. I mean, we were in a lot of homes where we came in and said ‘Hey, do you guys need some help cleaning out?’ and we wound up hugging homeowners who were in tears, because they didn’t understand that cleaning out after a hurricane meant gutting their first floor.”

“We had to do a lot of talking with people to convince them that we needed to take out all the sheet rock two feet above the waterline,” Bennett says. “But people who did not have their homes gutted right away, once things were gutted — you know, it stayed moist here for a long time and in the worst homes that we’ve seen, we walk in and it looks like cotton candy growing off the wall.”

The group’s methods are simple, but effective. It starts with drying out the houses: “If the house is already gutted,” says Bennett, “we come in and do some moisture readings to see how dry the house is. And we bring in some large industrial dehumidifiers, and heaters if people don’t have heat. We dry out until the wood is at 12% moisture content. For some people that takes three days. For places that are wetter, it can take seven days.” A rotating crew checks on the houses each day to monitor progress.

Next comes cleaning. “The actual remediation for the size houses that we are normally doing takes about three days,” says Bennett. “We use wire brushes and detergent. We brush down every bit of the structural wood that has to stay in the house. And we wipe everything down with detergent.” Respond & Rebuild uses a cleaning agent called Benefect (http://www.benefect.com), but Bennett says, “you can use a number of different kinds of detergents. Sometimes we use detergent mixed with Borax.” Once the building is thoroughly scrubbed and dried, it’s ready for reconstruction.

“We think the most effective method of mold remediation is also the cheapest and most accessible,” says Bennett. “But it’s just very labor-intensive — because scrubbing every single surface of the home with a wire brush is not fast. It’s not as fast as a fogger; it’s not as fast as a power-washer. But based on our research, it’s actually more effective than those methods.”

Respond & Rebuild’s method is based on advice from university experts in the area, as well as on the practical experience of volunteers who worked in remediation after other storms, says Bennett. “We were able to get someone here who did extensive work in Katrina,” she says, and he showed us research studies that looked at different homes that had been done in different methods — looking at them when they were done, and then looking at them months later to see what had happened. And we cross-referenced that by talking with experts at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College in the city, and at Long Island University.”

Respond & Rebuild is funded with private donations. In the early going, the group got in-kind donations of the tools and equipment they needed by signing up on the Amazon bridal registry set up by Occupy Sandy, a net roots relief group that grew out of Occupy Wall Street. And they raised about $40,000 with an online campaign on the “crowd funding” website indiegogo.com, says Bennett. On Saturday, March 2, 120 volunteers showed up to help, Bennett reports — college students on spring break. “For years now, people have been going down to work on Katrina recovery in New Orleans on spring break,” she says. “Now the kids from the Northeast colleges are starting to come here instead.”

via jlconline.com

Avoid overcharges when refinancing | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate

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The process of deciding whether to refinance a mortgage in order to lower costs involves four steps:

  • Step one: Select the preferred type of new mortgage.
  • Step two: Find the best available price on that mortgage.
  • Step three: Determine whether the cost of the new mortgage will be lower than the cost of retaining the current mortgage.
  • Step four: Find a way to prevent being overcharged after committing to the transaction.

Because borrowers navigating these steps must access multiple sources of information, many of which are unreliable if not biased, it is hardly surprising that many bad decisions are made.

The most important of the bad decisions are those not to refinance by many who would profit from doing so. I have written about this several times, most recently in “4 refinance myths debunked.” Among those who do refinance, the most common mistakes are in selecting the wrong type of new mortgage and then overpaying for it.

Common approaches to step one: Borrowers usually select the type of new mortgage they prefer from among the multiple versions of fixed- and adjustable-rate products that are available, before the refinance process begins; for example, they decide they want to replace their current 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) with another 30-year FRM. This means that their selection ignores price relationships between the different mortgage types. Sometimes this approach makes sense, but all too often it doesn’t.

via inman.com

Five ways robots will change real estate | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Here come the machines. It may sound like science fiction, but it’s not. Robots are about to be everywhere, including real estate. And with all due respect to my humble Roomba, this new crop of bots is going to change everything. In fact, they already have. Robots are in the wild, cleaning up nuclear waste, sanitizing hospital rooms, and entertaining us all. How will they impact real estate? It’s anyone’s guess at this point; but here’s five ways I think robots will impact real estate within the next five years.

