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Why new agents fail | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate

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What are the correlates of “new agent” success? Two studies from the Texas Association of Realtors reveal intriguing results for both new agents and those who hire, manage and train them.

On Aug. 28, 2012, the Texas Association of Realtors (TAR) sent a Zoomerang Web survey to 13,000 of its broker/manager members with the purpose of identifying how to improve the quality of the homebuying and selling experience for Texas homeowners. A second purpose was to assist TAR in identifying the factors that contribute to sales success of new agents, as well as those factors that result in agents leaving the business. A total of 277 brokers/managers participated in the study: 265 in the online survey and 12 in the one-on-one interviews.

Office size
The large majority of offices (70 percent) had 10 or fewer agents. Another 16 percent had offices with 11-25 agents. In other words, 86 percent of all offices had 25 or fewer agents. This matched a secondary finding that 71 percent of the respondents classified themselves as small independents, boutiques or family-owned businesses. Ten percent were virtual (no physical location), and 19 percent were affiliated with a national/international franchise.

Training
Seventy-two percent of all survey respondents currently offer sales training. Of that group, 43 percent created their training in-house. Another 47 percent relied on one-on-one mentoring/coaching. The remaining 10 percent relied on outside vendors or their local association to provide training. Only 7 percent charged a fee for their training vs. 93 percent that had no fee.

In 72 percent of the offices, the broker/manager was responsible for training. In the other 28 percent of the offices, GRI, CRS, and/or an outside training company provided the training. Of these, 8 percent relied on online (video and webinars) for their primary source of sales training. For those who did offer in-office sales training, 72 percent assigned a mentor, trainer or other point person to assist new agents.

Attrition
A major challenge nationally is the high turnover rate for new agents. Broker/managers cited the four issues below as the primary reasons new agents leave the business.

1. Lack of adequate startup capital
Broker/managers cited insufficient startup capital as the main reason new agents leave the business. Most new agents were uninformed about the initial startup costs that range from $1,200-$2,000. (This includes local association, MLS, state association fees, NAR fees, plus signs, cards, lockboxes, etc.) They also are unfamiliar with how commission splits work as well as how long it takes to ramp up a new business.

2. Unrealistic expectations
Many new agents view real estate as a job rather than starting a new sales-based business. They believe their broker will generate leads for them rather than having to do it themselves. They are also unprepared for how difficult the business actually is.

As one broker put it: “(New agents) are naive; they lack the knowledge of what it will take to succeed. They enter the business believing that real estate will be an easy way to make money, and the difficulty is way beyond what they expected.”

3. Part-time vs. full-time
The survey respondents were virtually unanimous on this point: Real estate is a full-time career that requires a full-time commitment; anything less usually results in failure. The challenge is that part-time agents represent a sizable proportion of all Texas agents. Fifty-five percent of the survey respondents replied that at least 25 percent of their agents were part-time.

4. Mindset/preparation/competence/confidence
Mindset is an important predictor of real estate success. The most damaging mindset is one were the agent takes shortcuts. This often starts with pre-licensing training. Ten of the 12 of the brokers who were interviewed on a one-on-one basis agreed that agents who had taken face-to-face training were much better prepared for the business.

As one manager observed: “Agents who took the shortcut versions of pre-licensing training or who attended online licensing training know next to nothing. They probably have never seen a completed contract. They come out of real estate school completely unprepared to work with the demands of buyers and sellers in today’s highly complex market.”

Previous careers
Overall, the people entering the Texas real estate industry come from virtually every walk of life. The broker/managers identified the top two careers that their two most recent hires had worked in as being either “teacher” or “homemaker.” Other high-probability hires were those who had been in sales-related careers or in another aspect of the real estate industry — i.e., title, new-home sales, or mortgage.

A number of broker/managers drew a distinction between those who had corporate sales experience and were accustomed to generating their own leads versus those who worked in retail sales positions in stores where they took orders at the cash register. Those who had the corporate sales background fared significantly better.

via inman.com

Top Lenders Clear out Foreclosure Inventories in Non-judicial States | Mt Kisco NY Real Estate

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Among the five lenders involved in the National Mortgage Settlement – Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Ally/GMAC – non-judicial pre-foreclosure activity (NOD, NTS) decreased 41 percent in November compared to a year ago, led by Bank of America with a 63 percent decrease and Citi with a 40 percent decrease. Meanwhile judicial pre-foreclosure activity (LIS, NFS) for the five lenders combined increased 26 percent from a year ago, led by Chase with a 114 percent increase and Wells Fargo with a 37 percent increase.

