Reading, Writing, and Real Estate

Last month, the DotLoop Blog examined what not to do with your website. Among the suggestions were to not use Glamour Shot images of yourself or brag about how awesome you are.

Today, let's go a bit deeper and discuss probably the most important part of your site - the writing.

Great writing can make a ho-hum site shine and bad writing can make a gorgeous site bland. A site's writing is what truly separates it from the competition. Here are three tips to make sure your site is a shining example of crisp and clear composition:

Practice Good Grammar - If you don't know your its from it's or their from there, then there's a good chance you're not paying attention to the details. And in real estate, details matter. Good grammar isn't about looking like an elitist; it's about looking competent. This includes the ever-important apostrophe placement, too.

Say Something - Everyone likes flowery adverbs, but don't forget you're also a business person. Your words need to say something of value, not just empty fluff. Same thing with your listings. What does a "cute cottage" mean, anyway?

Be An Expert - Talk about the local area, not just the specific home. Is there a local jazz bar around the corner from your listing? Do you have working knowledge about short sales and can you lucidly explain the process to your clients? Maybe you have a great tip on how to clean out gutters on a second story home. The more knowledge you can share, the better your brand will be.

Take a look at your site and check to see if you need some editing. Remember - your site's copy is how it communicates to the outside world. Make sure it has something to say and that it says it good, er, I mean well.

Pirate Phonics - Do Your Clients Understand Your Real Estate Lingo?

As many of you probably know, Sunday is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a day to celebrate swashbuckling and decry land lubbers.

It's a silly day, one that I never had heard of until a colleague here at DotLoop mentioned it earlier this week.

It got us thinking, though: every industry has its own "language" - real estate is no different. But how helpful is that to your clients?

Do your clients, for example, understand what a short sale is? Or what it means to be FHA certified? Do they know what escrow means or why they need to sign a certain document and only initial another?

A purchase contract, after all, like most legal documents, is not designed to make it easy to understand, but to legally protect certain parties by using obscure, sometimes archaic (sometimes Latin) language.

Your job, then, as an agent, is to translate the legalese and help them navigate the choppy waters and keep them from walking the plank.

After all, with a real estate transaction, your clients are looking to you to be the captain of the negotiation, to keep a watch out for them from the crow's nest, and to help them set sail on their new life in their new home.

Arrrrrrr you up to the challenge?

The First Rule of REBar Camp: No Selling

Proud REBar sponsor DotLoop is down in sunny Nashville this week enjoying REBar Camp 2010, a one-of-a-kind industry get-together designed to bring dialogue and fun to the real estate industry. Below, DotLoop CEO Austin Allison and REBar organizer and co-founder Brian Copeland discuss all things real estate, social media, and the difference between a gadget and a tool. Check it out:

Friday Farewell - The Future Is Simple

It's been one heck of a busy Friday here at DotLoop. This afternoon, Austin Allison was in a featured interview on the Harris Real Estate University Blog.

I myself attended a luncheon this afternoon at Xavier University's Cintas Center sponsored by the American Marketing Association entitled "Memo from 2015: What the Future Wants from a Marketer".

The luncheon was less about predicting any one specific future so much as it was about looking at the social trends and being in a position to meet them. Of course, one of the most prevalent discussions was how technology will shape the future.

Among the more interesting aspects was the notion of a offline/online combination along with a more local focus. Sounds like the future of real estate to me.

Of course, we know this; after all, DotLoop was founded upon the principle of merging the offline with the online, creating a paperless transaction while helping clients and agents negotiate more simply. We're not looking to replace anything except the hassle, allowing you and your client more time to do what you want.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

'Fore' For Much Longer?

It's funny how the universe works. Just days after discussing neighborhoods designed for the elderly, this morning, I stumbled upon this article at MarketWatch.com. In brief, it outlines how retirees are re-thinking the cliched idea of a golf-course retirement in sunny Florida and how, "today 'cost of living' is the most important consideration on where to locate."