1. Telepresence helps agents scale
New telepresence robots, like the ones from Double Robotics, will finally let us be in two (or more) places at once. Control the robot from your iPad and communicate face-to-virtual face with co-workers and potential clients. Send a telepresence robot along to an open house. Invite brokers and clients to attend previews from the comfort of their home or office. The possibilities of telepresence are limitless.

2. An extra set of hands
Robots like Romo could lend a helping hand. Need exterior shots? Send a Romo out to the street for wide angle views. How about a cameraman for your video? Check. Need a BPO? A Romo with some simple software can canvas a street and send back data while you meet with clients.

3. On the spot underwriting
How about a robot who can issue conditional approvals and underwrite loans in real time? Robots with natural language processing could collect data from a client interview and, connected to an underwriting engine, produce financing options and approvals in minutes.

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4. Eyes in the sky
The issue of private drones is unfolding in front of our eyes. Federal, state, and local governments are racing to issue guidance on drone use; but no matter the outcome, drones will become fixtures in our skies. Depending on how legislation shakes out, drones could be used for aerial views, home flythroughs and more. This is already happening with remote controlled quadcopters. The machines will handle it with a few taps on your iPhone tomorrow.

5. Finding the perfect home
Robots could make finding the perfect home a breeze. Imagine a robot who could use information about your client, their Facebook interests along with some simple questions about their income, to query and sort MLS listings for the perfect place for them. You’ll look like genius for finding a home that is just what your clients were looking for, close more transactions and spend less time showing homes.

Of course, how exactly the future will play out is anyone’s guess; but one thing’s for sure, robots will be a part of it. Want to learn more about robots in real estate? Join us at Inman’s Real Estate Connect in San Francisco, where the top robotics experts will share their thoughts on when and how robots will change real estate. Come see the future at Connect, meet Rovo and his friends, and own tomorrow.

 

via next.inman.com

Lender approving online apps in as little 15 minutes | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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One of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the country now allows borrowers to submit their own loan applications online and receive approval in as little as 15 minutes, according to an announcement from Guaranteed Rate.

Borrowers can use Guaranteed Rate’s website to choose and customize a loan, receive free credit reports with scores from the three major credit bureaus, submit a secure application to the lender’s automated underwriting service, and receive an approval letter to purchase a home within minutes of submitting the application.

“Historically, the mortgage process is manual and puts the burden to complete the loan application on the customer and the loan officer, with many handoffs between the two. With Guaranteed Rate’s online process, customers have the same access to tools as loan officers, and now they can apply for their loan and receive approval themselves,” the lender said.

Listing portals Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com offer consumers online mortgage quotes using “pricing engines” that take into account their credit history and the size of the loan they are seeking. Realtor.com operator Move Inc., for example, says consumers using its PreQualPlus tool can “prequalify completely online” in as little as 15 minutes.

PreQualPlus employs an automated underwriting process to evaluate consumers’ credit scores and their capacity to afford monthly mortgage payments based on pricing, eligibility, underwriting, a full credit history review, credit risk analytics, and loan scenario modeling.

Borrowers using Guaranteed Rate’s website can also check the progress of their loan online at any time, and many receive a “clear to close” in just a few days, the company said. At closing, borrowers who submitted their application through the website will receive $150, the lender added.

via inman.com

Best Practices for Your Real Estate Web Site Home Page | Bedford Hills NY Realtor

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Your Web site should be working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, capturing leads and marketing your brand. Your site should be helping consumers search for homes, find local market data, and get answers to some of their burning questions. And all of this can be handled on your Web site’s home page. Yes, really.

I’ve come up with a few best practices to consider for the home page of your real estate Web site, which will provide potential clients with a better overall online experience while boosting your credibility as a go-to resource in your market.