In November, foreclosure activity decreased of 3 percent from October and is down 19 percent from November 2011 – marking the 26th consecutive month with an annual decrease in foreclosure activity, according to RealtyTrac.

“The drop in overall foreclosure activity in November was caused largely by a 71-month low in foreclosure starts for the month, more evidence that we are past the worst of the foreclosure problem brought about by the housing bubble bursting six years ago,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “But foreclosures are continuing to hobble the U.S. housing market as lenders finally seize properties that started the process a year or two ago – and much longer in some cases. We’re likely not completely out of the woods when it comes to foreclosure starts, either, as lenders are still adjusting to new foreclosure ground rules set forth in the National Mortgage Settlement along with various state laws and court rulings.”

via realestateeconomywatch.com

Immigrants, An Emerging Base of Clients: The Virginia Story | Mt Kisco Real Estate

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The United States attracts about 1 million immigrants (permanent residents) every year. Over time, they achieve the American dream of having higher incomes and homeownership.

Did you know that India is the top origination country of immigrants entering Virginia in 2011? Virginia accounted for about 3% of immigrants entering the United States in 2011; studies show that the majority of immigrants will ultimately buy a home. India, El Salvador, Ethiopia, the People’s Republic of China, and the Philippines rounded out the top 5 countries.

What this Means for REALTORS®: Immigrants have a huge potential to become future homeowners. REALTORS® can seize the opportunity by initiating and expanding interaction with the immigrant community, possibly learning about customs, requirements, and interests of foreign-born clients. You can find information on foreign-buyers and international programs and services at http://www.realtor.org/reports/profile-of-international-home-buying-activity, http://www.realtor.org/global, and http://www.realtor.org/reports/state-by-state-international-business-reports.

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via economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org

Why’d You Choose That Domain Name? | Mt Kisco Realtor

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Let’s admit one thing. We all started this web thing honestly, naively.

Our first site was designed to help people, to fill a gaping void we saw in the online world.

We wanted to do so much good.

Where, then, did it go so wrong? And why? Why did we end up with a website like “www.how-to-earn-money-online.com” that we can barely mention across the dinner table without blushing?

In this post, I’m going to target the psychology behind our seemingly harmless paths to web domination. I’ve been curious for a while about why a few of us start the Zygna.coms and Digg.coms while others go a, well, different path. It all dates back to the mid 1970s, when a man name Albert Bandura, the guy behind Social Cognitive Theory, examined how we seek to replicate success we see in our surroundings and in media, often at all costs. It gets a bit creepy.

Day 1: A new beginnning

It all began with GoDaddy.

“What is GoDaddy?” we ask Google. And Google responds with a full tutorial on GoDaddy.

“Thank you, Google. Now I’ve got my first domain and I have no idea how to use it.”

Well at some point, no thanks to GoDaddy, we find Blogger or WordPress. Your first domain name most-likely had a .blogspot or .wordpress in it. Hello, new blog.

“Wow, this is so interesting,” we think. “I can write posts, post images, create links, and put things in my side bar. And what exactly is a sidebar? I’m going to grow this blog to be huge! I’m getting 100 views a day! Wait, I was tracking my own views. Shut that off. So this actually is difficult … okay, I can handle that.”

We set up our first Google Analytics profile and hardly use it. We’re too focused positioning Adsense ads and garnering Facebook likes.

“Suggest to friends? I think so. Why did he not like it? Not my friend anymore! Write posts, write posts, write posts. Write even more. How am I ever going to have as many posts as that other site? Three a week, that’s it. Must happen. Three great posts of 500 words at least. More coffee. You can do this! Backlinks. Backlins! Need more. Alexa tells me I don’t have enough. Must network. Got one! Got a tweet too! Oh my dear god prepare yourself for traffic! Traffic didn’t come…why not? More posts … more domination!”

At some fateful point after much deliberation we decide to hack off the .blogger/.wordpress and basically think the world will rejoice over our decision.

“Sigh, they don’t. People don’t care. They’re focused on their own websites. Oh well, more networking, more Facebook marketing! Backlinks!”

