Just a quick note: AAROnline.com will be down intermittently on Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5 from 10:00am to 2:00pm. We apologize for the inconvenience.

An Open Letter to the AAR Family:

It is with a heavy heart that we share the passing of our friend and 2012 AAR President-elect John “Jack” Woerner with you. Jack was an agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. In addition, he was a Past President of the Green Valley/Sahuarita Association of REALTORS^® (2004), AAR Region Five Vice President (2007-2009), and 2012 AAR President-elect. Jack was to be the 2013 President of the Arizona Association of REALTORS^®.

President-elect Woerner was a friend, mentor, leader, father and husband who will be missed by so many. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Jan, and his family.

As details for his services become available, we will be sure to share them with you.

If you didn’t know Jack personally, you missed a special opportunity to connect with a kind and honorable soul.

Sincerely,

Holly Mabery, 2012 AAR President
On Behalf of the AAR Board of Directors and Staff

AAR’s email issues were resolved Wednesday evening at 5:10 pm local time by our excellent tech staff.

Our domain host now attributes the issue to a problem with their DNS (dynamic name server) service. DNS is the “Internet address book” which allows traffic to flow using domain names instead of IP addresses. Thanks to all who called and alerted us of this problem.

AAR has not been receiving email since 10:00am today (Wednesday, 1/11).  The problem is due to a corrupted Internet domain mail (MX) record hosted at one of our vendors. Our website, www.aaronline.com, is currently functioning. Rather than moving our domain records to another vendor, we are going to wait overnight to see if MyDomain corrects the email issue. Unfortunately, shifting the full domain record would result in 24-48 hour interruptions in service to almost all AAR Internet services, which is something we want to avoid. We apologize for any inconvenience and will continue to closely monitor this situation.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Crashmaster007

This is part four in a four-part series.  See parts one (property management), two (REOs and short sales) and three (improper drafting of documents & advertising issues).

Here is an important risk management issue for brokers and managers: How do you handle agent-to-agent conflicts that arise? You do not want them going throughout the office unresolved.  I am sure you have all seen instances where an agent with an issue starts going around an office trying to garner support or sympathy for “their side” of the conflict.  In-fighting can destroy office morale when left unattended.

Sometimes the only solution is to ask one of the offending agents to leave, or both, but that is probably the worst case scenario.  A good risk management option for a brokerage would be to check your office policies and procedures and try to shore up areas of behavior issues before they begin.

AAR has received many complaints related to in-house referrals.  An agent claims the broker did not want to intercede between the agents disputing the referral or make a decision on the referral for them, and the agent starts seeking outside sources to help them decide what to do next.  Again, it would be good practice to look through your polices on referrals or establish a policy to include verbiage such as, “All referrals between agents must be in writing, acknowledged by both parties, and the dollar amount or percent clearly described.”  The broker or office manager then has a policy to use regarding the referral, thereby eliminating the need for a controversial decision that could be challenged.

One final risk reduction point for brokers and managers: Agents often call AAR with questions that should really be addressed by the agent’s broker or office manager.  When the agent is asked whether or not they have spoken to their broker or manager, the agent responds no.  When it is suggested that the agent contact their broker or office manager, all manner of excuses are offered relative to a broker or manager’s availability, managers not having the knowledge, the agent not understanding when or who to contact at the brokerage, etc.  Implementing communication policies regarding the chain of command in your offices is something that should be researched in every office.  For example, if an agent has a question, who do they go to first: a mentor, the office manager, the broker?  At what point should contact with the broker be made and what form does the contact take?

BY JACK COTTON, CRS, CRB

The real estate business is a relationship business. This statement is never truer than it is in the luxury end of the market. High-net-worth individuals like to be with others who are like themselves and want to deal with people they know or are known by someone they know.

Depending on who you listen to, there are those who tell you that the concept of geographic “farming” in real estate is over; it’s dead; it’s for the losers of the business.

I don’t subscribe to this extreme position, but I do believe that we need to elevate the process of finding luxury clients to be more on the level of “gardening.” Farming is a hot tractor tilling hundreds, if not thousands, of dusty, manure-laden acres.

Gardening takes place in a smaller area, it is more precise, and there is rarely a tractor involved.

Gardening is so effective because the decision to buy or sell high-end real estate often is impulsive.  A high-end owner of real estate will wake up in the morning, look out the window and wonder what the view of the mountains or water are like from another angle.  That afternoon the call goes out, the house goes on the market and the search begins for a home half a mile away.

This concept of musical houses is why it is critical for you to use gardening to be “top of mind” with high-net-worth owners of real estate in your desired market area.

