All Categories

Pilfering through Google Analytics So yesterday I was doing my thing, going through my GA reports @ 100 MPH when my mouse wheel came to a screeching halt (well maybe not screeching). Usually when reviewing my keyword analysis I skip right over all the keywords that match or partially match my company name. Today I took a closer look at that group of keywords and couldn't believe how much traffic was coming through those terms. Currently, I rank #1 for the most popular term in my market and I ... Read Full Post

Penetrating Affluent Markets For those listing agents that deal with the affluent market segments in their area one thing consistently rings true no matter what area of the country you work in . . . high-end listings usually come through word of mouth. With every high end listing we get, we as real estate agents do almost as much to impress the client as we do to market the listing. This ensure that we are talked about among the circles of the elite. During the staging process, it is common t... Read Full Post

Great Beginings The first thing you think of when you hear or read the word Woodstock is the Woodstock Festival of 69 right? Despite the name connection, the actual concert was held 43 miles away from Woodstock New York in our neighboring Sullivan County in the town of Bethel. This being said, there is no shortage of culture in Woodstock. The 1903 Byrdcliffe art colony is the oldest Arts & Crafts colony in America. The movement brought artists to Woodstock to teach the art of furniture, c... Read Full Post

When training new agents, one of the things they have the most difficulty with is, planning the route of the homes they are showing. Our market exists within a rural area with a senseless system of dirt roads, back roads, secondary roads, highways and roads that look like driveways. Making your way around can some times be difficult, let alone keeping a schedule. The problem . . . The way it works here is that a buyer agent would have to call the listing office of each listing he or she plans... Read Full Post

A great little tip I picked up at the last Prudential manager's conference. It has everything to do with combating some the bad press that seems to be relentlessly distributed in regards to the state of the market. As stated in some of my past blogs, our local Ulster County Real Estate market enjoys a significant boost to our second home market. This boost comes about because of the unique combination of our proximity to New York City and the value of the home buying dollar in our area as com... Read Full Post

I think signatures are a great tool for real estate agents. I train my agents to use them as a method of response to an otherwise daunting task of replying to large volumes of website leads (thanks to REW). Our email system (Outlook on an in-house Exchange server) has the capability of creating several signatures per email account. With this feature we have our agents create several signatures with canned response content based on the most common requests for information we recieve via the we... Read Full Post

Nobody really knows exactly where the Hudson Valley Real Estate Area starts and stops. As the term becomes more marketable it seems that it takes on a life of its’ own and grows in every direction along the Hudson River. From a real estate perspective, second-home buyers looking for the most bang for their buck are looking on the west side of the river heading more north into the Catskills, in search of more home buying value. Ulster and Sullivan Counties seem to be the destination of choic... Read Full Post

Here in Upstate New York we enjoy a niche market consisting of New York City residents looking to escape city life and enjoy a little of what country living has to offer. Along with the extra acreage, privacy, views and water features comes one other requirement of our city buyers, a feature I refer to as the naked factor. The naked factor refers to either the entire property or a portion of the property being secluded enough to be comfortably naked outside. I don't understand it completely b... Read Full Post

I recently did a training with a handful of my agents on digital camera use. It is my opinion and the opinion of a lot of other real estate professionals that good listing photos demonstrate professionalism. The training worked out great. Agents were excited to bring their personal cameras into the office so that the tech guy (me) can actually show them how to use them. After a morning of shooting dozens of photos of a listing we had close to the office we came back to the office to see what ... Read Full Post