Day 2: Day 1 got old

At some point in blogging, we become jaded. It just isn’t like it was on Day 1. Our community blog, our niche review site, and our Google Adsense landing page just didn’t work as planned. It wasn’t all we were told it would be, but we did learn in the process.

So, we start a new blog. We suck up our pride. We hobble back over to the computer. We probably woke up later that day because we were up late making it big the night before.

This is where it gets interesting.

The day we start up a second website defines us in our blogging careers.

Why? Because (in case you didn’t realize yet) everyone starts a semi-successful-yet-pretty-mediocre website at first, then moves on to another project. It’s in that second project that we either:

  • show the world we’ve learned from our mistakes and are ready to build something useful, or
  • totally sell out and continue down the path to eventual existential failure.

I’m sorry, but it’s one or the other. Which path are you on?

Maybe you’re on a different path?! If so, let’s hear about it in the comments.

Day 3: Pick a new domain

It may not be on actual day 3 of blogging, but the “third day” in your blogging career is the day you choose your next domain name. On Day 1 you made your first website, on Day 2 you decided to build another one, and on Day 3 you picked this new domain. And on Day 7 s/he rested.

So what did you pick?

The brandable domain

If you picked a brandable domain then I’d like to buy you a beer. I’m proud of you. A brandable domain is something like “Twitter.com”. It’s something like “Coursehero.com” or “Koofers.com”. It’s a brother of “Problogger.net” and a cousin of “Alexa.com”. Its recognizable. It stands out.

It holds its own in a conversation across the dinner table. (Should that be the new standard?)

People learn not just from trying and failing, but from observing, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes for means of survival, what works for our peers.—Albert Bandura

The importance of a brandable domain is five-fold:

  • Unique: It stands out.
  • Recognizable: People remember it.
  • Bizarre: It’s weird enough to generate some intrigue the first time someone hears it.
  • Worth mentioning: People want to talk about weird things.
  • Worth putting on a t-shirt: Yes, you would consider wearing that logo with it’s branded image on a t-shirt.

If you picked a brandable domain I commend you because, while you won’t get immediate “direct match” traffic from Google, you will get many more returning visits because you have a pretty cool concept.

These websites are more likely to get blog comments and will inevitably build larger email followings. They may not be the best at making a quick buck, but they do have a long-term trajectory to success. Props to you for choosing this option!

The keyword-rich domain

If you picked this type of domain, you may want to watch this short video as Matt Cutts talks about how Google is changing the algorithm.

Short summary: A lot of noise and competition exists among keyword-rich domains. Google is altering the algorithm so websites with keyword-rich domains won’t get as much an advantage over similar websites with less keyword friendly domains.

If you picked a keyword-rich domain, this is my advice for you.

  • Check out onlineprofits.com: It’s a successful community that makes online profits.
  • Check howtomakemyblog.com: It’s actually an awesome how-to site by Marko Saric.
  • Check out onlinecolleges.com and literally every other domain name with some variation of the phrase “online colleges” in it. You’ll begin to see just how competitive things are getting.
  • Learn some on-page SEO: It’ll help you immensely against the waves of others like you.
  • Get used to being #2: Hey, look at how well Monster does in the shadow of Redbull.

It’s okay, as a few of these examples will show you. With your keyword-rich domain your blog might actually make that six-figure annual income you dreamed about on Day 2.

However, as time passes I can’t help but think keyword-rich domains will become a dime a dozen, and will get sifted out to the bottom of the blogosphere while unique, original concepts rise to the top. It’s a process that may be happening as you read this.

Why did we choose one option or the other?

We’re human. We don’t want the things we do to eventually lead to failure.

We want to succeed, sometimes badly, and will often consider every means necessary to do so. Sometimes this means selecting a domain we at first would have scoffed at.

Albert Bandura was a renowned Canadian psychologist. He examined the characteristics we learn in our adolescence that leads us to success or failure. From the existing Social Learning Theory, it was known four key factors affect how we learn new behavior: drives, cues, responses, and rewards.

What Bandura found, in plain words, was that those of us who are more aggressive often skip a couple steps to get to the “rewards.”

This can be dangerous.

When our aggression outweighs our engrained moral compass, we exhibit “lapses in judgement,” as Bandura called them, where we totally avoid “cues” and “responses.”

