There’s been some news recently about the online advertising site Zoocasa releasing a Zillow-like online real estate value calculator for Canadian real estate. To accomplish this, Zoocasa went and bought access to Brookfield’s Centra system. They do a lot of appraisals, primarily in eastern Canada, and I’ve heard they gave Zoocasa access to 4-5 million records. That’s not a bad snapshot on first glance.

However, I’ve always said that appraisals are but one opinion of the value of a piece of real estate. Even within an appraisal they use 2-3 different ways of calculating values with differing results. I’ve also seen appraisals of the same property in the same condition differ by 10-15%.

To help cut through some of the BS, I’m going to run some recent Edmonton sales through Zoocasa and share the results. First, Addy Saeed had a good interview with Don Campbell that’s worth watching.

Don has a great quote in there. Don’t fall in love with a number. That’s always good advice for sellers. The value of your property is what a buyer and seller can agree on.

On to the data!

To do this quick test I pulled the last 10 Edmonton single family home sales from the MLS®. Because of delays in various offices enterting the data the sold dates are between October 28, 2011 and November 2, 2011 (today). Prices varied between $200,000 and $435,000. I placed no limits on the data except for being a single family home, so there’s two duplexes in the mix as well. One property (#3) didn’t have a lot size available because tax asessment data wasn’t available yet. Zoocasa wants you to:

• enter the address
• select from a limited number of property types
• number of bedrooms
• number of bathrooms
• living area
• lot size
• year built

There’s no doubt it’s an interesting tool with limited data and it’s still only one tool. As a REALTOR® I’m still a little concerned that people will start focusing on a number that’s been created using faulty or limited data, making my job and the lives of buyer and seller alike much more stressful. That said, having another tool is a good thing for the future of the market.

If you want a more accurate value, give me a shout for a CMA.

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Most people think of me as the internet guy. I worked for a big digital marketing agency, I teach online marketing workshops, I’m a Facebook/Twitter/etc addict, and I have a pretty MacBookPro that I love. I’m starting my career as a REALTOR® by doing something a little bit old school.

I’m sending real, physical, handwritten, snail mail cards out to a couple hundred of my closest friends, family, acquaintances and business people. Just a personal note and a couple business cards. I think people like that are deserving of at least the 2 minutes it takes to write a card.

If you’d like a card, or just like the feeling of something addressed by hand amongst the bills and junkmail, leave your address and I’ll send you a note or a Christmas card.

Photo Credit: Libraryman on Flickr

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The last few months have been just about as crazy as they get. Periods of insanity, followed by complete boredom. There’s three exciting things happening before the New Year (beside the birth of my first child) and I wanted to remind y’all that there’s a mailing list separate from this blog where I’ll be sharing them first.

You can sign up for the email newsletter here.

REALTOR® News

As you might have seen, I’ve just finished all the courses and exams to become a REALTOR®, and I’ve been interviewing real estate brokerages. I’ll be making a decision very soon and getting started helping people sell their properties and find new homes or investments. The lucky people on the email list will get to hear about it first (exciting, I know…) and also hear a little bit about the process (the things I’m reluctant to post on my blog for all to see).

Internet Marketing Workshops

Back by popular demand (i.e. people lovingly nagging me) will be my one day Internet Marketing Workshops. The date is yet to be set, since I’m trying to dodge Christmas Parties, but it’l be in early December. This will also be a very intimate session, limited to no more than 8 participants and it’ll be the last time I offer the course for $247 before I completely re-write the curriculum and the price goes up. This course is great for real estate investors, Realtors and small business owners.

Affiliate Webinars

And after a bit of a delay, the REIN affiliate program is going to get things going with a big December sale. Here’s part of an email I recieved from REIN’s Member Support Manger

Last year we decided to do a year-end clearance sale of a number of popular REIN™ products, and since it was so well received, we’ve decided to repeat that promotion again this year. So, get ready for the REIN ™ December Blow-out Sale for 2010 – we will be discounting nearly our entire line-up of programs, kits and some e-based products as well!

This year we are also going to give our Affiliates a piece of the action… You can publish those links or banners on your website, or use the text in an email or newsletter that you send out to your group. These promotional pieces are being designed now, and will not be available in your Affiliate dashboard until Dec. 1, so you may want to think about the timing of your next communication to your group…can you publish something to your database on, or just after Dec 1, and will that fit with your overall communication schedule?

As you promote our Sale to your contact database, every one of your people who clicks on the link embedded in the Sale banner or text copy that you post and then gets transferred to our shopping page will qualify you for a commission if they purchase a Sale item. They don’t even need to purchase an item on that visit – our system will also track future visits and purchases from that same user, and will credit you with a commission for a purchase even days later.