1. A full IDX search that is front and center

Make no mistake, consumers come to your Web site to search for listings. And they want to search all the listings — not just your or your office’s listings. Give them a full IDX search or don’t bother having a Web site. Keep your search obvious, as it should be the first thing the consumer sees on your home page. Offering a school district search, short sale and foreclosure search, and other advanced search filters would be nice as well.

2. Calls to action and contact forms

Say it with me: “The purpose of your Web site is to get more business.” If not, then why bother? Use calls to action to ask the consumer to take action on a specific item. Asking a Web visitor to “click here to view” some information will typically garner more clicks then just embedding the link in your text. Be sure to have contact forms (in addition to displaying your contact information) to entice visitors further. Ask them to make an appointment, get more information, sign up for local market data, get a CMA, and so on. These forms cannot be ignored – this is how a Web site viewer becomes a lead.

3. Clear and uncluttered layout (and nothing set to automatically play, please)

Always focus on the visitor experience when thinking about your home page design and layout. Be clear with your purpose and don’t overwhelm them with words. Remember that white space is okay. Avoid heavy code, as this will affect your page’s load times. Please (pretty please) do not have something automatically play when visitors land on your home page, such as music, a video, or a voice recording — you are outing the consumer when you do this and you’re likely to have them frantically searching for the mute button, or, worse, quickly bouncing from your site.

4. Fresh and useful content

Content is your not-so-secret weapon. The good news is, even though we know how important content is, most real estate professionals still are not providing fresh and useful information on their Web sites. What is useful content? Try to keep a local flair to a large part of what you post. Focus on the neighborhoods you work in (or want to work in) often. Talk about the local market statistics or events around town, spotlight a business, try a “man on the street” interview, or just showcase a subdivision or a section of a neighborhood. Nonlocalized content can be anything from real estate news to DIY projects and from FAQs to financing information. A mix of text, photos, and videos is ideal. Need ideas or fresh content that you don’t have to write or record? Check out HouseLogic from NAR at members.houselogic.com for free and shareable content. When in doubt, just ask. I recently had an agent call Zillow to see about reposting an article from the Zillow blog – they were cool with it provided she gave credit to the author and a link back. (Video screenshot courtesy of Stephanie Crawford, a REALTOR® in Nashville, Tenn. – www.NestingInNashville.com)

5. Add links to your content

Use links on your home page to provide the visitor with a deeper dive into your site. For your Web site to have value, set up your home page as the portal that allows users to easily move through to the internal pages of your site. This can be accomplished in two ways – have clear menus with obvious navigation and add in links to your existing home page content.

6. Use the video stick

These days, we prefer to watch our Internet rather than read it. Look at this shift as an opportunity. I know that many of you have already ventured into video by highlighting your listings and your community or maybe even creating a profile video. Embedded video or video that will play on the page is a big win right now. As video continues to rise in popularity, adding an embedded video or playlist is a great way to increase both traffic and the time visitors spend on a page as well as to build rapport with visitors. Videos make your home page stickier by keeping the visitors engaged for longer periods of time. If you have the right search engine optimization behind your videos, you can increase traffic to your site as well.

7. Social media HAS to be part of your Web strategy

By this, I mean more than just linking to your Facebook business page and LinkedIn profile. In fact, you might be better off downplaying those profiles so you don’t lose visitors to the social media suck. “Share this” buttons or a similar solution should be on all of your content pages, if possible, and woven throughout your site in a meaningful way. “Share this” is simple to set up and allows users to share your content on their network of choice. Use social media to drive traffic to your Web site – share your own content when you have a new post or page or if you just want to draw attention to a page on your site.

8. A word on SEO (or several words)…

Stop overthinking search engine optimization. Try to focus on your content above all else, and make a great experience for the consumer. I know that you have been taught that keywords and on-page SEO are important to a good search ranking – and they are, to a point. But don’t be keyword silly and pack your home page with the little gems. On-page SEO will only take you so far. If your site stinks, you might get the traffic from the on-page SEO, but you will lose the lead. For those who are link crammers … the same goes for you! If the experience stinks, you won’t get the business anyway.