It’s these tendencies which lead us to choose a certain domain and make larger, more long-term business decisions. It’s pretty hard to say a domain doesn’t hold vibes and messages that follow our website throughout its entire existence. So next time you’re sitting at GoDaddy about to make a purchase, remember Bandura and think about the long-term implications of your choice.

Bandura became the endowed chair of social psychology at Standford University in 1974 and is believed to be the fourth most cited pyschologist of all time. Go find more of his related work on Wikipedia.

The Blogger is a 25 year old guy from Manhattan who answers 150 blog questions before breakfast and holds a world record for comment response time. Sign up to his email club if you haven’t already (jeez) and find him on the Twitter.

via problogger.net

Mount Kisco NY Real Estate | New home sales shoot up 5.7% in September

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New single-family home sales rose 5.7% from August to September, with 389,000 homes sold last month, according to the  U.S. Census Bureau.

That is up from 368,000 sales in August and 27.1% above year ago levels when only 306,000 units were sold.

The median sales price of a home in September hit $242,400 while the average price hovered at $292,400.

“September’s rise in new home sales is another sign that homebuyers are becoming more willing and more able to splash out on a new home,” research firm Capital Economics said in response to the report.

The number of new homes for sale at the end of September reached 145,000, which reflects a 4.5-month supply of homes at today’s sales pace.

Econoday called the jump in home sales the best annual rate increase since mid-2010 when the market was still benefitting from homebuyer tax credits.

“September’s gain is convincing and is led, with a 16.8% jump, by the South which is far larger than all other regions combined,” Econoday said. “Supply, at 4.5 months for the lowest reading since 2005, is very tight and is limiting sales.”

via housingwire.com

A Basic Visual Design Guide for the Visually Incompetent | Mount Kisco NY Real Estate

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Have you ever woken up one day, looked at your blog’s header and other visual elements, and thought, “My, this is ugly!”

You need a visual redesign.

What to do?

There are two solutions to this problem: you hire a designer to work on your new visuals from scratch, or you try to do it yourself. The first solution can come at a cost, so cash-strapped bloggers can easily be tempted to try building their blog’s visual elements by themselves.

But what if, like me, you’re visually incompetent? I mean, really incompetent? You can’t draw a stick figure to save your life, and you know absolutely nothing about the basics of visual design. You’re a writer, after all, and writers are better off writing than playing around with pictures.

And yet, you can’t afford a designer, so you need to find a way, any way, to do it yourself.

In this article, I will share the lessons I have learned trying to redesign my blog visuals on my own—header, logo, and all.

Start with software that you understand

We’ve all tried to play with those complex professional photo and visual design programs. You load a picture or an empty canvas and you think “Wow, with all these great tools, I’m sure I can come up with something amazing!”

Well, not so much. After five minutes of trying to understand the functions of the program, you give up. This happened to me time and time again, until I discovered a nice little Mac app called Logoist.

Logoist is simple and has all the functions I need. I can use cliparts from its extensive library, add text, apply filters and effects and insert pictures and photos. Its interface is intuitive and it has a few tutorials to show you the ropes. It also has automatic grid lines that help align all your elements. This simplicity let me create more freely than any professional design program could.

There are a lot of apps and programs you can use for both Mac and PC. Some are free and most are reasonably priced. You don’t have to go for the $500 creative suite to get the job done.

Black and white are your friends

I’ve always worked under the principle that, when in doubt, you should take the simplest route. In visual design, black and white is a great base to start with.

A black and white design looks professional, clean, and easy to work with. You don’t have to worry about colors matching or clashing. You know your text and your visual elements will be readable on a computer screen, a tablet or a smartphone. Black and white reminds readers of printed paper, something that’s ubiquitous and familiar. It’s trustworthy.

But of course, black and white can become a little bland. To add variety, choose one (and when I say that, I really mean one) accent color for your sidebar widgets, for the picture in your logo, or for the blog title in your header.

For example, on my writer’s website, I decided to go with dark red. It’s a color I like, and I think it brings about the right amount of visual interest. On my blog, I count on the pictures inserted in my posts for a blast of color.

Play with fonts

For my blog’s header, I decided to keep everything simple and play with fonts rather than pictures or images. Each word of my title (Read, Write, Live) uses a different font that expresses something unique about that word.