To help people get up and runing on the affiliate program, I’ll be doing a free webinar to help teach you the basics. We’ll get that rolling sometime the last week of November, but it’s only available through my email newsletter so sign up now!

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Well, it’s been about a week since the agreement between CREA and the Commissioner of Competition, and that seemed like enough time to let things settle before posting.

Here’s the thing. It changes nothing.

Commissions are not fixed, and there’s nothing preventing Realtors from offering discount services. The only catch has been that listings on the MLS system, and thus on MLS.ca and Realtor.ca, must have a Realtor as the contact, which is to preserve the integrity of the data.

Local boards had the option to opt out of this policy, as the local boards are the ones who actually own their own MLS systems. Toronto is one such board which required that their Realtors offer added value services as well as just listing a property on MLS. CREA changed their stance earlier in the year, forcing several Ontario boards to allow listing-only services. This quote from one of the people who filed the complaint with the Competition Comission reflects this:

“It was only after my persistence that resulted in the Competition Bureau finally recently intervened which forced CREA to only recently remove these rules earlier this year. The settlement agreement now prevents CREA from re-implementing these types of rules again,” said Mr. Dale, who plans to announce in the coming days his reentry into the marketplace.

There have been discount or reduced service brokerages in Alberta for years. It’s important to note Mr Dale is planning his re-entry because reduced service brokerages aren’t a viable business model for Realtors or consumers.

In most markets, just listing on MLS isn’t enough to sell your home.

Realtors (by which I mean good Realtors) do much more than just stick your property on MLS.

• They know how to help buyers find safe, affordable properties which suit their needs.
• They know how to deal with multiple offers so that you always have a back-up.
• They know what to do with a property that might have issues with zoning, encroachments, missing Real Property Reports, assumable mortgages, and under/over pricing.
• They’re bound by a code of ethics which requires them to disclose defects, clearly indicate who they’re working for and all conflicts of interest.
• They know the right places to market a property, how to negotiate with buyers and do all the dirty work of running around for you.

If you want to see how a Realtor should really sell a home, go chat with some of the folks who work with Sara and Sheldon at Coldwell Banker.

Realtors make a healthy commission because they’re highly trained and do a lot of work to make that commission. The 2004-2007 Tiger Woods years made a lot of Realtors, buyers and sellers lazy, and sure, more competition and harder working industry members will help things. But ‘destroy the system’? Not bloody likely.

I still think it’s a great time to become a Realtor if you’re committed to doing it full time, making is your primary occupation and being ready to learn, change and grow. I’m not afraid of my commission disappearing beneath a wave of sellers wanting listing-only services. You’d better believe I’m going to earn my paycheque.

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It’s been a common question at my workshops and when I run into people at events like REIN meetings. People love the simplicity and flexibility of WordPress, but want to list their current properties on their site. There’s a couple ways to do it, and I’ll cover some of them here.

Categorized or Tagged Posts

This is the simplest way to get your listings published. It’s how Brent publishes his current listings right now while we decide on a new theme.

• Do a new post for each listing
• Categorize them as ‘listings’ or ‘property listings’
• Tag them with appropriate attributes like price ranges, number of bedrooms or bathrooms, square foot ranges or construction type

Pros:

• Simple and easy – if you don’t know how to write a post, just give up and hire someone to do all this.
• Guaranteed to work with your theme and current plugins.
• Won’t break when you upgrade WordPress.

Cons:

• Can’t bulk-upload listings
• No templated fields for area, bath/bedroom and other attributes
• You’ll have to add pictures manually (or semi-manually), although Flickr slideshows are fantastic.

Here’s what a simple listing looks like on Brent’s site.

Real Estate WordPress Plugins

There’s some great plugins out there that are simple and free. Each one requires a little bit of work to install and configure, but they’re pretty easy to use. One good example is WP-Property. These plugins give you more flexibility and style than regular posts, but will work within your existing theme.

Pros:

• Still simple and easy. In the current versions of WordPress you’ll be able to do one-click installation of most plug-ins and they’re easy to configure.
• Usually they’ll work with your theme and other plugins. From time to time, you’ll get a conflict. If you use lots of plugins it’s more likely. If it’s a formatting thing, diagnosing a CSS conflict can be difficult.
• Lots of flexibility, functionality and style. There’s some truly great plugins out there, like lightbox for displaying photos in full size.

Cons:

• Limited bulk-upload of listings
• Mapping or MLS functionality is usually US based, and things like Trulia don’t work here.
• Can lead to technical problems, and if you’re already running a real estate WordPress theme you may run into conflicts.