So let’s review our best practices for your real estate Web site home page:

  1. Have a full IDX search, front and center
  2. Use calls to action and contact forms
  3. Be sure your design is clear and uncluttered
  4. Create or repurpose fresh and useful content
  5. Use links to drive them deeper
  6. Try the video stick
  7. Use social media to share and drive traffic
  8. Don’t overthink search engine optimization

Last but not least, remember, experience matters. Try to create a fantastic experience for your Web site visitor. There are lots of tricks to drive people to your site, but it’s another thing altogether to keep them there (and hopefully coming back). Don’t wait — begin optimizing your home page and get your Web site working for you today!

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via realtormag.realtor.org

Single Family Renters More Likely to Stay in Place | Bedford Hills Real Estate

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Single family home tenants are 18 percent more likely than apartment tenants to stay in their current homes five years or longer, suggesting that demand for single family homes, the fastest growing rental category, will be more stable than multifamily demand, according to a new national opinion survey released today by Premier Property Management Group.

One of every four (26%) single family tenant plans to stay in place five years or more, compared to one out of five apartment dwellers (22%), according to a new national survey of renters by ORC International for Premier Property Management.  Founded in 1938, ORC International is a leading global market research firm and since 2007 has conducted the CNN|ORC International poll.

One factor contributing to single family stability could be high marks renters give the quality of single family property management.  Some 80 percent of tenants in single family rentals said their property management was good or excellent compared to only 63 percent of apartment renters One out of four apartment dwellers (26%) rated their management as only adequate,

“With the emergence of the single family rental option, American families have a new housing choice that brings them the aspects of associated with owning their own homes important to families such as living space, privacy, safe neighborhoods and the sense of community- without the cost and risks of homeownership.  Single family rentals can be found in virtually every community today and more and more families are choosing single family rentals either as a temporary stop on the road to becoming homeowners or as a permanent solution to their housing needs,” said Chris Clothier, director of sales & marketing and partner of Premier Property Management.

Over half, 52 percent, of renters, including 60 percent of single family renters and 44 percent of apartment dwellers, said they anticipate becoming homeowners in the next five years.  Families with three or more members (64%) and children under 13 (69%) were more likely to become homeowners than the 43 percent who don’t plan to become owners.

Clothier said near term interest in becoming homeowners among single family tenants reflects the new roles single family rentals are fulfilling as a stepping stone to homeownership for first-time buyers and as a sanctuary for large numbers of families displaced by foreclosures but who plan to buy again when they can afford to do so.

Despite reports that difficulties getting financing are keeping many U.S. renters from becoming homeowners, the survey found that the inability to get a mortgage ranks only third of among the reasons renters don’t plan to become homeowners. Among those who do not anticipate becoming homeowners (43 percent of all renters), 29 percent say they can’t get a mortgage.  More renters report that they don’t want to buy a home because they enjoy being renters (40%) or they simply don’t want to be homeowners (39%).

Short term turnover rates for both multifamily and single family rentals over the next two years are 56 percent for multifamily and 59 percent for single family rentals. Apartments typically experience an annual 50 to 60 percent tenant turnover.

The survey also found:

  • Single family renters make more money and are nearly twice as likely to have children as apartment dwellers. Median income for a single family renter is $75-100,000 (66%) versus $50,000-75000 (51%) for a multifamily tenant. Single family households are larger; some 65 percent have three or more members compared to 32 percent of apartment households. Some 63 percent of single family households include children; only 34 percent of apartment renters have children living with them.
  • Most single family tenants are older, aged 35-44 (53%) compared to 14-34 (46%) and 65+ (61%) for apartment dwellers.
  • Compared to apartment dwellers, single family renters value neighborhood features important to children, such as parks and playgrounds (65% to 71%), good schools (72% to 82%) and safe neighborhoods (97% to 98%).
via realestateeconomywatch.com