Portland Real Estate's Blog: All Categories

For the past 6 months I've been testing forced registration versus unforced registration, and for our website the results were very conclusive. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't more testing to be done. This is the Internet afterall, where everything and anything can and be tracked, tested, and optimized.

The way we structured our initial test is that we compared the 3 months of April, May, and June 2009 where we ran unforced registration, to the 3 months of July, August, and September 2009 where we ran forced registration. The results were surprisingly conclusive; when we switched to forced registration, we saw a 231% increase in leads! Disclosure: this test was done when we launched a redesigned website (LEC 4) at the same time that we made…

I think the old adage, "you only have one chance to make a first impression," is as true on the internet as anywhere. We really do only have one chance to make that first impression, and in the business of real estate today, that first impression is often via the Internet, and in particular via a website.

Which is why we want our website to offer the most information and in the most accessible format to prospective customers. To this end, we recently jumped on the bandwagon to upgrade from a standard REW template website to REW's latest and greatest LEC 4 limited edition custom site. I have to admit that I am thrilled to have finally made the move. I think that when customers see our website, they quickly recognize the depth and quality of information…

There are confusing messages out there about link exchanges. It seems that in the past, some real estate websites at Advanced Access and REW have been severely penalized by Google for "excessive" link exchanges. On the other hand, since that penalty, many of the real estate agent websites that are at the top of Google's results are those that still participate in national real estate directory style link exchanges.

To add insult to injury, when the #1 website for "mycity real estate" is not using link exchanges, then it is frequently because the top site is one of the national websites like Trulia or Yahoo Real Estate that inherently have less need for link exchanges to compete for rankings because they do SEO savvy/self-serving things like nofollowing…

Portland, Oregon is a travel destination for this months Sunset magazine. The highlighted neighborhoods include Montavilla which offers family friendly restaurants and shopping anchored by the recently renovated Academy theatre. The theatre offers $3 movies with pizza and beer, and kids are welcome until 8pm plus they have onsite child care.

Previous issues have also highlighted other neighborhoods in Portland, such as the ever popular Pearl District, described as "urban sophistication with small-town charm." They noted the strong sense of community and easy access to parks and trails with the enormous Forest Park just a short 20 minute jaunt from the heart of the Pearl.

The market is picking up, as it usually does in March, and things are moving quicker than last month. However, the year over year comparisons still shows a big slow down compared to last year. The March 2007 inventory was 3.8 months versus the current 9.1 months in March of 2008 which is a nearly 140% increase in inventory levels. The result is that homes are now taking substantially longer to sell than this time last year.

On the other hand, prices on residential homes are still up 5.1% from this time last year, with the median home selling for $344,700 versus $328,700 last year. The condo market is showing similar appreciation with the median price at $264,300 which is up 5% from $251,300 in March 2007. Although it should be noted that most of this…

Did you know that Google limits the search results to two entries from the same domain for a given SERP?

I noticed this in the results for the Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World contest because otherwise there would be many more results from the realestatewebmasters.com website showing up.

It ocurred to me that this could be useful to see how different pages on your site are ranking. For example, if you do a search for the "Greatest Real Estate Agent In The World" on Google while limiting your results to realestatewebmasters.com then you can see that Morgan's contest announcement is #1 and then Jim Sparrow's #2, but there are many other relevant pages which don't show up in a standard Google search for these keywords.

The reason for this filter is…

Before investing in real estate, it is important to understanding the different levels of involvement that you can have as a real estate investor. For some investors, real estate investing may be a full time occupation, while other investors just want to get checks in the mail. In reality, we would probably all like to just get checks in the mail, but as the old saying goes, time is money.

Now in reality, every investment and every investor is unique, but for the purposes of discussion, we will divide investors into two basic types which we will call active investors and passive investors. The reason for doing this is that it is helpful to identify the level of time commitment and involvement that you want to have as a real estate investor.

Active…

There are many ways to go about searching the Portland MLS, and your options primarily depend on which website you are using to do the search. Additionally, the type of search to use depends on what you are searching for and how well the geographic data matches up with your personal MLS searching goals.

On my website, we offer four different types of MLS search.

1) Search the Portland MLS by City: This is the traditional way to search the MLS, and the one that is most commonly available on almost all real estate agent websites. If the city that you are searching in is relatively small and the neighborhoods are not distinctly different, then this can be a very effective way to do your search. My site also offers the option to save these searches and get…