Select a small, defined geographic area in where you want to dominate the market.

Gardening this geographic area based on an organized plan of action can yield results because people of means like to be around people like themselves. Gardening geographically, therefore, can yield results as high-net-worth individuals are given the opportunity to “hand pick” their neighbors. In addition, a neighbor will often purchase adjacent property for added privacy or for a family member.

How do we garden? Again it is like farming, but on a smaller, more elegant scale:

Mailings: Mailings should be consistent, planned about a year in advance and reflect the quality of the service and product that you are representing.  The services, of course, are you, and the product is the high-end real estate you represent. 

Calling: The method of calling that has returned the greatest results for me is to call first with a very brief explanation of a mailing, usually a survey, they are about to receive and ask them to keep an eye out for it.

Events: ”By invitation only” property previews are a great way to meet people in your garden. You can join forces with a high-end retailer to enhance your event.

A master gardener would never till, plant, water and feed and then expect a beautiful floral display by the weekend. You might be surprised, however, at how fast results can come from real estate gardening.

Jack Cotton, CRS, CRB, has worked continually in the real estate company he started in his college dormitory room 37 years ago. Over the years, Jack has been involved in most of the record breaking luxury residential sales on Cape Cod, either directly or as coach to the agent involved. His books, Selling Luxury Homes: 12 Secrets Luxury Home Buyers Know and 12 Secrets Luxury Home Sellers Know  hit the Amazon bestseller list at the same time in October of 2011. Connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user (and AAR blog contributor) Bill Risser

The 2011 National Association of REALTORS® Conference and Expo was held in Anaheim, CA this year; a good time as usual. Anaheim is an excellent place for large events, and I know more than one person took advantage of the fact that it was right next to Disneyland! As is true every year, my favorite part is walking / talking with other attendees. Whether it’s your friends from other companies, online networking contacts you hardly get face time with, or vendor reps that you’ve never met, the face-to-face (F2F) interactions make this event worth going.

Theme Show

Each year I try to identify a single theme – some common string that runs through the booths, classes and hallway conversations. In my opinion, this was a continuation from last year. It’s no surprise that mobile is once again the front runner. People are still learning how to use their mobile devices in more useful ways. In fact, mobile devices have multiplied; bring on the tablets!

Tablets and Phones

Saturday morning I attended a session on using tablets and mobile devices in real estate. Amy Chorew and Ginger Wilcox lead the discussion in front of a jam-packed room. The room held hundreds and was bursting at the seems. Ginger started by painting a picture of the 2011 home buyer.

They pull up in front of a home for sale and pull out their iPad or smart phone. If they can’t see interior pictures within five minutes, they are frustrated. Five minutes is a LONG time to sit in front of a house waiting for more information.

I get it. I also get that some agents don’t know how to make “mobile friendly” information. It’s hard enough to keep up with the desktop web, let alone the mobile web. Ginger continued by addressing the question she gets asked the most.

Do I Need an App?

No, REALTORS® do not need an app. However, you should make sure that your website is mobile friendly. Do you know what your site looks like on a mobile device? I hope you’ve tried to check it out on your smart phone, BlackBerry* or iPad.

Visit howtogomo.com for tips on having a mobile-friendly site and to see what your site looks like on an Android.

Shiny App Syndrome

Ginger and Amy went through their list of handy apps. They both referenced the fact they have shiny app syndrome and have been know to download apps that never get used. For the sake of time, they filtered their apps list to the handy ones for real estate agents.

You’ve probably heard of the big ones like Dropbox, Skype, Twitter and Facebook. Here are some of the ones they mentioned that are lesser known:

• Expensify – track expenses, take pictures of receipts
• Milebug – track your mileage via GPS
• Magic Plan – build a floor plan from photos (iPhone only)
• My Measures – get dimensions of an object by taking a picture

Walking the Expo

As I mentioned before, no new trend stood out this year. Mobile advertising is still here – although there weren’t as many billboard-sized QR codes. Paperless file management is still being perfected by several different technology companies. Leads for purchase are everywhere. Banks are continuing their “but wait, we’re friendly” campaigns. All in all, nothing jumped out with the WOW factor. I did notice the foot massage booth stepped it up by adding a body shaker. I’ll spare you the ridiculous video.

FB 2 F2F

The next morning included peer-to-peer sessions. I chose Dale Chumbley’s Facebook talk. Dale is Facebook famous for starting the “365 Things to Do in [insert your city]” page trend and engaging his audience in creatively simple ways. After listening to his presentation, it’s no wonder he gets 50% of his business from social networking. Feel free to borrow:

“Crazy Things I See When Showing Homes!”

