Real Estate Marketing has become a hot topic. A website with good search engine visibility can capitalize on all the buyers and sellers who use the Internet these days. Every time you turn around, new statistics and surveys are being released about the Internet usage of consumers. These all point to one thing – that majority of buyers and sellers use the Internet for real estate research, so it’s critical for agents to be visible online. The sooner you start optimizing a website, the better.Marketing for Real Estate is a field that is truly complex. There’s so much to learn and so little time to do it. The biggest issue with real estate agents is the high turnover rate, up to 80% by some estimates. Consequently, there’s pressure for agents to get enough buyers and sellers to sustain a living and stay in the business while others wash out.It is important to have good Real Estate Internet Marketing today. After all, people are too busy these days to remember an agent based on a postcard they received or an ad they saw in the paper. To gain an edge in Real Estate Marketing, real estate agents should define their domains by clearly identifying exactly what their market is. Their marketing forte could be upscale homes, country estates, move up single family homes, etc.If you’re new to the world of Real Estate Marketing, start with the basics. It is important to first determine your goals. This will make the entire process easier. But make sure your goals aren’t too vague, and achievable as well as easy to comprehend. To gain any direction from this step, you have to get specific.Next comes the marketing plan. Make sure your marketing plan is constantly evolving, so don’t worry if it’s not perfect from the start. In fact, it’s a good idea to revisit, analyze and revise your marketing plan once a month or so. New ideas, opportunities and challenges will arise, so your marketing plan should be flexible.Consider your primary business objective, and then ask yourself, “How does my Real Estate Internet Marketing program support this objective?” If you can’t answer the question, it’s time for you to put in some effort. If you have a rough idea, you need to refine it. Without a primary business and marketing objective, you’re shooting arrows at random targets. Your chances of success will improve if you shoot arrows at the same target.Using simple tools like HTML to build your website is a great way to rank high among search engine results. Also, putting appropriate, informative content along with the right mix of keywords goes a long way in generating traffic for your Real Estate website. Keep in mind, a Real Estate Marketing strategy that works well for somebody else may not work as well for you. There is a constant evolution in the search engines and the criteria they rank the web-pages on. To become prominent to the search engines, therefore, you need to keep your website up-to-date with the current SEO trends.On a concluding note, a web presence is a combination of online entities, each one reinforcing and supporting the next. When you combine the precise Real Estate Marketing tools, you can steadily increase the number of ways people find you. Specialists like Z57 will be able to guide you to choose the right mix of these marketing tools, enabling your website to stand successful in Marketing for Real Estate.

Real estate commission is the way in which real estate agents are paid for the services they provide. They receive a percentage of the price received for the property. Effectively, the real estate agent requires the seller of a property (the vendor) to sign over to the real estate agent a part of the property being sold.Another way of looking at it is to say that the real estate agent, through the wording of the listing contract, effectively has his name added to the title deed of the vendor’s property, so that the real estate agent becomes a part-owner of the property. When the property sells, the real estate agent receives a payment that represents his share in the vendor’s property.Most readers will be aware of the arguments in favour of real estate sale commissions, so I won’t discuss those here. My focus is on the ways in which the sale process can be skewed against all parties involved, when the motivation to win a commission takes precedence over more important considerations.Commission is a “winner-takes-all, loser gets nothing” situation. This increases the pressure on the real estate agent to secure a sale. Time is also a problem. If the real estate agent cannot secure a sale within a time acceptable to the vendor, the vendor may take the property off the market, or away from the real estate agent’s agency. This will result in a total loss for the real estate agent.Finally, the vendor becomes an obstacle between the real estate agent and his commission goal. In order to receive payment for his share of the vendor’s property, the real estate agent must receive an offer to purchase within the available time, but the offer must be accepted by the vendor. If the vendor decides that the offer is not acceptable, then the real estate agent loses.In order to win the gambling game that is real estate sales, the real estate agent may decide to tip the odds in his favour – and there are numerous ways in which this can be done.At the listing stage the real estate agent may use improper means to win the listing contract. These include over-quoting on valuation, and offering dodgy sales figures.During the sale process the real estate agent may be tempted to tell potential purchasers things that are untrue. I have seen many sale contracts with clauses designed to protect real estate agents against the consequences of false statements. Known as “porkies clauses”, they invariably state that the purchaser acknowledges that any information provided to the purchaser by the real estate agent is provided on the understanding that the purchaser will not be relying on it for any purpose.When a purchaser has submitted an offer, and the purchaser cannot be convinced to increase her offer, the real estate agent may be tempted to pressure the vendor into accepting what would otherwise be unacceptable. Observations, such as “the market has softened” or “the market has spoken to us” are used by real estate agents to convince vendors that the real estate agent’s high estimation of value can no longer be relied upon, and that the vendor should now accept what the vendor believes is an unacceptably low offer.For some years now, I have been arguing that real estate services should be provided on a fee-for-service basis.I will explore the replacement of real estate sale commissions with a fee-for-service structure further in future articles.