Most plugins have screencasts to show you how to get started or explain how things work. Here’s one for WP-Property.

WP-Property – Tutorial 1: Adding Buildings from Andy Potanin on Vimeo.

WordPress Real Estate Themes

There’s a million of them. Themes are the skins which go over the chassis of your website and make it look and behave how you want. Here’s some Pros/Cons and then I’ll go over a couple of my favorites.

Pros:

• The best looking, most flexible and often easiest to use option.
• Bulk upload or automated feeds possible.
• Excellent ability to use multiple conversion points.
• Almost infinitely configurable and many premium themes (the ones you pay for) offer some level of support.

Cons:

• Some cost to the better themes out there.
• Configuring a theme to do the real estate things you require, and adjusting the design to fit your brand can be complex, or can be restricted by the license you purchase.
• Most good themes are US-biased, meaning MLS listings and such don’t always work the way they’re advertised.

Some Real Estate WordPress Themes I Like

ElegantEstate by Elegant Themes

AgentPress by Studio Press

Estate by Woo Themes

There’s a lot of ways to skin this particular cat, and it’s always changing and improving. Leave a comment and let us know if there’s a particular solution that works well for you.

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Several people have asked if I have another internet marketing workshop coming up, and I’ve heard some others mention going to a site several times a week to check for updates. There’s three or four easy ways to get what I write about, or to just find out about my workshops and other interesting info.

Internet Marketing Workshops and Ranking Reports

I have an email list for my workshops and other related topics. It’s seldom more than 1-2 emails a month, so this is the easiest way to keep in the loop without hearing from me every few days. You can subscribe here or use the form below.

Blog Posts, Website Updates and More Fun

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you can get the posts sent to you so you don’t have to surf back here every day or two. There’s two ways to do that.

First, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, using a reader like Google Reader.

Second, you can also subscribe to email updates, which will sent you a nice pretty copy of my posts by email. Here’s a quick signup form for the email updates.

Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Media!

And if you want even more frequent updates, you can follow me on twitter here (@w_chris_davies).

Connect with me on LinkedIn here.

I’m an avid user of the Social Media stock market called Empire Avenue. My ticker symbol is WCD.

You can add me on Facebook if we’ve met in person, but be warned, my Facebook has essentially nothing to do with real estate, internet marketing or social media and I will not likely join your groups/like your page if it has anything to do with real estate.

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There’s a scam that comes around every few years. You put an ad up for one of your units. Someone copies it, drops the price and ends up suckering someone out of a damage deposit or a month’s rent and running away. It’s the oldest trick in the book – sell something you don’t own. Here’s six tested and proven tips to help prevent people getting screwed and your name potentially being smeared by angry people.

1. Watermark your photos. Include your website and/or phone number. There’s a number of free options to do this, including the Picasa desktop app.
2. Pick a unique sentence that’s just in your ads and set up a Google Alert for it (in quotes). Then every time it shows up on the web you’ll get an email about it, which should only be when you put up a new ad. **You should also do this with your personal name and the name of your business.
3. Include several references to your name, phone number or website. This means in the body of your ad, not just in the fields where they say to put your name/phone number/email.
4. Inform your  caretakers or existing tenants when you’re advertising and if there’s a property that’s been hit by fraud like this. Also let them know when there’s people who are coming to view the suites.
5. Take your ads down when you’re done with them. This should be a no-brainer, but lots of people go for a shotgun strategy with their ads, meaning they’ll take forever to get them down. (You should be smarter and use a more focused approach to online advertising, but that’s another post.)
6. Include a link to your website and keep an eye on your Web Analytics. You should see each site under ‘referring sites’, or if you want to get sophisticated create URLs that label each site and then shorten them using a service like bit.ly so even if people share the link or copy and paste it you’ll get the referring information.

Photo Credit

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The next full day Internet marketing workshop will be on Sunday, July 18th in Edmonton.

We’ll be covering all the fundamentals of online marketing for Real Estate Investors and small business owners. Topics will include:

• The Online EcoSystem
• Search Engines
• Web Analytics
• Blogging and WordPress
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Lead Generation

We’ll be starting at 9am and wrapping up right around 4pm. Lunch is provided and the cost is $297, and registration will be open until sundown on Friday, July 16th.

You can register online here, use the contact form to provide your details or call me at 780-905-7562.

Photo Credit:

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Here is the latest edition of the Calgary rental website ranking report. Like the other reports I’ve released this week, you can find full background and the Winter data in the last edition of the rankings.

There’s been a few small changes that I’ll talk about in a future post, but for now, here’s your very own copy of the Calgary Rental Website report (PDF ~1mb).

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