Jeff Martel

This recession is an education - and I am learning everything I can as fast as I can. A task I face every day in running a Real Estate Brokerage in Boise Idaho is how to cut costs - not service. One of our biggest expensess last year was our websites and a huge portion of that cost was labor because we wanted our sites to be fully custom and to be different from the competition. But this year I resolved to learn ways to reduce overhead and increase service.

In the mad rush at the beginning of this year to completely revamp all of our websites I have given myself a crash course in all things Web. Granted, I have a Graphic Design degree and have been around this stuff for years, but this is the first time I have really embraced working with the Web as a tool. Mostly I stayed away from web work - too complicated and too much coding. I know how to make things "look" good, but I am not one for all the technical coding.

Enter a new way of doing things - SQUARESPACE! If you know how to work in Microsoft Word - then you can build websites! Best of all - they let you try it out for 2 weeks for free. It's not perfect, but it sure beats paying someone $75 per hour to make changes to your site! It is a powerful tool and it helps you to create clean SEO optimized web pages that work well for clients and for Google rankings! Running a Real Estate Brokerage in Boise Idaho today means being lean and mean in terms of Overhead. Making sure we cut costs - NOT SERVICE is key and this tool I think this is one of the key ways we are doing just that.

Here are a few of the websites I have created in Squarespace:

43 Degrees North Real Estate, Boise, Idaho

New Construction Consulting, Boise Idaho

Sonata Hills Community, Boise, Idaho

Hazelwood Village Community, Boise Idaho

But now I have some questions for the ActiveRain community - I'm hoping the experts out there who have been doing this longer than I have can answer some SEO dilemmas that have come up:

1) If I have a series of different domains all pointing to my main website - does this help or hurt rankings... or does it do nothing at all?

2) Does filling your site with keywords really work? Is there a guide to doing this correctly?

3) What is the number one way to increase rankings on search engines like Google?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

A New Direction In Real Estate

Jeff Martel | Broker / Marketing Director
208.327.2103 Voice | 208.327.2104 Fax
http://www.43re.com

(Note: My first post I had the numbers wrong - Blogging too early again!) When you see news story after news story about the stimulus package being debated right now - a little perspective comes to mind. If Housing was truly the issue here, then why not just pay off a portion of every mortgage in America? According to this site, As of 1999 there was about 6 Trillion in Mortgage debt outstanding in the US. I assume it is around 8-9 Trillion today. If we are considering a $900+ Billion stimulus - why not just pay off a portion of the debt? Because it WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM! Granted, a lot of people are in trouble right now. Job losses, purchasing way too much home, tight credit, over extending - all real issues for people today - but all part of what we call the free market.

As painful as it is to everyone - trust me I feel it too as a Real Estate Broker - it is part of a cycle to help keep things in balance. The housing bubble is called a bubble because it was not sustainable - it has to burst. These cycles give everyone a chance to make it. If we never had bust cycles then the Haves and the Have Nots would never change. It times like these that new innovations are made, new industries, new ways of thinking. If everyone is fat and happy all the time - no innovation happens!

So - look to the positives right now. Be closer to family and friends. Learn something new. Try something in a different way. The crazy attempts by the government to stop this economic downturn may or may not work - but in the end it's what has to happen. The government needs to try to save us from ourselves. We need to take stock in what is important in our lives. You get one run in this life so make it count. Up or Down, it doesn't truly matter if you stay positive and enjoy life.

As Realtors we know this will pass. It may be painful, and it may seem like it is going on forever, but good times are around the corner! Focus on what you can control and turn CNN off for a while - it makes the day seem better!

A New Direction In Real Estate

Jeff Martel | Broker / Marketing Director
208.327.2103 Voice | 208.327.2104 Fax
http://www.43re.com
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Are you looking for the signs of a market bottom? Look around - they are everywhere. The stock market has stabilized at 8,000 - this is a baseline. The jobs market - although seemingly chaotic, is near the end of the layoff festival. Companies have over compensated and have front-loaded their layoffs to over-compensate for a tough economic climate. Housing prices have over-corrected and removed all gains from the bubble. Interest rates are the same as when Leave It To Beaver episodes were brand new! Credit is tight - but not to qualified individuals - and programs are being modified and added every day to help get credit flowing.

By the time the media, or your friends and family realize that the housing market has bottom - they will be 6 months late. Look for the signs - don't wait for someone to tell you!

Jeff Martel | Broker / Marketing Director
208.327.2103 Voice | 208.327.2104 Fax
http://www.43re.com

Today the senate approved an addition to the stimulus package that will give buyers up to $15,000 tax credit if they purchase within one year. This is a very interesting concept and if marketed correctly will help to stabilize housing. The problem we have today is not that there is a lack of buyers - it is there is a lack of confidence. Buyers are asking the age old question - what if the market goes down? But this provision in the stimulus package is the answer to that question. Buy purchasing this year, there will be a built-in 10% price stabilizer. If the housing market goes down another 10% (which I doubt it will at this point) the loss is covered already. If the market doesn't go down, then the buyer realized a 10% savings by purchasing this year.

We'll see if it gets approved. My hope is that it applies to ALL homes purchased this year - no matter if they are first time home buyers, second homes, investors - doesn't matter. As long as the buyers are credit qualified then they should receive the tax credit. This will induce purchasing because it removes the uncertainty.

Jeff Martel | Broker / Marketing Director

208.327.2103 Voice | 208.327.2104 Fax

http://www.43re.com

Hi folks,

Posting from vacation in beautiful Palm Springs, CA today (yes, it's 70 degrees and sunny here - back home in Boise Idaho it's around 30 degrees). Typical vacation - I decided to rebuild all of our websites to make them fresh and new for the new year. It's a lot of work, but I think its important to keep things looking fresh. There is nothing worse than a website that sits idle - search engines hate it, consumers get nothing from it, and the sales force gets bored with it.

So, take a look at my vacation handy-work and let me know what you think!

www.43re.com - this is the main brokerage site

www.NewConstructionBoise.com - this is our New Construction website

www.Sonata-Boise.com - this is our Sonata Hills Community website

www.Hazelwoodvillage-Boise.com - this is our Hazelwood Village community website

I would love to hear comments, suggestions, or ideas on any of these sites to help make them better!