See something crazy when out with clients? Snap a photo and upload it to Facebook. This is a creative way to remind your friends that you are a REALTOR® that can help them buy a house too. Much better than using the line, “I’m a REALTOR® that can help you buy a house.” This picture is classic.

“What Is It?”

Do you like using photo distortion apps on your phone? Dale will modify a picture and ask his friends to guess what it is. I think it’s a fun way to keep people engaged. Can you identify this one without reading the comments?

Happy Birthday Videos

Have you ever wished a friend a happy birthday by writing on their FB wall? Yes. Were you 1 of 100? Yes. So… what are you going to do to stand out? Dale turns on the web cam and wishes his friends a happy birthday via video. As long as you have a web cam, it’s simple to post a video message within Facebook. Try it. If you don’t like watching yourself on video – don’t! Just post the message and continue on with your day. Start doing this today before it becomes the norm.

Even though Dale networks online better than you and I, his overall goal is still to meet people offline – a.k.a. in the real world. Facebook is a great way to communicate, but getting F2F is much better for business.

I like to stress the importance / significance of face time because so often I get wrapped up in all the techno-tools that I forget to mention what a lot of these tools are actually trying to accomplish: make our lives easier, make our businesses more productive or improve our relationships with others.

All in all, it was a great conference / expo. Thanks for reading!

 *Okay, okay. BlackBerry phones are smart phones too.

Yep.  I wrote that headline.  ”The Fallacy of Facebook Business Pages.”  Of course, I’m talking about pages created by REALTORS®.  In my opinion, 99% of them need to be deleted.  I’ve been saying that for nearly a year.  Finally, there is some support for my viewpoint. Chris Smith of InmanNext.com wrote the following post last month: You Need To Delete Your Facebook Business Pages Immediately.  It’s a quick read, so check it out.

When fan pages were first introduced, I admit I was firmly aboard the bandwagon.  I helped agents create pages.  Like every other instructor doing workshops, seminars and webinars, I touted the page as the place to do business on Facebook.  The messages went something like this:

Keep all your “business-y” stuff away from your profile and get it onto your page!

Drive people to your page to click “fan” or “like” so they can see the awesome content you post on your page!

Forget your typical website and simply use your Facebook page as your online presence!

Yes, I actually heard speakers (plural) promote that last one.  Use your page as your website.  Yikes.  I hope no one listened.

I will admit there have been some successful Facebook Pages in the real estate space.  Dale Chumbley’s “365 Things To Do In Vancouver, WA” is the gold standard.  With over 16,000 likes, Dale has generated business from this page.  He has also spawned a host of “365” strategies.  Some have worked; most have not.  The key to Dale’s success was the extra-ordinary effort he put into his page.  He did not miss a single day, even if it meant dashing back to a hotel room at a conference so he could get his post online.  Do you have the ability to put the time, energy and effort into this strategy?  For most, the answer is no.  For any page strategy to reach this level of success, it requires a near Herculean effort.

So, does this mean Facebook is not an effective tool for agents?  Absolutely not.

I ask every group I present to this question: “Is your business about building relationships?”  The near unanimous response is a resounding YES!  (For a contrarian view on this point, check out this post.)

Let’s examine Facebook pages using the assumption that real estate is a relationship-based business.  First, an astounding statistic about pages:

94% of people that click like on a page never go back to that page.

Why?  Because they assume that the act of clicking like will result in new content posted to that page appearing in their Newsfeed.  Does it?  If the page is McDonalds, with over 11,000,000 likes, it most certainly will. If the page is the typical real estate page with say,  72 likes, it won’t. Or if it does, it will be so far down the Newsfeed, the scroll wheel on your mouse will burst into flames from the friction of trying to get to the post.  From research I’ve read, a page needs in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 5,000 likes, and each post on the page needs multiple comments, shares and likes for Facebook’s algorithm to place it high enough in the Newsfeed of the “likers” to be seen.  I have clicked “like” on nearly 100 local real estate business pages, and I have yet to see a post appear in my Newsfeed. And yes, my settings are properly configured.

To be fair, I have seen a post or two from a real estate business page appear high in my Newsfeed.  This only happens if I switch to “Most Recent” in my feed, and the page owner just happened to post in the minutes prior to me signing in to Facebook.  This is actually just dumb luck, and last time I checked, luck is not really a marketing strategy.

So, keeping our assumption about real estate and relationships in place, how do we use Facebook effectively?