Also mentioned is a related article discussing the downsizing of the size of the average new home for the first time in 27 years, a topic I've covered before, too.

Regardless of your thinking about the housing market, it appears retirees are making a shift in their priorities. We'll see what kind of sea change this brings to the housing industry as a whole.

dotloop.com

Environ Mental?

Here at DotLoop, we talk a lot about the environment. We pride ourselves on being a company that values not only sound business policy, but sound responsibility, too. Ridding the real estate industry of millions of wasted sheets of paper not only makes sense, it helps our planet, too.

But environment can mean more than just green trees and blue manatees. Indeed, the word "environment" comes from the French word environs meaning "compass or circuit", or "around". So, environment means what's around you. It really wasn't until 1956 that it was used in a strictly ecological sense.

The Chain Gang

So, think about environment in broader sense: think of your physical environment, your social environment, even your work environment and think about how they are all interrelated.

• Physical Environment
  
  When people think of their environment, the most common thing that comes to mind is where they are physically. Someone who has a home in the city has a much different environment than someone who has a home in the country (Town Mouse, Country Mouse, anyone?). Depending on what you enjoy more (sidewalk cafes vs. fishing on Tuesdays), you can choose the concrete jungle or the prairie dog jungle.
  

• Social Environment
  
  So, you know where you want to live. Now, how does that affect who you interact with? Well, depending on what kind of "mouse" you are, you'll most likely interact with very different people. It’s as doubtful that city slicker's friends would know the best way to fix a tractor as a country native’s friends would know the best spot to grab an organic cappuccino.
  

• Work Environment
  
  So, you have your country house and you’re best friend is Will, the owner of the local John Deere tractor shop down the road. But your dream job is to design custom manhole covers and crosswalk signs? Where you work also affects who you have in your social circle, so you may want to avoid a job at a steak house if you only want to associate with vegetarians. And, if you do want to work in the city, a country home may not be feasible, unless you enjoy two hour commutes.

Un-LinkedIn

So, obviously, physical, social, and work environments are all inter-related. Who you interact with, where you live, and where you work with are all linked together in a pretty stringent relationship.

But throw in a new technology, and everything gets twisted up. The advent of the Internet has drastically changed our everyday lives and has completely shaken up how we view where we live, how we work, and who we share our lives with. The Internet has broken the chains that bounded us to our environments.

• Physical Environment
  
  The Internet has broken so many barriers that some could argue that physical space itself has become obsolete. E-mail has forced the US Postal Service to scale back its offices and e-commerce has helped make Black Friday less important than Cyber Monday. So, when you can talk to someone across the world in real time without paying long distance or even send them a PDF in a second, what exactly does long distance mean anymore?
  

• Social Environment
  
  And what about talking with someone across the world? With the Internet, it's now possible for someone living in the middle of nowhere to have a relationship with anyone in the world. Online dating has created millions of marriages and the dissolving of distance has afforded everything from more peaceful dialogue and to the rise of microcapital. The Internet has truly fostered a global community.
  

• Work Environment
  
  Any newspaper editor can attest to the changes brought on by the Internet. Not only has traditional media been given a run for its money, the traditional workspace has drastically changed now. The rise of social media has created jobs out of Tweeting and, with the advent of the Great Recession, more and more cubicles are being torn down, allowing employees to work from home in their pajamas.

One Big Happy - Putting It All Together

Shameless plug time now: DotLoop understands not only the inter-connectivity of our lives, but how the Internet has made our ability to live, communicate, and work so much more seamless and easy. Our ultimate goal is to make the lives of agents and clients alike easier and to help navigate in this modern world. We've decided that the future is in online collaboration, not chicken-scratched, over-faxed forms initialed on the trunk of a car.

The rise of the Internet has not only revolutionized the way we live, work, and communicate, but has made us take a closer look at our environment--and made us question not only its limitations, but its very definition.

So, next time you think about what's around you--take a closer look. There may be a lot more than meets the eye.

dotloop.com