| 9 tips for better real estate video and Rentals: A new niche for real estate agents? |
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If you're not promoting your listings using video, you're missing a huge opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition, provide a higher level of service to your clients, and reach the hot Gen X and Gen Y markets.According to NAR, only 1 percent of all agents used video in their businesses in 2010. This year, the number is 8 percent. If you want to edge out your 92 percent of your competition, creating fun and engaging videos is a great way to do it. Below are nine simple tips that can help you to shoot great videos for your business.1. Perfect quality not required If you were shooting a video five years ago, most people expected commercial quality. With the advent of YouTube, this is no longer the case. YouTube has made amateur videos shot with a cell phone or a Flip camera acceptable. [Read the full article] Editor's Note: This article is the first of a three-part series focusing on the personal safety of real estate agents. This first article in the series focuses on best practices to observe while conducting open houses. Part II will examine statistics and surveys on violent crime in the real estate industry, and regulatory efforts to improve licensing requirements and weed out criminals. Part III will highlight lessons agents have gleaned from personal experiences with potentially dangerous situations.In February, a real estate agent in Ottumwa, Iowa, was assaulted and tied up when she arrived at a home for a scheduled showing appointment. Her attackers robbed the home, according to news reports. Two months later, some 90 miles away in West Des Moines, 27-year-old Ashley Okland was fatally shot in the head and chest while working at a model home. The crime remains unsolved. [Read the full article] A: My friend, I went out of the business of gazing into my real estate crystal ball a long, long time ago. Once was, every year I was asked to predict precisely when in the next year the market would recover.Nowadays, the most I'll do is call out several markets a year that I think are showing signs that they'll do better than average -- things like net population growth, net job growth, low unemployment rates and high affordability all generally point to a city that will fare better than others.As well, there are a few markets in which demand is so restricted by tight land-use guidelines and the very minimal availability of land that they tend to fare relatively well throughout a recession, like my own San Francisco Bay Area stomping grounds. [Read the full article] 
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