By using Facebook as it was meant to be used.  By using it to create, maintain and grow relationships.  How is this done?  By strategically building custom friend lists that allow us to filter the incoming noise and target the outgoing message.  I have a couple of tutorials that walk you through the process.  It is not difficult, and once in place, you can spend as little as 15 minutes a day implementing a relationship-building strategy that revolves around your clients — past, present and future.

I am not suggesting you post listings on your profile.  I am also not suggesting you tout your successes and your awards on your profile.  I am simply saying use Facebook for the purpose Mark Zuckerberg intended it for:  creating, maintaining and growing relationships.

Stay tuned for a  follow-up post on the effective use of lists on Facebook.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Frank3.0

This is part three in a four-part series. See parts one (property management) and two (REOs and short sales).

Improper Drafting of Documents. AAR’s Professional Standards Department is receiving a number of complaints about the improper drafting of forms, such as contracts, counteroffers and addenda.

Although not always a main cause of action, improper drafting can be discovered when a complaint is being reviewed. When reviewing forms, consider: Have the forms been properly filled out? Are there initials and/or signatures on all?  Have the documents been reviewed when returned for changes, additions or deletions?  Do you have a copy of all documents for the transaction?  One missing piece, lack of a signature acknowledgement or an altered document that you cannot defend can lead to a violation.

Recently, one complaint involved a REALTOR® drafting a lease purchase.  If the REALTOR® doesn’t understand the transaction, they certainly are not drafting the paperwork correctly to protect the parties they represent.  Which leads to a question for our broker/manager readers: Do you allow your agents to draft lease options or lease purchases?  Have you reviewed your in-house policies for specialties your agents may offer?  Do you have specific training requirements prior to your agents offering such services?

Advertising Complaints. Here are complaints we are seeing charged frequently under Article 12:

• An MLS picture of a property from the “area” not the actual property with no disclaimer identifying the photo as not the actual site but an area photo
• Agents making claims that they are #1 in a particular market place or area that are false or misleading
• A variety of internet issues such as lack of disclosure (not indicating a licensed REALTOR®, not including the office affiliation)

One issue that comes to mind was that of a community with a lake.  The photo indicated the property as a “lake front” offering when in fact, the property was located a good distance from any lake.

Stay tuned for the next installment of this month-long series. On Monday, November 28, we’ll touch on agent-to-agent conflicts and broker communication policies.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user HarshLight

I brought my husband, mother-in-law and two kids along to Anaheim this past weekend so that they could do Disneyland while I did the National Association of REALTORS® annual convention. Because I was bringing the kiddos, I chose to stay at the Disneyland Hotel rather than a Hilton or Marriott.

It was my first time staying at a Disney property. I’ve been to the Magic Kingdom plenty of times, but growing up, my family generally stayed at a motel down the road to save money. Why pay more when all you’re going to do is sleep in the room, right?

During the convention’s general session, I was fortunate to hear former Disney CEO Michael Eisner speak. He had two main messages: practice creativity in a (financially responsible) box and don’t be afraid to micromanage.

Eisner was promoting micromanagement? Yep, that’s correct. But what he calls “micromanagement,” others might call “attention to detail.” He talked about how nothing was too small to escape Walt Disney’s notice. He would pick up litter as he wandered the park—the guy in charge setting a priority on cleanliness that is still evident at Disneyland today.

When I checked in to the Disneyland Hotel, the kids had not yet arrived. As I unpacked my bag and tidied up, I kept finding Mickey Mouse everywhere. He was subtly in the tiles of the bathtub. His familiar white-gloved hands held the lights by the mirror. His distinctive ears swirled in the carpets. A Mickey treasure hunt for my four-year-old son, I thought with delight!

As I passed the nightstand, I noticed that the lamp had two switches. A tiny Tinkerbell pointed to one of them. Intrigued, I hit the switch. The wooden headboard, carved with the familiar Disney castle, suddenly lit up with stars and fireworks as “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” started to play in a music box tone. Magic!

I couldn’t wait for my kids to arrive. The four-year old found all the Mickeys, with a little help from Grandma, but I saved the best for last. When I lit up the headboard, my nine-month-old cooed and reached out for the stars. And my son’s look of wonder was so heartfelt and intense that it nearly made his mama cry.

That headboard was our night light, and the wonder of turning it on and hearing the music play lasted throughout our stay. The motel down the street is a cheaper place to rest your head, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But this past weekend, I discovered the value of Disney’s fanatical attention to detail. That kind of magic is hard to resist.

What do you do in your business to enchant your customers? What is your signature service? It may be time to let Disney work his spell on you and inspire you to find your own magic.

(Want to see the headboard in action? It’s on YouTube, of course.)