“Read” is in a formal, serif type that you could find in a book or newspaper. “Write” is in a handwritten-looking font that illustrates the act of writing on paper and separates it visually the other two words. “Live” is in a bold, sans-serif font with unexpected lines. I added a small ornament (one of the cliparts in Logoist) in the middle for visual interest.

Here’s the logo version, with the first letter of each word:

Blog logo

Fonts are great because you can give personality to words and ideas before they are processed by the brain through reading. They leave an instant impression, and can make or break the viewer’s desire to read on.

A tool I love for choosing awesome fonts is Google Fonts. If you’re tired of Times New Roman and Comic Sans, Google Fonts has an impressive collection of independent, public domain fonts you can use.

Be yourself, be realistic

The most important thing when you’re stuck having to design your own visual elements without training is to be honest with yourself. If you don’t know how to use vector software, then don’t. There are a lot of solutions that are within your reach and your abilities.

You also need to be realistic: there is no substitute for a professional design. As much as a self-designed header and logo can fill in temporarily, as soon as you get a steady flow of readers, you’ll be expected to get some custom, professional visual design on your blog. But as a beginner or novice blogger, a handmade, simple header and minimal visual elements can go a long way

One last thing: remember to have fun. I can tell you that this kind of visual work can be absorbing and exciting when you really get into it. I didn’t know I could come up with something so attractive on my own. I was very proud of the results, and it got me compliments from readers too!

Have you ever tried to design your own visual elements? Do you have any other basic visual design tips you’d like to share with the visually incompetent among us? I’d love to hear from you!

via problogger.net

Home sales dip, but tight inventories provide price support | Mount Kisco NY Homes for Sale

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Sales of existing homes slipped from August to September but were still up strongly from a year ago — a sign that the national housing market is finding solid ground, the National Association of Realtors said today.

At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, sales of single-family homes, townhomes, condos and co-ops were down 1.7 percent from August to September, but up 11 percent from a year ago.

September sales of existing homes were up 11 percent from last September with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, which represents a slight dip of 1.7 percent from August’s upwardly revised rate of 4.83 million.

The 2.32 million homes on the market at the end of September represented a 5.9-month supply, down from 8.1 months a year ago. Many analysts view a six-month supply of housing as an even balance between buyer and seller demand.

Thanks to tight inventories, the national median home price was up 11.3 percent to $183,900 from a year ago, the seventh month in a row of annual increases and the longest stretch of annual increases in six years.

“We’re experiencing a genuine recovery,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a statement. “More people are attempting to buy homes than are able to qualify for mortgages, and recent price increases are not deterring buyer interest,” he said.

Low inventory will be a temporary issue, said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “Rising prices will get some homeowners back above water and willing to sell their homes, and tight inventory will encourage builders to keep ramping up new construction, bringing more new homes to market,” he said.

First-time buyers accounted for 32 percent of purchasers in September, up from 31 percent in August.

Foreclosures and short sales sold for 21 percent below market value, on average, and accounted for 24 percent of September’s sales.

All-cash deals accounted for 28 percent of September’s sales — up a percentage point from August and down two from last September.

Existing-home sales, September 2012

Seasonally adjusted annual rate4.75 million
% change from September 201111.0%
% change from August 2012-1.7%
National median price$183,900
% change from September 201111.3%
Unsold inventory (months’ supply)5.9
Share of all-cash buyers28%
Share of investor buyers18%
Share of first-time buyers32%
Share of distressed sales24%

Source: National Association of Realtors

All U.S. regions saw existing-home sales and prices rise in September from a year ago.

As was the case in August, the Midwest led the way in home sales with a 19.6 percent year-over-year increase to an annual rate of 1.1 million sales. The median price in the Midwest also rose in September from a year ago, up 7 percent to $145,200.

The South saw sales jump 14.2 percent from last September to an annual rate of 1.93 million. Median prices jumped, too, to 13.1 percent from last September to $163,600.

Home sales rose 7.3 in the Northeast on an annual basis to a rate of 590,000. Median prices in the region rose 4.1 percent to $238,700.

The West experienced a slight 0.9 percent yearly increase in home sales to 1.13 million, but saw the largest yearly median price jump of any region, 18.4 percent to $246,300, in September.

via inman.com